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Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#91

Post by munk-a »

flycaliguy wrote: post #19

Yeah, I mean, this is among Canadians willing to fill out a survey online. Frankly it feels like another push in the media world to shift blame to FB. As far as specifically Canadian factors, maybe don’t survey us in October when the days are getting noticeably shorter? I feel like we are all a little melancholy right now preparing for our lightless morning commutes.

I am actively disappointed that this organization chose to use such a weak survey to prove their point. It feels pretty darn accurate as a Canadian on the ground so paying out for a phone survey could have dodged all this doubt.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#92

Post by AzzieElbab »

version_five wrote: post #29
AzzieElbab wrote: post #20

what do most canadians think about the globe and mail?

Yeah that was the first thing that went through my mind too. There are few traditional news outlets that don't try and incite rage driven attention. The globe and mail is not a tabloid (last I checked, I'm 10 years into a boycott) but it still tries to bait people into viewing its stories in a way that's tailored to its readership.

realized it's been that way forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMXyzOaaU8

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#93

Post by allenu »

chickenfries wrote: post #31
darkerside wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange... I thought we were wired as a species to live vicariously, to feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer. You're not the only one that doesn't get that out of Facebook... Why? Is it the quantity? The format? What turns it into a place of covetousness and bitterness?

It's definitely the format and the quantity for me. Seeing an old friend in person and having them tell me about their life and accomplishments, even showing me pictures, does not make me feel the same way. I think it's also the fact that I turn to social media when I'm feeling lonely, so seeing a feed of people at their best moments, on vacation with friends, getting married, having children, etc... makes me feel ev…

I feel the same way, and to me it's all about the authenticity. The context of social media takes away from the authenticity of the post. Someone may genuinely just want to share some dish that they just created, but in the context of social media, you can never be sure if they're posting it because of that, or posting it for the easy likes or easy engagement. Social media has commodified human interaction.

I forget where I read it, but it's similar to the idea that if someone you love makes a meal for you, at the end of it, you don't ask "how much do I owe you?" and break out your wallet. It's distasteful. Likewise, you don't do someone for a loved one or friend and afterwards say, "well that will be $X".

Posting on social media has a reward of sharing and liking, and as a result, to me, it turns human interaction into an exchange. (And I will admit that there is an element to that already, in terms of owing people favors etc., but the "bookkeeping" that we do is generally in our heads and is hard to quantify, which makes it a bit fuzzier and less commodified.)

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#94

Post by Tiktaalik »

keewee7 wrote: post #38
flycaliguy wrote: post #19

Yeah, I mean, this is among Canadians willing to fill out a survey online. Frankly it feels like another push in the media world to shift blame to FB. As far as specifically Canadian factors, maybe don’t survey us in October when the days are getting noticeably shorter? I feel like we are all a little melancholy right now preparing for our lightless morning commutes.

What I don't understand is the selective outrage against Facebook/Instagram. Why not Twitter, YouTube, reddit and TikTok?

Or traditional media? Are we pretending that fashion magazines have never pushed toxic body image messages onto young people? lol

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#95

Post by bena »

jszymborski wrote: post #18
zepto wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What new platform? Why won’t the new platform be just as bad? Switching brand of cigarettes doesn’t protect your lungs.

I think that's a fair point, but I wonder if I can probe HNs brain on what a "healthy" online social network would look like. Here are some thoughts I have: 1) The platform does not have a user-engagement incentive. 2) Personal network sizes are restricted. You can't be "friends" with everyone. Adding friends perhaps comes at some cost or is just strictly capped. 3) Sharing outside your friends network from the platf…

> The platform does not have a user-engagement incentive.

Then you lose to a platform that does. There does need to be a level of incentive for user-engagement. Either that or users will invent one.

> Personal network sizes are restricted. You can't be "friends" with everyone. Adding friends perhaps comes at some cost or is just strictly capped.

Facebook is capped at 5000 connections where a connection is defined as a friend or page like. You can argue whether or not this should be a smaller number, but technically Facebook does have this.

> Sharing outside your friends network from the platform is not possible. This platform is for sharing with your friends, not the world.

What about Friend-of-a-friends? How do two people find out they're both on the platform? Some information has to be publicly available. I think if you stop making "public" an option, users will just find some way to make things more public. Like sharing images via avatar image. Or taking screenshots and passing those among their friends (and their friends share with their friends, etc).

> Trust in the platform and how it shares your data. The easiest way to trust the server is if everything is E2EE, but we all know that's not trivial. Perhaps the limits in scaling E2EE can work synergistically with (2) and (3)

Eh. End to end encryption only matters for information you want to be kept private. And the information isn't being shared between you and me, it's being shared between Facebook and me, then Facebook and you. The problem is that Facebook is the one selling the data. It's the fact that they're the hub.

It's a hard problem all over because in a lot of places, you're fighting human nature.

Maybe a P2P/torrent style system, where all the information is encrypted and your data exists as a hash. To contribute to that hash, you need the private key, to read that hash, you need the public key. Connections are made by swapping public keys with people. You'd need a way to get your own private key from some source if you want to use multiple platforms. But if the private key was stored in some central hub, but encrypted, you could request the encrypted private key and then use your password/phrase to decrypt it on your device.

Just spitballing.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#96

Post by legitster »

wellthisishn wrote: post #49
legitster wrote: post #30

I know Facebook is the great evil, but we really need to start looking at the mental health impacts of all social media. The unhappiest people I know are not on Facebook - they are religiously devoted to Twitter and Reddit. Heck, I'd like to know what sort of damage this post right here is doing to me. This is our generation's smoking but everyone only wants to know how harmful Marlboros are. Edit: Please upvote this…

We could start by calling it what it is -- antisocial. Spending time on media content aggregators is an antisocial activity. Not that spending some time on an antisocial activity is inherently bad... studying and research are also antisocial activities. But let's not call something "social" when it is the antithesis of anything that could be considered as such. I think this could be a decent start!

I think it would be one thing if they were just aggregators. It's the community aspect that's harmful - it's clearly addicting and gives people the feeling of being social with fewer of the benefits.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#97

Post by cronix »

munk-a wrote: post #82
cronix wrote: post #67

I'm getting kind of tired of the narrative that "x is evil/bad/harmful, but I'm too weak (we won't admit addiction) to not use x. Everyone I know uses x. Government needs to regulate x (so I don't have to change my ways)." I deleted my account over a year ago now, because I do view them as evil and do cause overall societal harm. It's not life ending. You'll adjust and then wonder why you didn't do it sooner. I made…

The issue is primarily that some folks have moved all of their online connections onto facebook - they've put all of their eggs in that basket. If you want to keep up with them at all you need to at least have the bearest presence on the platform. This is less about that dude from highschool and more about your cousin.

> If you want to keep up with them at all you need to at least have the bearest presence on the platform.

So, if you texted "Hey cousin, it's been awhile, how's it going?" you wouldn't get a reply?

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#99

Post by bena »

pzo wrote: post #47
jszymborski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a fair point, but I wonder if I can probe HNs brain on what a "healthy" online social network would look like. Here are some thoughts I have: 1) The platform does not have a user-engagement incentive. 2) Personal network sizes are restricted. You can't be "friends" with everyone. Adding friends perhaps comes at some cost or is just strictly capped. 3) Sharing outside your friends network from the platf…

some good points. I would add also: 5) limit how many posts / pictures / content you can share per day to avoid information overload. This should make people double thing what they are writing and hopefully more higher quality content. 6) automatically limit time spend for everyone on social media for e.g. 30-60 min per person per day. 7) Different business model than ads.

5 & 6 just means multiple accounts per person.

7 means some sort of paywall. You either collect from the users themselves, or collect from people who want access to those users.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#100

Post by Joeri »

heurisko wrote: post #76
legitster wrote: post #30

I know Facebook is the great evil, but we really need to start looking at the mental health impacts of all social media. The unhappiest people I know are not on Facebook - they are religiously devoted to Twitter and Reddit. Heck, I'd like to know what sort of damage this post right here is doing to me. This is our generation's smoking but everyone only wants to know how harmful Marlboros are. Edit: Please upvote this…

I think twitter is the most toxic. I have been uncomfortable on twitter to find enclaves where people are mentally ill, and have found others to exacerbate their behaviour and thinking.

I see toxicity not as twitter’s problem, but as its feature. I go to twitter to find out people’s gut reactions to current events, and in that role it is a uniquely capable and succinct resource.

What you will not find there is rational and reasonable debate, but imho that’s not what twitter is for.

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