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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

#231

Post by passivate »

quadrangle wrote: post #220
passivate wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can ask that for every single behavior that anyone claims goes against their deeper values like good health. Why do people keep smoking or eating junk food or staying up too late or yelling at family and friends when they lose their temper? Okay, but who other than that individual person is to blame for their behavior? If we blame external agents for all of societies ills, that completely devalues personal respo…

You're already in a less open, less curious state when your language is that of "blame". The more open-minded curious approach uses language more around cause and effect and studying causes vs correlations and looking for empirical evidence about how the world works. When you notice that you are looking for who to blame, then the best thing for learning is to investigate your own reactive (though perhaps very subtly…

Wow, that was rude of you. Sorry, you being judgy and condescending about my mental state and whether I am or not curious is not conducive to a conversation here. I'll let you have the last word.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#232

Post by verve_rat »

greenail wrote: post #57
SavantIdiot wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can choose not to use Facebook 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? That's what Facebook wants: to become something you simply MUST use to survive. It goes deeper in the US as well but not as deep: some restaurants and small shops don't…

> 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? I'm not ok with that at all however I would guess that those decisions are being reevaluated as we speak! >That's what Facebook wants: to become something you simply MUST use to survive. But if you choose…

It is much easier to change the "CEO" of the US Government than it is to change the CEO of Facebook.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#233

Post by tacocataco »

whimsicalism wrote: post #126
tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

People won't look at a entire catalog of 100+ photos. But if you do a few at a time you will get more eye balls.

People who stream usually don't dump an entire 8 hour stream in one video on YouTube. How many people would sit through the entire 8 hour video? But do clips and more people will watch more content. From what I've seen at least. (I'm not a streamer FYI)

The "pretending to be on vacation" thing is super wired. Haven't been on Facebook in years. Is it a new trend.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#234

Post by glial »

whimsicalism wrote: post #139
RealityVoid wrote: post #50

I used to think, untill recently, that Facebook was just a tool and all this hatred was overblown. After all, I modulated my use of it just fine. My usage is sparse, and I use messenger to talk with people I know, it kept us together. I can see how community and bringing old friends together is precious. But, recently, I realized someone I used to be very close has mental problems. Undiagnosed, but there is no other…

I think FB is probably bad, but I've also noticed that people have a tendency to blame delusional mental illnesses on whatever a person was going through/up to at the time it onset when it is often more like a timer went off.

Adding fuel to a fire makes it burn hotter, even if it was already there.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#235

Post by blackoil »

itsoktocry wrote: post #199
passivate wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands.

> Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands. If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you. But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of…

> the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful.

It is the Internet, you'll find real people who believe democracy is harmful, black people should be slaves and earth is flat. So what does that mean? Nothing!!

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#236

Post by kazinator »

RealityVoid wrote: post #50

I used to think, untill recently, that Facebook was just a tool and all this hatred was overblown. After all, I modulated my use of it just fine. My usage is sparse, and I use messenger to talk with people I know, it kept us together. I can see how community and bringing old friends together is precious. But, recently, I realized someone I used to be very close has mental problems. Undiagnosed, but there is no other…

Replace "Facebook" with "language" here ...

> And I see how [language] is exacerbating this. I see how these things are poisoning his mind, fantasies weaved by other mentally ill people. It's just sad, when I thought about it and dawned on me most of those _wild_ conspiracy theories are people that need help feeding each other's sickness.

> I think it is harmful and [language] does induce bad states in people that would otherwise be better, or at least... Surrounded by better support systems. But I still think it's not _just_ [language]. It's a confluence of factors.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#237

Post by bhargav »

smegger001 wrote: post #213
johnchristopher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really do believe there's a solution for that. We need whatsapp/telegram/signal to display a feed based on user's status and nothing more. It's almost free, frictionless and free from ads (for now). But sharing without the widest audience (just to the social graph of your contacts). It could bring back Google+'s circles so you don't share the same stuff with colleagues and friends and family, but your feed page wou…

I think the ideal would be if everyone had social account like they do with email where they post their content be it pictures text video what have you. and friending someone was simply subscribbing to a rss feed hosted by that persons provider. possiblly with a automated generation and exchange of pgp key for encryption/signing under the hood

Social media sites generally want a large user base. This approach sounds very technical so I'd imagine this being a big barrier to entry. PGP will make this even worse.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#238

Post by refurb »

itsoktocry wrote: post #199
passivate wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands.

> Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands. If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you. But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of…

I could run an internet poll and find people who think democracy is harmful.

What does that mean?

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#239

Post by themacguffinman »

heavyset_go wrote: post #211
themacguffinman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we decide as a society that certain races are evil/bad/harmful and should have fewer rights, would that make it okay? Just because a lot of people agree on something doesn't make it right or good. I'm not sure where you get the idea that society is just a platform for banning unpopular things. A lot of modern civics was designed specifically to counter that actually, things like constitutional laws, representative…

People can't choose their race, and one's race doesn't impact other people negatively. People can and do choose to engage in exploitative business practices for profit, despite any negative externalities those practices have on other people. We, as a society, have tomes of legislation and case law that regulate business practices and their negative impacts on individuals or society as whole.

> one's race doesn't impact other people negatively

Racists would say otherwise. If racists were a majority of society, would you agree that we as a society are right to govern that way?

You know, we also have tomes of legislation about what we don't regulate. In most Western societies, speech has pretty big tomes on that.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#240

Post by joe_the_user »

verve_rat wrote: post #229
joe_the_user wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's really not social media in particular. It seems pretty clear that when delusions are coming on, a person will seek out those who humor those delusions. If you're talking pre-social media Internet, you'd have the person on BBSes and email lists for whatever they find appealing. And it's worth considering that the situation isn't some mentally ill people and some opportunistic/predatory people. You have a mixt…

But there are healthy connections and unhealthy connections. Is it possible that there might be a way to encourage the healthy ones and discourage the unhealthy ones? Just because social media works the way it does now doesn't mean it has to always work like that. These things are constructed by humans and we can change them if we want. There is nothing intrinsic in Facebook or YouTube that says they must promote "en…

But there are healthy connections and unhealthy connections. Is it possible that there might be a way to encourage the healthy ones and discourage the unhealthy ones?

There has been talk of Facebook actually using algorithms to make mental health interventions. The problem is that I don't think that many users find some automatically generated warning credible.

Just because social media works the way it does now doesn't mean it has to always work like that.

Either you something like a single, state approved connection system or each social media network will serve up anything that users will buy. That's both because of the profit motive and because someone, somewhere thinks X sort of content is totally cool, both factor are in play. What's the plan to counter that?

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