Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media • Hacker News Board

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#101

Post by cratermoon » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

I wonder how long before the advertisers on these platforms realize how much the social media companies are using the same variable rewards, random payoff, low friction, and rule of reciprocity to manipulate companies into continuing to buy ads? Measuring ad effectiveness is already hard, now the social media giants are both the platform and the technology for measuring "engagement".

Isn't it blindingly obvious to ad buyers that they are essentially putting coins in a slot machine, pulling the "show my ads" lever, and getting a good feeling when the metrics show their ad 'went viral'?

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#102

Post by zahrc » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #97

zahrc wrote: post #14

Social media nowadays is not just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube… I’d even count HN. There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid amount of people way to invested in those See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn’t call that responsible.

I'd struggle to place Discord, HN and possibly Reddit into the "social media" category. They sure aren't dead websites and they sure have a community, but they don't feel the same way as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Maybe it's the lack of name recognition that makes them feel different.

Discord definitely falls under the “social networking” category, but can definitely used as a social media platform.

The rest is certainly social media.

The difference essentially,

Social media: broadcast a message, share news, showcase your stuff and get people to interact with it: Facebook, insta, tiktok, reddit, HN - not necessarily two-way

Social networking: engage in two-way communication with similar minded people

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#103

Post by ayane_m » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

Dave_TRS wrote: post #60

playpause wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN can be addictive, but it’s different in several relevant ways. It has no notifications. Its user base is relatively small and industry specific. It has no infinite scroll. It is plain text so it doesn’t reward semi-mindless scrolling like media rich social networks. It has a dead simple noprocrast feature that doesn’t play games. It virtually never changes its design, unlike social networks that are constantly twe…

HN is also different in that it's full of serious thoughtful discussion about things that matter. It's certainly addictive, but after I get sucked in I don't feel the same regret as with FB because at least I learned something about a variety of topics and saw what some intelligent people's take was on each

I agree. HN reminds me of the early days of reddit (pre-2010) where STEM people were over-represented compared to other popular websites at the time. The comments here often tend to be informative and insightful, and after catching up on the latest posts, there isn't much of an incentive to stick around. It's just how bulletin boards from the early days used to be, and reminds me of some small forums.

Reddit, on the other hand, has been a difficult addiction for me to break. It's gradually been growing into an alternative social media platform, and every new feature addition to reddit indicates such a transition.

It's still funny that redditors seem to be self-aware of their reddit addiction but somehow perceive Facebook et al to be worse. Different strokes for different folks, but at the end of the day, the mechanisms of addiction are similar regardless of the platform.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#104

Post by dang » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #30

What's with all the NPR spam? Who reads this garbage? There seems to be a contingent of people trying to turn HN into a CNN/WaPo/NYT/NPR news feed. GTFO.

I doubt that HN has more CNN/WaPo/NYT/NPR these days than it has for many years. The data is public; anyone who wants to could check that.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#105

Post by nicbou » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

mabub24 wrote: post #41

One way to rethink your relationship with social media is to, for lack of a more succinct phrasing, get a life. I don't mean "don't be a loser", I mean have a life with goals, projects, and real relationships. Once that life flowers, you see social media as merely a tool for the further flourishing of that life. This mindset also makes you take a hard look at the connections you make through social media. Most are 1…

I find that the Internet (not specifically social media) gets in the way of that. It keeps me just entertained enough not to seek greater pleasures.

I just had breakfast, put suncream on and planned a bicycle route, but instead of heading out as planned, I'm typing this comment.

Getting a life requires an initial investment. The Internet is right there.

I have done a lot to mitigate this addiction, but it's still there.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#106

Post by nicbou » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

powellzer wrote: post #18

I recently deactivated Facebook (which I only ever used via web browser) and since then I’ve been counting the number of times I unconsciously end up on the Facebook login page when I’m bored/killing time. I’ve noticed that faced with a “new tab” I’ll often just hit the f key and hit enter without thinking about it, landing me on the Facebook login page. Before I deactivated, this would result in me somewhat unconsci…

I use SelfControl to block these websites on my mac. I use uBlock filters to block feeds on my phone. I also log out of some websites when I'm done. It helps a lot.