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A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

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Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#62
If you want to use Facebook for the groups or business purposes, you can disable the news feed. I use the Firefox add-on 'Disable Facebook News Feed' or 'Kill News Feed' on Chrome. If you want to reduce their tracking on Firefox use the tab containers.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#63
Even better for your mental health is stop reading news.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

The truly toxic part of facebook and much of social media today is the amount of news and politics that have been allowed on it.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#64

Even better for your mental health is stop reading news. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... The truly toxic part of facebook and much of social media today is the amount of news and politics that have been allowed on it.

And the comments. How to not worry in one paragraph. If you can’t control, don’t worry. If you can, do something! Also, imagine if you are blind and walk around for 5 minutes with your eyes closed. Imagine if you are permanently blind. How will it be like to live as that forever! Open your eyes. You have the power of sight! More than you will ever need to survive! Edit: Why the downvotes?

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#65

I quite liked facebook. I don't have the urge to constantly check it, nor post much on it, but it was useful for events, casually keeping up with life events of acquaintances, and keeping a rolodex of semi-friends (e.g. people I met on holiday and would like to run into again). I deleted it because the company seems thoroughly evil and doesn't respect my privacy. But if anyone comes up with a privacy-respecting alter…

The problem with the alternatives is they don't have the budget and installed user base Facebook has. Sure, you'll get techie people to jump on board at first (remember Google+?), but all the family members who don't know a Twitter from an Amazon will stick with Facebook because the constant negative Facebook press isn't enough to get them to leave and no longer see pictures of their baby grandson. I'm not sure what…

Your argument is a truism: that any competitors don't have the budget/user base. Well duh, FB is by far #1 in both of those categories. The only way for a competitor to beat them is to come up from nothing to build a SNS and prove this naysayer argument wrong (and for its founders to have the stones to not get bought out). Until then, every FB post on HN is going to have people pointing to the FB network/userbase and saying "IMPOSSIBLE!"

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the alternatives is they don't have the budget and installed user base Facebook has. Sure, you'll get techie people to jump on board at first (remember Google+?), but all the family members who don't know a Twitter from an Amazon will stick with Facebook because the constant negative Facebook press isn't enough to get them to leave and no longer see pictures of their baby grandson. I'm not sure what…

Facebook's solution was initial exclusivity to college students. This made it cool to high school students. Then once high school and college students were all on it, their parents eventually got on. So maybe we could shamelessly copy that exact model for the new federated open-source Facebook replacement.

But wouldn't that mean we won't be in there? Until, and if, it gains traction?

Edit: also, are we the problem?

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#67

I quite liked facebook. I don't have the urge to constantly check it, nor post much on it, but it was useful for events, casually keeping up with life events of acquaintances, and keeping a rolodex of semi-friends (e.g. people I met on holiday and would like to run into again). I deleted it because the company seems thoroughly evil and doesn't respect my privacy. But if anyone comes up with a privacy-respecting alter…

Here you go: https://joinmastodon.org/

Do they support "events" yet?

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#68

I quite liked facebook. I don't have the urge to constantly check it, nor post much on it, but it was useful for events, casually keeping up with life events of acquaintances, and keeping a rolodex of semi-friends (e.g. people I met on holiday and would like to run into again). I deleted it because the company seems thoroughly evil and doesn't respect my privacy. But if anyone comes up with a privacy-respecting alter…

I keep it around solely because my parents / grandparents use it and it's a means for me to stay in their lives from far away. My social circles have totally dropped it.

for what? Instagram? That's much worse imo.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#69

Can confirm. I tried deactivating and then cutting down but that just never works. Deleting is the way to go. Old friends you want to connect with? There’s always email and a phone number. People actually reach out to me outside of that awful service to say “Hey Foo is in town” or “We’re having a reunion for Bar”. Just delete it, notify people first, save the images you want, and torch it. Everything incremental just…

It's a lot more difficult to do, but a deep cull of your friend list might replicate a lot of the value. Those acquaintances you met ten years ago and haven't spoken to since? Unfriend or at least unfollow. Get it down to the people you actually talk to & care about.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#70
You don't have to quit Facebook to get the mental health benefits.

All you have to do is unfollow everyone! Literally everyone. Your feed will be blank and peaceful, but you will still be able to maintain a presence on messenger and maintain your profile for people to reach you. You can also still interact with private Facebook groups and things, if you want.

This is what I did, and it curbed my addiction to checking facebook.

After a while, I slowly started following specific people again (mainly just the people I interact with on a daily basis, and the few family members that I can actually stand).

The moment someone starts stressing me out by posting nonsense or clutter, they get unfollowed.

It's very zen, and my mental health has drastically improved from it.

P.S. If you Google "Facebook Unfollow All", there are multiple tools and things like browser extensions which make this as simple as one button press to accomplish. It can be pretty tedious to do manually by hand if you have a lot of friends.

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