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Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

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Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#211

Post by lostgame »

blep_ wrote: post #79
inamberclad wrote: post #57

I wonder how people continue to work at Facebook. I know they tend to have the highest salaries from the FAANG groups, but still. We, as engineers and builders, have the responsibility to think critically about how the things we are working on will be used.

Earlier this year, I had a recruiter invite me to interview there, and I made an attempt at convincing myself with reasoning like: - they're going to do their evil thing anyway, may as well show up and intentionally do it marginally worse - they're going to pay someone large sums of money, may as well be me - I increasingly believe this whole industry is net evil overall, and large sums of money mean I can leave it s…

Thank you for a realistic, grounded, evidence-based discussion of this. I've seen quite a few comments in this thread that have made me shake my head pretty hard.

Here's the thing: anyone who is in IT, especially programming; is going to be well-aware of the...I don't want to say 'evil', but I will at least say questionably ethical nature of Facebook's workings.

Anyone working there had to compromise some level of ethics for the profit they acquire from it.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#212

Post by ziddoap »

stickfigure wrote: post #206
ziddoap wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really able to wrap my head around your argument. If it's damaging to some percentage of users, having more users means it damages more people. Is your argument that this is okay because some people also put their health at risk being salt miners?

Can you name something that is not damaging to someone? Excessive salt consumption is linked over a million annual deaths worldwide. Even water kills thousands of people per year (drowning). If your rule is "we can't have things that may hurt some people" then you're going to live in a pretty bland world. Gonna be especially tough without water.

>Excessive salt consumption is linked over a million annual deaths worldwide. Even water kills thousands of people per year (drowning)

And we have people and organizations that try to reduce the amount of deaths from those things. Raising awareness, passing laws, etc.

>If your rule is "we can't have things that may hurt some people" then you're going to live in a pretty bland world.

I only asked for clarification on your argument. But, no, that's not my "rule". I just think that if we can reduce harm, it's nice to do that where possible.

>Gonna be especially tough without water.

Come on. Your whole last sentence is ridiculous. The poster questioned why someone would work at Facebook. That is not the equivalent of saying "we can't have things that may hurt some people" and it's so far removed from your water/drowning scenario that I can't tell if you're being serious.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#213

Post by jdougan »

MandieD wrote: post #189
otikik wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some sort of willful ignorance Not "some sort of willful ignorance". It just requires "ignorance". I think most of us know someone who thinks that reality TV is ... well, reality. "It says it in the name". > Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake Perhaps you have very bright kids. My kid will ask me to buy two of whatever that person is pushing. He's simply not equipped to handle marke…

Up to now, I have vigorously shielded my toddler from marketing - as far as he knows, the TV occasionally shows holiday church services and election results, and "his" laptop shows fairly non-violent excerpts from BBC animal documentaries and bird-watching videos (he's taken to asking to watch by making the slurping sounds the desert rain frog in his favorite video makes as it's eating termites, then exclaiming "frog…

Start with advertising from the past and work your way forward? It looks lame now, but that stuff used to consistently work.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#215

Post by theGnuMe »

oblib wrote: post #203
sbf501 wrote: post #13

I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths' self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in that the media is custom-made to drive en…

>>I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels" Back in the early 80s I was living in LA and I'd grab some food on the way home from work and the "News" on an independent station. They had 3 half hour News show back to back. They started out with "Local News", then moved on to "National News", and finally "World News". At first it didn't seem much different than the big 3 Netw…

It’s been well studied. We know the ad suppprted news make us sad. Don’t watch the news.

NPR and PBS are the best if you have to.

  I think someone could make a few billion running a positive happy news channel.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#217

Post by jon_richards »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #191
jon_richards wrote: post #134

Social media will be the smoking of our generation. In a century, they’ll wonder how we could possibly have kept engaging knowing the harm we were doing to ourselves.

Is the harm really on that level? What is the magnitude of harm?

Yeah, let’s just keep smoking cigarettes, using leaded gasoline, and spewing carbon into the air until we know for sure how bad it is.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#218

Post by mcrad »

sbf501 wrote: post #46
mcrad wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well engagement implies a certain amount to decision making and real-time action. TV watching is pretty much passive, and I just have a hard time believing the brain is impacted similarly but such different types of activity.

I don't think that qualifies as "specious" because I'm not trying to deceive anyone. You missed the part where I stated TV isn't interactive. I tried to pose a question in good faith. Did I fail? I am interested in information. Using the term "specious" incorrectly, deliberately or accidentally, is a judgement of the basis of my argument, which is actually specious.

Strawman argument then? I'm simply disagreeing that cable TV has a similar kind of mental health impact referred to in the article, just because there are similarities in how they operate as economic/social entities. I have no reason to believe you are trying to deceive anyone and specious is a great word :)

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#220

Post by tomcam »

sbf501 wrote: post #13

I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths' self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in that the media is custom-made to drive en…

> "24-hour Outrage-News Channels"

That’s the only kind

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