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Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

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Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#151

Post by MikePlacid »

nopinsight wrote: post #143
parasti wrote: post #36

For me, I've found that social media doesn't affect my level of happiness and/or anxiety directly. What it does do, is take up a lot of my time almost imperceptibly - leaving less time for other, more meaningful activities. It makes me feel like I'm running out of time every day, which in turn causes a feeling of anxiety.

Do you/does anyone think this is something you would use? I'm working on My Productive Homepage , a custom dynamic homepage you can set and customize the exact topics and goals that you care about. It will recommend unseen info/updates on only those things and display info in summary form (with links to sources). No distracting or trending news unless they are highly relevant to the topics/goals you explicitly choose…

> No distracting or trending news unless they are highly relevant

No “unless”, please. No news should be present. No events should be discussed until they are a week old, at least.

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#153

Post by MikePlacid »

shrimpx wrote: post #118
ayngg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think social media is like our generations tobacco, everyone uses it and it is considered fashionable and cool but eventually it will start to come to light how unhealthy and insidious all the data harvesting, time sinks and gamifying social interactions at scale can be, especially with children who have much of the spare time to dedicate to it.

To add to your idea, social media shares a deep property with tobacco: people know it’s bad and keep consuming it. Part of the reason is soft social pressure: nobody wants to be the odd one out by quitting.

> nobody wants to be the odd one out by quitting.

Uhm… how do you know that?

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#154

Post by eligro91 »

Markstar wrote: post #126
eligro91 wrote: post #115

I'm using 2 useful apps to avoid social media on my smartphone: - Minimalist phone: Gives you full control on your home screen, and which apps you want to hide. - lock me out: Useful apps and sites blocking. You must pay in-app-purchase to break out your rules. And for my mac I'm using static /etc/hosts file and simply putting hosts that I don't want to access hundreds of times. it looks like that: 127.0.0.1 news.goo…

Interesting. The latter reminds me of a book ("Drop Dead Healthy"), where the author tests a similar technique to incentivize productive behavior. There it goes a step further, though: If you miss a deadline, break a promise, etc., you must donate a specific amount to a cause that you despise.

there is https://www.beeminder.com/home

which is doing pretty much what you've described here.

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#155

Post by impjohn »

SCUSKU wrote: post #150
digisign wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it is better to know a few people well than skim the updates of hundreds.

I would have to agree, I also gave up Instagram/Facebook because I noticed it impacting my mental health. The only thing I miss is the early days of Facebook when it was just humans being human, and posting pictures of them being silly or with their family instead of flexing about newly acquired money/status, etc. But maybe that's just me remembering with rose tinted glasses.

Personally it's hard to understand if quitting SM changed my emotional response to a lot of things or if it is me who changed in time. It doesn't help that the agenda and techniques used by these platforms evolve all the time to find new ways to hook you in

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#156

Post by noufalibrahim »

WilTimSon wrote: post #147
noufalibrahim wrote: post #145

I fast from food for a month a year due to religious reasons (from dawn to dusk). During this time,I fast from social media (telegram, twitter mostly). After about a week, I feel anxious at a superficial level but it levels off and I feel much better about 2 weeks in. After the whole month, when I log into twitter again, I can really feel a mental shift. Almost like being dragged back into it. It's not pleasant. I'm…

I'm curious, do you also tend to fast from news sources, if you follow any? HN, BBC, stuff like that. Things that aren't social media but might have a similar effect where you get overwhelmed or anxious from the information.

Very incisive question.

When I first moved off the social media sites, I went to google news to "stay informed". I had enough self awareness to realise that I was treating it more or less the same way I was treating twitter so I stopped looking at those too.

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#157

Post by MikePlacid »

parasti wrote: post #36

For me, I've found that social media doesn't affect my level of happiness and/or anxiety directly. What it does do, is take up a lot of my time almost imperceptibly - leaving less time for other, more meaningful activities. It makes me feel like I'm running out of time every day, which in turn causes a feeling of anxiety.

> I've found that social media doesn't affect my level of happiness and/or anxiety directly.

American privilege? Each time a war flares up in my home country I am going into a pretty deep depression. And the only cure is to switch off the Telegram. Which is frankly rather hard to do, but possible. A third week going strong…

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#158

Post by yawboakye »

charstacker wrote: post #149

Consider the following scenario: You're pleased and content one minute, thinking your life is going fine the next. You have a few minutes to kill, so you log onto Facebook and begin scrolling... First, you notice a friend's post stating that she has accepted her ideal job. Then you read a coworker's too political rant. You continue browsing and see a video of your neighbour enjoying a fantastic tropical vacation. And…

this isn't a problem of social media but rather a problem of following current affairs. the cost of publishing has become so low that even news media dedicate whole articles to single tweets (and other social media posts by famous people). devout followers of social media (and perhaps news media, both television and internet) have become addicted to knowing/following the current thing. one can visit/use twitter, facebook, &c everyday without keeping in sync with the current things and/or allowing themselves to be tossed about like a boat in a tempest. curate deliberately. follow few things and people.

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#159

Post by nopinsight »

MikePlacid wrote: post #151
nopinsight wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you/does anyone think this is something you would use? I'm working on My Productive Homepage , a custom dynamic homepage you can set and customize the exact topics and goals that you care about. It will recommend unseen info/updates on only those things and display info in summary form (with links to sources). No distracting or trending news unless they are highly relevant to the topics/goals you explicitly choose…

> No distracting or trending news unless they are highly relevant No “unless”, please. No news should be present. No events should be discussed until they are a week old, at least.

Sounds like a good option to add! We might allow the user to filter out recent news if they wish.

Should discussions be optional (ie available but can be turned off) or simply not available on this site?

Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious

#160

Post by somenameforme »

ayngg wrote: post #64
parasti wrote: post #36

For me, I've found that social media doesn't affect my level of happiness and/or anxiety directly. What it does do, is take up a lot of my time almost imperceptibly - leaving less time for other, more meaningful activities. It makes me feel like I'm running out of time every day, which in turn causes a feeling of anxiety.

I think social media is like our generations tobacco, everyone uses it and it is considered fashionable and cool but eventually it will start to come to light how unhealthy and insidious all the data harvesting, time sinks and gamifying social interactions at scale can be, especially with children who have much of the spare time to dedicate to it.

I'd argue it's more similar to cocaine. Tobacco is unhealthy, but the consequences were somewhat intuitive long before being proven (repeatedly cycling smoke through the lungs is intuitively unhealthy), and the real health effects aren't especially visible except over long time frames and with large samples.

By contrast, the shifts in behavior, effects, and downsides, of cocaine become apparent extremely rapidly and it's consumed in a way that makes it less obvious of the dangers. Vin Mariani [1] was a popular wine created in the mid 19th century. It's advocates included royalty, Popes, Thomas Edison, Ulysses S Grant, and countless others. It was wine mixed with cocaine. That wine itself also served as the inspiration for Coca-Cola - Coke, whose name derived from its two primary ingredients: Cocaine + Kola Nut.

Employers would give their workers cocaine to improve productivity, individuals themselves would use it (or various common products containing it) for similar ends, or just simple recreation. And we basically had a society where a large chunk of people were frequently coked out. But it was undoubtedly difficult to realize how absurd we all were because when something becomes ubiquitous, what do you have to compare it against?

And I think that's much closer to the reality we now live in where the impacts of social media are rather extremely evident on both a micro and macro scale, yet not only is the vast majority of society already hooked on it - but the people in power with the capacity to curtail its ails are themselves just as addicted to it, or alternatively exploiting it for their own personal benefit.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani

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