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The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

nber.org

471–480 of 527 posts

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, you just solved drug dependency issues all over the world. Just stop doing it!

Well yes, the essential working part of all interventions and therapies is to help the client understand how they can take responsibility and what control they have, and to believe in it. They aren’t pure victims, no one is.

That's miles different from what GP said. Dependency issues are a complicated matter, and for sure the affected person needs to be interested in changing and willing to do the needed steps. But to do that, to SEE that, you need external help and support, otherwise inertia and the dependency issue itself will keep you in the same circle forever.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#472
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any way you cut it, "feeds" are more addictive. Your family and friends only post a couple times a day, but you have all day at work to look for some quick stimulation. I watch my girlfriend devolve into this stuff. Waking up and scrolling endless feeds from reddit and insta; it's her entertainment. It's not so much worse than me waking up and scrolling Google News...maybe it's better, in that she gets less depressed…

>Ironically, the nice people at the other pub who told me are Lebanese. Why is it ironic that an Arab would be nice to you? Ignoring the racial/national assumption here, political views from diasporic Arabs, especially older ones who immigrated many years ago, are incredibly diverse and often more contingent on their local issues than world politics. People make the same mistake when assuming political views towards…

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Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#473
post #469
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would nobody see it? "Friends"/"Feed" is a chronological view of all your friend posts. Unless their friends are posting so much that they can't keep up, which is completely unrealistic these days, your posts are going to pretty hard to miss. But, in practice, nowadays people who have something to share with those they care about will do so through some sort of messaging application, including Facebook Messenger,…

It's not the default, nobody knows it exists. Also the way it works, for some reason it decides 2-3 people are my besties (they are not) and just shows me what they post, ignoring what everyone else is posting, so it's still useless.

Who doesn't know it exists? You know it exists. More likely nobody cares to use it because they don't really get much from their acquaintances' cat photos, in much the same way we were unable to come up with anything you want to share with your acquaintances. It turns out that people soon realize that the hundreds of random people they accumulated as "friends" over the years don't actually matter in their life. Those that do matter are already engaged using messaging services (SMS, iMessage, Messenger, etc.). Social media is alive and well, but it moved to places where you can actually be social, away from the "say and spray" venues like Facebook.

Also, you can choose to filter that feed by "Favorites". Did you mistakenly end up in that mode?

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I'd disagree on the Instagram front. If you look at the reels section, where most spend their time, it's just a more deplorable Tiktok. 80% of the content on there is soft core porn advertising one OnlyFans girl or another. The other 20% seems to be brain rot memes. I reinstalled it recently after 8 years of not having it, and immediately deleted it.

I guess it really depends if you have fed the algorithm with your preferences already.

The problem is, I haven't used it in 8 years, so there's no way to know my preference. The email is also not tied to any other accounts than perhaps a few browser video game accounts from my youth (miniclips, runescape and the like). My guess is that it fills the feed with sexualised content because it's the most popular kind, and eventually repopulates it depending on subsequent follows. The problem is I only follow friends and family, not celebrities, so that would prove difficult to do.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#475
post #166

I'm certainly an anomaly but since to me the downsides of social media have always been quite prominent and seemed to outweigh the benefits by a margin, I never jumped on the social media train. But I've got to say, it's getting harder and harder to keep that up. As our kids get older especially, almost all of their social activities are somehow tied to social media one way or the other: no matter what they're joinin…

Are you in the US? No one uses whatsapp in the US. This would have been done as an sms groupchat in all likelihood. Everything friends plan is on sms these days. Maybe its my generation, we don’t like signing up for accounts anymore when everyone can trivially text.

I'm guessing you are a younger generation than I am. My friends group tends to use Facebook Messenger for this. I never use Facebook myself, but do use messenger for essentially texting people.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#476
post #41

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…

This has moved heavily into group chats and I’m not sure it’s coming back. Group chats are basically the Circles that Google+ saw the need for but could never get fully set up. A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances. Meanwhile Instagram and Facebook keep evolving. Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Instagram is turning into…

There are also the loners whos complete social and emotional life is the feed who send that feed onwards into group chats as input, isolating them further.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#477
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any way you cut it, "feeds" are more addictive. Your family and friends only post a couple times a day, but you have all day at work to look for some quick stimulation. I watch my girlfriend devolve into this stuff. Waking up and scrolling endless feeds from reddit and insta; it's her entertainment. It's not so much worse than me waking up and scrolling Google News...maybe it's better, in that she gets less depressed…

>Ironically, the nice people at the other pub who told me are Lebanese. Why is it ironic that an Arab would be nice to you? Ignoring the racial/national assumption here, political views from diasporic Arabs, especially older ones who immigrated many years ago, are incredibly diverse and often more contingent on their local issues than world politics. People make the same mistake when assuming political views towards…

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Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has moved heavily into group chats and I’m not sure it’s coming back. Group chats are basically the Circles that Google+ saw the need for but could never get fully set up. A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances. Meanwhile Instagram and Facebook keep evolving. Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Instagram is turning into…

Any way you cut it, "feeds" are more addictive. Your family and friends only post a couple times a day, but you have all day at work to look for some quick stimulation. I watch my girlfriend devolve into this stuff. Waking up and scrolling endless feeds from reddit and insta; it's her entertainment. It's not so much worse than me waking up and scrolling Google News...maybe it's better, in that she gets less depressed…

Am Yisrael Chai.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a political conversation in which people are discussing ideas. I'm talking about experiencing a situation in which people I've never even met are actively rude to me because someone told them I "support Israel". I'm perfectly willing to have a conversation about its faults and mistakes. That's not what's going on here. One can be Jewish and not support Israel. One can condemn Israeli policies wit…

To be clear, I was responding to the insinuation that being rude to someone at a bar due to "literally anything to do with Israel" is antisemitic if they're Jewish. Of course being specifically rude to Jewish people due to their support of Israel is antisemitic, but being rude to people who support Israel is not (we can debate whether it's productive or deserved separately). But since you've gone out of your way to m…

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Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not punish them for having a mental illness, I am understanding of it as I have, too, but it is completely fine if you, yourself, do not want to handle or deal with it. I tend to call people out, too. I keep the ones that take it gracefully. Quality > quantity. :)

It’s not necessarily punishment, e.g. leaving an abusive partner is in most cases about self-preservation, and if intended as a punishment, very ineffective at that. That said, I think a lot of people who end up at the receiving end of it do tend to try to spin it as a punishment due to self-centered thinking and in order to frame themselves as the victim.

I think "punish" was the wrong word of choice here. I agree with what you said though.
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