Its strange for me. Some years ago, I only thought that the younger kids/adults was had the "separation anxiety" when it came to social media, but I have a 40 year old sister in law that is purely obsessed and it is crazy. I'm a big tech person but I know how to put my phone down. Heck most of the time I don't even have it on me.
The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
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Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#22I hope we can reach a point where there's enough research on the negative effects of social media (or more specifically which features of it e.g. scrolling videos) that we can inform people from a young age.
There is more than enough research. https://thehighwire.com/news/metas-internal-research-proves-... But nothing's going to change as long as we continue pretending that billionaires hoarding pieces of "special" paper (or numbers in a bank account) are less mentally ill than people hoarding pieces of regular paper (or other things).
You think billionaires are hoarders because the shares they own become worth a lot of money when they build successful companies?
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#23I know many people who say they're "off" social media but they're still scrolling. They may post less or not at all, but the algorithm still has them.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#24I've heard people say that if your post on social media isn't making you money, then it isn't worth making. This is very different from early Facebook/Twitter where the majority of posts were mundane things about one's life.
Going on Japanese Twitter was a very different and refreshing experience, because people still post random little life updates. But Westerners rarely do that now.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#25Social media isn't "social" anymore. It's algorithmically designed to keep you scrolling. Burnout is inevitable.
big normie social media yes, but people still have hella actual conversations on bluesky and mastodon and (i think) they use chronological fields by default
And then, tomorrow, it will be some other social media platform because someone said something wrong on one of those. Because they have to. Not because they need to.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#26Burnout is a symptom of prolonged unsustainable engagement.
I think it is a false narrative to say that the majority of people who are leaving platforms were overcommitted to that extent.
I think it is the simple fact that the platforms no longer provide enough to justify sticking around,
People came for the pie, stayed for the pie, and left when the vendors started serving cardboard wrapped razor blades and tried to convince you it was still a pie.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is more than enough research. https://thehighwire.com/news/metas-internal-research-proves-... But nothing's going to change as long as we continue pretending that billionaires hoarding pieces of "special" paper (or numbers in a bank account) are less mentally ill than people hoarding pieces of regular paper (or other things).
You think billionaires are hoarders because the shares they own become worth a lot of money when they build successful companies?
It's like playing cookie clicker except the higher your number goes up the more social status you and power you have.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#28Its strange for me. Some years ago, I only thought that the younger kids/adults was had the "separation anxiety" when it came to social media, but I have a 40 year old sister in law that is purely obsessed and it is crazy. I'm a big tech person but I know how to put my phone down. Heck most of the time I don't even have it on me.
Understand that social media endorphin-inducing algorithm optimizers, have made these sites optimized for _all_ ages, so it should not be a surprise. Very few of us are immune.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#29Chat apps have already replaced socialapps like FB long ago and the companies know it. Meta has FB Messenger and WhatsApp.
Re: The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use
#30> "Political content is pushing users toward the exit" The culture war is exhausting. The idealist dream of some sort of Athenian public deliberation has been overwritten by ragebait. It's both very effective at meeting social media goals (getting people to spend too much time online arguing with strangers), and political goals (Project 2025; the Hungarian/Russian/American conserviative project CPAC; whatever it is t…
My facebook seems to have trained itself to never give me "political content". Still, I open it about once per week to check for events at my favorite saturday evening hang outs, look at some cat photos and close it.
I never had a Facebook account till about 10 years ago when I went to a funeral and found out about relatives who had one and encouraged me to join them there. I did but, today, they might post there three or four times a year to show vacation pictures and that's it. I, too, only look at it once every week or two in case there's an event that happened but that's maybe once a year.