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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

#141

Post by barbs »

btheshoe wrote: post #131

It's not just Facebook, it's social media in general. More precisely, it's infinite scroll, which has become a ubiquitous design decision across social media. I recently finally succeeded in developing a healthy relationship to social media, and it involved disabling infinite scroll where I could (using Hackernews, moving to old Reddit) and quitting the social media sites where I couldn't (mostly Youtube). I'm scared…

I agree with that. I still use Facebook and Youtube, but I disable the News Feed and YouTube recommendations/home page using browser plugins.

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

#142

Post by teflonbungee »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #80
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 wish someone would make a site like that again! I will make a site similar to that. I really want to. I have plan all drawn up for how it will work. Its ad free, but with premium services for those willing to pay. One member of a family or group can pay for everybody. The site is ephemeral, all posts are removed after three months. Its not a place where you store all your photos. Its a site where friends and famil…

Maaaan I wish I could get in on something like this. I’m a noob web dev and I’d love to work on a substantial project with a skilled dev. This sounds like a really cool idea.

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

#143

Post by ldehaan »

I quit Facebook around 6 years ago and it was So easy. Facebook is trash, the ui is trash, I mean it's ridiculous, and that was 6 years ago. I can't imagine how bad the ui is now, but it gives me a headache to try.

I can only imagine it must be likes, I've rarely gotten likes on any platform. I assume it is because I am writing what I can only assume is gibberish to others. This simple fact stopped me from being addicted.

Be less likeable and quitting social media is super easy. Just tell the truth, that seems to work great at reducing likes.

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

#144

Post by iammisc »

Do you know what should be illegal? The way facebook does account deletion.

When you 'delete' your account, you actually put it into a special state for 30 days. If you log in, even accidentally, during those 30 days, the cancellation is canceled. So, if like most Facebook addicts (as I was), you had the habit of typing 'facebook.com' every 30 minutes or so, it would undo your facebook deletion request.

The proper thing to do is to either delete the account immediately (although I understand why maybe losing all your data is a bad idea), or, get rid of the automatic reinstatement and require users to go through a separate process to reclaim their accounts before data purging.

Facebook knows that by operating with this cancellation scheme, they can basically prevent cancellations of the addicted, since moments of clarity when someone requests deletion are soon clouded by moments of habit when someone types in 'facebook.com' to satisfy the itch.

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

#145

Post by iammisc »

ramoz wrote: post #19

The author who wrote this has tweeted, on average, 1-2x a day for 10 years. https://twitter.com/jaronschneider Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society (an information/propagation architecture that exploits how people process information, imo). For me, Facebook is nothing more than a hometown forum. I havent logged on in months.

Twitter is certainly more toxic than Facebook!

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

#146

Post by devit »

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 think the addicted people still use it like you are describing (as well as looking at the feed).

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

#147

Post by pitched »

root_axis wrote: post #104
afavour wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as though it's impossible for anyone to write a thread on HN about Facebook without someone immediately coming in and saying that Facebook is stupid and they deleted their account years ago. Yeah, me too. But you usually don't have to look beyond your immediate family to find someone that uses Facebook (or at the very least an FB-owned property) a ton. We aren't typical!

So what? Facebook has a lot of users, that doesn't negate the point that quitting is not hard, people just like Facebook, they don't want to quit.

> What you’re doing right now is the most important thing you could be doing, according to you.

A very powerful quote on preference falsification but I can’t for the life of me remember where it came from.

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

#148

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

"And you would obsessively watch who looks at your page ..."

I used a relatively small-scale website with all this functionality before Facebook or the term "social network" existed. However regarding seeing who visits a profile, I do not remember Facebook ever allowed the user to see who was viewing their profile. Today, one can create a "page" (cf. profile) and Facebook lets one pay to promote a page. Facebook gives some very basic metrics on whether the page is getting visits, with less detail than a basic web server log. It might be interesting if Facebook allowed users to see who was accessing their profile because from what I have profiles are routinely being accessed by accounts that the user is not aware of. Facebook might seem "dead" to some folks as they do not see much activity, however there may be regular activity that they cannot see. Their data is being used by Facebook and their profile data is being accessed. Connections are being made. (As in connecting the user to other people, locations, institutions, etc.)

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

#149

Post by devit »

ferrumfist wrote: post #124
klyrs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people with severe anxiety or depression, meditation can actually aggravate the situation and do significant harm. Letting one's mind run wild in that situation leads to more anxiety, suicide planning, etc. But, I'll amend my statement: facebook is less boring than a blank screen.

That's absurd. There is no scientific basis that would support your assertion. In fact, increased social media activity leads to a higher chance of suffering from depressive episodes. Meditation has been shown to to actually combat symptoms of depression. If you can't sit still with your own thoughts for 60 seconds without spiraling, then you shouldn't even be remotely near social media.

Well, if you do "meditation" (or "do nothing") in a way that results in shutting down all thoughts except the depressive ones, then it's going to make things worse.

In that case, you might be (temporarily) better off adding some very powerful and addictive thoughts or feelings to cover up the depressive ones; I think this might be in fact one of the main uses of social media and videogames.

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

#150

Post by klyrs »

root_axis wrote: post #105
ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my wife is addicted, she will pick up her phone to do one thing but first goes to Facebook and scrolls, then she forgets what she was using her phone for. Maybe not addicted but she has a habit of going to Facebook every time she uses her phone.

That doesn't seem at all like addiction to me, that's just a mundane routine. If she had a panic attack when FB went down this week then I think we could say it's an addiction.

Sounds like that Afroman song, to me. "I was gonna clean my room, but then I got high..."

If a habitual behavior is bad enough to interrupt somebody's ability to accomplish routine tasks, then it's pretty conclusively an addiction.

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