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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

#421

Post by yahnu »

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?

I agree.

I went from long time news-junkie phase to no-news phase to just-enough-news phase.

Being a citizen in a democracy is an active process and the active part doesn't have to take too much time. For example, you can check news just two times a week.

For those who are saying there are no neutral news organizations, here is my take: All people are biased. Organizations are made up of people. Hence, you won't get an organization without bias.

The goal is not to find organizations with no bias. The goal is to get your news from organizations with high standards of journalistic integrity and professionalism. Organizations that are aware of thier bias and try to seperate their news coverage from thier opinion section. There are many such news organizations (probably more than any time in history). Just pick two or three such outlets and you will stay informed.

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

#422

Post by projektfu »

minusSeven wrote: post #339
projektfu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

This is easy to say and hard to accomplish in reality. Unless you give specific to dos and don'ts, you will have to change a lot of your habits.

I'm implying consuming more deliberative media, such as long-form journalism, research, "current" history, and the reports of advocacy groups you agree with to inform yourself and help decide what action you will take.

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

#423

Post by banads »

pbourke wrote: post #402
banads wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does abstaining from watching the news prevent someone from being able to vote for a politician that claims to care about climate change?

How would you know about the issues if you abstained from the news?

Go to that candidate's website. Read books about them. Check their voting record.

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

#424

Post by dwrodri »

dwrodri wrote: post #354
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?

Some other commenters have offered really good replies, but I’d like to reiterate the sentiment that most major (American) news outlets have heavily prioritized ad revenue and television ratings over their public duty to inform the people. These days, I get most of my headlines from Reuters and AP. I also respect The Economist, Propublica, FiveThirtyEight, Washington Post, The Intercept, Miami Herald, Buzzfeed News,…

payila -> payola

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

#425

Post by 0xff00ffee »

MFLoon wrote: post #418
0xff00ffee wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is just an empty slogan weaponizing empathy to guilt whoever it's directed at towards supporting your political leaning." What a wildly defensive response to something that wasn't even directed at you. Or maybe YOU think it was and believe it, which is why you got defensive. See, If you are rich you don't need to worry about issues that impact the poor. If you are white you don't need to worry about issues that impa…

I'm criticizing the assertion on it's logical merits (or lack thereof). You're ignoring the substance of my critique, and making a borderline ad-hominem attack on me, including attempting to guilt me for my presumed identity. So yea, I'm sensing a pattern...

> You're ignoring the substance of my critique

"Substance" is being mighty generous. It was more like a temper tantrum than a critique. Shall we review?

You started with:

"...an empty slogan weaponizing empathy to guilt whoever it's directed at towards supporting your political leaning."

Wow, that's quite a claim. Let's see how you back it up...

Oh wait, you didn't. You simply state "both sides are good people" in not so many words. Sure, it is an explanation, but HARDLY a logical explanation.

And then you ended with this gem:

"And if you think of places/times where that ethic of mandatory political life is or was enforced, do you really want to be like that?"

Your fallacious ethical balancing act completely ignores the substance of privilege, you simply choose to ignore the concept! Way to dodge the issue.

Whereas I gave concrete examples as to why it is a privilege to be disengaged.

So spare me your bleeding-heart puling about "weaponization" of truth. It is people like you who hide behind "logic" yet fail to actually use it that are the problem.

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

#426

Post by perl4ever »

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?

I was kind of shocked recently because my phone nudged me towards the "front page" of Wikipedia with top news stories, and it was completely different from other sources of online news. In particular I hadn't heard anything about Brexit finally happening. Someone who is older than me and mainly watches news on TV told me it had been reported there. But Google News and various internet sites I usually read seem to have omitted it. It seems like there is a distinct echo chamber, and maybe you don't have to give up news entirely to get out. It's crossed my mind I could start reading a local newspaper again, too.

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

#427

Post by perl4ever »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #316
quickthrowman wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloomberg (the website) is garbage, FT is far better. Bloomberg journalists are compensated for stories that “move markets”. Ridiculous. I would really like a free Bloomberg terminal tho

>Bloomberg journalists are compensated for stories that “move markets”. Possibly, but that is fundamentally different from infotainment. Even with that bias, Bloomberg never writes an article which fails to answer the most basic questions one could ask about a given story (unlike most "news" [1]). I also qualify them as decent because they generally report trends not anecdotes. Contrast with your local TV station run…

This! Whatever its flaws, the fact that it doesn't share the most pernicious ones of most online news sources counts for something. I refuse to pay to access Bloomberg as long as he is running for President, but it would probably be worth subscribing to otherwise.

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

#428

Post by perl4ever »

PTOB wrote: post #220
godelski wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I suggest consuming news through text rather than video? In fact, the more boring the better. I see a big issue is that the news is frequently emotive based. In some cases this is helpful, when terrible stuff is going on. Other cases it makes mundane things seem worse. Or it makes things that don't affect us and/or we have no control over emotionally important. The latter is particularly harmful, imo. A lot of th…

Where do you get the boring stuff? Please, I'm drowning here.

Local papers?

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

#429

Post by perl4ever »

jfengel wrote: post #215
dave5104 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how books really solve that. If I was interested in following the recent impeachment, what books am I going to read? I'm sure there will be plenty available within the year, but that's a little late for anyone who wants to know what's going on right now.

That's precisely it. There will be plenty of books available before November, and their authors will have had a few months to digest what happened and its aftermath. And November is the only time it really matters. Until then, you can shake your tiny fist, but in November you get to make a choice that counts, literally. You could follow it in real-time for the entertainment value, if you want. But if you actually wan…

Ignoring the news and waiting for a book leaves you vulnerable to revisionism. As people tell stories about events that happened, the events retroactively evolve.

This is something that is particularly noticeable as you get older so that you remember things 10 or 20 years ago. Of course, your own memories can be inaccurate, but people who weren't around at the time are generally completely unmoored because nobody examines primary sources.

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

#430

Post by perl4ever »

throwaway21320 wrote: post #222
jfengel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely it. There will be plenty of books available before November, and their authors will have had a few months to digest what happened and its aftermath. And November is the only time it really matters. Until then, you can shake your tiny fist, but in November you get to make a choice that counts, literally. You could follow it in real-time for the entertainment value, if you want. But if you actually wan…

> But if you actually want to make an informed choice when it matters, you'll have no trouble finding a book that summarizes it, and it will take far, far less time than trying to keep up with it (and remember it all come November). I also doubt there are a lot of people who were following the impeachment because they wanted to decide whether or not to vote for Trump. If you already know how you'll vote, following th…

"because they wanted to decide whether or not to vote for Trump"

I assume people weren't watching to find out if he would be acquitted, either, although polls might be interesting to know.

Important people have been declaring odd things, like how they're sure he's learned his lesson, so it's hard to tell what people believe or expect.

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