I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends, college friends, and distant family without having to see irrelevant posts, like some stupid remark from a politician halfway around the world or influencers doing something outrageous just for attention.
The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
41–50 of 527 posts
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#4250 years from now, we are going to be looking back at Social Media and Smartphone addiction like we currently look at smoking. “How insane were we to have allowed it and allowed it to be promoted?” our grandchildren will rightly ask!
tbf, I think pre-AI social media will barely receive a paragraph in a 2075 history book.
No it will. Because it's the beginning of all that happened after it.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#43[dead]
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#44> People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls. Can anyone translate? Random web search find sugge…
Even if it's statistically significant, it's a laughably tiny effect.
Like have one nice meal or a one walk in the woods 2 months ago and rate your mood today kind of effect size.
0.06 std deviation is not anything to write home about and really doubtfully real, given the general quality of psychological science.
Perhaps, how much better of a day would you have if you found a dollar on the ground.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps it wasn't clear what I meant. When I said significantly, I meant it in the colloquial sense, not in the statistical significance sense. I was looking for a more digestable figure describing the extent of improvements, not whether the study found them confidently distinguishable (which I just assumed they did based on the wording, good to know they didn't for Instagram).
A 0.060 standard deviation improvement is super small. If the average person rates their happiness/anxiety/depression score at, say, 50 out of 100, and the standard deviation (how spread out people’s scores are) is around 10 points, then 0.060 SD = 0.6 points. So quitting Facebook gave an average person a ~1% bump in mood score. Instagram was even smaller: ~0.4 points, or 0.8%. It's real, but barely noticeable for mo…
On what scale? What do 'points' on the scale mean? Without knowing those things, we can't say what 6 or 60 points mean.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps it wasn't clear what I meant. When I said significantly, I meant it in the colloquial sense, not in the statistical significance sense. I was looking for a more digestable figure describing the extent of improvements, not whether the study found them confidently distinguishable (which I just assumed they did based on the wording, good to know they didn't for Instagram).
A 0.060 standard deviation improvement is super small. If the average person rates their happiness/anxiety/depression score at, say, 50 out of 100, and the standard deviation (how spread out people’s scores are) is around 10 points, then 0.060 SD = 0.6 points. So quitting Facebook gave an average person a ~1% bump in mood score. Instagram was even smaller: ~0.4 points, or 0.8%. It's real, but barely noticeable for mo…
This is what I was interested in, thank you!
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#47Anecdotal: Stopping commenting on reddit reduced emotional stress significantly. Reddit is one of those "social" anti-social circles where you can't afford to be on the "wrong side of argument" and every discussion can quickly spiral out.
I think the trap is that many social platforms were genuinely fun, but then became a disaster
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the paper PDF ( https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33697/w336... ): > We estimate that users in the Facebook deactivation group reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, anxiety, and depression, relative to control users. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p > We estimate that users in the Instagram deactivation group reported a 0.041 stand…
Perhaps it wasn't clear what I meant. When I said significantly, I meant it in the colloquial sense, not in the statistical significance sense. I was looking for a more digestable figure describing the extent of improvements, not whether the study found them confidently distinguishable (which I just assumed they did based on the wording, good to know they didn't for Instagram).
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Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#49Well, let me tell you its far better. I had been using in collage upto 2013 i suppose. It use to make me sick in multiple ways. Now i use mastodon, almost same goes with it as well. But i just check things in mastodon which you can check without signing up as well. The Urge to check news multiple times a day is there. But i am getting hang of it. I didn't knew that how these companies suck your brain. With adblock and using just few times the phone makes me feel better.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#50Anecdotal: Stopping commenting on reddit reduced emotional stress significantly. Reddit is one of those "social" anti-social circles where you can't afford to be on the "wrong side of argument" and every discussion can quickly spiral out.
Same with stopping replyhing to HN. I just downvote and upvote. Emotional stress significantly reduced.
There's a correlation between being really obnoxious and continuing threads on HN or anywhere else.
Occasionally there are good real conversations where people are generally interested and curious but the most common are either marginally interested or very interested in worthless conflict.