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Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

calnewport.com

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Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#51

Post by vidarh »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #39
Ntrails wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood why people claim reading is a more worthy use of time than watching tv. Love island probably teaches people more about the human condition than fifty shades does, so pick your poison

most books that have been published in the past 100 years will disappear because they aren't worth the e-/paper they're written on. What makes reading more valuable for your brain is that it requires active engagement. films might be valuable too (I love films such as sci-fi, crime and comedy) - but binging 6 hrs on movies/shows every days is sure not as valuable as reading 6 hrs every day. It becomes even more damag…

Most of my sons screen time is spent socializing. He rarely watches TV, but he spends a lot of time in multiplayer games where he is simultaneously on discord and building friendships. Yes, he needs face to face socialization too, and he gets plenty of that at school and various other activities, but the point being that screen time can be very passive or it can be active and involve lots of social contact.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#52

Post by mellowdream »

I thought I was clever to disable YouTube viewing history, thus replacing all the interesting and addictive videos I normally get lost in with the most inane garbage from the typical "news" vendors, sports highlights, celebrity interviews, Star Wars/capeshit theorycrafting, crap from Business Insider and TED and the like, etc. which I of course planned to never watch...

Now when I want to avoid working I just end up watching stupid clickbait instead of interesting clickbait...

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#53

Post by bandwitch »

mellowdream wrote: post #52

I thought I was clever to disable YouTube viewing history, thus replacing all the interesting and addictive videos I normally get lost in with the most inane garbage from the typical "news" vendors, sports highlights, celebrity interviews, Star Wars/capeshit theorycrafting, crap from Business Insider and TED and the like, etc. which I of course planned to never watch... Now when I want to avoid working I just end up…

What I found really helpful in reducing Youtube viewing time, is to use a browser-extension that hides recommended video all together. This way, you only watch videos you explicitly searched for.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#54

Post by philpem »

numpad0 wrote: post #45
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The echo chamber is real. I went cold turkey on Twitter after using it for 10 years and gaining about 6k followers. Twitter was the #1 source of left-wing extremist noise in my life. I'm sure there were/are right-wing extremists on that platform too, but one seemed to appear in my algorithmic feed more than the other. Or perhaps it was confirmation bias. Who knows! Good riddance.

Both side's on it. In fact there's no sides. Just that Twitter is competent at removing constructive elements and distilling hatred/rage/anger for profit and it's working against you. There are few ways to strip out some of their 10-year "improvement" and oh how deserted it looks under there...

Message to the shareholders: "Millions of active users, billions of messages"

The truth: most of those messages are angry and argumentative, and most of those "active users" are just the same people being angry and tribal towards each other.

It makes for good stats, but like all stats, they're just numbers if presented without the context and analysis behind them.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#55

Post by mlang23 »

ygggvg wrote: post #29
mlang23 wrote: post #27

I totally quit television about a year ago, and it had a very noticeable positive impact on me. I also mostly quit Facebook with the end of last year. I say mostly, because I still use its event calendar, and occasionally check my stream. But I significantly reduced the amount of comments I leave on that platform. I feel like, while the criticism of FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit and co is pretty much warranted, we manage…

Wasting our time? Why would you think it is wasting time?

Well, first of all, most TV programs I know are catering to an audience that is clearly not fitting my expectations of quality information or even entertainment. The mother from "requiem for a dream" comes to mind when I think about average TV entertainment. What adds to that, is that I really can't stand the style of action movies produced since about 2010. They are heavily overloaded and lack a story that is worth following. Maybe I am getting old, but I constantly feel like being wound up by TV programs these days.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#56

Post by japanoise »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #50
numpad0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both side's on it. In fact there's no sides. Just that Twitter is competent at removing constructive elements and distilling hatred/rage/anger for profit and it's working against you. There are few ways to strip out some of their 10-year "improvement" and oh how deserted it looks under there...

I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I'm quite convinced certain subcultures are overrepresented on Twitter, and that while Twitter is open to all, that doesn't mean it's a representative cross-section of the general population. I think this is true of most social networks, and is more obvious in certain cases, e.g. , Tumblr.

It's pretty notable on the left - for example, tankies, who are almost nonexistant irl, flood that website.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#57

Post by CaptArmchair »

sbmthakur wrote: post #44
_8j50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism. HN is hardly alone on this, plenty of other sites including redit and a few others that I know of hate on facebook regularly.

> FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism. I don't get how Facebook is detrimental to society . Probably I am missing something. The majority of people do have an option to delete their account or simply not to log in. Apart from Facebook's involvement in scandals like Cambridge Analytica, I don't see what's wrong with the site or company.…

That's the equivalent of the "guns don't kill people. People kill people." argument. It's a sort of "shifting the goalposts" fallacy.

Tools, organization, policies,... are always an expression of a specific or a common intent. How Facebook moderates the platform, makes design choices, how it decides on what to show on your newsfeed,... all of that is intentional.

Facebook isn't a public commons, it's not a space where people freely control the flow of the content they publish or control what they see or when they get to see it. Facebook is designed with the express goal of getting to know as much as possible about its tenants - "insights" in marketing speak - so it can then sell that information.

The problem with Facebook is how 2nd and 3rd order network effects that disrupt the fabric of society, emerge through its sheer scale. What's wrong with the platform is that it is entirely unwilling to acknowledge those effects and happily shift responsibility towards society and individuals.

If people aren't willing to delete their account, then that's because Facebook has captured how people communicate and understands that it plays into basic psychological behaviors such as FOMO, or that nobody likes to be an outsider.

If literally everyone you know goes to the top place in town every thursday and saturday night, if all the gossip happens at that spot, well, it's extremely hard to stay clear of that without feeling left out.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#59

Post by officialchicken »

ygggvg wrote: post #29
mlang23 wrote: post #27

I totally quit television about a year ago, and it had a very noticeable positive impact on me. I also mostly quit Facebook with the end of last year. I say mostly, because I still use its event calendar, and occasionally check my stream. But I significantly reduced the amount of comments I leave on that platform. I feel like, while the criticism of FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit and co is pretty much warranted, we manage…

Wasting our time? Why would you think it is wasting time?

The viewer IS the product. Both are mediums that serve essentially no real purpose other than to support advertisers.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#60

Post by mlang23 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #30
ygggvg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasting our time? Why would you think it is wasting time?

time spent in a way that made you feel good isn't wasted. maybe it had no economic output but that isn't a waste. But the long term benefit of TV/Video isn't a diet that's good for you. Consider all the things you could do (not "achieve") if you'd use it for reading books, travel, learning a language or art. What this medium robs you of is boredom, which maybe feels great in the short run, but is hugely damaging to y…

> time spent in a way that made you feel good isn't wasted

I am not sure this sentence is universally true. I'd like to remind you about the experiment with mice that got a button to trigger their own happiness center... They end up pressing that button, until they die from lack of food.

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