The benefits of staying off social media • Hacker News Board

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#231

Post by gameman144 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

micromacrofoot wrote: post #152

gameman144 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this all the time I'm these discussions, but I call bunk. Sure, small talk is filler content, but you're not going to jump straight into the more meaningful conversations with people you don't yet know. The filler small talk content isn't the substance, it's the launching point for those more substantive conversations. For instance, maybe you got the hat at a concert in Wichita, and this person at the gas stat…

>But it's also totally fine to try to start a conversation with someone. I would agree (and really wish I could) if most people would recognize disinterest and stop there, but anecdotally I'd say half the time it's met with anger or some form of pointed dissatisfaction. People have outright touched me to get my attention about some off-hand comment I ignored initially. It's frequent enough where I'm conditioned to st…

> I can not support any kind of small talk under the reality of what comes along with it.

Eh, I can understand that, but in my mind this seems like one of the purest instances of not letting the assholes co-opt the thing I like.

Some people can't take no for an answer in loads of contexts. In my mind, the proper response is to call those people out for their misbehavior, stigmatize those bad actions, and let the vast majority of good actors and positive experiences carry on.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#232

Post by kodah » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

hackernews777 wrote: post #210

kodah wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this track with human existence ? Most of my inbox is spam, even if I fight to control it. That doesn't mean I turn my email off or never use it. All of the activities you noted suck, but there's a lot more humans looking for something other than that. I ride my bike around town a lot and end up meeting a lot of strange people because of that. Some people think it's weird and obviously straight up other me if…

No it doesn't track with human existence. In the past such things lead to wars and large schisms in societies, it is completely abnormal for the vast majority of anything to be negative and the prevailing wisdom be just grin and bear it. The USA was founded on the idea of negative rights and an opt in culture, instead today we increasingly see a shift to people demanding positive rights and putting the burden on the…

> In the past such things lead to wars and large schisms in societies

Can you be specific?

> it is completely abnormal for the vast majority of anything to be negative and the prevailing wisdom be just grin and bear it.

Tangentially, my life has been mostly negative until adulthood. From what I've learned of others, this is pretty common, just not commonly spoke on.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#233

Post by GDC7 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #227

GDC7 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The WORST thing you can do for social anxiety (or any anxiety) is to avoid trigger it No point triggering for the sake of it. You need to bring the socially anxious person in a very easy enviornment. A scenario in which they can easily "win" the social setting. Like a pre-season friendly game against a minor league team. You put 30 runs on them, and of course you'll start the season full of swagger. It's called the…

> No point triggering for the sake of it. Actually there is, if it's contextualized correctly. It's called Exposure Therapy [0] and it's scientifically proven to help phobias/anxiety/fears. Avoiding the anxiety-provoking situations makes things worse. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...

I don't think people would ever become accustomed to being losers.

It might work for fear of flying or heights

But being in a social setting and trying to penetrate into the "in crowd" and being rejected would only make things worse.

You need a controlled environment to exogenously make the socially anxious person "in" so that they then have enough momentum and confidence to go out in the real world and go through an X amount of rejections on their way to thier first real win.

If they lose confidence before achieving a real win because the X amount of rejections is too high , then you gotta go back to the controlled environment.

It's basically like baseball with Major and Minor leagues.

Minor league aces are way more confident than sluggish Major league players.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#234

Post by mistermann » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #192

mistermann wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The main benefit of taking a break from social media is that you stop living in a fictional world and finally start dealing with your own reality." > There is lots of quantifiable information showing that social media is bad for you. This seems much harder to quantify, but seems like the elephant in the room. This is perfectly reasonable, but I am personally very skeptical. Also from the article: >> “As painful as…

This is a brilliant answer and I learned a lot from it. Thank you. I plan on sharing this with my kids and wife. Wonderful.

Thank you for the kind words!

Now that you mention sharing with your kids, it brings to mind another idea that pops up now and then when thinking about such ideas: it seems to me that once people start to get older and more knowledgeable, it's like they lose the ability to even conceptualize ideas like this, let alone take them seriously. It seems like with age and experience, it's as if people get "locked in" to reality, eventually perceiving it as a kind of immutable, bounded system that is forced upon us, as opposed to an open, mysterious environment full of hidden tricks and tools that we can us to shape the environment to our will.

If there is some truth to this, my armchair theory is that it is in part due to physical changes in the brain, such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_pruning

Anyways, I think humanity would be well advised to put some effort into seriously listening to the perspective that younger minds can bring to this old problem, maybe your kids could come up with some novel ideas to contribute if they set their minds to it.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#235

Post by nebula8804 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #211

nobody9999 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I grew up in Midwest USA and lived for an extended period of time in NYC. "Small talk" is almost non-existent in NYC where it is very normal to stop on the street in the Midwest and converse with complete strangers. I grew up in NYC and have lived in a variety of places around the US. To a certain extent, your observation about NYC is valid. But only to a point. In NYC, if you're walking down the (very crowded) stre…

> As such, if you ask a lot of folks who are online, you're more likely to get responses like "Why would you want to talk to someone else?" because the folks who actually like interacting with other humans in person are doing that instead. I think this is hugely important to remember. Many regular people don't spend much time on social media. Of the ones that do, maybe 1 in 100 (or less!) actually ever post anything.…

I learned this the hard way when I found out that all these leftist AOC type primaries were failing left and right back in 2018, 2019, and 2020. I spent so much time volunteering for them and online they seemed like winners. However reality is that in real life, the numbers of volunteers and voters is a small percentage of the internet support. Its as if half of the internet is all fake AI bots. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#236

Post by Domenic_S » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

GDC7 wrote: post #233

Domenic_S wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No point triggering for the sake of it. Actually there is, if it's contextualized correctly. It's called Exposure Therapy [0] and it's scientifically proven to help phobias/anxiety/fears. Avoiding the anxiety-provoking situations makes things worse. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...

I don't think people would ever become accustomed to being losers. It might work for fear of flying or heights But being in a social setting and trying to penetrate into the "in crowd" and being rejected would only make things worse. You need a controlled environment to exogenously make the socially anxious person "in" so that they then have enough momentum and confidence to go out in the real world and go through an…

why are you equating social anxiety with being a loser?

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#237

Post by nebula8804 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #98

ipdashc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where people consider talking to someone a chore. This bit in particular really hit me. I've noticed a rising trend around the Internet (or maybe I was just blind to it before), mostly on Reddit, of people who really do seem to consider any sort of real-life social interaction a chore and an attack. I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or somet…

Internet people are usually a lot angrier than real world people. Hard to explain but they always seem a bundle of neuroticism and mental pathologies. HN is no exception. I find that when I participate I also start mimicking this behavior and insulation is required. Fortunately, nothing happened to small talk. I’m a talkative fellow and people still react cheerfully and converse with me. One can only suppose that eve…

I am concerned that long term commenting has negatively shifted my real life behavior towards being slightly more aggressive. Given enough time it feels like a behavioral shift can happen to people who are online way too much.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#238

Post by watwut » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #227

GDC7 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The WORST thing you can do for social anxiety (or any anxiety) is to avoid trigger it No point triggering for the sake of it. You need to bring the socially anxious person in a very easy enviornment. A scenario in which they can easily "win" the social setting. Like a pre-season friendly game against a minor league team. You put 30 runs on them, and of course you'll start the season full of swagger. It's called the…

> No point triggering for the sake of it. Actually there is, if it's contextualized correctly. It's called Exposure Therapy [0] and it's scientifically proven to help phobias/anxiety/fears. Avoiding the anxiety-provoking situations makes things worse. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...

Exposure therapy is not the same as randomly triggering the person. It is not going into situations where you will fail either. It is quite deliberate process where you expose person to dose the the person can handle with some difficulty and then you give them break to recover.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#239

Post by maxdoop » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:05 PM UTC

tgittos wrote: post #164

One thing this article doesn't bring up but I have observed in myself since quitting social media about 4 years ago is the pain of living in a world where nobody holds the same values as you do anymore. Yes, all these benefits will come to you from opting out of social media. You'll grow, learn and appreciate your own life more, and at the same time feel more and more isolated from the world around you. You'll find y…

I share your feelings on this.

It is an awesome thing to lower (or eliminate entirely) your social media usage. To begin "doing", creating, and being in the present moment with yourself. It's liberating, and after the odd "brain itch" feeling wears off from not using social media anymore, I truly did recognize a state of contentedness that I'd long not felt.

But then you go to visit your family and friends. They begin talking about that viral video they shared on Facebook. About the funny TikTok challenges that they are all doing. About the latest internet fad that they got interested in over the last week.

And suddenly, you are an outsider. No one cares about that poem you wrote last week. Or if they do, they don't discuss the content of the poem or its meaning -- they tell you to start an Instagram page and start building an audience. They tell you to start that Youtube channel so you can maybe monetize that creative spark inside you.

It's very isolating.

I know there are many people out there who aren't on social media and share the same thoughts/experiences as me, but unfortunately, those people are not most the people I'm close with. Or even aware of.

Instead, most people are exactly like most people: living online.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#240

Post by watwut » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #197

nobody9999 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I grew up in Midwest USA and lived for an extended period of time in NYC. "Small talk" is almost non-existent in NYC where it is very normal to stop on the street in the Midwest and converse with complete strangers. I grew up in NYC and have lived in a variety of places around the US. To a certain extent, your observation about NYC is valid. But only to a point. In NYC, if you're walking down the (very crowded) stre…

I think there's something a little more complicated than that going on. I remember even when I was a college student who rode public transit in Saratoga Springs (small city in up state New York), it was normal to start a conversation with random people on the bus, or with the bus driver. Sometimes I would initiate it, often others would. That just doesn't happen in New York. Maybe that's due to space constraints, but…

I don't live in NY, I live is small town comparatively. Talking to strangers on the bus would come across as weird odd behavior here.

No one does that, except occasional heavily drunk person.