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

Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 273 posts

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#201

Post by itsoktocry »

karmanyaahm wrote: post #117
hcrisp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unbiased. Only sampled people who were online and ostensibly only those who used Facebook. Since maybe ~60% of people use Facebook, I don't think the results speak for _all_ Canadians. If it did that's saying a lot for secondhand effects of social media platforms.

Not totally sure, but aren't people with extreme feelings more likely to answer a survey? Voluntary or nonresponse biases

>Not totally sure, but...

This kind of discourse is annoying.

You don't get "points" for making some hypothetical claim. If you think there is something wrong with an analysis, demonstrate it. Isn't that what "pro-science" people do?

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#202

Post by passivate »

CJefferson wrote: post #163
cronix wrote: post #67

I'm getting kind of tired of the narrative that "x is evil/bad/harmful, but I'm too weak (we won't admit addiction) to not use x. Everyone I know uses x. Government needs to regulate x (so I don't have to change my ways)." I deleted my account over a year ago now, because I do view them as evil and do cause overall societal harm. It's not life ending. You'll adjust and then wonder why you didn't do it sooner. I made…

Isn't "x is evil/bad/harmful. Government needs to regulate x." basically the entire purpose of society? I enjoy living in a society, and not having to worry about if every food I eat might poison me, or every bridge I walk over might fall down. If we decide, as a society, it would be better to ban Facebook, why shouldn't we?

Banning things is a bit short-sighted and misses the point. IMHO, Its better to think about types of long-term incentive structures that we can create so that more companies will be incentivized to do the right thing - or at least behave in a way that we agree as a society.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#204

Post by golemiprague »

keewee7 wrote: post #38
flycaliguy wrote: post #19

Yeah, I mean, this is among Canadians willing to fill out a survey online. Frankly it feels like another push in the media world to shift blame to FB. As far as specifically Canadian factors, maybe don’t survey us in October when the days are getting noticeably shorter? I feel like we are all a little melancholy right now preparing for our lightless morning commutes.

What I don't understand is the selective outrage against Facebook/Instagram. Why not Twitter, YouTube, reddit and TikTok?

Because facebook give a place for not so lefty people to express their mind. Twitter and reddit are lefty so they are protected, Tiktok is Chinese so no political points gains attacking it since they don't care about some American opinion. Youtube people actually have to invest time and effort to make an engaging content so people at least have some basic appreciation for it.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#205

Post by passivate »

itsoktocry wrote: post #199
passivate wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands.

> Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands. If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you. But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of…

>If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you.

"If you think.." - Why not ask me what I think instead of assuming and putting up a strawman?

>when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful. They are saying that. What does that mean?

I don't consider opinion polls as pathways to truths. They're interesting data points, but not some kind of absolute truth. Human opinions change, perspectives change, often multiple times when provided new/different data. Opinions can also be in conflict with each other. We're not automations or pinnacles of logical consistency. You can hand-wave it away as "nuance", but it isn't. Its fundamental. It's messy.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#206

Post by munk-a »

whimsicalism wrote: post #143
munk-a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter, at least, is utterly worthless and entirely voluntary. Nobody uses the platform to announce or coordinate family events or to reach out to loved ones when they need help. I have a mostly inactive facebook account in case family messages me on there and I need to help out - I don't have a twitter account because I don't find brigading to be a worthwhile activity. I'd say with a moderate level of confidence th…

I completely disagree. There are entire fields of academia where effectively the only discussion being held outside of papers is on twitter. Twitter, by a large magnitude, has been the most professionally useful social network to me as a knowledge worker/researcher.

Isn't twitter an extremely inefficient way to convey technical information? Why hasn't your specialty broken out a self-hosted forum or even, I guess, a heavily moderated subreddit?

In my, admittedly very brief, experience with twitter, I found it nearly impossible to actually grasp whole conversations. Little snippets and snipes get RT'd to the sky while the main discussion thread gets forced ever downward in the interest sorted feed.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#207

Post by heavyset_go »

cronix wrote: post #67

I'm getting kind of tired of the narrative that "x is evil/bad/harmful, but I'm too weak (we won't admit addiction) to not use x. Everyone I know uses x. Government needs to regulate x (so I don't have to change my ways)." I deleted my account over a year ago now, because I do view them as evil and do cause overall societal harm. It's not life ending. You'll adjust and then wonder why you didn't do it sooner. I made…

These are trillion dollar operations that hire teams of behavioral scientists to design user experiences that "increase engagement" by exploiting psychology in all the same ways exploitative industries like the gambling and advertising industries do. It might even be worse as interactive computer services are not regulated in the same ways that gambling, advertising, or alcohol companies are regulated.

This is like complaining that people who can't stop smoking cigarettes are just whining unless they quit themselves. Billion dollar industries spent decades formulating cigarettes to be as maximally addictive as they could possibly make them, and cigarettes are the #1 cause of preventable mortality, and kill about 500,000 people in the US each year. Despite those obvious, clear and unavoidable consequences, millions of people still struggle to stop smoking.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#208

Post by sigstoat »

itsoktocry wrote: post #199
passivate wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands.

> Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands. If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you. But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of…

> But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful. They are saying that. What does that mean?

we can probably find 1,545 people who think everything you love and hold dear is ruining the world.

what does that mean?

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#209

Post by retrac »

whimsicalism wrote: post #139
RealityVoid wrote: post #50

I used to think, untill recently, that Facebook was just a tool and all this hatred was overblown. After all, I modulated my use of it just fine. My usage is sparse, and I use messenger to talk with people I know, it kept us together. I can see how community and bringing old friends together is precious. But, recently, I realized someone I used to be very close has mental problems. Undiagnosed, but there is no other…

I think FB is probably bad, but I've also noticed that people have a tendency to blame delusional mental illnesses on whatever a person was going through/up to at the time it onset when it is often more like a timer went off.

A person's mental illness can have drastically different outcomes depending on who they are surrounded by. Even before Facebook there were plenty of cases where people exploited the emotionally and socially naive or unstable, for their own gain or amusement. I worry social media can enable something similar.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#210

Post by heavyset_go »

dexterdog wrote: post #157
munk-a wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what number? The one they have now or the one they switch to without telling anyone in a few months?

People don't change numbers very often. Most people never do.

I think this is a class and age thing. A lot of less wealthy and young people use prepaid wireless carriers because of cost, and end up just getting new phone numbers when they buy a new shitty phone or switch to a plan that's a better deal for them.

It costs money to port numbers between carriers, and it's a pain to set up when you can just pop in a SIM card and start making calls/texts right away with your new number.

Post reply on HN