50 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!
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The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
61–70 of 527 posts
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#62I 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…
Try MySpace, classmates.com? They are still around.
The trouble is: broadly speaking, no one uses those.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with stopping replyhing to HN. I just downvote and upvote. Emotional stress significantly reduced.
Your comment is proof to the contrary. You are thus lying and everything you say or do is now severely tainted. I will now produce a seven-pronged argument for why exactly this type of behavior is the hidden root cause of climate change and why you should feel bad. (/s) Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I know the feeling, but I have to admit that people being obtuse helped me to take them and myself less serious. That sa…
I 100% knew a reply like this was coming :). So I kind of thank you for saying this...
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#64I 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…
i used facebook back when it functioned like that. and it was still retarded then
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#65> 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…
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…
So, ELI5 level.
People who use Facebook also may feel depression, from very strong to none at all. In the middle of this interval there's the "expected value" point, sort of an average level of feeling depressed. This point is at an equal distance from the "most depressed users" group, and from the "not depressed at all" group. Let's call this distance of depression strength a "standard deviation".
Now, the users who stopped using Facebook became slightly less depressed, by 6% of that "standard deviation" range. If you buy a small coke at a McDonald's, then take one sip, you make it about 6% smaller. It's not unnoticeable (you've made that refreshing sip), but about 15 more such sips still remain!
In other words, there is an effect which can definitely be noticed ("statistically significant"), but it's not a big deal either.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#66I 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…
Instagram used to be closer to this when they showed posts in chronological order. Of course, Facebook got to work and ended this by showing posts in algo-sorted order, added an explore page, and even started showing non-followed people's viral content on the main feed. So unfortunately the trend has been a slow frog-boiling march towards engagement and enshittification.
In the meantime, maybe I should just share more photos in the group chat instead...
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#67I 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…
From Feeds in the sidebar, select Friends.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#68The surprise here is how little of an effect it has. Deactivating facebook makes you only 1/16th of one standard deviation happier. And instagram even less. And this was measured during elections, when the effect is likely to be greatest. Kinda crazy that the magnitude is so small! (my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")
I’d be interested in the results of a study that cuts out all social media, but the problem I can already see with that is self-selection bias (the people that would volunteer for it are probably already eager to get away from social media so the results would likely be skewed).
Personally I’ve been mentally in a better place since getting rid of my social media accounts during COVID, but it does cause problems because Facebook has become a utility as well (schools and real-life social groups use it for co-ordinating activities).
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#69Bad time to do it during what turned out to be very emotionally charged election where traditional news turns in to social media style instantaneous reporting and is inescapable. I’d also suggest 6 weeks is not long enough to fully recover. In fact in that time frame you may still be experiencing FOMO type symptoms. Would have been interesting to see how the participants faired after a year/two years.
Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Maybe the record of history itself will change. When it’s all LLM’s feeding into each other then how long until every whackadoo conspiracy theory becomes a historical fact?