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Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

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Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#41

Post by gjulianm »

ramesh31 wrote: post #5

Facebook was just the beginning. It feels crude almost in comparison to the new generation of designer drugs (TikTok et. al).

Although TikTok is fairly addictive, I find it's far better at showing you content you actually like instead of outrage/emotional/clickbait content. It's very easy to get into niches you actually enjoy with actual decent content (woodworking, cleaning, plants, DIY, cats in my case, for example) and actual people as creators, instead of whatever reposted content factory managed to cheat FB/Instagram algorithm this time.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#42

Post by svachalek »

changoplatanero wrote: post #7

I don’t get why Facebook is so often singled out in these types of studies. What about other activities like dating or school or going to church? I bet those can be shown to increase anxiety and be bad for mental health

In addition to other replies here, Facebook is also the only one of these that is deliberately trying to hurt your mental health. They have internal studies showing these results and they actually optimize for them, since angry and depressed users are known to increase their engagement with the platform.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#43

Post by standardUser »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #27
standardUser wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes when I'm scrolling Instagram I'm reminded of the sad era of "channel flipping" where we would just watch "whatever's on" while endless ads were blasted at our faces. At least now we have some control over our poison, though few seem to bother exercising that control.

Um... I installed Instagram recently for the first time. Every 5th post or so is an ad. That you have no choice over... And there are a lot of suggested content posts which you have no control over. It's like the same as channel flipping and getting ads blasted at you but now the ads are smarter/more targeted.

Yeah, the ads are actually relevant sometimes and they don't demand 30 seconds of my life, so massive improvements all around. I don't see much suggested content unless I scroll too long, at which point I probably do need some more content.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#44

Post by tmpz22 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #38
matai_kolila wrote: post #31

IDK... I know Facebook feeds are different for each person but for me there are basically zero posts from people I know on Facebook anymore, it's just ads and videos of random TikTok style videos.

Did you know you can look at profiles, not just the feed?

So if we engage with facebook more, and invest more time, we can have slightly better content?

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#45

Post by nightski »

racheltanks wrote: post #39
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

Anecdotally, Facebook seems relatively tame these days compared to the firehose of doom & gloom, violent videos, outrage porn, and outright misinformation that fills Reddit and Twitter. Browsing Reddit’s default feeds or popular posts is a wild experience these days.

Twitter is poison

I have a love/hate relationship with it. I follow many statistics & data science professionals and it's a great way to discover new books, resources, and content. But you have to wade through a lot of crap, even with a heavily curated feed. It feels like it is getting worse to the point where it isn't worth it anymore.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#46

Post by sbf501 »

mcrad wrote: post #37
klodolph wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you care to elaborate? Why do you say it's specious?

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.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#47

Post by gergov »

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…

Right, engagement at all cost it is, but there is a fundamental difference. Television required professionals where even wrestling and reality TV is scripted: it requires some sort of willful ignorance from the viewer to engage with it.

Social media pushes the illusion that you are not engaging with professionals but peers, and the dominant signals (how many views, likes, comments, etc.) of this day and age were not present with TV. This seriously messes with the innate reasoning of most humans, because for all our individualism we are norm conforming herd animals.

Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake. If the same thing is pushed by all of their friends, now we're in the territory of peer pressure which is a different ball game!

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#49

Post by tenebrisalietum »

gjulianm wrote: post #41
ramesh31 wrote: post #5

Facebook was just the beginning. It feels crude almost in comparison to the new generation of designer drugs (TikTok et. al).

Although TikTok is fairly addictive, I find it's far better at showing you content you actually like instead of outrage/emotional/clickbait content. It's very easy to get into niches you actually enjoy with actual decent content (woodworking, cleaning, plants, DIY, cats in my case, for example) and actual people as creators, instead of whatever reposted content factory managed to cheat FB/Instagram algorithm this tim…

Political content in particular seems to not rear its ugly head on my Tiktok except rarely. Not even political ads. This is something that didn't ever happen with Facebook even after unfollowing everyone.

Re: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

#50

Post by tmpz22 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

Anecdotally, Facebook seems relatively tame these days compared to the firehose of doom & gloom, violent videos, outrage porn, and outright misinformation that fills Reddit and Twitter. Browsing Reddit’s default feeds or popular posts is a wild experience these days.

I'd ad Youtube to that list. I turned off personalized ads and oh boy a whole lot of sexualized Flow Ads and other weird stuff came up, including ads for Newsmaxx. Absolutely gross that those are the apparent defaults.
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