Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 109 posts

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#91

Post by naravara »

fredley wrote: post #77
porpoisely wrote: post #63

Even better for your mental health is stop reading news. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... The truly toxic part of facebook and much of social media today is the amount of news and politics that have been allowed on it.

I agree, I actively tried to go on a news diet last year, it was really hard. Especially in the current climate (in the UK and US at least), avoiding news chatter is nearly impossible, and trying to cull your curiosity to read up on such stuff takes serious willpower, even if you cut out the places that inject it into your thoughts (e.g. literally any feed). I find myself compulsively checking news sites at least a f…

The best thing for me was when I went to India for a week. Because the time zones are almost flipped, I slept while all my news sources were active and vice-versa. I basically just checked my news feed once in the morning and once in the evening and life felt much smoother, even though I was doing a lot of fairly stressful work at the time.

It's basically just a morning and evening edition paper.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#92

Post by bobochan »

I am prepared for this to be a minority opinion, but I liked FB when I joined and I still really like it. There may be many alternatives, but as someone who grew up with an acoustic coupler modem and an Apple //+, I do not take for granted the fact that I can video chat with friends around the world for free with Messenger. In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by daily stories of the mundane: a kid doing better than expected on a spelling test, or scoring a goal in soccer; an unexpected meetup with an old classmate; or a selfie of someone going on a hike. I get great recipes on FB.

Many friends have quit FB and reported that they feel better, and almost everyone on this thread is reporting the same thing, so there must be something to it. Honestly though, I have a hard time understanding why looking at a FB feed would bother someone. If it is anxiety over privacy, then absolutely, leaving FB absolutely makes sense. I get the feeling that it agitates people for other reasons though, but I am not sure what those are.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#93

Post by marricks »

ip26 wrote: post #69
marricks wrote: post #21

Can confirm. I tried deactivating and then cutting down but that just never works. Deleting is the way to go. Old friends you want to connect with? There’s always email and a phone number. People actually reach out to me outside of that awful service to say “Hey Foo is in town” or “We’re having a reunion for Bar”. Just delete it, notify people first, save the images you want, and torch it. Everything incremental just…

It's a lot more difficult to do, but a deep cull of your friend list might replicate a lot of the value. Those acquaintances you met ten years ago and haven't spoken to since? Unfriend or at least unfollow. Get it down to the people you actually talk to & care about.

People reconnected with such acquaintances a couple decades ago without Facebook.

I find not having FB way better for those relationships anyways, instead of creepily knowing their life story since I stopped seeing them )because of FB) we have something to reconnect and talk about if I do run into them.

And I did manage my FB friends well, I deleted it when I realized FB facilitated those conversations in ways I hated and most of my feeds was ads anyways.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#94

Post by lenocinor »

samdoidge wrote: post #55

At what cost to your social life and relationships?

Mine still seem pretty good even after stopping reading the News Feed completely years back. It's not quite deleting Facebook -- I still use Messenger a lot, and also the events now and then -- but it's in the same ballpark, and I don't miss it at all.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#95

Post by tsumnia »

bobochan wrote: post #92

I am prepared for this to be a minority opinion, but I liked FB when I joined and I still really like it. There may be many alternatives, but as someone who grew up with an acoustic coupler modem and an Apple //+, I do not take for granted the fact that I can video chat with friends around the world for free with Messenger. In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by daily stories of the mundane: a kid…

> In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by daily stories of the mundane

I think this is one of the reasons; instead of accepting hardships exist and dealing with them, some people use social media as a filter for life. As such, since they avoid hardships, they never trained on dealing with hardships. I've spoken about it in my comment history, but I think some people lack perseverance/grit in this regard. A gas station cashier may be less motivated to get out of their job for a better career because they are busy getting entertained on their phone rather while than being bored during dead times.

I still have Facebook mostly for planning things with groups, but have all notifications disabled. Now, I only check it once a week to see plans change or if I was tagged in a picture. I just don't care about the rest.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#96

Post by AtlasBarfed »

RankingMember wrote: post #35
Brigadirk wrote: post #4

I quite liked facebook. I don't have the urge to constantly check it, nor post much on it, but it was useful for events, casually keeping up with life events of acquaintances, and keeping a rolodex of semi-friends (e.g. people I met on holiday and would like to run into again). I deleted it because the company seems thoroughly evil and doesn't respect my privacy. But if anyone comes up with a privacy-respecting alter…

The problem with the alternatives is they don't have the budget and installed user base Facebook has. Sure, you'll get techie people to jump on board at first (remember Google+?), but all the family members who don't know a Twitter from an Amazon will stick with Facebook because the constant negative Facebook press isn't enough to get them to leave and no longer see pictures of their baby grandson. I'm not sure what…

What would be really cool would be a hidden social network app that can pull data from existing facebook/twitter/etc social data stores with various high and low tactics of stenography and obfuscated data. It could have side benefits like completely scrambling the tracking information on someone on the aggregator size, use useful stuff like image storage and video storage.

Of course that would get routinely disrupted by the base providers, since that is direct intrusion into their precious data silos.

But it would be cool.

Because I'm not super interested in outright encryption of all my thoughts and activity. That actually broadcasts you/marks you. At this point I have a lot of trackers that have SOME information on me.

So I'd like a lot of obfuscation and noise inserted around what companies know about "me".

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#97

Post by balabaster »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #65
RankingMember wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the alternatives is they don't have the budget and installed user base Facebook has. Sure, you'll get techie people to jump on board at first (remember Google+?), but all the family members who don't know a Twitter from an Amazon will stick with Facebook because the constant negative Facebook press isn't enough to get them to leave and no longer see pictures of their baby grandson. I'm not sure what…

Your argument is a truism: that any competitors don't have the budget/user base. Well duh, FB is by far #1 in both of those categories. The only way for a competitor to beat them is to come up from nothing to build a SNS and prove this naysayer argument wrong (and for its founders to have the stones to not get bought out). Until then, every FB post on HN is going to have people pointing to the FB network/userbase and…

It was impossible for Facebook once upon a time too... until it wasn't. Once upon a time Mark Zuckerberg was just an idiot with an idea, and here's where we ended up.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#98

Post by bobochan »

tsumnia wrote: post #95
bobochan wrote: post #92

I am prepared for this to be a minority opinion, but I liked FB when I joined and I still really like it. There may be many alternatives, but as someone who grew up with an acoustic coupler modem and an Apple //+, I do not take for granted the fact that I can video chat with friends around the world for free with Messenger. In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by daily stories of the mundane: a kid…

> In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by daily stories of the mundane I think this is one of the reasons; instead of accepting hardships exist and dealing with them, some people use social media as a filter for life. As such, since they avoid hardships, they never trained on dealing with hardships. I've spoken about it in my comment history, but I think some people lack perseverance/grit in this r…

It seems like the sign on that equation is wrong though, no? If social media was really a means of avoiding hardships then wouldn't leavers report great angst from withdrawal? Instead they report being happier.

I keep seeing the word humblebrag come up in discussions on FB and I have to wonder if the real reason is that some people see social media as a form of competition. We now see both the good fortunes and misfortunes of people in a much wider global circle, which can provoke either jealousy or anxiety.

> I just don't care about the rest.

Everyone is different I guess. I could never say that I do not care about the welfare of friends and family.

Re: A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health

#100

Post by fredley »

naravara wrote: post #91
fredley wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I actively tried to go on a news diet last year, it was really hard. Especially in the current climate (in the UK and US at least), avoiding news chatter is nearly impossible, and trying to cull your curiosity to read up on such stuff takes serious willpower, even if you cut out the places that inject it into your thoughts (e.g. literally any feed). I find myself compulsively checking news sites at least a f…

The best thing for me was when I went to India for a week. Because the time zones are almost flipped, I slept while all my news sources were active and vice-versa. I basically just checked my news feed once in the morning and once in the evening and life felt much smoother, even though I was doing a lot of fairly stressful work at the time. It's basically just a morning and evening edition paper.

I lived in India for a year and I remember this experience very well! Essentially nothing would change during the day on British/American news sites, and I had no interest in domestic news.
Post reply on HN