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The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

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Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#41

Post by reaperducer »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #13
debrice wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if being on Facebook reduces your motivation to build new friendships (it does take some work) since it allows you (with little effort) to maintain some form of very limited remote relationship? Maybe without Facebook, we (remote people) would be more motivated to build new local, face to face, and fulfilling friendships?

I've found that leaving social media, I was forced to actually message my friends more to feel connected. I end up talking. We do things and go out. I meet more people. Getting off the passive dopamine train makes you do the active hard stuff. You realize it's not that hard.

What was amazing to me was how much time I got back in my life.

Without social media filling up all the spare minutes, then overflowing into things I actually need to do, I have so much more time to do things I want to do.

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#42

Post by ken »

ajxs wrote: post #37

I stopped using any kind of social media five or so years ago, and I've never looked back. I have a bare bones profile with no personally identifiable information on one particular social network so I can keep in touch with a few people who are interstate, but I never browse the public site. My fears that I would lose touch with people close to me were unfounded. It may be a platitude to say that the people who don't…

I take it you don't consider HN to be a kind of social media, then? What are your criteria?

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#43

Post by shakna »

Worth pointing out that how you feel when using Facebook will also change, not just with environmental and other personal factors, but always with how Facebook chooses to respond to you.

Facebook has had at least one experiment in the past to change how the user feels, and it was A-B tested, not run against everyone. [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#44

Post by jakecopp »

ajxs wrote: post #37

I stopped using any kind of social media five or so years ago, and I've never looked back. I have a bare bones profile with no personally identifiable information on one particular social network so I can keep in touch with a few people who are interstate, but I never browse the public site. My fears that I would lose touch with people close to me were unfounded. It may be a platitude to say that the people who don't…

Why not adblock the news feed and delete the app?

Then you are able to stay in contact with those far away, and make new friends at random events you may not have heard about otherwise?

I dislike their monopoly on the friend graph just as much as anyone else, but at least in the Sydney university demographic FB Events are ubiquitous.

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#45

Post by remarkEon »

ken wrote: post #42
ajxs wrote: post #37

I stopped using any kind of social media five or so years ago, and I've never looked back. I have a bare bones profile with no personally identifiable information on one particular social network so I can keep in touch with a few people who are interstate, but I never browse the public site. My fears that I would lose touch with people close to me were unfounded. It may be a platitude to say that the people who don't…

I take it you don't consider HN to be a kind of social media, then? What are your criteria?

I think there's something about interacting with visual depictions of other human beings that makes the other "real" social networks much different than HN - what's essentially a pseudo anon message board that has well defined rules about interactions on the platform (that are easily enforceable but more importantly well known and easy to describe). We generally come in here to talk about tech (or tech adjacent things), and we know what we're getting when we come in here. The people are (usually!) well informed and the discussion classy and highbrow.

That's not an accident, and neither is what Facebook's doing.

Facebook, and Instagram especially (but I repeat myself), absolutely do prey on the visual. It's hard for me to put into words what I'm describing (heh) but I do think visual depictions trigger latent or dormant responses in us that are too easy to manipulate and control.

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#46

Post by willart4food »

01100011 wrote: post #5

I dunno. After moving to the valley and leaving all my friends behind, social media is my one connection to anyone besides my wife. I don't compare myself to people on SM and feel bad. I see my friends and family and generally feel good.

It's not what you have; it's how you use it / what you do with it!

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#47

Post by ajxs »

ken wrote: post #42
ajxs wrote: post #37

I stopped using any kind of social media five or so years ago, and I've never looked back. I have a bare bones profile with no personally identifiable information on one particular social network so I can keep in touch with a few people who are interstate, but I never browse the public site. My fears that I would lose touch with people close to me were unfounded. It may be a platitude to say that the people who don't…

I take it you don't consider HN to be a kind of social media, then? What are your criteria?

I'm sure you can tell the difference between how people interact on HN and Facebook. Obviously there's some small degree of ego in effect with how people interact on HN, but it's vastly different to 'profile-based' social media. Among other differences, we're here discussing a topic, not just projecting ourselves at each-other.

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#48

Post by ajxs »

jakecopp wrote: post #44
ajxs wrote: post #37

I stopped using any kind of social media five or so years ago, and I've never looked back. I have a bare bones profile with no personally identifiable information on one particular social network so I can keep in touch with a few people who are interstate, but I never browse the public site. My fears that I would lose touch with people close to me were unfounded. It may be a platitude to say that the people who don't…

Why not adblock the news feed and delete the app? Then you are able to stay in contact with those far away, and make new friends at random events you may not have heard about otherwise? I dislike their monopoly on the friend graph just as much as anyone else, but at least in the Sydney university demographic FB Events are ubiquitous.

I'll admit you have a good point with keeping abreast of events in certain circles. That's essentially what I did though. In my original post I noted that I have an anonymous profile on one social network that doesn't do anything except for chat with a few people, it doesn't even have any 'connections'. Hi from another Sydney-sider by the way!

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#49

Post by twirlock »

01100011 wrote: post #5

I dunno. After moving to the valley and leaving all my friends behind, social media is my one connection to anyone besides my wife. I don't compare myself to people on SM and feel bad. I see my friends and family and generally feel good.

>no, social media makes me feel good

What a fresh and insightful rebuttal.

Re: The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel (2017)

#50

Post by bjornsteffanson »

schiavi wrote: post #9

I have been working in this problem space for the past year or so developing a new kind of social media that I think has some merits. Take away the advertisement model, the public nature of discourse, and replace it with meaningful context-driven one-on-one conversation and I think we might have something. My platform can take any topic and disseminate a discussion to as many one-on-one conversations as people who ar…

For starters, you have a leaderboard. Any sort of number metric or gamification is enough to keep me off a platform.

Edit: I just realized the irony of the above as I type this on Hacker News.

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