Live data from Hacker News

Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

bbc.com

361–366 of 366 posts

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#361
post #18

I'm starting to wonder if mass media in general is bad for our mental health, and if we'd be better off unplugging as much as we can from everything - social media, TV, radio, Hacker News, etc. and spending more time with our community. I suppose the problem is, most communities are completely addicted to this stuff, so we're left in a situation where it's hard for most people to unplug for any long period of time wi…

I recently saw the video about one cell to salamander on HN. I was awestruck. How can you access such amazing topics without accessing HN? Or do you access it once a week?

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in other words: the answer is that type 1 errors self-correct quickly, but type 2 errors self-correct slowly.

Speed of acceptance may indeed be related to the type of claim, but I think it’s also highly related to the ability to confirm the evidence yourself. There are many ways to confirm major pieces of evidence for, say, the earth being round. It’s easy enough to do, even without getting into a rocket and seeing the earth’s curvature. There are many fewer ways to confirm a whole lot of other ideas, though, whether there’s…

Yeah, you cannot confirm those yourself - so what do sane people do? they consult the experts.

The Sea of human knowledge is too vast for any single human to traverse it fully.

But here you have people who are anti-experts, who are matched with others with similar sentiment.

And flat-earthers are a very specific example. What about politics, where facts do not matter? Or even objective issues, which got politicized?

The only thing the current social media do, is to entrench beliefs of everyone using them, without regard to what that belief is.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#363
post #361
post #18

I'm starting to wonder if mass media in general is bad for our mental health, and if we'd be better off unplugging as much as we can from everything - social media, TV, radio, Hacker News, etc. and spending more time with our community. I suppose the problem is, most communities are completely addicted to this stuff, so we're left in a situation where it's hard for most people to unplug for any long period of time wi…

I recently saw the video about one cell to salamander on HN. I was awestruck. How can you access such amazing topics without accessing HN? Or do you access it once a week?

Exactly. I subscribe to the hacker newsletter which gives me a digest of the highlights once a week. Rarely hit the homepage on my own anymore, but I do browse some of the topics once a week when I read that newsletter.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Social media and the sensational, vain culture it has inculcated it is entirely damaging and without value. It is _only_ revolutionary and disparages any prior merit and censure without reason. It is a denial of service on reason and experience claiming precedence and priority without any historical context.

I think you have the causation exactly backwards - the vain culture is what gave rise to social media. Japanese "social media" including forums and image boards are biased towards being nonentity as possible. Famous cat owners make efforts to be non-entity as possible compared to US ones often involving owner presence even if just dangling a toy and talking to the cat. Japan sure as hell isn't perfect socially but th…

No. Entrepreneurs understood our cultures tendency towards vanity, self reflective and voyeuristic exhibition, and created businesses based on this. Social media was the exploitation and exaggeration of that vanity. What it is now is a huge business and opportunity for marketing and social control.

Re: Heavy social media use associated with lower mental health in adolescents

#365
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view right from the start of the internet has been to make quarrelling exact a cost, just as it does in real life. Thus downvoting should cost equal karma...

That’s a great idea.

I know, right? The thought is that people wouldn't downvote ideas that they dislike as much as they regrettably do now.

Yet at least some of them would gladly downvote a poster who behaves badly, e.g. is deliberately disruptive.

Post reply on HN