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Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

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Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#121

Post by whatshisface »

anderber wrote: post #101
INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

I absolutely understand what you're saying. But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable. If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news, what effect would that have in our Govenment?

>If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news,

That would be a similar situation to everyone following the advice of not becoming a musician (no music) or not becoming an astronaut (the international space station would have to shut down). Our society is based on specialization and every group of friends really only needs one person who knows what the news is talking about.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#122

Post by luckylion »

minikites wrote: post #105
INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

>And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a country with a high standard of living and personal safety, doesn't affect me at all. The fact that it doesn't affect you means you're in an incredibly privileged position in your country, your life is not the same as everyone else's.

How would somebody less privileged be negatively affected by not knowing about the news? Mind you, it's not about being affected by what's in the news, of course you're affected when the government decides on a new policy ... but how does knowing about it on the same day or in the same hour mitigate that?

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#123

Post by aikah »

I mean there is no point quitting Facebook to spend all your time on Twitter or Instagram either... They are objectively as bad, especially Twitter which is 24/7 of nonsense and petty drama and people yelling at each other or organizing virtual lynch mobs...

Facebook as a way to keep in touch with close friends, as a private family network is fine.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#124

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

GcVmvNhBsU wrote: post #50
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing social media usage to alcoholism? One is physically dependent, one is a fucking website. Ignore posts from people that cause you stress, or just don't scroll through the website. I keep mine to keep in touch with people, but I don't view other people's stupid thoughts. Of course that's not going to be fun.

One is a physical dependence, the other is a psychological dependence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480687/

Well now we are getting into regulating dopamine responses, which is too broad to apply to a single website which is probably why the article doesn't have a source.

This article is just a hit piece. This is the trash on HN these days.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#125

Post by wheels »

INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

I did this for a while, with a couple modifications:

I tried to replace the topics I was reading about in the news with books on those same topics. You'll get far more about, say, the Israel-Palestine conflict from reading one 300 page book than you will from reading 300 1 page news articles.

On top of that I'd pick up about one news magazine or newspaper a month or so, just to stay on top of what the current issues actually were. I did this for a couple of years.

That, however, was at a period of relative stability in western politics. The truth is that right now I'm too interested in the stories that are currently unfolding to only read about them once they've become history.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#126

Post by projektfu »

anderber wrote: post #101
INTPenis wrote: post #89

What gave me the most satisfaction is quitting the news. Incidentally I don't have or use any social media either. Except imgur and sometimes among the funny memes I get news. But I'm afraid for people I meet who always remind me of all the awful things they've seen in the news. I'm aware of none of this until someone tells me. And yet my life is the same as everyone elses. Not knowing what is going on, living in a c…

I absolutely understand what you're saying. But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable. If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news, what effect would that have in our Govenment?

The news these days has no attention span and pounds on the most catchy story all day. Right now it's novel coronavirus. I bet people who watch CNN are highly stressed out about it. I caught a few minutes during a tour of the CNN center and I was glad I won't be seeing that reporting all day. As soon as a more gruesome story comes along, the reporting will change, it'll forget about the virus, and life will go on.

There must be a better way to truly accomplish keeping government accountable. Think about your locus of control. Most reporting is about things that do not directly affect you, you cannot change them, and they have some emotional value that keeps them in the news. Where you can effect change is in your locality, or with your local representatives, voting in larger elections, writing letters to staff, joining advocacy groups, etc. I think the constant drumbeat of bad news makes people less likely to do any of these things.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#127

Post by codegeek »

In my humble opinion, there are 2 types of people who use facebook:

1. The show offs who want to share every little detail about their every little thing in life.

2. People who want to keep tabs on their family/friends occasionally.

I started as #1 back in 2004 when fb was still early on and slowly graduated to #2.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#128

Post by daveFNbuck »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #108
anderber wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely understand what you're saying. But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable. If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news, what effect would that have in our Govenment?

You can delegate your concern to a political party, which is essentially all you are able to do as a citizen in a country like the US particularly if you live in a state that does not have a lot of referenda. If you want to learn more you can spend more time on researching the issues. Otherwise you could vote on a single issue, or just pick the party that is supposed to represent people like you with a similar hierar…

The problem with the strategy you describe is that if too many people use it, politicians can just openly lie about what's happening in the world and what they're doing about it. A voter who has identified with a party and is no longer interested in learning the facts has no way to correct for this.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#129

Post by Diederich »

papreclip wrote: post #18

I open facebook for 2 minutes a week and scroll through my relatives' baby and pet pictures. I don't get how the site is such a specter of misery for some people Twitter I would understand a little better. It's such a tar pit of negative energy, insults, rage bait, etc

Right. My use of Facebook is similar. I almost never look at my 'feed'. I search on specific people and look at what they post, but on variable intervals. I'll look at a few people's posts once a day. Others, once a week, etc.

> I don't get how the site is such a specter of misery for some people

I understand what you're saying; it doesn't have much sway over me either. But it does over a lot of other folks, by design. And that pull is very real, and quite powerful.

Re: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

#130

Post by keenmaster »

ralmidani wrote: post #72

I use FB almost exclusively for news about the Middle East, especially Syria where the Assad regime actively targets journalists who tell the truth about what is happening there and very few Western journalists are going into the areas the regime is bombing. I have vowed to not use FB once the regime is gone, people can gather freely, and real news media can operate openly. My FB feed is mostly depressing these days,…

One of the benefits of social media is supposed to be transparency, and I believe that. However, isn't it an indictment of global callousness that so many people have seen Assad's destruction of Syria and no one is helping? In fact, Russia's bot armies far outnumber Syrian refugees on Facebook, and they're spreading confusion on the whole situation. They're making it seem like Syria is some sectarian black hole, where no one is innocent, and global action will accomplish nothing. That keeps everyone else out, Russia and Iran in, and leaves Syrians to be genocided day in and day out. More people rallied behind Kony 2012, even though it was a campaign of lies. The American public has been successfully and systematically jaded into glossing over the whole Syrian tragedy.

Facebook is probably a net-negative for Syrians all things considered. Your social network may know the truth of who is committing 98% of the crimes, who invited ISIS/terrorists into Syria, and who is responsible for a modern-day genocide (half a million people erased from existence so far), but unfortunately that's not the case for the vast majority of people.

After Syria is destroyed, the history books will ask: how did we allow that to happen? What happened to Never Again? Social media will be part of the answer. We are reduced to tears when watching a film about Rwanda, and merely confused when hearing about Syria. Dictators love it when you are confused, because truth is their greatest enemy. In a state of confusion, the truth is not fully resolved. Moral clarity is dead. The solution starts with caring strongly about this problem. Only then can we begin to address it.

I would be pleasantly surprised if we're not both downvoted. You have my solidarity. I know how hard it is for you to receive zero empathy, and sometimes even aggression, when speaking the truth of who slaughtered your people and deprived you of your country. Keep telling the truth regardless. Part of the problem (of confusion and jadedness) inadvertently originated in the tech industry, and part of the solution will come from the tech industry. It won't know or care about the issue until victims come forth and make the problem clear. The tech industry needs to hear your voice. Creating a tool that is, on net, an accessory to perpetrators of genocide and manipulators of the public, without fixing it, is very, very problematic. Separately, Youtube is deleting video evidence of the genocide (even though it said it doesn't mean to). Many of the posters of those videos are no longer alive, or not in a situation where they can raise a dispute with Youtube. That is perfectly legal, and almost noone knows or cares.

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FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, are you listening? A GENOCIDE is going on. Facebook, your platform is being leveraged by the perpetrators of genocide as a modern-day Pravda of epic proportions. Google/Youtube, you are continuing to delete critical video evidence of the genocide from your servers forever even though activists put you on notice. Help.

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