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The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

nber.org

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Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#7
post #2

With ai, i hope the feed is more useful to me.

How could you _possibly_ believe a company like meta would use a new technology to act in your interests rather than theirs?

The same way people think a politician would?

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you _possibly_ believe a company like meta would use a new technology to act in your interests rather than theirs?

The same way people think a politician would?

The politicians in my state do a fairly good job, so that is easy to believe.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#9
> People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls.

Can anyone translate? Random web search find suggests multiplying by 37 to get a percentage, which sounds very questionable, but even then these improvements seem negligible.

This doesn't really line up with my lived experience. Getting myself out of shitty platforms and community spaces improved my mental state significantly (although the damage that's been done remains).

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#10
post #2

With ai, i hope the feed is more useful to me.

How could you _possibly_ believe a company like meta would use a new technology to act in your interests rather than theirs?

it's obvious meritocracy in institutions is dead. people with half baked ideas float to the top for no reason now
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