Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

calnewport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 486 posts

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

#381

Post by Teever »

id wrote: post #368
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? This sounds like a misunderstanding. Being happy for friends (real friends not "500 Facebook friends" friends) is not mutually exclusive with these news invoking bad feelings inside you (shame, feeling of inadequacy etc.)

It's not a misunderstanding. I'm also happy for complete strangers. Jeff Bezos is enjoying his Amazon money? Great for him. Also, I can't relate to feelings of shame or inadequacy because someone has something good happening to them. If anything, it motivates me to achieve the same.

To be clear here, what you're saying is that the feelings that others are describing are totally alien to you?

Like you can't understand that humans act this way in these situations?

I don't believe you.

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

#382

Post by np- »

irrational wrote: post #360

I’ve noticed the same thing about the news. When I don’t follow the news I am happier and less anxious. Yet, it doesn’t feel right to be ignorant of what is going on in the world. How does one balance their own happiness versus being informed? “Ignorance is bliss” is a saying for a reason I suppose.

I suffer from this conundrum too. One thing I did observe is that people who don't actively follow the 24/7 news and social media cycle are still are fairly aware of important major events (Ukraine, COVID, etc), as it would be hard to be completely ignorant without living under a rock, so maybe it doesn't have to be a binary thing.

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

#383

Post by weatherlite »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #380
weatherlite wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us commenting here live in competitive, capitalistic societies and a lot of our sense of self worth and self esteem comes from comparison (mostly comparing to our friends, colleagues and siblings) - and the metrics as we all know are stuff like career/money and other social status metrics. Feelings of envy are completely involuntary btw so there is no need to pretend like feeling them or not feeling is some k…

I sincerely do not believe that this behavior is genetic. As you've said, many of us live in competitive capitalist societies, we are conditioned into a socipathic mindset by advertising, and educated to reduce the people in our lives to numbers on a spreadsheet. This is not how humans are meant to function, we have been conditioned and trained to think this way.

It is exacerbated by our current system for sure but I think the core of it is still there, genetically. I say that because I remember my old dog would act up if I petted the cat sometimes. Also very young toddlers show envious behaviour when a sibling is born.

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

#385

Post by AlwaysRock »

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…

Removing social media from my phone and replacing it with the Kindle app has quite literary changed my life.

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

#386

Post by malauxyeux »

prawn wrote: post #275
sdevonoes wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a friend gets a great job or starts to live a healthy life you don't feel great for them? We can feel happy (for them) and unsatisfied (with ourselves) at the same time. Multiply that by N, and well, that's a recipe for disaster (at least for me). I know, I know, we shall not compare ourselves with others, but hey, I'm not a machine, I have my imperfections which I am polishing from time to time, but in the mean…

I travel more than average so I am happy seeing friends going on trips. It's rare that their trip looks better than what I've just done or have planned next. But I could absolutely see how someone might spectate a feed full of holidays and feel from the aggregate like everyone else is constantly travelling, while they grind away at work.

Since this is about the effect of social media on mood, I'll chime in to say that it's the opposite for me.

Seeing people conspicuously consume extravagant leisure travel – and the associated resources – brings to mind global warming and how few people actually give a damn about it in any meaningful way.

It also reminds me of what brazen liars many people are. In cases where I've known the people posting Facebook/Insta content about their amazing trips, in about half of those, the reality is that the trip was far less than amazing than their posts would suggest.

As an example, one woman I know took her family across the Pacific to Thailand on a two-week vacation. By their accounts, they had a pretty rotten time, even considering moving their return date forward. But, the Facebook narrative was glowing. Four years later, the woman's Facebook cover photo is of a Thai Buddhist temple from that trip. (She's not a Buddhist. The photo is purely for aesthetics and social signaling.)

It seems to me that this kind of behavior feeds into a loop that encourages other people to consume finite resources and then post about their "amazing" (though often non-amazing) trips. And so the cycle continues.

And that really gets me down. I don't go on Facebook very often.

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

#387

Post by colpabar »

id wrote: post #368
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? This sounds like a misunderstanding. Being happy for friends (real friends not "500 Facebook friends" friends) is not mutually exclusive with these news invoking bad feelings inside you (shame, feeling of inadequacy etc.)

It's not a misunderstanding. I'm also happy for complete strangers. Jeff Bezos is enjoying his Amazon money? Great for him. Also, I can't relate to feelings of shame or inadequacy because someone has something good happening to them. If anything, it motivates me to achieve the same.

But you can see how some people may not think this way when they go online and see that seemingly everyone they've ever met is doing things that they can't afford or aren't able to do? If you can't relate, fine I guess, but what's the point of just saying "these problems don't affect me"?

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

#388

Post by ndbebofienw »

irrational wrote: post #360

I’ve noticed the same thing about the news. When I don’t follow the news I am happier and less anxious. Yet, it doesn’t feel right to be ignorant of what is going on in the world. How does one balance their own happiness versus being informed? “Ignorance is bliss” is a saying for a reason I suppose.

Same thing here. I’ve ended up with two places I exclusively check for news: AllSides [0] and a satirical news source of my choice.

AllSides helps me frame big events from multiple perspectives. I’ve always had a hard time seeing these perspectives, so having someone else do it for me helps.

The satirical site introduces me to assorted current events with a bit of lightheartedness. If it seems important enough, I’ll do a quick search to learn what the “real” news is.

With this setup, I am not as well-versed in all current events. However, it’s much less draining, and it also takes less time out of my day!

- [0] https://www.allsides.com/

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

#389

Post by xkbarkar »

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…

My humble opinion. I am happy and content, log on to facebook and see posting like this.

Something something…. Dastart Putin. Dead people because you didnt wear a mask. Dead children ( Syria a few years ago, Ukraine now ). Something antivaxxer. Something texas abortion law. Someone parked like an idiot. My childrens amazing . Some snyde humour picture, usually something about a republican. Posted by a non US person to a feed full of europeans.

And it goes on. Facebook makes me want to vomit sometimes.

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

#390

Post by karaterobot »

shoeshoeshoey wrote: post #13

At 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.

You hear this kind of equivalence made a lot: social media is no different than the newspaper, or the TV news. This never made sense to me. Obviously, some characteristic of social media persuaded people to drop their newspapers and turn of their televisions to use their phones instead. There must be something qualitatively different about social media on mobile devices that explains this.

The difference may be that it is better and more enlightening, or it may be that it is more addictive and intrusive. But, it is not the same.

Post reply on HN