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Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#221

Post by zdragnar »

lr4444lr wrote: post #214
distortedsignal wrote: post #8

Most important paragraph, IMO: > Conducted Oct. 8 to 10, the online poll surveyed 1,545 Canadians and cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples. It's a pretty good sample-size, but we don't get error bars. I don't remember if there was anything FB-critical happening that week (when did the study about teen mental health come out?), but the timeframe could also…

Do you really think non-internet users would make thr "FB is harmful" opinion LESS chosen?

Plenty aren't aware of what harms it might cause due to lack of exposure to it. Plenty of others might be completely biased based only on anecdotes and bad press.

There's no way to tell what the balance is without actually asking them

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#222

Post by achr2 »

birtoise wrote: post #216

Why do they use it then? Just stop using. Damn ppl are dumb. “Oh it hurts when i poke my eye with a needle guess i will keep doing that for 3h everyday”

Facebook and it's ilk are one of the most addictive forces ever conceived. It's hard enough to change significantly embedded habits, nearly impossible when those behaviours are expertly designed and continually refined to be as pervasive, addictive, and manipulative as possible.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#223

Post by tiahura »

passivate wrote: post #205
itsoktocry wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. T…

“Why not ask me what I think instead of assuming and putting up a strawman?”

It’s not an assumption. You just said it.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#224

Post by Igelau »

Pxtl wrote: post #131
johnchristopher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really do believe there's a solution for that. We need whatsapp/telegram/signal to display a feed based on user's status and nothing more. It's almost free, frictionless and free from ads (for now). But sharing without the widest audience (just to the social graph of your contacts). It could bring back Google+'s circles so you don't share the same stuff with colleagues and friends and family, but your feed page wou…

Imho, the big toxic thing on Facebook wasn't the "news", it was "your friend liked this" and "your friend commented on this". That's where we get inundated with awfulness. My friends don't post/share terrible stuff, but they do occasionally interact with terrible stuff.

My friends apparently LOVE solving ambiguous order of operations problems.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#225

Post by quadrangle »

azangru wrote: post #178
quadrangle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask that for every single behavior that anyone claims goes against their deeper values like good health. Why do people keep smoking or eating junk food or staying up too late or yelling at family and friends when they lose their temper? It's true that deeds speak louder than words. But it's also true that habits are hard to break, and there's the thinking-fast-and-slow ideas that our judgments, actions, and v…

> If you ask "why" in a sincere curious way No, I was asking why in a frustrated rhetorical way. I get annoyed by the frequency with which people complain about social media, which is usually followed by requests for a government intervention or for a stricter moderation by the network owners. Just quit, I want to say. The internet is huge. Find yourself another hobby. A better network. Or, if you think you are addic…

Thanks for your honest clarification.

I totally get your reaction, and I have similar reactions myself all the time.

Some wisdom I got from elsewhere which I'm still working to practice is to eat-your-projections. We notice how other people are complainers and blamers and they make excuses and don't take responsibility. So, we turn it around and ask, "how am I being a complainer and blamer?" And we might notice how we're complaining about the complainers. And best to find this self-reflection humorous. If we switch to blaming ourselves for complaining, we're still blaming and complaining. Ideally, we find some empathy as we realize now something about how the complainers feel, and we realize that we didn't stop to be really curious about what is going on in their experience.

I agree with you completely about the value of taking responsibility. It's SO SO hard (I'm speaking for myself here!) to turn that around and literally ask, "what am I doing to take responsibility for this situation?" I.e. the situation in which other people were complaining, and their complaining triggered you, and you're unconsciously blaming them for your annoyed feelings instead of taking responsibility for your failure to be stoic.

Sorry for all the meta, this is stuff I am practicing, and it really seems the only "out" to the pattern. And really, take everything I just wrote as me noticing your patterns because I have them myself. I'm working on leading by example before telling you what you "should" do ("shoulding you" in one way to say it).

I'm laughing about this and about myself here, so I hope somehow that comes across in this overlong plain-text which I should expect to be misunderstood if I take my own damn advice. Haha ;)

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#226

Post by verve_rat »

joe_the_user wrote: post #217
RealityVoid wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, most likely the ilness would be there even without Facebook. But the platform enables some destructive behavior while in the real life, I hope, more productive support structures could exist. While mental illness is something you might be biologically predisposed, the outcome can vary wildly with or without support structures and good help. And I think on this end Facebook is profoundly destructive.

Yes, most likely the ilness would be there even without Facebook. But the platform enables some destructive behavior while in the real life, I hope, more productive support structures could exist. But, realistically, is the choice social media or real life? Or is choice between one part of the Internet and another part of the Internet? Which is to say, what are you talking about doing? Ending Facebook in particular?…

So just give up? Do nothing? If we think these things are harmful and those harms outweigh the good, then we should do something.

Even if it is just a higher tax rate for Social Media companies to help pay for the clean up of the damage. Sin taxes work, but in this case you'd have to apply them to the real customers, advertisers, somehow.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#227

Post by thaumasiotes »

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?

It means exactly nothing, obviously. You can substitute literally anything else for Facebook without affecting the truth of that sentence in the slightest.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#228

Post by thaumasiotes »

tiahura wrote: post #223
passivate wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. T…

“Why not ask me what I think instead of assuming and putting up a strawman?” It’s not an assumption. You just said it.

He very clearly did not say that not putting up error bars was what makes people lose faith in the media.

According to passivate's commentary, what makes people lose faith in the media is when they report a study that notes "our findings cannot generalize because we used a nonrandom sample" in the terms "most Canadians believe...".

itsoktocry is just putting up a low-effort bad-faith nonrebuttal.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#229

Post by verve_rat »

joe_the_user wrote: post #215
retrac wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it's really not social media in particular. It seems pretty clear that when delusions are coming on, a person will seek out those who humor those delusions. If you're talking pre-social media Internet, you'd have the person on BBSes and email lists for whatever they find appealing. And it's worth considering that the situation isn't some mentally ill people and some opportunistic/predatory people. You have a mixt…

But there are healthy connections and unhealthy connections. Is it possible that there might be a way to encourage the healthy ones and discourage the unhealthy ones?

Just because social media works the way it does now doesn't mean it has to always work like that. These things are constructed by humans and we can change them if we want. There is nothing intrinsic in Facebook or YouTube that says they must promote "engagement" above all else.

Maybe they might make a few less dollars, wouldn't that be sad.

Re: Most Canadians believe Facebook harms their mental health

#230

Post by joe_the_user »

999900000999 wrote: post #72

I'm so happy to see awareness around the negative mental health effects of social media. You also don't get all that much from it, back when I was heavy into social media I was miserable, online dating never brought me a worthwhile person. The rare times I'd actually meet a real person, it was almost certain to be someone who was 30 plus and not interested in working. Deleted all my online dating profiles, limited my…

It seems like there's a standard format "I quit social media and everything is great" post. Usually the poster implies they stepped into ready-made in-real-life contacts and maybe they did. But the implication that this is generally viable strategy for everyone seems wrong.
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