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

nber.org

491–500 of 527 posts

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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Don't forget FB marketplace. I know a few younger coworkers who have FB just for market place.

I'm Old, but this is me. Marketplace is big improvement over Craigslist, it's the only reason I have a FB account.

I hesitate to call it an improvement. The search is garbage, and you get tons of shit you didn't even search for, and the filters don't work.

Yeah CL is dead by comparison, and everything is listed on Marketplace, but better? I dunno.

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

#492
post #24

If people didn’t like the way these apps make them feel, they would stop using them. Many people prefer having anxiety about drama to being bored.

Have you heard of smoking addiction?

There are lots of reasons people might make different choices than you do.

Some people have shorter time horizons, for instance.

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

#493

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…

[flagged]

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

#494
post #376
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…

Another problem is the social fragmentation caused by electronic social interaction being split among so many different platforms: Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, iMessage, SMS, etc. Even the device platform you choose segregates you. There are a few neighbor families our family is close to. They(neighbors and my family) all talk on iMessage. I've got an Android/eOS device so I am excluded from the chats. At least my wife…

iPhone has a bug right now where you can’t mute group chats that have android users. I hate it. Either I leave the group chat or mute all texts.

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you all made place for guys like me; I don’t get booed away by 90% of the users anymore when engaging in discussion, more often I get an actual discussion out of it. Before that it was just a highly toxic “noo my opinion is the right one and I’m rigid on that and you’re an idiot” ambience. Funny how things shift like that. Also never engaged with political stuff.

The irony of the toxicity of your comments to ghaff is amazing. You know nothing about him, but made him the villain in your story.

I didn't mean to correlate the guy I'm replying to with the people I was describing, and I apologize if it seemed that way.

What does "ghaff" mean? I can't find a definition. I'm not a native English person.

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

#496

Facebook can be hard to get rid of if you actually have hobbies and things because so much gets organised via it. I tried to get rid but my Running club exclusively posts stuff on Facebook. For Instagram with you needing to log in to view pages, you find that you can’t find opening times for restaurants etc because many places use it to advertise that they’re open/closed at short notice.

This is probably a "YMMV" kinda thing, because I thought that I would experience the same struggle, but in reality I've found out that I encounter those moments but... I don't really care. It's like being removed from all of the bullshit that comes with social media is worth the tradeoff of occasionally missing a detail like that. I went and found forums for the hobbies I'm into, rather than social media groups. Than…

> For restaurants? Meh. So what if I show up and a place is closed on short notice? Worse things can happen than wasting a little bit of time. Do they only share their menu on social media but my friends swear it's amazing? Fine, I'll experience it O'Reilly-style ("We'll do it live! Fuck it!").

This one is fine til it ruins your plans. My wife and I have a toddler, we went to a local Lebanese place for lunch on the one day a month we share working from home, place was closed, so we went home, no nice lunch out, found out after it was posted only on Instagram that they were closed. The other options close enough to where we live to nip out for lunch are... Mcdonalds or Burger King. I don't live in a metropolis.

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

#497
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds extremely toxic. I would not even consider such people friends to begin with.

I think it's a mistake beliving you can judge each persons character accurately from the beginning when entering a new social context.

I agree, although I had luck with that in my life. I know who my real friends are. I do not have many, but I feel blessed with the friends I have.

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

#498

Facebook can be hard to get rid of if you actually have hobbies and things because so much gets organised via it. I tried to get rid but my Running club exclusively posts stuff on Facebook. For Instagram with you needing to log in to view pages, you find that you can’t find opening times for restaurants etc because many places use it to advertise that they’re open/closed at short notice.

If you really value your running club, why not help them set something else up? You could offer to help the people who do all that posting to get it onto an email list or some other platform away from Facebook. A small indie website somewhere, even a blog. I know this sounds like work, and you just want to enjoy your running club, but if it gets sticky, the people who are currently posting everything on FB will event…

They have a website, which is actually quite good, but it's the social aspects - lift sharing to races, posting about races that people are going to, etc. that the social media is actually useful for. Nobody is signing up to a forum in 2025 to do this sort of thing, and WhatsApp groups which seems to be the alternative are way too noisy for my liking.

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

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably a "YMMV" kinda thing, because I thought that I would experience the same struggle, but in reality I've found out that I encounter those moments but... I don't really care. It's like being removed from all of the bullshit that comes with social media is worth the tradeoff of occasionally missing a detail like that. I went and found forums for the hobbies I'm into, rather than social media groups. Than…

> For restaurants? Meh. So what if I show up and a place is closed on short notice? Worse things can happen than wasting a little bit of time. Do they only share their menu on social media but my friends swear it's amazing? Fine, I'll experience it O'Reilly-style ("We'll do it live! Fuck it!"). This one is fine til it ruins your plans. My wife and I have a toddler, we went to a local Lebanese place for lunch on the o…

But, that's life, no? We can never make plans that work out all the time. I'd say, as a father of a 5 and 3yo myself, it's a great opportunity to demonstrate/teach the kiddos how to deal with those situations.

The point of days like that, and what I highlighted to my oldest when we had a similar disappointing outing this weekend (we all wanted to grill in a park, packed everything up, but forgot it was Easter and every other family had the same idea and we were screwed), is that we still get to have a nice time with family one way or another, regardless of what we're eating.

It's definitely disappointing when time is super limited, I completely empathize! I guess I just always try and highlight the glass half full aspect of things and use that to find a way to make the best of a crummy situation.

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

#500
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…

If OP's opinions on Israel include it having a right to exist, a leftie group would absolutely throw him out.

Unfortunately most people seem allergic to nuance on this topic, which really sucks for both Palestinians and Israelis.

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