[HN Gopher] Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 438 points
Date : 2022-09-22 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.tau.ac.il)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.tau.ac.il)
| bannedbybros wrote:
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| As a manager of a large page (several million reach per day), I
| often feel uncomfortable. On the one hand, Facebook is the best
| platform to reach many people. On the other hand, I think it is
| unethical to encourage people to stay on the platform. I also
| think that if I were to close the page, the void would be filled
| by the next person.
|
| My ego tells me that since I'm aware of these problems, I can do
| my best to keep my page from turning into a doomscrolling
| experience. Yet, once again, the algorithm doesn't display my
| posts in their natural order, only the controversial ones, so the
| doomscrolling happens anyway.
|
| I often keep up at night to think about it and I feel like there
| is no good answer.
| juancn wrote:
| Does anyone still use facebook? I mean, I'm 45 and just my mom
| uses it.
|
| Are they sure the mental health impact is not just senility?
|
| /s
| matai_kolila wrote:
| IDK... I know Facebook feeds are different for each person but
| for me there are basically zero posts from people I know on
| Facebook anymore, it's just ads and videos of random TikTok style
| videos.
| bluGill wrote:
| I have started "hitting block all from [whoever created the
| meme/video]". It makes a difference, but only a small one. the
| other thing I do is after blocking 2 I close facebook. I hope
| more people do this - I want it to start showing up in
| statistics that shared memes and videos is harming engagement
| numbers, while friends and family sharing their life is
| helping. Thus encouraging whatever change they need to make to
| give me more of that.
|
| I still have a number of distance friends/family who share
| their life of facebook so there is value to remain there.
| Facebook is a great way to see my daughter singing "baby shark"
| - if you don't personally know me you don't want to see that,
| but if you know me you want to see it.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Did you know you can look at profiles, not just the feed?
| matai_kolila wrote:
| True, I do use Facebook profiles to remember the names of the
| children of my friends/family. But I can't remember the last
| "wall" I saw that had anything from this year on it.
| xapata wrote:
| You're saying that your friends and family don't post to
| Facebook? In this light, your first comment was misleading.
| You implied that Facebook's post-display algorithm was
| suppressing your friends and family.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| Not misleading, emblematic. Facebook's utilization has
| plummeted.
| xapata wrote:
| I thought you originally meant that your friends were
| frequent posters.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| So if we engage with facebook more, and invest more time, we
| can have slightly better content?
| pohl wrote:
| Maybe think of it in terms of active vs passive engagement,
| rather than more or less engagement. In other words: using
| the tool, rather than letting the tool use you.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| No, the context of this thread is a study on mentally
| harmful content. I'm not here to coach people on seeking
| quality Facebook content
| Melatonic wrote:
| Breaking news: Water is wet. Facebook is fucked.
|
| In all seriousness though glad to see this is actually being
| seriously studied
| inamberclad wrote:
| I wonder how people continue to work at Facebook. I know they
| tend to have the highest salaries from the FAANG groups, but
| still. We, as engineers and builders, have the responsibility to
| think critically about how the things we are working on will be
| used.
| blep_ wrote:
| Earlier this year, I had a recruiter invite me to interview
| there, and I made an attempt at convincing myself with
| reasoning like:
|
| - they're going to do their evil thing anyway, may as well show
| up and intentionally do it marginally worse
|
| - they're going to pay someone large sums of money, may as well
| be me
|
| - I increasingly believe this whole industry is net evil
| overall, and large sums of money mean I can leave it sooner
|
| - also, it was their VR thing, and if it was a VR thing at
| _literally any other company_ I would be excited about that
| because VR is at least conceptually cool
|
| These are not particularly good arguments, and that's why I
| don't work there now. But statistically, I can imagine a few
| people who we would otherwise categorize as non-evil actually
| convince themselves with arguments like these, and when you're
| casting as wide a net as Facebook does, a few is all you need.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think those arguments would only be persuasive to someone
| who is actively looking for a way to paper over their ethical
| concerns and take the money. They wouldn't be persuasive for
| a person trying to be true to their ethical stance.
| blep_ wrote:
| This is an accurate description of my thought processes at
| the time.
| lostgame wrote:
| Thank you for a realistic, grounded, evidence-based
| discussion of this. I've seen quite a few comments in this
| thread that have made me shake my head pretty hard.
|
| Here's the thing: anyone who is in IT, especially
| programming; is going to be well-aware of the...I don't want
| to say 'evil', but I will at least say questionably ethical
| nature of Facebook's workings.
|
| _Anyone_ working there had to compromise _some_ level of
| ethics for the profit they acquire from it.
| [deleted]
| foobiekr wrote:
| In most engineer discussion contexts, the second the topic of
| how obviously evil, manipulative, and socially destructive the
| social, gig, and ad companies that pay well comes up, the
| people who work or worked for them or aspire to make
| Facebook/Google/Uber/... comp packages will go to great lengths
| to defend them. It is really incredible how transparent it is.
|
| "Hey, there are crack dealers, people selling cigarettes, etc.
| Why are you singling out Facebook?"
|
| It's almost like they know the issue, but think that somehow
| the existence of even worse scumbags provides them with ethics
| aircover.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I wonder how people can continue to post questions like this to
| HN, when there are _billions_ of people who happily use
| Facebook. I would think it 's our responsibility to look
| outside of our narrow information bubble.
| hhmc wrote:
| If the original claim is that 'facebook is damaging to (and
| beyond) its users', then the response 'but it has _many_
| users' isn't much of a defense..
| stickfigure wrote:
| I think the original claim is that "facebook is damaging to
| _some_ users ". You could say the same about salt. People
| still work in salt mines.
| lostgame wrote:
| LMFAO...yeah, you could say the same about Heroin. And
| Heroin _is_ actually damaging to users.
|
| You can pick _any_ random thing, compare it to any other
| random thing, and get similar or opposing results - or
| anything in between, because those things aren 't
| correlated or comparable in any way. :P
| ziddoap wrote:
| I'm not really able to wrap my head around your argument.
|
| If it's damaging to some percentage of users, having more
| users means it damages more people.
|
| Is your argument that this is okay because some people
| also put their health at risk being salt miners?
| stickfigure wrote:
| Can you name something that is not damaging to someone?
| Excessive salt consumption is linked over a million
| annual deaths worldwide. Even water kills thousands of
| people per year (drowning).
|
| If your rule is "we can't have things that may hurt some
| people" then you're going to live in a pretty bland
| world. Gonna be especially tough without water.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Excessive salt consumption is linked over a million
| annual deaths worldwide. Even water kills thousands of
| people per year (drowning)_
|
| And we have people and organizations that try to reduce
| the amount of deaths from those things. Raising
| awareness, passing laws, etc.
|
| > _If your rule is "we can't have things that may hurt
| some people" then you're going to live in a pretty bland
| world._
|
| I only asked for clarification on your argument. But, no,
| that's not my "rule". I just think that if we can reduce
| harm, it's nice to do that where possible.
|
| > _Gonna be especially tough without water._
|
| Come on. Your whole last sentence is ridiculous. The
| poster questioned why someone would work at Facebook.
| That is not the equivalent of saying "we can't have
| things that may hurt some people" and it's so far removed
| from your water/drowning scenario that I can't tell if
| you're being serious.
| lostgame wrote:
| That's, uh...pretty ignorant of the fact that most of the
| people in the IT world are infinitely more aware of how
| damaging FB and most social media sites are than the average
| person. Come _on_.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Please tell me about the medical and sociological research
| you do in your IT job.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Still say FB did nothing wrong. Maybe it's bad for you, but so
| is TV news, sugar, alcohol, tobacco, and fast food. As an
| engineer I have the responsibility to give my users what they
| want, not be some moralizing nag.
|
| edit: I mean nothing wrong in terms of the product it delivers
| lavventura wrote:
| Playing video games or trading have similiar effects or worse.
| Engineers who build those platforms should question themselves
| too.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| That depends on the video game:
|
| https://www.verywellmind.com/video-games-could-treat-
| mental-...
|
| https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-
| benefits-o...
|
| https://english.umd.edu/research-
| innovation/journals/interpo...
|
| EDIT: formatting
| nvarsj wrote:
| As an engineer, you should love FB. They had a large hand in
| breaking up the lowball salary cartel maintained by Google and
| Apple, and set a precedent in the industry for paying engineers
| well. As far as societal impact - it's debatable whether it's a
| net good or not.
| randomdata wrote:
| No doubt they do think hard about how their product will be
| used and ensure that the customer is as happy as possible.
| Money is on the line. It is production of the product that
| produces undesirable externalities.
|
| Frankly, how does anyone continue to work in any job? They all
| bring undesirable externalities of some sort. As a farmer, I'm
| one of the most evil people on the planet, or so they say, due
| to the externalities created by agriculture. Working for
| Facebook would be a huge moral improvement. But, what are you
| going to do?
| shmde wrote:
| They definitely know, keep silent till they are on meta's
| payroll. Once they resign their moral compass suddenly aligns
| correctly and they start speaking out about how fb is bad blah
| blah. Quite pathetic to be honest.
| jon_richards wrote:
| Social media will be the smoking of our generation.
|
| In a century, they'll wonder how we could possibly have kept
| engaging knowing the harm we were doing to ourselves.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Is the harm really on that level? What is the magnitude of
| harm?
| dougweltman wrote:
| "Proven"
| mayowaxcvi wrote:
| - brought to you by the academic fields that can reliably
| predict almost nothing.
| themitigating wrote:
| I'm happy that at least a decent portion the comments here
| are treating this with the same skepticism as other studies
| on HN. I was actually expecting people to accept it because
| of the hate towards Facebook.
| kodah wrote:
| Facebook has an earned reputation, not hate.
| thenightcrawler wrote:
| yep
| swayvil wrote:
| Consider your attention.
|
| You pay attention. Concentrate your attention. Occasionally have
| your attention jerked around by distractions.
|
| Consider what you do when you think, read, watch tv, consume
| facebook. Consider what you are doing with your attention. That
| _shape_.
|
| If you do it a lot then that shape intensifies.
|
| And that shape sticks. It becomes your normal.
|
| And the shape of your attention dictates your reality.
|
| It's important to take that into account.
| andrewla wrote:
| As with all studies in the social sciences, one of two principles
| apply.
|
| First, if the conclusions are counterintuitive or unexpected,
| then when you look closer, you will find that the methodology is
| garbage and that it does not support the conclusions given.
|
| Second, if the conclusions reflect things that you believe are
| true, when you look closer, you will find that the methodology is
| garbage and that it does not support the conclusions given.
| xoxo1121 wrote:
| Tainnor wrote:
| That's a low-effort, shallow dismissal that doesn't even
| address anything specific to the article.
|
| If you have specific criticism regarding the methodology of
| this study - which doesn't, prima facie, appear unsound -
| please let the rest of us participate.
| andrewla wrote:
| Unfortunately I was not able to locate a preprint for the
| paper itself, so we only have this article summarizing.
|
| First I'll say that without preregistration of the
| methodology, there's a lot that is immediately suspicious.
|
| > The researchers built an index based on 15 relevant
| questions in the NCHA, in which students were asked about
| their mental health in the past year
|
| Why these 15? What was the "relevance" criteria?
|
| To their credit, they don't just look at a summary metric of
| "mental health" which would be kind of absurd since the
| relative weighting is also arbitrary (although that appears
| to be the main conclusion). The article here notes several
| axes on which significant differences were found. Why these
| axes? What about other "mental health" metrics? Did they get
| better or stay neutral or just have no detectable effect?
|
| Without preregistration it's almost impossible to determine
| exactly how cherry-picked these differences were, as with a
| large enough set of potential questions to choose from,
| you're going to find statistically significant trends on some
| of them by random chance.
|
| The core methodology is to track the spread of Facebook to
| different colleges and compare mental health between schools
| that had Facebook and schools that did not yet have Facebook.
| This is surprisingly not terrible, but without insight into
| how the study controlled for the time axis and potential
| confounding variables about the non-random selection of
| schools for the rollout, it's difficult to say more.
| nequo wrote:
| > Without preregistration it's almost impossible to
| determine exactly how cherry-picked these differences were
|
| It is hard to credibly preregister studies that use
| observational data. It also seems hard to design an
| experiment around the roll-out of a social-media service
| that we know ahead of time to be successful.
|
| Instead, what is usually done on observational data is (1)
| making clear what the statistical assumptions are that are
| required to establish causality, (2) testing possible
| violations of the assumptions, and (3) testing whether the
| data is consistent with alternative explanations.
|
| So in such papers, results don't come for free. We need to
| think seriously about what reasonable theories we can have,
| and whether the data matches each theory.
|
| > without insight into how the study controlled for the
| time axis and potential confounding variables about the
| non-random selection of schools for the rollout, it's
| difficult to say more.
|
| The paper does also use alternative assumptions that lead
| to alternative statistical specifications. They also look
| at various intermediate outcomes to see if they are
| consistent with their proposed narrative. Such defensive
| writing is what blows the PDF up to almost 80 pages.
| andrewla wrote:
| I hate that I was baited into taking a closer look at this
| rather than just sticking with my trite dismissal. I did
| locate a preprint of the paper [1], but have not yet looked
| at it to determine if any of my above criticisms hold
| water.
|
| Nonetheless I remain blithely confident that this study is
| not going to be the one to break the mold.
|
| [1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/180181
| 2535....
| rajup wrote:
| So it is a low-effort shallow dismissal then?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Certainly a dismissal but at this point it seems rather
| disingenuous to call it low-effort and shallow.
|
| (Also, please consider this friendly piece of advice:
| check yourself!)
| Tainnor wrote:
| The follow-up comment is not low-effort and shallow, the
| original one was.
|
| Not sure why OP considers themselves to have been
| "baited" when the conversation IMHO has been greatly
| improved by them substantiating their criticism (which
| may have its merit).
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Fair points!
|
| The comment I responded to was seeming to attribute those
| to OP's later comments, which would be unfair. The
| dismissal of the dismissal still comes across as low-
| effort and shallow.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| It is a working paper and you can find the whole paper
| here:
|
| https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787
| mikkergp wrote:
| One thing about this study as described in the article is it
| doesn't really seem to be about "Facebook" persay but social
| media in general, it doesn't seem to cover any of the
| newsfeed optimization stuff since it was done using data from
| the initial college rollout. Interesting nonetheless but I
| think it's weird to attribute it to "Facebook" specifically,
| I mean, you sort of have to since they only covered Facebook
| in the research, but it mostly seems to be about "services
| that facilitate comparison to your peers."
| random314 wrote:
| I will take a stab. Mind you, I have not even clicked on the
| article, much less read it or know what the methodology is.
| Here goes ----
|
| "The have used a correlational model, not a causal model.
| There are several confounding variables the paper doesn't
| consider, hence it is not proven from the evidence that
| Facebook has a negative impact "
| Tainnor wrote:
| In most fields of study you can't really perform double-
| blind experiments. We know that smoking is linked to cancer
| through decades of correlational studies and careful
| analysis of confounding factors, for example.
|
| The article discusses how the study looked at different
| universities during the same time period, some of which had
| access to facebook and some of which didn't, and discovered
| that in the first case there was an increase in mental
| health issues over that period. There could still be
| confounders, sure, (or the sample size could be too small
| etc.), but at a first glance, that's not an unreasonable
| approach, as it tries to isolate the variable "facebook
| yes/no".
|
| That said, if you haven't read the article, I'm not sure
| why you even felt the need to comment? This is exactly the
| same kind of shallow dismissal I was calling out.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The smoking comparison is very apt I think. People and
| institutions persistently pointing out that correlation
| isn't causation is a big part of why it took decades for
| the link between smoking and cancer to become commonly
| accepted after it was well established.
|
| Some were surely acting in their own personal financial
| interests but I'm also certain that a lot of it was more
| nuanced and personal. People need to think of themselves
| as, for the most part, good people who do mostly good
| things. Knowingly contributing to something that makes
| life much worse for many people doesn't align with that
| and they will need to deny it. I know if you polled
| phillip morris employees about cancer in the late 60s
| after the link was confirmed you'd hear a lot about
| correlation and uncertainty.
|
| HN isn't a random slice of the population. A lot of us
| here work in this domain or on similar products. There
| are certainly people in this comment section who directly
| worked on the core facebook product being discussed. They
| need to think of themselves as good still, too.
| random314 wrote:
| Smoking to lung cancer has a very direct delivery
| mechanism, inhaling tar into the lungs. The effect size
| and sample sizes are big. The hypothesized mechanisms
| here - unfavorable social comparison is far more tenuous,
| and the sample size here is number of universities- not
| number of students.
|
| These 2 are vastly different situations.
|
| To give an example. Establishing causal effect between
| nicotine and lung cancer is an open question, even as the
| causal effect of smoking on cancer is very clear.
| random314 wrote:
| I made it a point to not read it, because virtually all
| social science papers are like these. It's really not
| worth my time and why the "shallow" dismissals should be
| the default response.
|
| Going back to your specific comments. Clearly the
| universities were not randomly assigned the treatment and
| control. And the actual number of independent sample
| sizes is extremely unlikely to give stat sig results at
| the single percentage digit impact shown. And no matter
| what they do, for something as complex as mental health,
| listing out all the confounding factors is hopeless -
| unlike lung cancer where you are literally sucking tar
| into your lungs and the sample sizes and effects are
| huge. Its a useful observational study, but it is
| ridiculous to call it a proof.
|
| > We know that smoking is linked to cancer through
| decades of correlational studies and careful analysis of
| confounding factors, for example.
|
| Yes, it took decades, when there is no proper control
| set. There are work arounds like backdoor and front door
| criteria, but yeah - it will take decades of work and
| looking inside the "black box".
| Tainnor wrote:
| > but it is ridiculous to call it a proof.
|
| Proofs are for mathematics, not for science. (I share
| your distaste for science journalism that throws big
| words like "prove" around without much care, but that's
| probably not something you can fault the study authors
| for.)
|
| This is evidence in favour of a theory. It is to be
| understood within a larger body of evidence. Eventually,
| hopefully, there is enough evidence in one direction or
| another that we may draw more or less definitive
| conclusions.
|
| > I made it a point to not read it, because virtually all
| social science papers are like these. It's really not
| worth my time
|
| Nobody is forcing you to read this study, but somehow you
| seem to assume that your shallow dismissals (to which you
| are of course entitled privately) are worth anyone's
| time.
| jedberg wrote:
| > but at a first glance, that's not an unreasonable
| approach, as it tries to isolate the variable "facebook
| yes/no".
|
| I agree it's not unreasonable, but you have to account
| for the fact that back then, most of the colleges that
| had it were top tier/high stress/highly selective
| colleges. Facebook started at Harvard, then went to Yale
| and Princeton, and then on to basically most of the US
| News top 50.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| FWIW, the article claims the exact opposite
|
| > _While many studies have found a correlation between the
| use of social media and various symptoms related to mental
| health, so far, it has been challenging to ascertain
| whether social media was actually the cause of poor mental
| health. By applying a novel research method, researchers
| have now succeeded in establishing such a causality_
|
| But doesn't elaborate on the new method. We'll have to wait
| for the study to be published I guess.
| andrewla wrote:
| I note in my other reply in this thread that they do
| describe some of the methodology (although I have not yet
| located a copy of the paper itself) appears to be address
| this.
|
| They looked at the mental health (as measured by self-
| reported surveys) among schools over time and cross-
| referenced that with the rollout of Facebook over time.
| So they could compare the change in mental health at
| schools the received Facebook access and compare it to
| the change in mental health at schools that did not
| receive Facebook access at the same time.
|
| The methodology appears to be fairly novel and does
| isolate them from several reverse-causation biases, as it
| is difficult to imagine that the rollout of Facebook was
| influenced by factors that led to the decline of mental
| health in student bodies.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Hmm, yes I read that but it seemed so basic that I
| assumed it couldn't be considered "novel." Also it would
| appear to establish correlation but not causation.
|
| I assume to do that you have to establish the complete
| pathway and mechanism from someone using facebook to an
| increase in depression, like showing observations of
| changes in neurotransmitters or brain structure that have
| been proven to cause changes in mental health, and then
| proving that facebook caused the changes in those levels.
| (FWIW I assume this could be done and that we may see
| those kinds of results if it were done, but I haven't
| actually seen a study like that. I also assume the
| hypothesis in general.)
|
| For instance, using the example of smoking from another
| commenter, from the CDC website [0]:
|
| > - Poisons in cigarette smoke can weaken the body's
| immune system, making it harder to kill cancer cells.
| When this happens, cancer cells keep growing without
| being stopped.
|
| > - Poisons in tobacco smoke can damage or change a
| cell's DNA. DNA is the cell's "instruction manual" that
| controls a cell's normal growth and function. When DNA is
| damaged, a cell can begin growing out of control and
| create a cancer tumor.
|
| These seem more like things that can be tested in
| laboratory settings that are easily reproducible and rely
| on more objective observations than self-reporting.
|
| I'm neither a neuroscientist or social scientist so I'm
| just trying to understand, not saying they're wrong or
| that the research is even flawed.
|
| [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/diseases/c
| ancer.ht...
| srcreigh wrote:
| The methodology in this paper is a step above simple
| correlation analysis. Facebook in its early rollout period was
| released to some universities & colleges and not others. This
| study compares the increases of depression & anxiety in the
| schools where Facebook was made available vs schools where it
| wasn't.
|
| Of course, it'd be nice to see if the difference in increased
| rates of depression & anxiety are themselves abnormal in the
| first place... Not sure if the study goes into that depth.
| altdataseller wrote:
| Your methodology for analyzing the methodology of this report
| is unsound (FB still is bad for mental health though)
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| There's some stuff with merit. Generally headlines on this
| forum are way off the money generally, in psychology sociology
| psychiatry.
|
| Like there's that one finding that came up while researching
| how scientists in the hard sciences achieved recognition. The
| soft science researcher discovered that every single one of the
| scientists insisted questions are more important than answers.
| But there was no margin of error, so they couldn't write a
| paper about that. It's not a statistic, it's just absolute.
| They should have by all means written a paper about it, no
| shame in being absolutely right.
|
| And there's sociologists like Andres Pascal Allende, on whom
| _the Mandalorian_ is based, who was considered a counter-
| terrorist by the rightful president, and also a terrorist by
| the usurper, like _the Mandalorian_. I should clarify he mostly
| carried out sociology with machine guns and grenades, killed
| many carabineros, hard target, came in and out of Chile as he
| pleased, highly persecuted, outraced the persecutors every
| time, was Minister of Tourism in Cuba--that 's a really good
| job, incredibly good, dude that's like that's a huge reward for
| standing up to death and torture, oh man, that's recognition,
| on top of the other recognition, medals and all the rest. That
| is all second only to being the hero of the absolute most
| oppressed and repressed (both) worthy victims, meaning those
| who wish to do what he did for them if they could like watching
| _the Mandalorian_ wishing they could do that and then going
| back into the grind and struggle day after day of exploitation
| and dealing with the betrayal contest set up by the
| dictatorship. Nothing compares to that recognition, the
| recognition of the worthy victim. That is heroism
| definitionally. Really his heroism and those he led determined
| were the only thing holding up the dignity and living
| conditions of like 80% of Chileans, fear of the hero.
|
| He studied sociology before becoming _the Mandalorian_. Must
| have learned something if he was determined to graduate.
| fdewrewrewf wrote:
| Once it becomes more widely accepted just how bad the continual
| dopamine drip of (especially mobile) social media is for
| individuals and society, it would be very interesting to find
| some research into the gender differences. My wife has a theory
| that, for a variety of reasons, women are more drawn into the
| online social world than men.
| duxup wrote:
| For me I just felt uncomfortable not being able to just pick what
| I wanted to see...
| bastardoperator wrote:
| The ship has sailed. They could pay me to come back and that
| still wouldn't be a good enough excuse to waste my time there.
| All they had to do was keep facebook positive but between the
| shockingly bad products they advertise and right wing maniacs, it
| might as well be the cesspool of the internet. It would take an
| act of god to turn it around at this point.
| boatsie wrote:
| Sure, and alcohol, soda, candy, processed foods negatively affect
| physical health. People "know" this but obviously think the
| satisfaction they get from it is worth the negative impacts.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I don't get why Facebook is so often singled out in these types
| of studies. What about other activities like dating or school or
| going to church? I bet those can be shown to increase anxiety and
| be bad for mental health
| randomdata wrote:
| Probably because it is the place most likely to be where you
| watch your friends live their apparently perfect lives without
| also being able to see their failings. Facebook is not the only
| place that provides that type of thing, but brand recognition
| in the headline draws attention.
|
| Real life isn't without its own flaws, but the research shows
| an increase in mental health issues when social media is a
| factor. That increase is interesting, and worth studying, even
| if it is not the only place one can develop mental health
| issues.
| svachalek wrote:
| In addition to other replies here, Facebook is also the only
| one of these that is deliberately trying to hurt your mental
| health. They have internal studies showing these results and
| they actually optimize for them, since angry and depressed
| users are known to increase their engagement with the platform.
| burlesona wrote:
| Most in-person social activity is good for your mental health.
| Studies show this includes church:
| https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776270553/hidden-brain-does-g...
|
| Facebook is singled out because they are the largest
| practitioner of surveillance capitalism. The entire idea of
| "optimizing for engagement," where Facebook has been a pioneer
| and the largest player, is increasingly being shown to be a
| primary driver of political polarization, anxiety, bigotry, and
| hate crimes.
|
| Thus Facebook is the new Big Tobacco.
| isodev wrote:
| > this includes church
|
| Except I'm gay, and church is the opposite of a safe place
| for my mental health.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The Unitarian church ordained their first gay minister in
| 1979 and conducted its first same sex marriage ceremony in
| 1984: https://www.hrc.org/resources/stances-of-faiths-on-
| lgbt-issu...
|
| Not that I'm advocating for UUA, I'm atheist myself, but
| from what I've heard it sounds like a hippie commune
| focused around the bible.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I'm not super in the know here, but I think it's possible
| you're mixing up Unitarianism with Unitarian
| Universalism.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Have you actually been to a church? The options are wide
| and vast.
| hestefisk wrote:
| Well said.
| Minor49er wrote:
| It's a safe place for your spiritual health
| retrac wrote:
| That's probably why some LGBT folks went and founded the
| MCC back in the 1970s.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Community_Church
|
| The institution of traditional religion played a social
| role in Western societies that has not been adequately
| patched over by anything else yet. Even as a non-religious
| person, I do take seriously the hypothesis that the decline
| in regular church attendance accounts for some of the
| social isolation crisis. (That is of course, hardly the
| whole picture. A similar argument can be made about union
| meetings or youth clubs, both of which have also declined
| significantly in regular attendance over the last half
| century.)
| Taywee wrote:
| Depends on the church in question. I know gay people who
| are accepted by their congregation, and churches that don't
| have issues with gay people at all. The biggest LGBT youth
| group in my city is organized by and hosted in a Christian
| church.
| [deleted]
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| I've broken plenty of rules in the Bible but still always
| welcomed in a church with open arms.
| afandian wrote:
| It never occurred to me before, but the Roman Catholic
| Church, with confession[0], is surely the largest historical
| "surveillance capitalism" out there. I wonder if Facebook has
| hockey-sticked them yet.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)#Catho
| lic...
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I bet those can be shown to increase anxiety and be bad for
| mental health
|
| Numerous studies over a long period of time indicate the
| opposite.
| sidcool wrote:
| One of those is not like the rest.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| https://medium.com/catholic-way-home/the-only-group-to-see-m...
|
| Heh. The religious were the only group to see improved mental
| health during 2020.
|
| Also, you are right that it should be social media. Nothing
| special about Facebook.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| Off Facebook for more than five years ... and still not mentally
| healthy. I feel cheated.
| steve_john wrote:
| I think it depend on the user's mind. If you like the right way
| to use it will be good thing if you are using it for the time
| pass then its not good thing. So, the thing is its depend on the
| user's mind set
| mattwest wrote:
| This brings up a bigger question that spans all media, which is:
| Why are people willing to give away their attention so easily?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Anecdotally, Facebook seems relatively tame these days compared
| to the firehose of doom & gloom, violent videos, outrage porn,
| and outright misinformation that fills Reddit and Twitter.
| Browsing Reddit's default feeds or popular posts is a wild
| experience these days.
| viridian wrote:
| It's to the point where I, as someone who has used reddit for
| over a decade now (somewhat regrettably), will never, for any
| reason, ever click the snoo/homepage link in the top left
| corner. The thought of doing so reminds me of the nuclear waste
| repository warning:
|
| This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed
| is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
| racheltanks wrote:
| Twitter is poison
| nightski wrote:
| I have a love/hate relationship with it. I follow many
| statistics & data science professionals and it's a great way
| to discover new books, resources, and content. But you have
| to wade through a lot of crap, even with a heavily curated
| feed. It feels like it is getting worse to the point where it
| isn't worth it anymore.
| Bakary wrote:
| What I find odd about Twitter is that the toxicity level is
| off the charts. It's not as bad as say, the wilder 4chan
| boards or Kiwifarms, but it's worse than almost anything
| else.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I'd ad Youtube to that list. I turned off personalized ads and
| oh boy a whole lot of sexualized Flow Ads and other weird stuff
| came up, including ads for Newsmaxx. Absolutely gross that
| those are the apparent defaults.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Completely agree, Reddit at this point seems detached from
| reality. It's hard to believe it's the same site I was on 10
| years ago.
|
| I scan Facebook once every few days for updates from family
| members and frankly I find the experience entirely pleasant.
|
| Cutting out Twitter and Reddit is one of the best decisions
| I've ever made for my mental health.
|
| For me it's Hackernews and the Wall St. Journal.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Outrage on reddit is so ridiculous in the last year. I think
| its so insane that I don't even feel like I need to
| disconnect from it, its just that unrelatable. r/all is just
| all outrage topics all the time. The political stuff, the
| antiwork stuff, white and black ppl twitter, the woe is me
| crap. I cant believe these are real people. Just angry all
| the time?
| kzz102 wrote:
| We shouldn't encourage this type of reporting of academic
| results.
|
| A better headline: "Evidence towards causal relations between
| mental health issues and Facebook use for some College students
| in 2004". If this doesn't look newsworthy, it's because it isn't.
| Single academic result is almost never newsworthy.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| No date on the article?
| pjscott wrote:
| 19 September 2022, for the record.
| Lapsa wrote:
| ditched the Zuck long ago. failed service
| ranger47 wrote:
| Who needed a study? We've known this for years, and it was even
| speculated at the dawn of Friendster, MySpace, etc. Watching a
| society (the US, for example) slowly say "social media is bad"
| then continue to use it is like watching a stumbling drunk
| declare their ability to quit drinking anytime they want.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Even intuitive things should be studied. It's valuable to know
| the scope and context and magnitude of impact. "X is bad"
| followed by confabulation, which is how many of these
| discussions go, is not helpful.
| BrainVirus wrote:
| Who needed it? People who like to deny the obvious, even when
| the obvious is stated by Ph.Ds. in psychology like Jonathan
| Haidt.
| jeff-davis wrote:
| I'm pleased to see the word "causation" reappear along with the
| word "science".
|
| But I'm disappointed to see the word "proven". It isn't proven,
| and there are a number of problems.
|
| One is that the hypothesis is never really tested, this is just
| more data analysis. I don't want to split hairs over the
| definition of "science" but if you don't have an experiment where
| you intervene in the real world and dispassionately record what
| happens, then it's probably not science.
|
| The scientific method is a causation-finding machine intended to
| avoid all of the errors that humans are likely to make. Perhaps
| that leads to too few exciting results, so now we have a bunch of
| "scientific studies" instead.
| oneplane wrote:
| While it might not be a record of an experiment, it's a whole
| lot better in terms of data analysis than just someone's gut
| feeling. That last one was something I expected much more in
| the comments where people would just "well duh" this type of
| publication.
|
| At the very least this data analysis shows something with a
| trace, instead of just throwing an idea out there and hoping
| someone builds a complete thesis around it and starts
| experimenting while everyone else is still guessing and having
| feelings but not getting anywhere concrete.
| theboywho wrote:
| I'm starting to suspect HN to have the same effect, the more I
| read HN the more unmotivated I feel.
|
| Unfavorable comparisons with "successful" people/projects who
| make it to the front page could be behind the same effects.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| You could test this by looking at "new" instead of "top".
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| As critical as I am about Facebook and social media in general --
| I doubt this has been "proven".
| dougmccune wrote:
| This was studying Facebook circa 2004-2006. That version of
| Facebook was laughably basic at that point. If I remember right
| it was a chronological list of posts on your wall. There was no
| algorithmic feed. Hell, the news feed at all was only launched in
| late 2006. There was no video. There were no ads. Nobody made
| content hoping to get rich and outrage didn't sell. If only we
| could go back to such an innocent time.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Idk about Facebook specifically but it seems the old wisdom of
| not discussing religion, politics and diet is more relevant than
| ever. We have added more topics to the list: controversial
| medical procedures, celebrity drama, conspiracy theories etc.
|
| I stopped using social media for many years, recently came back
| to have access to local cycling/running groups and my experience
| is largely positive. All I see is cool people doing cool things,
| fun events, some local cycling related trade etc. I managed to
| make some connections and keep them going thanks to social media
| it's just positive experience all around.
|
| I think Instagram can be like that if you filter out
| politics/celebrities and "I have money/am attractive"
| influencers. It takes some work for that to stop showing in your
| feed and to learn to ignore whatever is left though.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Facebook has proven to be the best way for me to keep in touch
| with people who I grew up with, or worked with. It has proven to
| have a positive impact on my mental health.
| [deleted]
| sbf501 wrote:
| I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug:
| "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-
| News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the
| interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a
| 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths'
| self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in
| that the media is custom-made to drive engagement at all costs.
| [deleted]
| gergov wrote:
| Right, engagement at all cost it is, but there is a fundamental
| difference. Television required professionals where even
| wrestling and reality TV is scripted: it requires some sort of
| willful ignorance from the viewer to engage with it.
|
| Social media pushes the illusion that you are not engaging with
| professionals but peers, and the dominant signals (how many
| views, likes, comments, etc.) of this day and age were not
| present with TV. This seriously messes with the innate
| reasoning of most humans, because for all our individualism we
| are norm conforming herd animals.
|
| Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's
| fake. If the same thing is pushed by all of their friends, now
| we're in the territory of peer pressure which is a different
| ball game!
| kennend3 wrote:
| > Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell
| it's fake.
|
| No, they cant.
|
| How many kids believe the photoshop pics they see?
|
| Not to single her out, but Kim K is now selling headphones
| and her pic in her ad makes her look like a character from
| the sims. This is NOT how a normal human being looks without
| hours of photoshop work.
|
| There is a reason we use to have laws around advertising to
| children.. they are too young to understand things.. this is
| also why you cant legally enter into a contract with a minor.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > it requires some sort of willful ignorance from the viewer
| to engage with it.
|
| > Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell
| it's fake
|
| This does not explain the Alex Jones show.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Right, engagement at all cost it is"
|
| Ha I actually read this as en _rage_ ment, which I don't
| think is even a real word.
| classified wrote:
| It has become a real word by now. Culture changes, language
| adapts.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I don't really agree with this. Rush Limbaugh successfully
| ran a platform on mostly entirely television that deeply
| poisoned the cultural landscape of the USA at the time (he
| was defending Reagan's neglect of HIV/AIDS and playing
| "another one bites the dust" when Freddie Mercury died), and
| laid the foundation on current polarized rhetoric strategies.
| He spread lies that Obama wasn't a natural born citizen. He
| blamed volcano eruptions on the Affordable Care Act. So on
| and so forth. It's spurious to claim that outrage bait on
| television hasn't messed up people's brains just because the
| internet is doing a better job at it. They're just modeling
| what television was already successfully doing.
| [deleted]
| advantager wrote:
| I believe Rush did become famous on television, but after
| the mid-90s it was really all about his radio program. So
| it might be to your point, fundamentally it isn't the
| internet, or TV, maybe it was radio.
|
| I do believe that the Rush style radio talk show lays the
| foundation for Tucker Carlson and all of the conservative
| pundit TV programming. Which is the basis for the problems
| we see with Facebook / Fake News etc.
| derac wrote:
| One can trace that lineage in conservative thought back
| to the John Birch Society.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Why stop there? Why not Fr. Coughlin or William Jennings
| Bryan?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Why stop there Girolamo Savonarola was doing it in the
| 15th century, or Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > Savonarola
|
| Love that the Catholic Church burned him at the stake for
| being too conservative. Really! Go Renaissance Popery!!
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Well, heresy and schism officially. But he was more of a
| populist than conservative and also weirdly sided with
| the invading French king which kind of pissed off the
| pope.
| bakal wrote:
| derac wrote:
| It's pretty lame to make fun of a guy dying of AIDS
| because you hate that he is gay. Not chad at all. Very
| weak.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| This is a really weird comment, because Limbaugh was almost
| entirely radio. His TV show was short-lived and not really
| popular, as he wasn't comfortable in the medium and it
| showed. He got his start in radio as a DJ, and went on to
| basically remake the AM band from farm reports and local
| sports talk to talk radio as we now know it.
|
| This is really basic bio stuff about Limbaugh, and it
| doesn't speak well of your other assertions if you got this
| part so wrong.
|
| What's really funny is that during the 90s the "Greatest
| Threat To Democracy Ever" WAS talk radio, more or less
| solely because the Limbaugh program was so popular. The
| targets may change, but the talking points never seem to.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Hey, thanks for correcting me. You're right that the
| issue was Limbaugh's radio program, not his TV. I
| apologize for getting my example wrong, but I think my
| overall point is still a valid one (that just because
| social media is more effective at spewing bad rhetoric
| doesn't mean bad rhetoric is ineffective in other media).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Your point was valid but your example was _creepily_
| wrong.
| mawise wrote:
| Facebook brought us in with the promise of keeping in touch
| with friends, but the incentives are to "engagement at all
| costs". I'm hoping that if we can offer an alternative that
| lets people keep up with their friends without the engagememt
| incentive then we could greatly improve societal mental
| health. Thats why I build Haven[1] as open source and self
| hosted, along with several 3rd party hosting providers. No
| central entity means no "engagement at all costs".
|
| [1] https://havenweb.org
| nkingsy wrote:
| This is a tragedy of the commons situation because people
| cannot help themselves.
|
| What we are actually seeing is users going to TikTok
| because it is even more engaging.
|
| People may say they want to keep up with their friends, but
| they will choose the more engaging activity.
|
| There is no regulating or out-competing it.
|
| Governments should provide identification, communication,
| community, payments, etc platforms for their citizens, but
| entertainment is always going to look like this unless
| stoicism is somehow engrained into our culture.
|
| Entertainment itself is measured by engagement, so it will
| end with unlimited personalized ai generated content that
| will be almost impossible to put down.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >This is a tragedy of the commons situation because
| people cannot help themselves.
|
| _SOME_ people cannot help themselves. I spend 0 minutes
| on social platforms. I can help myself just fine. Some
| people have much more addictive personality traits than
| others. Please, don 't paint everyone with the same broad
| brush. It doesn't help the conversation in a meaningful
| manner
| classified wrote:
| > I spend 0 minutes on social platforms.
|
| You're spending time on HN.
| eimrine wrote:
| But he is not spending time on social platform.
| smsm42 wrote:
| And he can't wait to tell the Internet how proud he is
| about that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Only in relation to a thread about how much time people
| are spending on the socials. It's part of the
| conversation. That's kind of how the work.
| nkingsy wrote:
| First off you're on hn, which is social media and
| absolutely optimized for your specific engagement.
|
| I also figured the "some" was implied because the world
| is a complicated place. I do believe we all have our
| weaknesses, though mindless consumption is more
| attractive to some than others.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you equate HN to actual social platforms then okay.
|
| The HN "algo" is user driven by fellow readers up-
| voting/down-voting which is much more common interests.
| There are no "friend" relations on HN. The other
| platforms are all advertising based algo driven with
| intentional doping to make people addicted to the
| platform. This isn't even apples-to-oranges comparison.
|
| After the dust from Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers
| settles and everything gets evaluated, I sincerly hope
| that Meta/Zuck,et.al gets investigated in the same line
| as Purdue.
| cma wrote:
| Reddit is vote based so would you include that too? HN
| also has advertising (it has hiring ads for ycombinator
| companies put in as mostly organic-looking posts with no
| [ad] tag).
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't want to get into an argument about what an ad is,
| but I think we all understand what the difference of ad
| driven algos on the social platforms vs hiring blogs,
| Who's Hiring, etc on this platform.
|
| Also, I just never have liked Reddit.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I never used Friendster, and thought that everyone spending
| so much time on MySpace was just wasting time. However, I'd
| love for socials to be back to just MySpace levels of
| people engaging with each other, sharing music, etc vs the
| ad engagement driven by ads instead of common interests.
| otikik wrote:
| > some sort of willful ignorance
|
| Not "some sort of willful ignorance". It just requires
| "ignorance". I think most of us know someone who thinks that
| reality TV is ... well, reality. "It says it in the name".
|
| > Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell
| it's fake
|
| Perhaps you have very bright kids. My kid will ask me to buy
| two of whatever that person is pushing. He's simply not
| equipped to handle marketing at any level, yet.
| MandieD wrote:
| Up to now, I have vigorously shielded my toddler from
| marketing - as far as he knows, the TV occasionally shows
| holiday church services and election results, and "his"
| laptop shows fairly non-violent excerpts from BBC animal
| documentaries and bird-watching videos (he's taken to
| asking to watch by making the slurping sounds the desert
| rain frog in his favorite video makes as it's eating
| termites, then exclaiming "froggy!").
|
| I know he needs to be exposed to some marketing while I'm
| watching along to talk about it so he isn't completely
| defenseless against it later, but I don't think that time
| is quite yet. So far, I'm going with his being able to
| separate "real" from "pretend" as a minimum.
| jdougan wrote:
| Start with advertising from the past and work your way
| forward? It looks lame now, but that stuff used to
| consistently work.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I'm not sure we're equipped as a society, otherwise why
| would marketing budgets be so high?
|
| I know adults who voted for Trump because they believed the
| apprentice gave them an unvarnished view of his character
| and decision making prowess in the real world. My own
| grandmother would cite episodes of the show.
| mcrad wrote:
| Engagement with broadcast TV vs with hyper-personalized apps is
| a specious comparison.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| TiVo monetized hyper-personalized broadcast TV, by
| interposing ads based on all sorts of calculated data, into
| recorded broadcast TV streams, though.
|
| So it's more continuous a transition i suspect than people
| consider.
| kurthr wrote:
| TiVo allowed you to skip ads. Was there an earlier or later
| version?
|
| You own the recording... I know there's still 5-15-30sec
| skip.
|
| Hulu, Roku, et al do of course insert their own ads because
| they're ad supported.
| svachalek wrote:
| The psychological manipulation is based on the same
| principles, it's just the application is less refined.
| samatman wrote:
| It is and it isn't, but mostly, it isn't.
|
| The relentless Skinner Boxing which Facebook and similar
| platforms engage in has no parallel in broadcast media,
| which can't be algorithmically tuned to harm the victim as
| much as possible.
| klodolph wrote:
| Do you care to elaborate? Why do you say it's specious?
| mcrad wrote:
| Well engagement implies a certain amount to decision making
| and real-time action. TV watching is pretty much passive,
| and I just have a hard time believing the brain is impacted
| similarly but such different types of activity.
| klodolph wrote:
| I think "engagement" in the discussion here is more of a
| term of art, and it's not really a question of what it
| implies.
| sbf501 wrote:
| I don't think that qualifies as "specious" because I'm
| not trying to deceive anyone. You missed the part where I
| stated TV isn't interactive. I tried to pose a question
| in good faith. Did I fail? I am interested in
| information. Using the term "specious" incorrectly,
| deliberately or accidentally, is a judgement of the basis
| of my argument, which is actually specious.
| viridian wrote:
| People aren't as unique and individualized as one might
| think. A half dozen channels, and thus permutations of
| outrage content is likely plenty enough to capture the
| overwhelming majority of the population's attention.
| swayvil wrote:
| Books, radio, tv, videogames, internet, vr...
|
| A progression of machines for interacting with dreams more
| deeply. A progreassion of better and better _dream amplifiers_.
|
| Dreams becoming a bigger part of our life
|
| Expert dreamers making the big bucks
|
| A whole population with one foot in dreamland.
|
| You ever noticed how fiction is everywhere? And advertising.
| And propaganda.
| duxup wrote:
| My father in law, who suffers from parkinson's calls me several
| times a day to leave me voice mails about how terrible the
| world is and how scared he is about what is coming.
|
| If there's a hell I hope there is a special place for 24-hour
| news channels and folks who feed fear and skewed garbage to
| people and hurt them.
|
| I sometimes wish I could run a 24 hour news channel that tried
| to do more of a mix of content / etc. It might not be popular,
| or profitable, but it wouldn't be doom and gloom and conflict
| and bait all day. Maybe some stories about rando people's lives
| and other things?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| You'd go out of business.
|
| I'm not dismissing malice or opportunism in the media, but it
| is also important to appreciate the situation mass news media
| is in. Mass media are extremely dependent on things like
| advertising and that's always been the case for as long mass
| media have existed. The price of subscription or buying a
| paper is simply too meager to cover the costs of running a
| paper, for example. Advertising introduces its own perverse
| incentives and limitations (you can't bite the hand that
| feeds you, for example).
|
| 24 hour news are, for the most part, useless, so they've got
| to fill the air time with sensationalized garbage, and
| because there's an arms race, the sensantionalism escalates.
| oblib wrote:
| >>I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway
| drug: "24-hour News Channels"
|
| Back in the early 80s I was living in LA and I'd grab some food
| on the way home from work and the "News" on an independent
| station. They had 3 half hour News show back to back. They
| started out with "Local News", then moved on to "National
| News", and finally "World News".
|
| At first it didn't seem much different than the big 3 Networks.
| Everyday I'd come home from work feeling fine but after a few
| months of doing that I realized by the end of the last
| broadcast I was very depressed.
|
| It finally occurred to me, after a few months, that the station
| was gathering every tragedy they could find, rapes, robberies,
| murders, wars, airplane and auto crashes, etc. So I decided to
| stop watching it and immediately went back to my normal, happy,
| content self.
|
| Since I've learned to monitor the "News" as opposed to
| consuming it and that's much easier to do when we can pick and
| choose what to consume and ignore it with just a click or tap.
| And since then I've had quite a few friends and relatives
| who're happy and content before and are now in a constant state
| of rage because they're pretty much addicted to watching
| FOX/CNN/MSNBC, etc.
|
| That said, I would love to see a serious study on this because
| it's grown into a serious and national mental heath problem
| here in the U.S.
| oDot wrote:
| You've reminded me of a very good Norm bit
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ktWtIDQQQ
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| We have been gamified. But then again spending 6 hours a day
| reading celebrity magazines to r watching daytime TV will
| equally rot our sense of balance.
|
| We some how think this would be six hours replaced with
| "improving our minds", visiting museums and working on our
| calculus or oil painting.
|
| I mean we _could_ all do that. we more or less force our
| children to do that at school.
|
| If there was a "improve my mind" button on facebook, do you
| think we would all press it?
|
| I am torn between my pessimism and optimism
| Xeoncross wrote:
| National parks in the US experienced a surge in interest
| after the covid lockdowns. I have hope that while more people
| might be falling into the unhealthy trap of news and social
| media - a lot of people are breaking free and exploring the
| world and it's people and places.
| wfbarks wrote:
| I took a long break (maybe 5 years or so) but I have recently
| started using both FB and Instagram and have been surprised at
| how positive my time has been on these platforms. On FB I have
| been finding interesting local groups and events (just moved to a
| new city) and on Instagram, I have been enjoying seeing updates
| from real friends.
|
| On the other hand I recently deleted Twitter from my phone. I
| love twitter for getting interesting infromation and staying up
| to date with news, but the whole culture there has just turned
| into cheap dunking on one another, and its just guaranteed to
| leave you feeling angry about something. Extremely disruptive to
| mental state.
|
| I spend some time on the TikTok-like products as well (youtube
| shorts / fb reels) and have found them to be just a really easy
| way to completely waste an hour for no reason whatsoever. Less
| disruptive to mental state than twitter though.
| oneplane wrote:
| The issue with the meta products is that no matter how much you
| try to personally curate who you see stuff from, they will
| insert sponsored content you have no choice in and that can be
| real ads but also random posts.
| TylerE wrote:
| The key to happy Facebooking for me is to keep it to people I
| don't routinely have any other way of keeping in touch with -
| so it's mostly hobby groups, people I've met while traveling, a
| few former co-workers...
|
| In particular, I do not friend or follow any family, neighbors,
| current co-workers, etc.
| MattSayar wrote:
| I started checking Facebook only on the computer and only when it
| organically comes up in my daily browsing (like now!). As it
| happens, I check Facebook about 3-4 times a week now, and it's
| basically just to Mark as Read my notifications (which are
| largely useless).
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| > They found a statistically significant worsening in mental
| health symptoms, especially depression and anxiety, after the
| arrival of Facebook:
|
| 7% increase in number of students who reported having suffering,
| at least once during the preceding year, depression so severe
| that it was difficult for them to function
|
| 20% increase in number of students who reported anxiety disorders
|
| 2% increase in number of students expected to experience moderate
| to severe depression
|
| 3% increase in number of students experienced impairment to their
| academic performance due to depression or anxiety
| rconti wrote:
| I am suspicious of the methodology because of how quickly
| Facebook rolled out across most colleges/Universities. I want
| to say within a year. It feels unlikely that the data would be
| granular enough (and the survey given frequently enough at each
| University) to reach these sorts of conclusions.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Bears proven to shit in woods.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Link to the working paper is here:
|
| https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787
| theropost wrote:
| After being off Facebook for a few years, I have started to
| clearly see how creepy people really are - it's like everyone has
| turned into low level stalkers, but somehow that is okay within
| the cult.
| sidcool wrote:
| Not just FB, LinkedIn has a similar effect, just on a different
| demographic.
| themitigating wrote:
| Do you evidence of that?
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| I do not care for this trend of omitting the publication date
| from news articles. Temporal context is very relevant in news
| articles, especially to assess whether the information has been
| superseded.
|
| (I know, one can often find the publication date in the HTML
| source, but that requires savvy, and should not be necessary.)
| dchftcs wrote:
| Yeah, and sometimes that's the point. Some sites do this
| probably to improve viewership of older articles. I don't
| understand why a university would do this though.
| singlow wrote:
| Its a Drupal 7 site so every content item has a publication
| date in the db since it is part of the root data schema for
| posts/pages and all sub-types. In their case they have at least
| two content types in their news page. All of the "News" type
| articles do display the date but the template for "Research"
| articles does not display it. It is possible this was
| deliberate but most likely it just was in the default news
| template and when they created a custom template for the
| research articles they based it on the default page template
| which doesn't include a date line.
| sna1l wrote:
| I don't understand why this is causation vs correlation?
| jessenichols wrote:
| This just in, food is also misused and proven to cause ill health
| in the majority of people, stop eating food now.
| holoduke wrote:
| Today I disabled Facebook and Instagram. I also removed all
| shortlinks to various newssites. I want to avoid them as well.
| Including Reddit . The only thing I am allowed to read is
| hackernews. I find that one of the few good sources. Even for
| general news.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Do not forget even without an account or the apps they are
| tracking the crap out of you everywhere. Shadow profiles and
| whatnot. Any website with a little facebook button at the
| bottom is a tracker.
| colordrops wrote:
| An RSS reader with a curated list of sources is good too.
|
| Google News has become a trash heap, full of gossip and
| propaganda, and changes constantly in relation to what I last
| searched. It's converging with the Facebook feed
| karaterobot wrote:
| That's great! Sadly, a lot of the HN front page is just a
| direct link to Twitter. Reddit shows up occasionally. It would
| be nice if there was a way to filter out sources from the front
| page.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I agree, I can't even get to any of the twitter 'posts' by
| clicking on them - all major social media is blocked (by me)
| in my hosts file - which rules out a lot of the low-effort
| reposts from twitter.
| askafriend wrote:
| Now do a study for Hacker News
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Is the research design capable of distinguishing from the
| opposite causation here; what if people who are more depressed
| are more likely to use facebook more?
|
| This occurred to me because I more and more think of social media
| use in terms of addiction. For more typical addictive behavior
| with drugs, we are more likely to think people who are depressed
| are more likely to develop addictive relationship to alcohol (or
| other drugs), than we are to think using alcohol (or other drugs)
| too much will makes you depressed. Although I suppose it can be
| somewhat circular and complex.
| pjscott wrote:
| Yes, the study design is able to tell which way the causality
| points. Not all colleges got access to Facebook at the same
| time (back before it was open to the general public) so this is
| sort of a natural experiment: you can look at the colleges that
| had Facebook access and compare them to the ones that didn't,
| assuming that they're probably pretty similar in all other
| confounding variables, and that people don't choose their
| college based on whether or not it has Facebook access. For
| more information on this type of design, the phrase to google
| is "difference in differences".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences
| taytus wrote:
| From all my digital addictions, FB is the one I have most under
| control.
|
| I have to do a lot of blocking but the reality is that I can now
| say I do enjoy Facebook.
|
| My timeline is filled with content I meticulously have
| curated:Woodworking, Baking, Canoeing, Startups, Beekeeping,
| Jeeps.
|
| But... it shouldn't take all this work to enjoy it.
| standardUser wrote:
| I use FB in that same way. Nearly all of my "friends" are muted
| and most of the content is from pages and groups I have chosen.
| But it does feel like I'm fighting the platform to make it work
| in a way that works for me. God forbid they should empower the
| user instead of perpetually trying to squeeze more blood from
| the stone.
| taytus wrote:
| >But it does feel like I'm fighting the platform
|
| I couldn't agree more.
| prox wrote:
| Because we aren't the user, advertisers are. We are the
| hypnotized consumers of the lights in the box.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Facebook was just the beginning. It feels crude almost in
| comparison to the new generation of designer drugs (TikTok et.
| al).
| standardUser wrote:
| Sometimes when I'm scrolling Instagram I'm reminded of the sad
| era of "channel flipping" where we would just watch "whatever's
| on" while endless ads were blasted at our faces.
|
| At least now we have some control over our poison, though few
| seem to bother exercising that control.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Um... I installed Instagram recently for the first time.
| Every 5th post or so is an ad. That you have no choice
| over... And there are a lot of suggested content posts which
| you have no control over.
|
| It's like the same as channel flipping and getting ads
| blasted at you but now the ads are smarter/more targeted.
| standardUser wrote:
| Yeah, the ads are actually relevant sometimes and they
| don't demand 30 seconds of my life, so massive improvements
| all around. I don't see much suggested content unless I
| scroll too long, at which point I probably do need some
| more content.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I honestly don't see targeted ads as an improvement at
| all. I see them as the opposite.
| floren wrote:
| Here's the thing about Instagram: aside from posts by
| your actual real-life friends, everything you see is an
| ad. It's either a literal ad, or it's a popular user
| trying to sell you their t-shirts/newsletter/onlyfans. My
| wife likes to look at Instagram videos of cute kids and
| dogs, and whenever she shows me one the text at the
| bottom says something like "Our merch shop is open
| again!!!"
| gjulianm wrote:
| Although TikTok is fairly addictive, I find it's far better at
| showing you content you actually like instead of
| outrage/emotional/clickbait content. It's very easy to get into
| niches you actually enjoy with actual decent content
| (woodworking, cleaning, plants, DIY, cats in my case, for
| example) and actual people as creators, instead of whatever
| reposted content factory managed to cheat FB/Instagram
| algorithm this time.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Political content in particular seems to not rear its ugly
| head on my Tiktok except rarely. Not even political ads. This
| is something that didn't ever happen with Facebook even after
| unfollowing everyone.
| advantager wrote:
| TikTok has great content and I am far more entertained and
| educated there than any other of the engagement-driven
| "social media" apps (i.e. Meta products).
|
| The problem I find is that it is basically mindless
| engagement, everything is really too short to get into it,
| the comments are garbage, and it's extremely entertaining and
| therefore addictive and a waste of my free time.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| I fear to imagine what the next iteration will be. Probably
| someone, somewhere is already working on it.
| labarilem wrote:
| Maybe the AI will also generate personalized content instead
| of only recommending it?
| 99_00 wrote:
| The study uses historical data, change in mental health before
| and after Facebook was introduced to a campus. Which is a very
| cool way to make use of a natural control. Nice study.
|
| Seems clear facebook had negative impact on mental health on
| campus.
|
| Facebook then was also likely very different from Facebook now.
| So not exactly sure what recommendations for today can be drawn
| from it.
|
| It's interesting to note that the data shows facebook was
| damaging mental health at the same time that many readers of this
| comment were most enthusiastic about Facebook.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-22 23:01 UTC)