The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by anovikov » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:30 AM UTC

Quit all social media 8 years ago, never missed it one bit. It was all good and i truly enjoyed it before ~2014 but then it started deteriorating so rapidly due to political polarisation and domination of "influencers" that kept peddling worthless trash, by about 2016 i no longer understood wtf i was doing there.

Since then, only tried reddit, but it has a different problem - it's an echo chamber where no real discussion is possible on any topic as anyone who disagrees with even minute details in dominating dogma of every subreddit, gets downvoted to invisibility. Plus too many subreddits are merely karma mills that people use to boost their karma to allow themselves at least some actual voice in other subreddits - and those useless-by-design subreddits dominate the whole thing because you need to do a lot of those "filler" posts to allow oneself one real one, thus SNR on the platform is ridiculously low - but it's not some evil bots who's creating noise, but actual live people, and not even dumb ones, just because they HAVE to. And going through this - for what? To get a chance to participate in one more "someone on the internet is wrong" debate?

Meaningful talk is possible in groups where people are united by at least something and where is at least some real barrier of entry. These are not the social media. They can't afford filtering who gets in because that way they'll lose viewership and leave a lot of money on the table. I wonder why that comes as a surprise to anyone.

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

#82

Post by steveBK123 » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:34 AM UTC

Kozmik1 wrote: post #73

Weird. There is little that depresses me more than watching my wife sit at the table for hours a day slowly scrolling Facebook while ignoring me and the kids. We have talked about it and she's tried to reduce it to no avail.

There's something about the social media influencer industrial complex that short circuits women's brains worse, as far as I can tell. Most of my friends quit social media years to a decade ago but our wives are all on it. Men seem to get sucked into Youtube wormholes instead.

I think the only way out is cold turkey. The number of conversations my wife starts with telling me about some distant acquaintances recent vacation (as seen thru IG) is distressing.

My "social" internet use is more hobby based - forum/reddit hobby focussed content.

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

#83

Post by UnreachableCode » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:35 AM UTC

designerarvid wrote: post #79

8s2ngy wrote: 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…

Intellectually many want this. But the feed shortcuts our reptile brain and gains more engagement minutes / day. As you say, the algorithmic feed is superior for creators wanting reach, and more importantly, advertisers who want eyeballs on their ads. Due to network effects, it is likely impossible to get friends and family to join a boring and non-profit alternative. Instead of pausing social media altogether, I rec…

> it is likely impossible to get friends and family to join a boring and non-profit alternative.

Isn’t this just WhatsApp now though? The addition of Statuses, Following and now Communities almost confirms this. People are dropping Facebook and IG, but can’t give up WhatsApp (yet).

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

#84

Post by xyzal » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:35 AM UTC

8s2ngy wrote: 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…

I think the EU should flex their regulatory muscle and forbid algorithmic feeds on by default unless the networks break european society as the US is broken.

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

#85

Post by submeta » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

Deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts years ago and my inner peace increased immediately, my meditations became deeper, better within days. I never would have guessed how much negative energy these platforms created within me. People will post mostly how perfect their life is on these platforms. Distorting reality, inducing jealousy, guilt, and other forms of negative emotions. And finally a sense of depression.

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

#86

Post by RajT88 » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

salt-thrower wrote: post #62

aramattamara wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try MySpace, classmates.com? They are still around.

The trouble is: broadly speaking, no one uses those.

I logged into classmates a couple of years ago. I had a message waiting from 2005 from one of my sister's insane ex-friends. That was a blast from the past and hilarious. 18 years without bothering to log in.

Then I realized their business model is so low-rent, they had web 1.0 style protections on scraping all their scanned yearbooks. So I liberated all the ones with anyone I was likely to know and posted them to Archive.org.

You're welcome.

Also: #deletefacebook

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

#87

Post by blackbear_ » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #45

kacesensitive wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the contrary, reporting changes relative to the standard deviation of a control group frees you from scales and their meanings, because it relates the observed change to the normal spread of scores before the intervention. In this way, you don't need to know the scale and its meaning to know if a change is big or small, and from a statistical perspective, that's (almost) all you need to find if a change is significant or due to random chance. Of course, looking back at the original scale and its meaning can help interpreting the meaning of the results in other ways

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

#88

Post by baxtr » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

nomilk wrote: post #56

The 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?")

Maybe social media usage is a symptom of unhappiness and not the cause?

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

#89

Post by steveBK123 » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:38 AM UTC

steventhedev wrote: post #37

perching_aix wrote: post #9

> 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…

It means that there is a statistically significant improvement, but that improvement is tiny, and will not make you happier than your peers all by itself (assuming a standard peer group of 200 people - you'd likely swap places with 1 or 2 people). Of course, this study only considered normative people, not marginalized or those who were experiencing active harm from exposure to social media - your personal results ma…

As far as I can tell, the algorithm can really harm people during times of mental illness/stress/anxiety. Part of it is that it is like a feedback loop.

When we lost our pet and my wife was very upset for a while, the algo kept showing her more and more content associated with pet loss. It got to the point that some random content pushed to her social media was upsetting her daily.

I can imagine someone experiencing depression, suicidal thoughts, etc can easily be pushed over the edge by the algorithmic feedback loop.

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

#90

Post by smelendez » Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 6:39 AM UTC

8s2ngy wrote: 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 a hipper LinkedIn, where artists, musicians, and local businesses share career and business updates and advertise their wares.