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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

#181

Post by eafkuor »

id wrote: post #168
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…

If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? Those are good things in general, although the tropical vacation might make me also feel concerned about the climate. The problems I have with social media are that - it steals a lot of time - a lot of content gets me by evoking negative emotion - it's taxing to get exposed to so many different ideas, clips, heated discussi…

> If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? Those are good things in general, although the tropical vacation might make me also feel concerned about the climate.

If this would be your genuine reaction, congratulations. You belong to the 0.001% of the population that would feel this way.

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

#182

Post by watwut »

roywiggins wrote: post #105
capybara_2020 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone out of Asia, the information the previous poster mentioned has near zero relevance to me. Barely any ripples from the events happening with the topics mentioned. But still for some reason my feed is flooded with that news and it feels like there is a lot pressure to take a stand on topics I neither understand nor care about. Social Media feels suffocating at times, it is like teenage peer pressure multipli…

I think this is less social media problems and more American cultural hegemony problems, especially in English-language media of all types.

Ukraine specifically is even bigger news issue in Europe. The closer to Ukraine, the bigger, unless you are Belarus or some such.

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

#183

Post by watwut »

mongol wrote: post #94
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.

Certainly, if you only want to hear about actionable information, you can strike out most of news all together. You can pick up a history book in 30 years to read up on what was happening in the world. Perhaps you will be happier for it, I don't know.

This is called uninformed voter - the one that votes on what went on 100 years ago, but ignores what contemporary parties and politicians actually do.

For the record, I did skipped news entirely for few years. Yes, I did not knew about some things that may be stressful to know about. I was also dumb af when it came to voting or just generally having opinion on what is going on. This sort of person is super easy to manipulate, because missing context accumulates. So I do read them ever since, because I dont want to be that kind of voter.

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

#184

Post by wwwwasmistake »

I was an social media early adopter but have been off from big social medias for years and as a non-native english speaker i can't find correct words to describe how happy I have been with this decision. Maybe someone else can handle it better.

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

#185

Post by somenameforme »

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.

I don't think people are getting overwhelmed or anxious from the information, but rather from the way that information is presented. The past was, in nearly every measurable way, vastly worse than the present. In the span of a single life you go from WW1 to the Spanish Flu to the Great Depression to WW2 to the very real threat of nuclear annihilation which nearly came to be multiple times.

And you didn't need to seek out information on this. You were likely directly affected by some of these events. If you weren't, you certainly knew somebody who died or was otherwise severely affected themselves. I mean think about COVID and then bump up its impact exponentially. And then imagine living through events of this scale over and over and over and over again. That is what people in the past lived through.

Today you can present data impartially, or emotionally. Emotional narrative gives a million clicks, a million shares, and drives extreme "engagement" that is a hair's breadth away from mob mentality. You can also present data impartially, which drives little more than a more informed society. It's not a surprise which path we take.

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

#186

Post by bayindirh »

MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #178

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 eff…

I don't think HN fits to the "Social Media" of today. It's more of a slow churning RSS feed with comments underpinned by a strong social contract.

Another difference is, while we disagree, we don't fight bona fide flame wars. A more civilized and skilled discussion is favored here, and this is a very good thing (TM).

Feeling a lot of completed projects or new things kindle the impostor syndrome sometimes, but it's not creating the same insecurity of image based social platforms or "free for all" comment platforms.

I've first deleted reddit back then, then removed Instagram from my phone. I can say that I'm much happier. However, HN is not creating same type of tension for me. I learn a lot of things, for a start.

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

#187

Post by laputan_machine »

eafkuor wrote: post #181
id wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? Those are good things in general, although the tropical vacation might make me also feel concerned about the climate. The problems I have with social media are that - it steals a lot of time - a lot of content gets me by evoking negative emotion - it's taxing to get exposed to so many different ideas, clips, heated discussi…

> If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? Those are good things in general, although the tropical vacation might make me also feel concerned about the climate. If this would be your genuine reaction, congratulations. You belong to the 0.001% of the population that would feel this way.

If a friend gets a great job or starts to live a healthy life you don't feel great for them? I don't believe that puts me in the minority of people, not a chance.

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

#188

Post by scotty79 »

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…

I'm a bit immune to a lot of this because I don't like travel, jobs of any kind, having family, excessive fitness (the one you need to excercise to get) and facebook does fairly good job of exposing me only to rants that confirm my biases. But this also makes Facebook way less engaging for me because it does invoke barely any feelings in me.

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

#189

Post by watwut »

Calvin02 wrote: post #11

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

> Snark aside, why is this a recurring obsession of HN posters?

I think that there are too related patterns on HN and both have to do with tech culture. First, complains about loneliness and seeing loneliness as major problem. Second, looking down on socialization or at least ways other people socialize - whether social media or young students partying and socializing. So, any bad news about social media is welcome.

There is ethos of not socializing the wrong way or not at all. And ethos of not wasting your time with fluff, doing side project or getting better in something instead (and some amount of this is absolutely good) and of working a lot. And combination then it leads to kind of magical thinking of "if only other people did not used these, everything would be better".

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

#190

Post by 8K832d7tNmiQ »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #114

Until the past couple weeks I haven't used reddit in years because its just a bunch of toxic echo chambers. Today I tried posting a helpful suggestion to someone asking for recommendations for speakers for their parents' TV. Several other users got nasty and a mod deleted our thread because I dared to suggest a soundbar in the "home theater" forum. I guess I'll try again in a few more years?

Reddit is still the best place to find and learn small and niche interests, with bonus points if it's still pretty active.
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