I wonder if hacker news shares the underlying impact on individuals similar to social networks
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
#232Hot take: I read what other people sre doing on HN and I feel like I'm an utterly mediocre dev who's just pushing features at work to make someone rich, and I can't do much about it because I have a family relying on my income.
I don't necessarily think that is such a hot take, but a feeling shared by many of us. And I think that this ties to the title of the post and general discussion - many people (myself included) feel bad when seeing other people achieve something great or extraordinary.
It's so easy to diminish ones achievements, I often do it as well, sometimes without giving it too much thought.
But I think its also easy to forget that people in social media (or in HN posts) usually just present the best parts of them. Nobody talks about his/hers bad sides or vices, so it's easy to think that all the other people are great and better than us. In reality most people - like you and me - are probably in the 80-90% of normal workers, be it IT or not, that achieve some successes in life and have some screw-ups as well. What we see in social media is a highly curate 5% of people that shine the spotlight on something great they did.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think you're in the minority either. We experience joy from the joy of those around us. I think the disagreement here mostly stems from a different definition of "friend". For most ppl, the friends they see on their FB/IG feed aren't actually "friends"... but more like acquaintances. Often times they're people that you've only met a few times and haven't seen in many years. Though, even with close friends, so…
But even when it comes to acquaintances, when I hear about their great new job or vacation, I don't feel envious or bad. I compare myself to other people, yes, and of course I'd like to have some of the things I see, but not to the point that I would feel bad. Does every story about someone being successful make you feel bad? I doubt it, as that is not my personal experience at all.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#234Earlier 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? As if regular people don't compare themselves with others and just enjoy the success of everybody, without considering if they are falling behind or not?
You can compare yourself and enjoy the success of someone else.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#235Consider 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…
> Makes we wanna throw away my phone and live in the woods
What I tried to aim for in Digital Vegan 1[] is to get people thinking about tech as a healthy balance.
It is actually rather common to have these extreme swings, all or nothing, total technological connection or living off berries in a woodland shack. It's called splitting in psychology, and the conditions around technology are geared to maximise it.
That's partly because it is so aggressive, in it's marketing, and peer pressure, in it's network effects created by deliberate lack of interoperability, by the way it is forced upon people. Young people are constantly bullied into over-connection by the idea they will be "left behind", that they will "miss out", and that a total cybernetic society of "ubiquitous" technology is "inevitable". All a total crock of shit of course. Nobody wants that except a few silicon valley pushers. But if you are immersed in that toxic narrative, which comes through the medium itself, it's hard for anyone to exercise rational choice, self-control and use technology in a moderate, healthy way.
So to me it makes sense to define "hacker" as someone who has mastery over technology. A master is not dominated by their own creations and desires. Part of mastery is choosing exactly how much, and what type of technology to use, and not allowing other people to foist that upon you. Real hackers make technological choices that may marginalise them, instead of just following the crowd.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
One could be “happy”* for a friend and also feel shitty about themself. “Damn. Matthew has changed jobs 3 times in the past 5 years already, each time to a better paying job. Look at you. You’re still stuck in this shitty job because you suck.” This is literally the kind of thought I have had in the past. [*] Are you “happy” in a polite way? Or are you genuinely happy?
Genuinely happy, of course! I want to see my friends and family succeed in life and enjoy it. I don't feel like a lesser person in any way, I feel proud of them.
I'd feel exactly the same way as you about that, and if we truly are in a tiny minority perhaps that does explain a lot about the world.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#237I took 1+ month break from Facebook and after I got back to check some groups, I totally forget to visit this social site so often. Like at the end of day, I remind myself that I wasn't there and still not missing anything. I was tired of bad news and angry comments.
There must be really some dopamine effect about these things. Like person is bored so you scroll 100 posts which fulfils your desire and after some time when your levels drop, you come back making this something like habit. Similar to drinking coffee, a lot of people complain about headache if they don't drink right amount of coffee they are used to every day.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#238Consider 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 think a lot of people realize that facebook makes them feel bad but they prefer to feel bad rather than not feel anything at all. They unknowingly pursue easily available emotion (even negative) to avoid emotional boredom. It's a bit like watching scary or sad movies.
> they prefer to feel bad
Kinda the premise of The Matrix
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#239I visit small Reddit subreddit which is really well-moderated, good sources, I really like it. In spite of, cannot be compared with casual Facebook group.
For example, I've created some fancy FB group when people can join and after I logged in after a month, it had almost 1 000 submissions waiting for approval. So i set this to auto submissions. I came back and was horrified with the content.
Images of naked people which were breaking so many rules and had so many views before Facebook deleted it. What's the worse, I had to see it because of admin privilege. Thanks Mark. Fake accounts posting IBAN codes, sharing ads and other things. At the end, my group was penalized (not banned). Like, the biggest gigantic superb tech company can't even detect a nude stuff from fake accounts?
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#240At Facebook / Meta, employees often questioned Mark Zuckerberg whenever a study like this came out. Zuckerberg noted that the same held true for news media. Reporters do not like to mention this.
That seems like a silly argument. "They are bad hence us being bad is okay"