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

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

#41

Post by gfxgirl »

itake wrote: post #23
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.

maybe you need to curate your feed? mine is no memes and few ads which I ignore. it's all posts from family and friends . also stopped following friends who I aren't close and friends that post too much

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

#42

Post by htrp »

mjevans wrote: post #32
htrp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Sadly, I agree with the first half; for normal end users anyway. (Open)PGP / GNUpg are uselessly cumbersome, slow to adapt standards, useful tools that are ill-suited to the needs of most end users and have horrifically bad UI. The second half is total bunk though, and I'd like to hear how you think that's possibly the case. Maybe there's an angle I'm missing since I don't use that platform for those things. I suspec…

I took two of the most awful things that bother me about general purpose computing (and likely the larger HN community) and typed them in to see if that would trigger an emotional response.

My heart rate actually jumped 15 bpm writing the second statement.

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

#43

Post by betwixthewires »

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…

You know what, you're right, I never noticed this change, probably because I quit FB years ago. It's just a content aggregator now, there's not much social about it aside from FOMO.

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

#46

Post by Geee »

smsm42 wrote: post #24
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.

I think more reasonable stance would be that addicted people stop caring about what they eat, and prioritize time spent on Facebook instead of time spent on cooking better food.

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

#47

Post by betwixthewires »

smsm42 wrote: post #26

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…

I don't disagree with you, but I felt the need to point out the positive feedback loop in the scenario you laid out, that is, the more time you use Facebook the less you spend in your real life and so the alternative becomes weaker even if it was strong when you started. People who use Facebook compulsively didn't start out with no friends and family, if they had they'd have had no reason to create an account on the first place.

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

#48

Post by standardUser »

nonameiguess wrote: post #35
standardUser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past several years I was able to leverage Facebook groups to meet people and find activities when I moved abroad, furnish an apartment when I moved back, discover a niche retro gaming community that I adore, share photos and memories with old friends when a high school friend passed away, collect stories and remembrances that were shared for an uncle who died and share those with his elderly, non-tech parents,…

In contrast, I have done none of those things, but because I have no idea if anyone else I might have otherwise connected with or known has done them, either, I've lost nothing. It's not like I have no one to tell stories to or no communities I'm a part of. I just didn't find them on Facebook. People still tell me when family or close friends die. I didn't become unreachable.

I don't really "tell stories" on social media, I'm not much of a sharer on these platforms, rather I was giving examples of when it was a useful resource, and specifically instances where the resource doesn't have an obvious replacement. I'm not sure I relate to the idea of "lost nothing". By that logic I'd have "lost nothing" if I neve flew on a plane, or sat quietly in a room for 10 years. But in terms of pursuing things I do want to do, Facebook has been a helpful resource on a number of occasions.

As for people dying, that for me has been far and away my most valuable use of Facebook in recent years.

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

#49

Post by betwixthewires »

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…

I'm like you in this respect, but I wasn't always. It took reflection and effort to realize that being challenged is more stimulating than being defensive, and more productive personally. So yes, I can understand that line of thinking, and yes, it is pretty senseless.

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

#50

Post by colpabar »

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 deleted my account several years ago and tried to get my girlfriend at the time to do the same thing. She was in favor of the idea, but facebook would show her a bunch of people with a message like "but what about all these people, won't you miss them?" and it did a great job of picking people who she most likely would not have kept in contact with if not for facebook, so she never deleted it.

I think FOMO is the main reason most people are still on there, not so much "addiction".

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