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Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

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Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#131

Post by chrisco255 »

abledon wrote: post #96
prolikewh0a wrote: post #82

I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed. I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out. My friends are always telling me about cool ev…

Do you program for a living or have a job that requires lots of human interaction? I find coder jobs amplify the unbalancing nature of loneliness. On the other hand , loneliness is just a symptom of the human not knowing how to be alone and remain content. If only we were born with the user manual around our neck

While I think one can learn to be alone...we are social creatures and it's literally woven into our DNA. So, while I do think few humans can get by without fulfilling social relationships...I think that loneliness is a very serious condition that can cause all sorts of harm.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#132

Post by selimthegrim »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #7

Luckily I never got into Instagram or Twitter, but I was big into both Reddit and Facebook for a long time. I cut off Reddit completely after a run-in with yet another subreddit wannabe dictator mod. It just wasn't worth the drama, not to mention the crappy usability of the site, especially on mobile. For Facebook, I can't cut it off completely, it is unfortunately indispensable for arranging events and interacting w…

If this is the forum I suspect (goon?), I’m certainly pleasantly surprised it is no longer known as a source of trolls.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#133

Post by Aeolun »

drewmate wrote: post #85
prolikewh0a wrote: post #82

I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed. I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out. My friends are always telling me about cool ev…

I'm kind of in the same boat. I assumed that I would be able to participate in normal friendships without social media (the way people did for generations before me). Instead, I think people just assume I'm ignoring them on facebook because I'm anti-social. I've learned to be more proactive in maintaining relationships, but it often feels very one-sided since many other people are used to just getting passive status…

I’ve had people genuinely get angry at me because I’d just been ignoring all IM’s for a few days.

They were worried about whether I was still alive, but the concept of calling to confirm was apparently foreign.

I kind of want to stop using social media, but I guess everyone will think I hate them or something.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#134

Post by Aeolun »

jelly_dev wrote: post #2

About half way through my college education I decided I would only use Facebook for messages and otherwise eliminated all social media from my life aside from Reddit and Hacker news. Since then I found my outlook on life has improved dramatically and recommend most people do that. The problem with social media is you only see the interesting parts of people's lives, so you're forced into a loop of thinking your life…

Unless you have a lot of self control, cutting down on reddit may make you a lot happier too.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#135

Post by laurex »

It's interesting that messaging and social media are conflated by some people and not others. It stands to reason that direct communication is helpful to the problem of loneliness, whereas "observing the sanitised version of other people's lives from the outside" is not.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#136

Post by eeZah7Ux »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #93
clarry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the guidelines, moderation and mechanics all work way better on lobste.rs than here. Here the hivemind effect is pretty damn strong too, so it's going to be frustrating to try have a fruitful discussion if your opinion doesn't align with the group. Here there are enough toxic people that discussions often turn into tiresome, flamey back-and-forth between a handful of people. And here there are too many people wit…

I'm surprised you are not getting downvoted (more) by mentioning the hivemind. The first rule of the HN hivemind is that you don't mention it.

The downvotes I'm getting are proof enough.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#138

Post by strikelaserclaw »

bambataa wrote: post #109
village-idiot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit and HN provide what I call “false novelty”. It’s a torrent of new information and entertaining images, but none of it really provides any sort of lasting impact beyond the first 5 minutes or so. When you do new things in the real world, these become major events that anchor your memories and sense of time. You can probably vividly remember some vacations, concerts, your first kiss, and a thousand other novel l…

But don't you find you learn things, get introduced to new concepts and so on? I definitely think that HN has improved me as a software developer, if only to show me how much unknown stuff there is out there. Reddit is a bit more questionable but I've definitely found useful things in some sub-reddits. And sometimes all I want is something that will easily wile away a few minutes.

This is more for reddit than hacker news (although i would say hacker news is the same to a lesser degree). More and more I've been feeling that all that exposure does is make one feel like one is learning a lot but in reality its just a wide shallow understanding not really useful for anything. It's good to gain exposure but its easy to fall into the trap of mistaking exposure for thinking real hard and working to understand something deeply, at least that is how i feel.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#139

Post by strikelaserclaw »

Humans are social creatures, and we are more isolated than we've ever been even though we are better connected than we've ever been. I don't think social media is to blame, just as i don't think fast food is to blame for obscenity epidemic, but i do think that social media has certainly, consciously leveraged certain weakness of humans in modern society to create addictive substances which cause more harm than good for most people.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#140

Post by coralreef »

Aeolun wrote: post #133
drewmate wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of in the same boat. I assumed that I would be able to participate in normal friendships without social media (the way people did for generations before me). Instead, I think people just assume I'm ignoring them on facebook because I'm anti-social. I've learned to be more proactive in maintaining relationships, but it often feels very one-sided since many other people are used to just getting passive status…

I’ve had people genuinely get angry at me because I’d just been ignoring all IM’s for a few days. They were worried about whether I was still alive, but the concept of calling to confirm was apparently foreign. I kind of want to stop using social media, but I guess everyone will think I hate them or something.

I wouldn't really classify instant messaging as social media, even though all social media platforms have messengers attached nowadays.

Also, if your friends are making an effort to keep in contact with you, why are you faulting them for choosing X medium instead of Y?

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