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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

#121

Post by wang_li »

munk-a wrote: post #104
cronix wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

To what number? The one they have now or the one they switch to without telling anyone in a few months?

This sounds like a you and your cousin problem. It seems pretty strange that it would be suggested that the government step in to regulate a third party because you and your cousin can't manage to stay in touch.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#122

Post by stemlord »

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…

I agree, most people are just weak, full stop.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#123

Post by bentcorner »

mikepurvis wrote: post #109
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…

How do you suppose Tiktok fits into all this? On the one hand, it's still a glamorous best-of reel, but it's also a lot more silliness, with sketch comedy and various remix formats (lipsync, duet, etc) being a big thing, not to mention significant subcommunities posting earnestly about topics like self esteem, mental health, etc (and with the needed community-management tools to enable the resulting discussion to not…

I think community plays a huge part. I'm not a tiktok user but I get the impression that a lot of the early tiktok users were heavily creative users. It's like a flywheel.

As these sites/services gain more popularity communities tend to splinter and it's up to the service to keep things going in whatever direction they want to via things like the fyp algorithm.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#124

Post by pzo »

bena wrote: post #99
pzo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just only added features that IMO would make a healthier social network. It's different problem how to implement in a way to avoid people try to game it. Maybe it's not even possible and only utopia.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#125

Post by cm2187 »

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…

In fact I don't know anyone in my close or more distant friend circles who haven't abbandonned facebook in one way or another. I am puzzled by facebook still being the centre of attention (for this, control of news, influence on elections, influence on vaccination).

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#126

Post by whimsicalism »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #42
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…

A lot of social media posts come down to bragging under the guise of "celebrating life". People will go on a vacation and then meter out the pictures from it over months to appear like they're on perpetual vacations. I don't mind people apologizing for those. To say nothing of edited photos.

> People will go on a vacation and then meter out the pictures from it over months to appear like they're on perpetual vacations. I don't mind people apologizing for those.

I've noticed this increasingly. It's sorta bizarre?

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#127

Post by zepto »

rightbyte wrote: post #44
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.

> Switching brand of cigarettes doesn’t protect your lungs. Atleast get one with filters?

Filters make cigarettes mildly worse.

https://www.quora.com/Is-smoking-unfiltered-cigarettes-signi...

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#128

Post by Pxtl »

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…

Right? My pandemic hobby was cocktails. Never even tried drinking anything more complicated than a screwdriver before, but fell down the cocktail youtube rabbit hole because of "how to drink".

So, over the course of a year I made a hundred different cocktails and blogged my experiences on my blog, twitter, and Facebook. Most of the cocktails were simple 3-ingredient things based on what I had available, but a few were elaborate messes like eggnog or a Ramos gin fizz.

I had my neighbors coming over to me when I was outside thanking me for the cocktail blogging and saying it was one of their favourite things to see on Facebook, and asked me to keep posting them.

Social media doesn't have to be terrible.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#129

Post by Fordec »

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!

Antisocial - "when a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others".

I don't think antisocial fits as a descriptor, at all. When I think of antisocial behavior I think of graffiti or arson and other property damage without regard for the owners or the public sphere.

I think the word you're looking for is asocial.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#130

Post by soylentcola »

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…

> Anybody have thoughts on what could make a social network "healthy"?

Personally? I was thinking about this the other day and how I wish it was more like email - use whatever provider you want or host your own - either way you can post and share with other users.

That's at least one criteria after seeing how so much of the network effects are created by the need to use one platform in order to communicate on that platform.

Then I started thinking about how this would work. Subscribing to the feeds of people you care about, being able to browse and search updates, etc. and in the end I realized I was basically describing RSS with easy publishing tools.

Host your stuff on whatever platform/host/provider you prefer and see fit, but have some common format "calling card" or address that you can use to share your subscription address.

Competition would come in the form of hosting options, reader features, etc. but the conflict would likely result from some providers "innovating" features that only work on their platforms, devices, etc. Sort of like how I can message with anyone with full functionality...unless they're on an iPhone and default to iMessage. Then I'm downgraded to SMS/MMS.

That said, I would still prefer a nonFacebook that still allowed me to follow/converse with people on Facebook, even if it stuck me with the shitty interface when dealing with non-standardized platform "features".

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