Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 273 posts

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#111

Post by pesfandiar »

macksd wrote: post #7

As a side note, I'm a little saddened when I see friends apologize for their posts. There's such a reaction to "influencer culture" that people feel like foodgrams and humblebrags are a terrible thing, and in excess they certainly can be, but I think from most people it's a billion times better than strawman political arguments and manipulative media that is far worse for our mental health than just comparing ourselv…

It may be easier for adults to see those highlight reels for what they are, and minimize the feelings of inadequacy and envy. At this point though, it's pretty much established that they do harm young adults and teenagers.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#112

Post by Minor49er »

pzo wrote: post #78
Minor49er wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're looking at this from a western perspective. Some non-western countries are entirely linked by Facebook products. When Facebook went down last week, some people couldn't access their BANKS. You OK with that? Wasn't this because DNS servers were effectively DDoS'd when applications overwhelmed them with requests looking for Facebook without caching the response? Or are there actually banks out there that requi…

So many people these days instead of creating separate account to some websites (login/password) the use instead integrated Login via Facebook button. I tried to educate friends and family not to use this feature even for the reason that if their FB account will be blocked they will loose access to many other websites. However many people give up because it's not so convenient as to just clicking one FB button.

I have accounts with a couple of banks and can't say I've ever seen them using OAuth. But if they did, I'd consider other banking options.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#114

Post by intrasight »

FB happens to be the platform by which people share. In an alternative universe where "ShareBook" was the dominant micro-blobbing platform, that would have been the target of these critiques. Depressed people says something about those people and about our culture in general.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#115

Post by mikepurvis »

pasquinelli wrote: post #106
chickenfries wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that I wish social media was full of more posts like this, but foodgrams and humble brags as you put it are also one of the reasons I avoid social media these days. Seeing a feed of the best moments of other peoples lives leaves me feeling depressed. "Comparison is the thief of joy." I'm happy for my friends, but seeing it all collected in one place makes my own life feel inadequate. I'm much happier…

i also avoid social media, but for the opposite reason. i'm not bothered seeing everyone else's greatest hits, but curating my life and thoughts to present to an audience was wearing me down, and when i finally realized that's what i was doing, i got off it. presumably there are some personality types that social media works well for, as opposed to personality types that work well for social media, of which there are…

Maybe it's not the healthiest thing, but I kind of enjoy having that as a secondary motivation, especially for projects I'm on the edge for— things like bread baking, kombucha making, small electronics repair, etc. If I know I can take a few pictures and tell a fun story around it, then it can be the motivation to get something started or power it through.

I guess the one boundary is that I don't generally mine my interactions with my kids for internet kudos— I don't want my camera in their faces when we're at the park or reading a book, making them feel like I'm only there spending time with them to score internet kudos later.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#116

Post by white-flame »

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…

What do you define "social media" as? If it's communication kept within circles of family, friends, colleagues, and enthusiast/interest groups, I really don't see much problem with it, just as forums/blogs/etc before it.

The two big problems poisoning this well are:

1) monetization usually reaches for manipulating people's personal socialization stream, and

2) public broadcast of personal content to the feeds of strangers, usually the most inflammatory subset because of point 1.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#117

Post by karmanyaahm »

hcrisp wrote: post #103
xdavidliu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is a sample. It's just not an unbiased sample [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_(statistics)#Kinds_of_s...

Very unbiased. Only sampled people who were online and ostensibly only those who used Facebook. Since maybe ~60% of people use Facebook, I don't think the results speak for _all_ Canadians. If it did that's saying a lot for secondhand effects of social media platforms.

Not totally sure, but aren't people with extreme feelings more likely to answer a survey? Voluntary or nonresponse biases

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#118

Post by mistermann »

munk-a wrote: post #85
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight nitpick. The argument isn't, "so I don't have to change my behaviors." The argument is, OTHER people are too weak to change their behaviors, so we need to have the government regulate THEIR behavior. (The greater good.) It's bad enough to be lazy and want someone else to fix your problems. It's almost worse to decide you know what other people's problems are, and decide what needs to happen for them. (Or phras…

No - since this is a social network this isn't all about personal responsibility. People hate-use facebook because everyone hate-uses facebook. There is no sane alternative because everyone needs to hate-use the same platform to be on it with everyone else.

I think it is plausible that a different kind of social media could be created that does not involve hate (at least not in the same quantities), that some people would find to be preferable to the current toxic ones everyone is one. It wouldn't happen overnight, but if no one ever builds anything, we may be stuck on these forever, or until we tear society part.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#119

Post by white-flame »

remir wrote: post #55

Social media, ultimately, is information. There is no point in polarizing Facebook as good or bad. It is access to certain types of information and one must learn to discern if it can serve them or not.

Facebook (and most other businesses in the space) is a system of manipulating and editorializing individuals' social communication in order to extract engagement-related profit.

This is not a common carrier, but an active distorter.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#120

Post by wesapien »

macksd wrote: post #7

As a side note, I'm a little saddened when I see friends apologize for their posts. There's such a reaction to "influencer culture" that people feel like foodgrams and humblebrags are a terrible thing, and in excess they certainly can be, but I think from most people it's a billion times better than strawman political arguments and manipulative media that is far worse for our mental health than just comparing ourselv…

Facebook was good when it was just about adding your people and then seeing posts of your Facebook friends and messaging with them. It turned harmful when they forced the news feed content on everyone.

I'd like to share the most coherent conversation regarding the harms of Facebook (to a certain extent big tech algorithms/ML/AI). This is with Tristan Harris, Daniel Schmachtenberger and Frank Luntz. I didn't find any dull moment so please watch the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPAOzlqcGIQ

Post reply on HN