Yeah, but only one more a week. Next question.
If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
91–99 of 99 posts
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#92To me, yes. Well, I've never been on "social media", but e.g. at night before bed some times I scroll on HN for a long time before falling asleep (30min-1hr). If I commit myself not to, I read instead. The thing we should be talking about is forms of entertainment, and social media is just one type of entertainment. We should be discussing pros and cons of different forms of entertainment. Instead the discussion is "…
same and my attention span is exercised a lot more while reading a static book vs skimming and clicking through different articles/comments.
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that reddit and HN are social media. They're a different form than Facebook or TikTok, but we come here to be social just the same. If someone used HN to find interesting articles, then spends 90% of their time reading the articles and only comes to the comments briefly to see that other people think, then it would be fair to call HN a news aggregator site for that person. But realistically, for most people…
Regardless of whether I consider HN social media or not, the point of my response is exactly the same. But if you want to have the (less interesting) conversation about definition, I don't call HN social media, because there's no media. It's just talking to other people. You say > or most people, it's the opposite - 90% of time chatting with people in the comments Exactly! I didn't even read the article. I'm just her…
Media is shared information, including text. Traditional media is created by institutions like newspapers and mass broadcast. Social media changed that so that anyone can create the information. When we write comments here, we are creating short pieces of media and sending them out to be read.
I find this conversation, about what social media is, and whether some kinds of social media can be healthy, highly interesting, important even.
I also think it's important that we on HN are aware that we're engaging in social media because any time this conversation comes up, there's lots of people saying that they don't use social media, they only use HN, which leads to feeling superior to people on other forms of social media. I don't think that's valid or healthy.
If you or I use HN for 30-60 minutes everyday and we find utility in that, there's no difference to a teenager using TikTok for the same time, we don't get to feel superior or talk about social media addiction without being aware that includes us.
Tiktok has a bad rep but it has some pretty great content too, informative, well produced. Same with YouTube.
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: Games I literally can't play stuff like Civilization and the like. There's no natural point to stop, so I just keep playing until the sun comes up. "One more turn" Young me was this close to getting fired due to Civ3 being released, I started dozing off at work and playing all evening and night :D In other games there's usually a save point, you hit a difficult boss, or the round ends in multiplayer games - those…
I remember buying The Sims when it came out originally. I started a gaming session that evening, and after a little while I noticed the sun coming in the window. I'd played all night without noticing. Since then, I've given that kind of open-ended game a wide berth. It's a bit disconcerting for a gaming session to achieve flow state.
This is also how my partner stopped complaining about my late night gaming, the first time I woke up and they were still playing - hadn't stopped all night.
"...I get it now" and no complaints from gaming since =)
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of whether I consider HN social media or not, the point of my response is exactly the same. But if you want to have the (less interesting) conversation about definition, I don't call HN social media, because there's no media. It's just talking to other people. You say > or most people, it's the opposite - 90% of time chatting with people in the comments Exactly! I didn't even read the article. I'm just her…
Media is shared information, including text. Traditional media is created by institutions like newspapers and mass broadcast. Social media changed that so that anyone can create the information. When we write comments here, we are creating short pieces of media and sending them out to be read. I find this conversation, about what social media is, and whether some kinds of social media can be healthy, highly interesti…
> I also think it's important that we on HN are aware that we're engaging in social media because any time this conversation comes up, there's lots of people saying that they don't use social media, they only use HN, which leads to feeling superior to people on other forms of social media. I don't think that's valid or healthy.
> If you or I use HN for 30-60 minutes everyday and we find utility in that, there's no difference to a teenager using TikTok for the same time, we don't get to feel superior or talk about social media addiction without being aware that includes us.
No, I do feel superior: I'm being challenged, and I'm having to articulate my ideas and points of view.
When you're on tv/tiktok/instagram/youtube you're consuming something that's been prepared for you. Whether the content is informative or well produced is irrelevant to my point.
Totally different when it comes to how much critical thinking you need to exercise for those two activities.
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#96Yes, that is literally 2024 and 2025 for me. I switched to books instead of doom scrolling.
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
My progression was something like: Video Games > Social Media > YouTube > TV > Reading I had to cut quite a few things out of my life before I defaulted to books, because all of the prior activities tapped into my brains inherent desire for stimulating, low effort consumption. Reading is quite often hard, boring, or difficult, but generally more rewarding in the end. I retain more useful information, explicitly becau…
What you read is also a big thing. There's no need to read that new pseudointellectual tome everyone is talking that could've been a blog post. It's a boring slog to read anyway. You can just grab a book where a space-wizard stops an orbital bombardment with his willpower[0]. Or one that's Top Gun but Grimdark WH40k[1]. Whatever is fun for you specifically. Books can be fun, they don't need to have any "value" past e…
Well, if it's just for entertainment, then books don't have more value than any other medium or way to spend time to entertain yourself.
People have a book fetish because they imagine books are necessarily better quality, but it is actually rarely the case. Reading valuable books is hard, takes time, effort, and concentration, and is out of the means of most people.
And that's just about all there is to it. Stuff that would have been books previously, now are just long articles because the commercial incentives have changed (just like music albums have disappeared). It's not a bad thing in my book!
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#98My "problem" is more with Youtube: lots of quality (to me) content that I find educational (history, science) and entertaining.
>>lots of quality (to me) content that I find educational (history, science) and entertaining. This seems to be a tug of war- that is- information vs distraction I remember in the 1990s India it was quite common to view kids from homes that had TV/Cable TV as kids who were bad at academics, and distracted without focus. OTOH, as time passed people realised those kids had better english speaking skills, vocabulary and…
Pretty much.
People seem to think progress is linear and need razor-sharp focus on a single thing at once.
I don't think it's the case at all; in fact, most good things seem to have come from mistakes or luck.
Re: If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
#99My "problem" is more with Youtube: lots of quality (to me) content that I find educational (history, science) and entertaining.
The irony is if I quit social media, I start devouring youtube, including both high quality video essays and general video slop. If I quit youtube, I'm inclined to binge watch TV. I sometimes wonder if I need a more dramatic act of "unplugging." As writer Manu Joseph says on substack: "Yet, I do not believe it is true that attention spans have changed significantly over the decades. People’s minds have always wandere…
Yep, it's just that the world is extremely competitive, and you are constantly forced to think about your “productivity.”
If you are not hustling and generating some value, you are “wasting time.”
Of course, that's nonsense. You are living your life to do whatever you want with it, and if that's spending a lot of time on social media, you just need to be OK with that (as in, it is a conscious choice, not an addiction).