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

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

nber.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 527 posts

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

#171

Post by PaulRobinson »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #126
Kozmik1 wrote: post #73

Weird. There is little that depresses me more than watching my wife sit at the table for hours a day slowly scrolling Facebook while ignoring me and the kids. We have talked about it and she's tried to reduce it to no avail.

You're enabling it by being kind. Stop being so nice.

Semantic point: nice and kind are not the same thing.

The nice thing to do when somebody is behaving poorly, is to ignore it until it becomes untenable (firing them, leaving them, and so on). The kind thing is to address it and let them change their ways.

Wanting to be nice is baked into our social structures - nobody wants to be seen as the un-nice person - but being kind is where relationships and interactions get strong. You just need to do it with empathy.

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

#172

Post by pmcginn »

busymom0 wrote: post #91
ryandrake wrote: post #29

50 years from now, we are going to be looking back at Social Media and Smartphone addiction like we currently look at smoking. “How insane were we to have allowed it and allowed it to be promoted?” our grandchildren will rightly ask!

Hope you are right but I think it's different. Smoking has very visible side effects fairly soon though- types of cancer, photos of rotten lungs and throat everywhere on cigarette packs etc. Social media only seems to have psychological side effects which aren't as openly visible to our eyes.

Your attitude is exactly what the parent comment is describing. You have the benefit of decades of scientific research and government mandates that didn't exist for previous generations. Modern cigarettes date to the late 1800's but the link between smoking and cancer wasn't established until the 1950's. It took over a decade after that for the first warning labels to appear on packs, and the photo type you're describing didn't exist until the 2000's.

It seems obvious to you because it has been made obvious to you. It wasn't the same for people in the first half of the 1900's. The parent comment is making the same point: it's not obvious to most people today, but in fifty years from now, people will look at the research, the decline in the birth rate, the increase of anxiety, and effects we can't imagine today and go "social media has very visible side effects fairly soon, how did they not know?"

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

#173

Post by lazide »

blitzar wrote: post #159
raffraffraff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wife went cold turkey on social media and then had to join Instagram and LinkedIn for her business. Now she's addicted to Instagram. No LinkedIn, not you, you boring Ted Talk humblebrag.

People love LinkedIn cringe on instagram and twitter - but on LinkedIn itself you have to confront the reality that these people, often colleagues / former colleagues etc. are being serious

Well, serious in the same way cult members have to be serious.

If you crack and admit it’s fake, everything falls apart and it’s your fault. Expulsion out onto the street follows.

Even worse, now everyone else is going ‘how could you be so dumb to believe it’ and/or ‘you sure fucked up by admitting it was fake’ all at the same time.

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

#174

Post by arvinsim »

donatj wrote: post #111

Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.…

I downgraded my Instagram from curated feed of "interesting" things to just basically a journal of my travels and hobbies. Just less stressful this way.

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

#175

Post by PaulRobinson »

physicsguy wrote: post #150

Facebook can be hard to get rid of if you actually have hobbies and things because so much gets organised via it. I tried to get rid but my Running club exclusively posts stuff on Facebook. For Instagram with you needing to log in to view pages, you find that you can’t find opening times for restaurants etc because many places use it to advertise that they’re open/closed at short notice.

If you really value your running club, why not help them set something else up?

You could offer to help the people who do all that posting to get it onto an email list or some other platform away from Facebook. A small indie website somewhere, even a blog.

I know this sounds like work, and you just want to enjoy your running club, but if it gets sticky, the people who are currently posting everything on FB will eventually realise there's value elsewhere and they'll keep it ticking over.

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

#176

Post by FlyingSnake »

Grimblewald wrote: post #136
FlyingSnake wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. 100%. Touché This has been my experience as well. I was a heavy lurker during peak Twitter phase, but I still got lots of value from it. I tried posting about tech and stuff and there’s absolute silence. No one cares anymore as if there are only tumbleweeds out there. I logged out of all my social media accounts (except HN) and moved them to hidden apps category. As a result I managed to read 3 lovely books an…

Because twitter has been gutted, its history the information sector equivallent of vulture capitalism. Take platform, gut its credibility and audience for some end goal (e.g. buying an election, redefining the truth in the minds of many) and leave a smouldering corpse behind. Twitter is dead, and its grave is marked with nothing more than an X.

All the interesting conversations, all the aha moments are now gone and buried behind the walled garden

Once in a while we’ll see screenshots of these insightful tweets but they’ll be lost forever, like tears in the rain.

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

#177

Post by perching_aix »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #72
999900000999 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you do on Reddit. Politics, relationships, those are not things to talk about. But being able to respond to major FOSS contributors, that I'll do.

> Depends on what you do on Reddit. I agree to some extent, but even highly specialised / niche topics on dedicated subs are getting slammed by the "hivemind". I guess it's more apparent for non-us users, as we're not the target audience, but the political brigading is showing even on subs like space and ML related. Reddit is now very similar to ~2015-16 reddit when the-donald and other subs really peaked, just the o…

I don't think the hivemind thing can be solved so long as people can see each others' comments. But then it's difficult to have a social media site without that.

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

#178

Post by TheCapeGreek »

kleiba wrote: post #166

I'm certainly an anomaly but since to me the downsides of social media have always been quite prominent and seemed to outweigh the benefits by a margin, I never jumped on the social media train. But I've got to say, it's getting harder and harder to keep that up. As our kids get older especially, almost all of their social activities are somehow tied to social media one way or the other: no matter what they're joinin…

I'd still not class WhatsApp as a social media platform as your story implies. It is a communication tool for the most part with some social features slowly being baked in. The downsides you're speaking of are far more applicable to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and similar, more than WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord.

I don't know where you're based, but in general these days at least one "chat app" of some kind is the de facto standard in most countries. For a lot of the world, that's WhatsApp.

The US is an outlier in still relying majorly on SMS as the communications platform.

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

#179

Post by PaulRobinson »

young_unixer wrote: post #130

Recently, I've been thinking about creating an Instagram account. I've never used it before, and I dislike it in general, but because of recent circumstances in my life (a breakup that almost gave me depression, and some other things), I need to go out more and meet new people IRL, and Instagram is the de facto way to meet people in my country, at least for those of us under 30, to the point that you're seen as weird…

There are people out there - probably many people - in your country under the age of 30 who feels the same way about Instagram as you do. These are the people you want to meet, not the people on Instagram.

If you hate Instagram and the anxiety it gives you, the people you meet on there will never be really on your level, or you on theirs. You will waste your time and effort on shallower relationships that can't get deep because you want to engage with life differently and not be on social media.

Dig deep into the hobbies that give you joy, and go to as many meetups and social occasions around them as you can. Leverage your friend and family network - the people who know you, and get you - and build on it.

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

#180

Post by earnestinger »

vekker wrote: post #158
xyzal wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the EU should flex their regulatory muscle and forbid algorithmic feeds on by default unless the networks break european society as the US is broken.

I'm sure that would work out fine. Just like the GDPR regulation made the web so much better & more private, and the promise of the AI act is boosting innovation in Europe...

You probably mean the visible cooky thing.

But behind the scenes companies did start to think about customer data gathering, retention and deletion in terms of maximal fine of 4% of turnover.

Post reply on HN