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Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

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Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#211

Post by mygo »

evfanknitram wrote: post #105
jacobkg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

Is there some study showing that your first sentence is correct? The reason I ask is that I never ever see stuff like that in my feed. Is it your friends who share that kind of stuff or is it showing up as ads or? And why are those people encouraged to share stuff such as bacon giving cancer? In my feed I only see the stuff from friends, such as travel photos, various fun experiences, poems and sometimes comments on…

facebook has this “trending” section where they show ~3 trending news headlines with a little blurb under each. It’s usually near the top. On the right sidebar on desktop. And yeah it’s often times very depressing headlines such as those. You don’t get that?

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#212

Post by fokinsean »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #36
fokinsean wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a very similar experience, but have since relapsed back into the instagram-sphere. The only things keeping me there are group chats and Fortnite clips/memes. The biggest benefit was how much my attention span improved when I quit, but now I am back using insta and the itching feeling of grabbing my phone the moment I'm bored or stuck on something has returned. I need to re-read Deep Work and highly recommend it…

I know that itching feeling well, here's what's mostly worked for me: view your phone as tool with a limited set of functionality. For me, that functionality is: calls, texts, Google maps, Spotify, Audible, podcasts, and a camera. That's it, no email (technically have the ability to send an email if i need to, but no notifications and no constant checking) and no random internet browsing and twitter etc consumption.…

Yeah that's definitely a good way to look at it. I also turn off notifications for 90% of my apps which is a life changer. Same with email/slack notifications on my computer. I only have notifications if I get DM'd.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#213

Post by jacobkg »

spondyl wrote: post #209
jacobkg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

As horrific as it was, the NYT's "Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards, Indictment Says" bizarre headline actually made by day :) I had to do a double take and check that I hadn't been redirected to The Onion.

Maybe because I have a young son but the headline was so gut wrenching I still haven't been able to read any of the coverage.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#214

Post by zombieprocesses »

9889095r3jh wrote: post #178
zombieprocesses wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? You are confusing a propaganda campaign against social media with actual news. Also keep in mind that the author of the Op-Ed was pushing a book he was writing. Billions of people have a healthy relationship with social media. Just like billions of people have a healthy relationship with alcohol, food, working out, tv, sports, cars, etc. But it…

Why would the elites try to reign in social media? If I were an "elite" I'd want everyone to be on social media, except me. I'd want them revealing all the intimate details of their life, so I can better manipulate them with targted advertising. You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain the recent uptick in articles about social media's negative effects. It's called a news cycle. People write stories about things…

> Why would the elites try to reign in social media?

To better control it?

> I'd want them revealing all the intimate details of their life, so I can better manipulate them with targted advertising.

Yes. As long as they control the targeting and advertising.

> You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain the recent uptick in articles about social media's negative effects.

It's not a conspiracy. It's reality. It's what happened with every communication medium. Print, Radio, Film, TV and now the internet. To believe otherwise is the real conspiracy.

> It's called a news cycle.

It doesn't span years.

> Remember when lead was discovered in Flint, MI's water supply? And then there was an uptick in stories about lead poisoning?

Crazy how quickly that downed down huh?

That the elites want to control the means of communication is standard policy for thousands of years. And it spans all nations. The chinese elite, russian elite, saudi elite, the european elites, etc all want to control communication. Our elites aren't different. Societies, like humans, have similar organs.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#215

Post by greedo »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #124
RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

Well, I used to think I had a healthy relationship with drinking, but ohhh... Not that social media is the same thing at all. But I have a degree in philosophy and was trained in my formative years to argue with folks. That's a terrible mode to be in on social media-- it doesn't serve the people around me and it doesn't serve me at all. So I stopped arguing and just posted nice things, like songs I sing or good thing…

Obligatory XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/386/

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#216

Post by iamhamm »

I'm not sure I buy that not using social media is the linchpin of my career, but I take his point that it's largely a waste of time to be reasonable. I have all the major social media services and I use them occasionally (for example: I don't install the apps, I just login from a browser). I think the bigger message that I take from this:

1. Some people are probably "addicted" or at least habituated in a way that makes social media actively negative in their lives.

2. For the rest of us, maybe some see value in social media and others don't.

I'm in (2): I take the "does doing X enrich my life?" approach to social media. Maybe once or twice a week I log on and see if anyone had anything personally interested happen. If so, great, if not or if it's just not something I want to spend brain on, I just keep scrolling. I've got other places to spend my time and I recognize that passively consuming a feed isn't enriching my own growth - so I don't do it.

For the people in (1), it's a very different story. They may be using social media to an active detriment. Not sure how you get there, but to quote the psychologist in Annihilation:

"Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct."

I guess for some folks, that's social media - it's destructive to the point that bloggers need to write articles about quitting it. Or maybe it's just more clickbait since that's our world now.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#217

Post by l9k »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #204
npsimons wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First and foremost, what evidence is there for Hamming's claim? > is worth a single disrupted morning. We're not talking about a single "disrupted" morning. We're talking about chronic depression, which can lead to suicide. Many people I tell that I don't keep up with current events like to claim I'm ignorant. At which point I ask them to name the most important thing they learned from news two weeks ago. Haven't had…

>I do not believe we receive knowledge from modern mainstream media today. Most of it is ephemeral drama that does not matter in the least. The "news" has been like that for a long time. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confr…

I actually thought it was a recent quote until the end. 200 years later, still true.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#218

Post by peterlk »

A fundamental rule that is eroding the allure of social media:

Information consumption != happiness

I have recently engaged in a somewhat forced[0] experiment. I have given up nearly all social media, and apps that send me push notifications of any kind, and replaced my news diet with e-books. Now, rather than reading the daily political gossip or worse, I listen to an audio book or read an e-book about something that interests me. I feel like my brain has much more space, and I am much less stressed.

[0] I broke my phone, and couldn't get the one I wanted, so I got a temporary phone that gives me a grand total of 4GB of user-available storage. I've installed very few apps.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#219

Post by shrimp_emoji »

iamhamm wrote: post #216

I'm not sure I buy that not using social media is the linchpin of my career, but I take his point that it's largely a waste of time to be reasonable. I have all the major social media services and I use them occasionally (for example: I don't install the apps, I just login from a browser). I think the bigger message that I take from this: 1. Some people are probably "addicted" or at least habituated in a way that mak…

This site is my social media, and I'm addicted to it, and I can't concentrate. This is a cry for help.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#220

Post by shrimp_emoji »

peterlk wrote: post #218

A fundamental rule that is eroding the allure of social media: Information consumption != happiness I have recently engaged in a somewhat forced[0] experiment. I have given up nearly all social media, and apps that send me push notifications of any kind, and replaced my news diet with e-books. Now, rather than reading the daily political gossip or worse, I listen to an audio book or read an e-book about something tha…

Good to hear it's going well, Bryan!
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