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Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

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Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#51

Post by s-shellfish »

austincheney wrote: post #12

How horrible. If I had a dime for every time somebody on the internet took a civil disagreement of opinion to an emotional level I would be a trillionaire. If this is how I qualified my self-worth I would be in a very bad place. This is also the reason I deleted my Reddit account. God forbid you offer technical advise or attempt to explain a complex subject and the answer somehow becomes extremely political. The bigg…

> I could have said something about harming children and would have been less reviled.

Yes, but that's literally because people see their technologies as being more human than most humans. It's something that goes down to an individuals core and is intrinsically defining of how they understand and express.

Not saying it makes sense to average Joe. Just a different breed of person.

For example, the soundness property of a language. Think about why that might be what creates the echo chamber, rather than thinking about how the echo chamber reacts when whatever contributes to verifying soundness is modified. The reaction might be a side effect, rather than an outright planned action.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#52

Post by prolikewh0a »

bdz wrote: post #14

Social media is the new smoking. Cancer destroys you physically but these sites destroy your mental health. Not just Facebook but Instagram too for example, it's even worse. And don't forget Twitter.

The "withdrawal" of them is bad too. You're essentially forced to create a new friend base because a lot of people just won't participate in a real meaningful friendship outside of Facebook. It's like you're not a person if you're not on some form of social media.

I still type reddit.com into my browser just from muscle memory now 6-ish months after quitting.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#53

Post by prolikewh0a »

roflc0ptic wrote: post #44
s-shellfish wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agreed. It's just chaos, because the mind that constantly requires a reflection of itself to prove it is healthy is not a healthy mind to begin with. Behaving in that pattern in a conditioned sense opens oneself up for all sorts of manipulation, which long term, that's quite a bit of suffering (if there's no genuine connection between members of a social group, hence, the group is prone to rapid shifts in lik…

Yeah, as much as people complain about hacker news' negativity - and it certainly is around - there's still a high concentration of thoughtful people interested in having respectful conversations.

Also you will get scolded in a meaningful way if you screw up or say really dumb things with no evidence here.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#54

Post by rustcharm »

There are many things wrong with Facebook, but this is just the people who don't like Facebook clucking their tongues and puffing their chests while proclaiming that they're somehow morally and intellectually superior than the people who do like Facebook.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#56

Post by amelius »

yosito wrote: post #55

My understanding is that humans have evolved to stake their self worth on social acceptance. Facebook just capitalizes on this need that we all have. It's the natural extension of capitalism and why pure capitalism without regulation is evil.

Could you elaborate on the connection with capitalism?

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#58

Post by detaro »

amelius wrote: post #57

How do free/open alternatives like Mastodon avoid this problem?

Not entirely, in so far it's happening when you provide the means to compare filtered perspectives on others' lives to yours.

They do by not having the business pressure to optimize for an engagement, which leads to artificially highlighting things, hiding negative personal posts, push-notifications and e-mails to pull people back in when they stay away for a day or two, ...

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#59

Post by emeraldbird »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #20

The way this is titled makes the relation seem directional, and in the wrong direction... Basing self worth on social acceptance definitely predates Facebook, and Facebook addiction is a pretty obvious consequence of the positive feedback loop that you'd get form using Facebook to feed that part of yourself. Not defending Facebook or any other social network here, I personally think Facebook is likely toxic -- but I…

When you say it is a positive feedback loop, you already describe it as a self-augmenting vicious cycle. In such a cycle, the initial cause becomes soon less important. People might start to use a social network because they feel temporarily lonely, perhaps because they moved to another place. But if that social networks leads to people spending more time on the net than with people in real life, it very quickly contributes to that cause.

A better question to ask would be whether Facebook increases self-confidence and leads to more self-validating social interaction outside of the Internet. Given what I see and hear, I don't believe this is the case.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#60

Post by [deleted] »

s-shellfish wrote: post #39
anothergoogler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure, a Skinner Box is designed to condition its occupants. Facebook cultivates a user's thirst for validation from other users. On a much, much smaller scale, Hacker News does it with the point system. That's not surprising, everybody is going for engagement. I disagree that every obsessed Facebook user is innately hooked on approval from others. Facebook pays the big bucks, has hundreds if not thousands…

On HN, I really try to ignore the points. I personally know for me, if I simply read a point of view that is valid, that is enough to stick with me such that it continues to be part of my personality, or allows me to draw from my own self in slightly stronger way - the world is accepting of me, tolerant. I don't need to encourage it to be that with points. All I need to do is see 'Is it? Or is it not?'. People are af…

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