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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

#171

Post by MikePlacid »

the_gipsy wrote: post #106
idontpost wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But none of that is likely to be actionable information for them. It's like hearing that meteor is going to kill us all tomorrow and there is nothing you can do. Sure, it's going to affect you, but your life isn't going to be any better if you know. It's just pointless anxiety.

Politics: it is what most impacts your life, yet you cannot change it, at all.

> Politics: it is what most impacts your life,

Doubt that. I’ve lived through some changes of the ruling party in my current country, the only changes I’ve observed were: 1) would taxes be 49.9% or 50.1%, 2) in which exact foreign country our military will be waging or supporting another useless war.

Compare that to the price of the stock of your company…

> yet you cannot change it, at all.

Oh, you can. I’ve changed the politics around me twice already: 1) I’ve participated in overthrowing the government- result was good for me, but not so good for the whole country, 2) I’ve swapped a country - that worked dramatically good, both for me and my new country. So use recipe 1 with extreme caution, but recipe 2 looks safe to recommend.

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

#172

Post by vehicles2b »

Is a week long enough to experience such changes? Probably for a change in perceived well-being, but for a change in depression or anxiety it seems too short. Anti-depressants and therapy work on a timescale of months. I don’t know, maybe social media has a profoundly negative effect on mental health and its removal for even a week can cause immediate benefit.

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

#174

Post by bishopsmother »

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.

I'm building SocialsDetox ( https://socialsdetox.com/r/sdh ) along similar lines, to provide an easy way to block/timeout from Social Media (and/or other categories that may be detrimental to well-being). Unfortunately I suspect not many people would opt for the "donation to a cause they despised" feature (before being allowed to re-enable their access); will look at adding it as an option and report on the take-up.

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

#175

Post by randomsearch »

Calvin02 wrote: post #11

Does this include HN? Asking for a friend. Snark aside, why is this a recurring obsession of HN posters?

No, I don’t think so.

HN is not constantly measuring your behaviour and trying to feed you more addictive and outrageous content.

HN does not advertise your karma to others as a measure of self esteem.

HN does not make money from advertising.

HN is not like social media in the ways that matter when discussing how damaging social media is.

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

#176

Post by throwaway290 »

mongol wrote: post #83
Gigachad wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of stuff that ends up filling my news feed. None of it has ever had any real effect on my life but it all seems to get equal feed real estate on reddit/twitter

Unsure about that.. I don't think Australia has been isolated from the rippling effects of price increases of grain and energy, that is one effect of the war in Ukraine. Probably not as much affected as many other countries, but I think you would still import products from countries where these effects are significant, and which have had to raise their prices due to it.

Reports on price increases on grain and energy is not the same as minute details on troop movements and artillery hits or interviews with various retired US generals and former Russian officials.

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

#177

Post by watwut »

basisword wrote: post #123
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.

And much like non-smokers are effected by smokers (particularly when they were the majority) non-social media users are still affected in the sense that it has completely changed and polarised our politics, social/justice issues etc.

If there were no social media, there would be no social issues. Only talk radio and 4chan, so we would all be radicalizing in the same direction.

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

#178

Post by MezzoDelCammin »

Is HN considered "social media"? Because in many ways (at least for me), there's a resemblance - the never disappearing timeline, the comments that sometimes show the trenches of the good old culture wars...

It's definitely no Facebook. I guess HN (or HN admins, to be precise) is doing a better job at limiting the disagreements from "Petersburg troll-farm vitriol" to "occasionally sarcastic". But the social media effect is definitely there...

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

#179

Post by throwaway290 »

mongol wrote: post #61
Gigachad wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it’s not the fake people showing off, it’s all the news, drama and doom. And arguably it’s all irrelevant anyway. As an Australian, if I had known nothing about Ukraine, BLM protests, Trump, Kyle Rittenhouse, etc, my life would be no bit worse or less informed. It would probably be a bit better. But if I check social media it’s just a non stop stream of crap.

That's a weird mix of contemporary events to mention together.

If you're in the US, you'd be highly attuned to these events and putting them together would be a striking dissonance. But really the common trait of these events is that they are widely reported by US media but aren't really consequential or actionable to an ordinary person anywhere else in the world (excluding the war in Ukraine, which is also consequential in parts of Europe).
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