Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#21

Post by htrp » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

ewzimm wrote: post #15

Does anyone else find it hard to personally connect with the well-researched claim that people respond with a fight-or-flight response to ideas that challenge their core beliefs? I've always found ideas to be more interesting the more they challenge my core beliefs. This is true of math and science, but especially true of things like religion. I remember how wonderful it was as a teenager to find challenges to the id…

Public key encryption, especially PGP, is useless in a modern computing context. Windows has solved almost all identity management issues for the end-user base.

(did that trigger an emotional response?? It bothered me to write it)

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#22

Post by zepto » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

haolez wrote: post #12

ramesh31 wrote: post #9

As someone who's recovered from multiple substance addictions in the past, it is so painfully obvious when I see social media addicts. It's literally the exact same behavior. The compulsion, the lack of awareness, the ignoring of friends and loved ones while mindlessly scrolling; it's all there. Social addiction is even more sinister because the feedback loop is scientifically optimized in a way no substance could ev…

No substance could ever match? More powerful than hunger? I strongly challenge that.

It’s a pretty reasonable hypothesis. Social drives are innate and are likely at least as powerful the drive for food, and may be prioritized higher.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#23

Post by itake » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #14

Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…

+1. My news feed is like 90% memes and ads. I have like 3 friends that actually make interesting text posts that foster discussions. Everything else is a waste cognitive energy.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#24

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #9

As someone who's recovered from multiple substance addictions in the past, it is so painfully obvious when I see social media addicts. It's literally the exact same behavior. The compulsion, the lack of awareness, the ignoring of friends and loved ones while mindlessly scrolling; it's all there. Social addiction is even more sinister because the feedback loop is scientifically optimized in a way no substance could ev…

If you ever heard about Maslow hierarchy, the status is way towards the top. Things like hunger, safety and not being in pain is much lower. So I highly doubt many people would forgo food and agree to be in constant excruciating pain just to be able to access facebook.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#25

Post by gmadsen » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

ewzimm wrote: post #15

Does anyone else find it hard to personally connect with the well-researched claim that people respond with a fight-or-flight response to ideas that challenge their core beliefs? I've always found ideas to be more interesting the more they challenge my core beliefs. This is true of math and science, but especially true of things like religion. I remember how wonderful it was as a teenager to find challenges to the id…

Yes, as I'm sure many do here as well. Thats because the HN community is not representative of the average population

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#26

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

I find the premise ridiculous. I mean yes, there are people who are addicted to it. There are people who are addicted to lots of things, from playing video games to climbing ice-covered mountains. But the idea that it's harder to quit facebook than to get rid of, say, opioid dependency - which literally rewires your body's biochemistry - sounds like complete BS. Of course, if your life is so empty you have nothing to do but browse facebook, sure it's hard to quit, but it's not because of the strength of the addiction, it's because of the weakness of the alternative. I'm sure if you cut off that person's internet access and threw their phone into a lake, they'd be cured pretty soon.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#27

Post by tombert » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #17

Imagine if nicotine had network effects (edit: I mean as strong network effects as fb). You can't quit unless all your friends do too. I hear some alcoholics have a similar challenge when their social life revolves around drinking with peer pressure not to abstain.

While it was fortunately never a problem for me (I've never really drank a lot), when I did business travel for a living, it was pretty common to go to bars after work and expense some drinks to the company (the CEO knew about this, we weren't breaking rules).

I remember thinking that if I were an alcoholic, this would either be the best job in the world or the worst job in the world, depending on your perspective. I can't imagine how much harder it would be to actually quick full-blown alcoholism if all the booze is free. Obviously you were allowed to just buy a soda or seltzer or something, and that's usually what I did, but I could totally see it being ten times harder to quit when all your drinks are comped and all your peers are drinking around you.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#28

Post by standardUser » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #14

Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…

I follow a certain set of pages/groups for some hobbies and have muted almost everything else, including almost all people. You can pretty much make a custom feed that way, though the quality will depend on the quality of posts in those groups (which is on average very low).

Instagram still sort of works like an actual social network for me. I've found it's actually super important for dating (in my age group/scene/whathaveyou).

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#29

Post by nonameiguess » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #17

Imagine if nicotine had network effects (edit: I mean as strong network effects as fb). You can't quit unless all your friends do too. I hear some alcoholics have a similar challenge when their social life revolves around drinking with peer pressure not to abstain.

It does. It's pretty common for friends groups to grow around everyone at a school, a dorm, an office, that take smoke breaks together.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#30

Post by BoxOfRain » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #17

Imagine if nicotine had network effects (edit: I mean as strong network effects as fb). You can't quit unless all your friends do too. I hear some alcoholics have a similar challenge when their social life revolves around drinking with peer pressure not to abstain.

>Imagine if nicotine had network effects. You can't quit unless all your friends do too.

As a former smoker, it took me moving from an office full of smokers to an office where I was the only smoker to finally motivate me to quit for good. I tapered down over about a year with a vape though, and I think that almost has an anti-network effect in that you kind of look like a bellend!