Ditto. From my experience and assumptions by many media I've seen, people tend to post the best of what is going on in their lives to social media. Subsequently, not seeing the bad or mundane in comparison to oneself, causes anxiety. There are many other aspects to the social media that might affect life satisfaction. Time spent on the platform rather than being productive is one that comes to mind.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same. I quit FB a month ago, and sadly not a single "friend" has emailed me or phone called me since then asking "yo, what's up dude?"
If you are upset with the way they treat you, then perhaps you should reconsider your relationship. Have you contacted them? I personally go years without speaking to some of my friends and pick up right where we left off. It feels like there has been no time gap. I do not put much stock in friendship. It would not be upsetting to me if none of my friends contacted me ever again. You may not be the same.
the new is interesting however the article is just a quote from another article and a study. It ends up not pointing out any valuable information, like what are the underlying mechanisms. Basically a copycat to get free visitors traffic.
Questions I wish there were answered: is it about anxious browsing? anxious goshipping? compare oneself to others? compulsive procrastination? does it apply to other social networks, is it related to general screen time or just mindless consuming? would movies and stronger leisure activities have a similar effect or just compulsive social network browsing and the mental drain of feeling like comparing to others?
I would be curious about this part, namely in sporting activities where the participants are considered "lower-performers". I would also like to see some connection to other psychological studies like Fixed/Growth Mindsets. Someone with a fixed mindset may show more life satisfaction quitting than a growth mindset person.
I'm predisposed to believe this is true... But I can't find a link to any evidence or research in the OP, which is a fluffy piece with little actual content. I'm flagging the OP unless someone posts a link to either evidence or higher quality content.
"The Treatment group was less likely to say they follow news about politics or the President, and less able to correctly answer factual questions about recent news events. Our overall index of news knowledge fell by 0.19 standard deviations. There is no detectable effect on political
engagement, as measured by voter turnout in the midterm election and the likelihood of clicking on email links to support political causes. Deactivation significantly reduced polarization of views on policy issues and a measure of exposure to polarizing news. Deactivation did not statistically significantly reduce affective polarization (i.e. negative feelings about the other political party) or
polarization in factual beliefs about current events, although the coefficient estimates also point in
that direction. Our overall index of political polarization fell by 0.16 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, prior work has found that a different index of political polarization rose by 0.38 standard deviations between 1996 and 2018 (Boxell 2018)."
Deactivation increased "well-being" by about 20-40% the amount you'd expect for someone getting therapy:
"Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular in self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. Effects on subjective well-being as measured by responses to brief daily text messages are positive but not significant. Our overall index of subjective well-being improved by 0.09 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, this is about 25-40 percent of the effect of psychological interventions including self-help therapy, group training, and individual therapy, as reported in a meta-analysis by Bolier et al. (2013). These results are consistent with prior studies."
(1) This article is pretty low-quality, and provides no sources for anything. It certainly sounds plausible enough, but still...
(2) Assuming that this is true for Facebook, I'm pretty sure the same result would hold true for any other social media site for short-form content (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc).
(3) I'm LESS sure about sites for sharing longer-form writing, such as Reddit and HN. I suspect that the effect is not as stark, but that it does hold true to SOME extent whenever you have the gamification of upvotes and downvotes.
It seems that throughout history, we've discovered things that were exciting and hyped only to later realize that the addictiveness was damaging for society, leading us to regulating it (or attempting to do so).
I wonder if what we're going through right now with social media will look irresponsible and quaint the way smoking does in Mad Men at some point in the future.
I wonder, have fb quitters stopped using all social media? Have they also stopped visiting news websites?
My point is, is Facebook the only negativity inducing platform? I know for me it isn't. The question is how do you deal with the rest of them? Do you balance news intake against the impact on your mental health or you stop consuming news entirely, because in the end whatever it's set to happen will happen regardless?
Not me. Just FB. Removing just that is a big improvement. I'm still on IG. I don't look into Twitter much anymore, because it's not too different from FB.
Social media isn't news. Most of what we call news isn't. There's very little useful news out there. I read "The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption" by Clay Johnson which covered the topic quite well.
I can't speak for others...but Facebook was my social media gateway drug in 2006. Maybe unsurprisingly, it was also the catalyst which led to me quitting most social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others). Soon after, I made a commitment to only consume news on Saturday mornings. The combination of all of these things has helped immensely, and I honestly feel like I'm missing very little.
I haven't hard quit anything but vastly reduced all of these things. Yes, I have vastly reduced my visits to news websites, Twitter, etc. I have increased my consumption of monthly periodicals, books, and movies.
I quit Facebook about 2.5 years ago but was still on Twitter and Instagram for awhile. About six months later I dropped Twitter, and then about a year ago I dropped Instagram. I found that having any of them just added to my anxiety, depression, and overall feeling of being dissatisfied with my life. I don’t currently miss any of them, and I find myself having a lot more time to read books and work on things I’m passionate about. I’ve also found that the people who actually care still keep in contact with me on at least a weekly basis, and it’s a lot more personal and rewarding because we communicate directly rather than through “the void” of social media.
I've also found other benefits of quitting such as spending less money because I'm not seeing as many ads for things I don't need, and not feeling influenced to visit/participate in some activity just because other people are doing it. Maybe it's my own lack of willpower, but I found myself doing and buying a lot of things that ultimately did nothing for me because of the constant flood of information from social media.
Obviously other experiences will vary and I don't judge anyone who feels like they need social media and gain something from it, but for me it added very little to my life and I feel a lot better without it.
One data point: I deleted my Facebook some time in late 2012 or early 2013. I have since deleted all my social media accounts / not join in on the rush to get new ones, with the exception of Mastodon (which I use very rarely) and HN. I don't go to news websites and just accept that I will find out about some things later than people who are more plugged in than me. When I need to know more about something in particular I will look that thing up, allowing myself to read about it on whatever source has a good piece on it, so I still consume some news but never passively.
I think even HN can be too reward-driven for me personally (I enjoy getting upvoted, etc). I've found that my relationship with all online information platforms was kind of destructive while I was doing it (things like autopilot opening Reddit in an elevator, not seeing anything and then opening another Reddit tab immediately). I've come to view information, especially on sites with an infinite feed, kind of like sugar: it's very good and can be okay in moderation, but if left to my own devices I would go overboard, so I have to specifically police myself.
I thought sticking to my "information diet" would be much harder than it is. I miss very little of what I used to consume: I reach out to the friends I want to keep up with, I look up the news I want to read, and I get to be relatively insulated from the constant torrent of negativity/targeted advertising/etc that happens on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
Personally I’ve changed to leveraging social media to pursue my work and some specific interests. No friends or family.
HN for stay current in my industry.
A very curated Twitter via a third party client for following specific tech creators.
No FB, IG or Reddit. No keeping up with the Jones’s or lusting after others lives.
If I want to talk to someone I make a habit of doing it regularly. I text friends and family at least once a week just to say hi. I attempt to maintain my relationships actively instead of the passive “likes” you can send through social media.
I do FB for hobbies... The groups can be pretty amazing, from tabletop RPG resources to ham radio hardware support to just watching a favorite musician like Haywyre uploading "musical sketches." There's a lot of good stuff.
This seems backwards to me. FB is exclusively friends and family. Those are people I am close to. Why would that drive "keeping up with the Joneses"? Wouldn't following some celebrity or athlete or something drive jealousy more than following friends?
On Twitter, I've attempted to follow industry experts and "special interests" but it seems exclusively about people who I thought would provide insight into that special interest, saying mundane or inflammatory shit.
Maybe it's down to different personality types, but if I'm going to see random shit, I'd rather see it from people I know and love, than from someone I've never met lusting after engagement clicks.
> wouldnt following a celebrity drive more jealousy?
No. The whole premise for the keeping up with Joneses are that you know them well. They love in your neighborhood, they have similar jobs, etc. The phycological lie is that based on some things you should be able to keep up.
Whereas with celebreties, you know that what they have in unachievable. They have so much you dont. The joneses are just like you, but with that one new thing. And then the next thing. Etc.
I still use LinkedIN, meetup (if that counts) and kept my rarely used Twitter account. Snapchat died on its own, that is, all of my friends quit posting on it - I assume they use Instagram now, but I won't touch it.
I try to keep all news on RSS feeds to avoid clickbait and ads pretending to be articles.
quit facebook about two years ago. i stopped using my real name on social media, use random names and gibberish for accounts.
i also stopped reading any news, it's all tainted bullshit anyway by whoever paid the most to have it written. i talk more with people around me to get the news.
I deleted Facebook and Twitter at the same time in 2008 when I dropped out of University. It’s really been hell not owning social media, as it just cuts you off from everything. "just add/msg me on facebook", why can't I just text you? txting is free.
In the end, while it has made me more depressed not being part of it, it has made me a better person not being part of.
Reddit and HN are the only two online accounts I have. And even I am tempted to delete my Reddit account.
I open facebook for 2 minutes a week and scroll through my relatives' baby and pet pictures. I don't get how the site is such a specter of misery for some people
Twitter I would understand a little better. It's such a tar pit of negative energy, insults, rage bait, etc
Yeah I'm really confused by the whole "my life got so much better when I got off FB" trope. I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, but my time spent there is generally pretty positive - I really enjoy getting updates from my friends and family and seeing their photos.
I'm confused by it too, but I see it in some members of my family. Full grown, middle aged adults, absolutely ADDICTED to their Facebook feed. Sitting in a room full of people and glued to Facebook. I don't get it, but I can say without adult that those who are addicted to FB are also the most unhappy. So I see that correlation in my own life. I don't know that FB causes or contributes to their unhappiness, or if maybe it's an escape for them, but I see it.
Some people are more heavily integrated into the platform. My SO is a part of multiple groups based around common hobbies/preference in memes. Although there's a lot of good content in these groups they can get pretty toxic. Also, seeing your immediate family post political rants/flame other family members or random people on the internet can be disheartening.
As for myself, and most men, ordinary and dull, being devoid of that which attracts women, the vacuous but sonorous, like me, fb is perpetually the Garfield cartoon where John is sitting by the phone waiting for anybody except his mom to call. And then cobwebs.
Deleted, I'll project my soul into the stars and find better company, and sing hymns with Epictitus and Nolan.
People can feel obligated to post those pictures. There's social pressure to respond to posts. Deleting Facebook can be easier than the social friction of using it but breaking perceived social obligations.
I'm very happy that there are those that can interact with Facebook without negative side effects. If you're in that category, I hope the site adds value to you and you enjoy it.
I can't. Yes, it's a failure on me, but my experience is better without Facebook in my life.
You mention negativity, and that's part of it. I saw a steady stream of "the world's on fire" type posts. The other side, the rosy view of my friends and family also wasn't great. It was a steady stream of my brain using this as a chance to remind me I can't live up to these people, that I'm falling behind, and that in general, I suck.
It's not true. I could have crafted an equal fantasy and posted it, but I'm not that person. I could let the positive and negative posts go without influencing my mental well-being, but I'm apparently not that person.
All of this is a long way of saying, for me, Facebook is baggage I had to carry around with me. I didn't need to open it, but I knew it was there, ready to mock me at any time. Now my account is gone, and that bit of unnecessary baggage is gone. It added nothing to my life, only made it worse.
It sounds like your two feeds are very different. I didn’t like facebook, then unfollowed everyone except immediate family. It’s nice now! Not distracting, occasional baby pictures.
One of facebook’s worst long run mistakes was optimizing for engagement vs. enjoyment. It boosts metrics but makes people quit or go cold turkey.
Sounds like a problem with your family and not Facebook. But quitting Facebook will indeed help you distance yourself from all of that, so, I guess, it is still a net benefit.
Facebook doesn't care about enjoyment. They want to maximize eyes on the screen time and sell that for maximum ad revenue. If you are someone who would like to spend 5 minutes a week on Facebook catching up with friends they do not care about you.
Possible. But I used facebook a lot more when I enjoyed it. I enjoy instagram now for example and use it a lot.
Facebook showed me stuff I didn’t care about it that aggravated me, so I stopped using it. now I’m in thE 5 min a week category. But I’d rather follow more people, but only the important stuff
The main problem is in the name. It's a face book. As a famous male model said, "it's a face game", when asked why he didn't body sculpt. The face is hardest to change. If you're kind of ugly like myself, you'll never win in the superficial arena, because no striving beautifies but the soul. And I will assure you no woman was attracted by a pure soul ever, get the thought out of your mind. Power, yes, such as the power of the church and the security of it, but not authentic and actual virtue observable and present and real, never in the least, except as a mask, but not from the self, attested by the difference of fervency, no fever of devotion is caught by a woman for goodness itself.
So, the simple reason why fb sucks is that women are in charge of it, it's the gossip corner. And therefore it descends into the angst of pettiness and uselessness, as these are the names of the servants of the superficial.
But the reason why fb is a problem is the fault only of men, wimps who won't give it the one finger salute and delete it.
Right, which is why the result in the headline seems misdirected. "Facebook quitters" are, in fact, a special group. They/you recognized problems that were addressed by quitting facebook! And the study found that when this population removes something they feel is a problem, they feel better. That's... not really surprising, if you think about it. And importantly, it's not a result that says "social media will make everyone feel bad".
I'm one of the normies like the grandparent comment. I don't use Facebook all that much, and most of what I see there is just a stream of banal life events from a selection of people that I'd otherwise not hear from. Most of it isn't that interesting directly, but I'll admit that my life is enriched by retaining these relationships I'd otherwise have dropped. It's definitely not something I feel bad after using.
Obviously that's not your experience, and there's nothing wrong with that. Certainly you shouldn't be forced to use this platform if it makes you unhappy. Really this just goes down to "people are all different and we all have to find our paths through the world". Technology changes the battlefield a little at the margins, but it hasn't changed the war.
You just changed my mind a little about Facebook. I mean, I still think they’re a threat to democracy, but you made me see the value of a feed with a small group of people.
> most of what I see there is just a stream of banal life events from a selection of people that I'd otherwise not hear from
This was part of the problem for me; it made me think I had more friends than I actually did. What I really had was an app that showed me what everyone I used to know at some point was up to, and many of us start to mistake that for friendship. At some point I had the epiphany that I don't really know the kids from my high school friend circle anymore, and keeping up with them doesn't improve my life. We had our time, the friendship fizzled out as they tend to do, and the healthiest thing for me was to just move on.
My life improved after quitting Facebook because it forced me to be more intentional with who I spend my time on. Rather than passively blasting everyone's news feed with something, I send it individually to the people I want to see it. It makes me be an active participant in friendships, which is something I've had trouble with (at least when using Facebook).
This is an interesting comment to me. Your conscious mind says you received no value, when reflecting. Yet your behavior indicated that you got enough value to create a compulsion.
>your conscious mind says you received no value, when reflecting. Yet your behavior indicated that you got enough value to create a compulsion
well social media is designed to give you little dopamine hits all the time and we all know when we think about it for a second that the constant, cheap stimulation is bad, but it also hijacks our lizard brains and it's designed to work that way.
The big problem I think is that we let the designers of these applications get away with exactly the 'your preferences indicate you like it' line, well the same applies to gamblers in a casino.
I refused to get on FB for many years, until I was finally convinced to do it. I never did more than post funny pictures I found around the internet.
And then the next political cycle hit and I straight up quit. I found the political ads more offensive than anything, and I've never been back since.
FB is a terrible place, ignore the poster you're responding to because they very well could be putting on airs while you're trying to be more honest about things. That's the nature of social media, of which HN is included.
I drink one glass of fine red wine once a week while having a nice conversation with a good friend. On other occasions I have a shot of strong brandy before stepping out on a cold winter evening. I don't get how alcohol is such a specter of misery for some people.
Well now we are getting into regulating dopamine responses, which is too broad to apply to a single website which is probably why the article doesn't have a source.
This article is just a hit piece. This is the trash on HN these days.
You know what's off ? GP's comment about how he doesn't get why and how Facebook's usage is problematic for some. On HN. Where we have been talking about every aspects of Facebook every 6th submissions for years.
What I'm saying is that the analogy of alcohol is not helpful.
Social Networking is not inherently toxic, and quitting many things: sugar, television, even meat, might have the similar effects for some small group of people.
In fact, the entire thread is based on three levels of indirection of misinformation: the Bloomberg article misquoted the paper, and the short-summary referencing Bloomberg made it worse.
Here is the summary of the findings [1]:
"We find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election (i) reduced online activity while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone
and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use"
So that's a little bit more information now isn't it? And completely conflates the Facebook/wellbeing issue with a host of other things.
Most poignantly, stopping Facebook usage reduced the amount of factual knowledge a person had access too. So maybe that's not so good?
Maybe by 'removing Facebook' people are simply a little bit more removed from the issues of the day (like elections) many of which can be contentious.
So 'ignorance is bliss' is the result of the study? Or is it really something materially related to Social Networking.
I think we'll need to do some more studying to find out.
Or that people who perceive themselves as doing something unhealthy may feel better in a short window after they make a change they think will makes them happier?
How can we distinguish the effect from a general “I’m making a change” groundswell of feel goodery?
Implicit in your statement is the proposition that quitters are a self-selected group of people with a disordered consumption pattern - a moderate social drinker is not going to quit.
But I do recall an instance where everyone in some college class or something were supposed to abstain from social media for a week, whether they had a healthy relationship with it or not and the group reported substantial increases in life satisfaction.
Without a reference, this comment doesn’t indicate anything.
If I asked you to abstain from any behavior for a week to see if it would improve your life... I bet most studies would show abstention helped.
The relevant question is how this intervention helped, compared to other interventions that could be seen as similar. Eg, if you didn’t watch tv for a week, how would you feel?
If there's one truth to social networks its that everyone's experiences on them are different, based on who you're connected to, where you grew up, what life stage you're in, and whether you have interests adjacent to toxic or problematic spaces. It's quite similar to the adage "you are the average of the five people you know best", but on a global scale. Radically different experiences can emerge from the same platform.
Personally, my experiences on FB are extremely tame and similar to yours. However I intentionally sabotaged my experience by unfollowing nearly everyone several years ago. Even my rather fallow feed is an engine of engagement and addictive impulse, in part because of years of conditioning myself to go there when I was bored.
I think if you have basic bitch-ass friend who are always posting about "living their #bestlife" and/or are at risk of starting drama, you're in for a shitty time on Facebook. More so if you're like this yourself.
People with lives to lead off social media have fewer of these problems.
There a 'depressing' side of passive information intake. It satisfies but thinly. If your life is not balanced you can kinda get stuck on thin, aptly named, feed.
not sure if you're being flippant re: 2 minutes but that's almost certainly undersold. you'll have to forgive me but i'm extremely skeptical of that claim if made seriously.
Don't really remember how, but my family switched to using a single snapchat group to share baby and pet pics, which imo works better for that use case. Even taught my grandmother how to open stories, even if she sometimes gets lost when they update the app. Maybe not much better than FB on most issues, but it's nice to get in and out without the facebook timesink, and these kids (probably) don't have to worry about embarrassing pictures on the public internet forever.
My FB experience is like yours, but I had to mute friends and family who are perpetually outraged, as well as those who ask for help every day on things like which shoelaces to buy. I also raised the feed prominence for people who rarely post.
Similarly for Twitter, I don't follow people who post ragebait or feel the need to comment on everything.
Right. My use of Facebook is similar. I almost never look at my 'feed'. I search on specific people and look at what they post, but on variable intervals. I'll look at a few people's posts once a day. Others, once a week, etc.
> I don't get how the site is such a specter of misery for some people
I understand what you're saying; it doesn't have much sway over me either. But it does over a lot of other folks, by design. And that pull is very real, and quite powerful.
There are plenty of people who claim (Facebook|Twitter) is what you make of it.
But it seems to me that there's a substantive difference between the default-circles of Facebook where you see what your 'friends' post/share, and the default-broadcast of Twitter where more things are shouted publicly to the ether.
To be sure, posts on either can be 100% public, and, in theory, you only see what you 'follow' on Twitter, but the design of the platforms is very different, and they have very different incentive structures. (Despite Facebook's incessant drive to increase engagement).
I'm just like you. Friends' family, dogs, humor posts. I've aggressively unfollowed connections who exhibit/show behavior/posts/lifestyles I don't want to be exposed to.
twitter is mostly anonymous users shitposting and dunking on each other.
facebook is all your friends' racist friends yelling at you, interspersed with bizarre ads for products you'll never buy and sponsored links to phony news sites. it's a completely different dynamic and it's much more insidious.
Rather than going cold turkey on Social Media, I’ve found it more effective to reduce the amount of content I’m exposed to e.g. for Facebook unfollowing all groups, turning off all notifications, reducing friends; for Instagram unfollowing almost all accounts And turning off all notifications etc.
This has the effect that when I DO inevitably visit these sites, I spend far less time there and it’s much less entertaining since I reach the “bottom” much quicker.
From the title I initially wasn't sure if this would be about people who quit using Facebook becoming happier, or people who quit working there. Anecdotally both are true among my peer group :)
Rather than going cold turkey, I’ve found it much more effective to find ways to reduce my engagement e.g by turning off notifications for all platforms, unfollowing friends, groups etc.
I’ve significantly reduced my
Social media usage using this because I’m no longer tempted to scratch the itch of a notification, and when I do visit, there’s far less content so I’ll almost always reach the bottom’ now. I basically no longer use Facebook because I’ve made it barren for myself and significantly reduced time spent on Instagram.
I like looking at my friends pictures on Facebook. But I never understood why I would post any pictures myself. I don’t understand the upside. Even my profile photo is blank.
As an aside, if anyone has any unusual things that you have done that have helped with depression, please mention them. I've done the usual route of therapy and meds but that didn't help with my depression or suicidal thoughts. Thanks in advance.
Continue to see a licensed professional but one thing I've learned is that people tend to be happier when there is something to look forward to. If everything pending in your life is a dread, it can be a downward spiral. The best approach is to find that thing for you. It could be volunteering or a hobby. It doesn't have to be the perfect thing but just pick one. Learn how to take photographs and how to use a camera with f-stops. Learn how to bake pastries. Join civic clubs or church clubs or hiking clubs. Join a gym and get in shape. If you don't like it, try something else. Search on meetup.com or other similar. Most of these things have an impassioned group of people who will talk about the group's focus for hours on end. It creates anecdotes and funny stories and events to look forward to. It creates a sense of accomplishment even if you only get better at thing X very very slowly. You make progress and improve.
"My own sense is that –certainly for males, and maybe for anybody, having a certain amount of fitness and strength makes you proud, and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know." - Stewart Brand
You might want to check out 'The Book of Joy' by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize winner and archbishop). The book lays out what these two men believe are the fundamental pillars of enduring happiness. Instead of doing a poor job summarizing the contents, here's a link to Amazon if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CZCW34Q. Wish you the best.
Damn. Alcohol helped me some, but it's rather difficult to recommend that.
Simply accepting that it's going to be part of my life forever has helped some as well. I look for small pleasures, and it takes my life off of my thoughts for a while.
Regular exercise, quitting a job I didn't like (biggest win, took me out of a depression), removed myself from an extremely negative friend (this happened for other reasons, but I noticed after it left me happier).
What I aspire to and think would leave me happier is taking a more deliberate approach to hanging out with friends than my current just going with the flow (and forgetting to hang out with people out of sight).
Not sure if you're open to controlled substances, psychedelics in particular, but LSD has been the singular thing that has really made an impact on my depression (and I've gone thru the usual round of therapy/medication/etc). Ten years ago I had a serious suicide attempt. I'm happier and healthier than ever now, and I credit a lot of what helped me to LSD. Happy to chat about this more if any body has any questions, but otherwise I find Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind an excellent introduction to psychedelic therapy (although his experience focuses predominantly on psychedelic mushrooms, there's a lot in common as they do have similar but different effects on the brain).
It's important to note that LSD or any psychedelic therapy isn't a cure-all. It's more like an accelerated, intense meditative/therapeutic state that allows you to reflect upon your life in a way that doesn't involve the ego-center of your brain. I highly recommend everyone to try it as it offers a way to introspect on yourself that is pretty difficult to achieve in normal life.
I sincerely hope people at FB come to the realization that they can do something powerful to dramatically change the world IF they are willing to forgo the money.
"The Treatment group was less likely to say they follow news about politics or the President, and less able to correctly answer factual questions about recent news events. Our overall index of news knowledge fell by 0.19 standard deviations. There is no detectable effect on political
engagement, as measured by voter turnout in the midterm election and the likelihood of clicking on email links to support political causes. Deactivation significantly reduced polarization of views on policy issues and a measure of exposure to polarizing news. Deactivation did not statistically significantly reduce affective polarization (i.e. negative feelings about the other political party) or
polarization in factual beliefs about current events, although the coefficient estimates also point in
that direction. Our overall index of political polarization fell by 0.16 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, prior work has found that a different index of political polarization rose by 0.38 standard deviations between 1996 and 2018 (Boxell 2018)."
2. Deactivation increased "well-being", by about 20-40% the amount you'd expect for someone getting therapy:
"Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular in self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. Effects on subjective well-being as measured by responses to brief daily text messages are positive but not significant. Our overall index of subjective well-being improved by 0.09 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, this is about 25-40 percent of the effect of psychological interventions including self-help therapy, group training, and individual therapy, as reported in a meta-analysis by Bolier et al. (2013). These results are consistent with prior studies."
3. After the experiment ended, people in the treatment group didn't feel like they needed to go back:
"As the experiment ended, participants reported planning to use Facebook much less in the future."
"About 80 percent of the Treatment group agreed
that the deactivation was good for them."
FB is mostly a tool for evil but it's got some amazing parenting resources. On the evil side you have the anti-vax nutters but you also have supportive parent groups for whatever weird disorder/issue/disease/problem your kid might have where the evidence-based stuff is winning out. Global scale organizing of these resources is a net benefit for sure.
I suppose 10 years ago they would have been on yahoo groups. 10 years before that, mailing lists. Now they're on FB and I guess that's alright if you don't mind FB knowing everything about your kids problems.
So yeah FB still evil warmongers against privacy but its power to organize moms does some little bit of good in this world.
Is that a net benefit, though? Couldn't those communities re-organize onto platforms that don't harm democracy and rationality? On the one hand, anti-vaxxers have caused a lot of damage, and FB aided in that; on the other hand, FB in general has taken revenue and power from those groups, and do we want FB to have more or less power?
I confirm. Facebook stopped properly working for me today: I use it mostly on a smartphone via a mobile Firefox, and it stopped showing more than 4 lines of text in every post, drawing a non-working 'more' link at the end of line four. So, I decided not to report the issue because I feel myself much happier without Facebook.
Facebook is still the best way to get people to gather. I have recently started a fan club for a soccer group, and without Facebook it would have been impossible to organize. No other social media platform addresses that need, that I know of, that has a massive reach to get people with common interests. Organizing events and reaching people is made much easier.
I almost quit FB (almost only business) and I'm spending more time on HN :-)
Basically I know less about my friends living far from me but they are second/third tier friends anyway: the time spent together in real life is what matters.
FB FOMO is a such an issue for myself. I remind myself that no one has a perfect life but nonetheless, I find myself driven to inspect profiles of people I admire, only to be horrified when I realize how much younger, but still more successful, they are than myself, or they do more interesting work, or are paid more, or live in a more appealing city, or take nicer vacations or inhabit more attractive bodies.
It's perfect recipe for feeling inadequate. I console myself by knowing someone is lurking my profile, thinking the same thing.
I am glad you shared your personal experience. Quite refreshing to read (even if it's a negative experience) in a thread that usually gathers a gazillion of people who "don't understand what's wrong, I use it only in an healthy way: for events and keeping in touch with friends/family a continent away".
FB has 2 barbs which are quite painful when deployed together: 1) The cheap and easy social validation of the "like" and 2) The observation of other people's status-seeking, which invalidates our own.
It's much like a drug- if you can use it responsibly, that's great. But we are just animals and all too often we gradually use FB more and more as a dopamine trigger. Often, this is in the form of edgy memes, angry politics, soft-core porn or just status-seeking. Add some FOMO to the mix and you will assuredly feel pretty crummy.
The FB like button is such an insanely powerful feedback mechanism. I never would have thought, 15 years ago, that such a simple thing could take over people's minds so completely. But it's becoming abundantly clear that not only is FB playing to our weakness, they are playing us against each other. In the scramble for likes, we obsessively refresh our pages. Likes cost FB nothing but the chase for them leads its users to churn in circles, all the while generating ad revenue and which finally resolves itself as Zuckerberg's 18th mansion.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadQuestions I wish there were answered: is it about anxious browsing? anxious goshipping? compare oneself to others? compulsive procrastination? does it apply to other social networks, is it related to general screen time or just mindless consuming? would movies and stronger leisure activities have a similar effect or just compulsive social network browsing and the mental drain of feeling like comparing to others?
EDIT: spell and formating
I would be curious about this part, namely in sporting activities where the participants are considered "lower-performers". I would also like to see some connection to other psychological studies like Fixed/Growth Mindsets. Someone with a fixed mindset may show more life satisfaction quitting than a growth mindset person.
Some takeaways:
Deactivation reduced (political) polarization:
"The Treatment group was less likely to say they follow news about politics or the President, and less able to correctly answer factual questions about recent news events. Our overall index of news knowledge fell by 0.19 standard deviations. There is no detectable effect on political engagement, as measured by voter turnout in the midterm election and the likelihood of clicking on email links to support political causes. Deactivation significantly reduced polarization of views on policy issues and a measure of exposure to polarizing news. Deactivation did not statistically significantly reduce affective polarization (i.e. negative feelings about the other political party) or polarization in factual beliefs about current events, although the coefficient estimates also point in that direction. Our overall index of political polarization fell by 0.16 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, prior work has found that a different index of political polarization rose by 0.38 standard deviations between 1996 and 2018 (Boxell 2018)."
Deactivation increased "well-being" by about 20-40% the amount you'd expect for someone getting therapy:
"Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular in self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. Effects on subjective well-being as measured by responses to brief daily text messages are positive but not significant. Our overall index of subjective well-being improved by 0.09 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, this is about 25-40 percent of the effect of psychological interventions including self-help therapy, group training, and individual therapy, as reported in a meta-analysis by Bolier et al. (2013). These results are consistent with prior studies."
(2) Assuming that this is true for Facebook, I'm pretty sure the same result would hold true for any other social media site for short-form content (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc).
(3) I'm LESS sure about sites for sharing longer-form writing, such as Reddit and HN. I suspect that the effect is not as stark, but that it does hold true to SOME extent whenever you have the gamification of upvotes and downvotes.
I wonder if what we're going through right now with social media will look irresponsible and quaint the way smoking does in Mad Men at some point in the future.
My point is, is Facebook the only negativity inducing platform? I know for me it isn't. The question is how do you deal with the rest of them? Do you balance news intake against the impact on your mental health or you stop consuming news entirely, because in the end whatever it's set to happen will happen regardless?
Social media isn't news. Most of what we call news isn't. There's very little useful news out there. I read "The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption" by Clay Johnson which covered the topic quite well.
I've also found other benefits of quitting such as spending less money because I'm not seeing as many ads for things I don't need, and not feeling influenced to visit/participate in some activity just because other people are doing it. Maybe it's my own lack of willpower, but I found myself doing and buying a lot of things that ultimately did nothing for me because of the constant flood of information from social media.
Obviously other experiences will vary and I don't judge anyone who feels like they need social media and gain something from it, but for me it added very little to my life and I feel a lot better without it.
I think even HN can be too reward-driven for me personally (I enjoy getting upvoted, etc). I've found that my relationship with all online information platforms was kind of destructive while I was doing it (things like autopilot opening Reddit in an elevator, not seeing anything and then opening another Reddit tab immediately). I've come to view information, especially on sites with an infinite feed, kind of like sugar: it's very good and can be okay in moderation, but if left to my own devices I would go overboard, so I have to specifically police myself.
I thought sticking to my "information diet" would be much harder than it is. I miss very little of what I used to consume: I reach out to the friends I want to keep up with, I look up the news I want to read, and I get to be relatively insulated from the constant torrent of negativity/targeted advertising/etc that happens on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
HN for stay current in my industry.
A very curated Twitter via a third party client for following specific tech creators.
No FB, IG or Reddit. No keeping up with the Jones’s or lusting after others lives.
If I want to talk to someone I make a habit of doing it regularly. I text friends and family at least once a week just to say hi. I attempt to maintain my relationships actively instead of the passive “likes” you can send through social media.
On Twitter, I've attempted to follow industry experts and "special interests" but it seems exclusively about people who I thought would provide insight into that special interest, saying mundane or inflammatory shit.
Maybe it's down to different personality types, but if I'm going to see random shit, I'd rather see it from people I know and love, than from someone I've never met lusting after engagement clicks.
No. The whole premise for the keeping up with Joneses are that you know them well. They love in your neighborhood, they have similar jobs, etc. The phycological lie is that based on some things you should be able to keep up. Whereas with celebreties, you know that what they have in unachievable. They have so much you dont. The joneses are just like you, but with that one new thing. And then the next thing. Etc.
I try to keep all news on RSS feeds to avoid clickbait and ads pretending to be articles.
The only regret I have about deleting FB two years ago: not copying down friends' birthdays.
The solution? Ask them.
i also stopped reading any news, it's all tainted bullshit anyway by whoever paid the most to have it written. i talk more with people around me to get the news.
In the end, while it has made me more depressed not being part of it, it has made me a better person not being part of.
Reddit and HN are the only two online accounts I have. And even I am tempted to delete my Reddit account.
2. follow pages and groups that interest you
3. LAUGH at the comments of idiots that get their kicks out of life by vomiting non-nense.
The future of Facebook looks a lot like the old AOL.
Twitter I would understand a little better. It's such a tar pit of negative energy, insults, rage bait, etc
That's fine, great even, but do you believe those people are reporting their own experiences accurately?
But I also use Facebook primarily for organizing events and group activities.
Deleted, I'll project my soul into the stars and find better company, and sing hymns with Epictitus and Nolan.
I can't. Yes, it's a failure on me, but my experience is better without Facebook in my life.
You mention negativity, and that's part of it. I saw a steady stream of "the world's on fire" type posts. The other side, the rosy view of my friends and family also wasn't great. It was a steady stream of my brain using this as a chance to remind me I can't live up to these people, that I'm falling behind, and that in general, I suck.
It's not true. I could have crafted an equal fantasy and posted it, but I'm not that person. I could let the positive and negative posts go without influencing my mental well-being, but I'm apparently not that person.
All of this is a long way of saying, for me, Facebook is baggage I had to carry around with me. I didn't need to open it, but I knew it was there, ready to mock me at any time. Now my account is gone, and that bit of unnecessary baggage is gone. It added nothing to my life, only made it worse.
One of facebook’s worst long run mistakes was optimizing for engagement vs. enjoyment. It boosts metrics but makes people quit or go cold turkey.
Instagram has never felt like that.
Facebook showed me stuff I didn’t care about it that aggravated me, so I stopped using it. now I’m in thE 5 min a week category. But I’d rather follow more people, but only the important stuff
I try to behave on Facebook like it's 2005 again, before the outrage or glamour.
That being said I think it's totally reasonable that the difficulty each of us experiences in trying to exert such control will vary.
So, the simple reason why fb sucks is that women are in charge of it, it's the gossip corner. And therefore it descends into the angst of pettiness and uselessness, as these are the names of the servants of the superficial.
But the reason why fb is a problem is the fault only of men, wimps who won't give it the one finger salute and delete it.
I'm one of the normies like the grandparent comment. I don't use Facebook all that much, and most of what I see there is just a stream of banal life events from a selection of people that I'd otherwise not hear from. Most of it isn't that interesting directly, but I'll admit that my life is enriched by retaining these relationships I'd otherwise have dropped. It's definitely not something I feel bad after using.
Obviously that's not your experience, and there's nothing wrong with that. Certainly you shouldn't be forced to use this platform if it makes you unhappy. Really this just goes down to "people are all different and we all have to find our paths through the world". Technology changes the battlefield a little at the margins, but it hasn't changed the war.
This was part of the problem for me; it made me think I had more friends than I actually did. What I really had was an app that showed me what everyone I used to know at some point was up to, and many of us start to mistake that for friendship. At some point I had the epiphany that I don't really know the kids from my high school friend circle anymore, and keeping up with them doesn't improve my life. We had our time, the friendship fizzled out as they tend to do, and the healthiest thing for me was to just move on.
My life improved after quitting Facebook because it forced me to be more intentional with who I spend my time on. Rather than passively blasting everyone's news feed with something, I send it individually to the people I want to see it. It makes me be an active participant in friendships, which is something I've had trouble with (at least when using Facebook).
What a funny world we live in, in our heads.
well social media is designed to give you little dopamine hits all the time and we all know when we think about it for a second that the constant, cheap stimulation is bad, but it also hijacks our lizard brains and it's designed to work that way.
The big problem I think is that we let the designers of these applications get away with exactly the 'your preferences indicate you like it' line, well the same applies to gamblers in a casino.
And then the next political cycle hit and I straight up quit. I found the political ads more offensive than anything, and I've never been back since.
FB is a terrible place, ignore the poster you're responding to because they very well could be putting on airs while you're trying to be more honest about things. That's the nature of social media, of which HN is included.
One is physically dependent, one is a fucking website.
Ignore posts from people that cause you stress, or just don't scroll through the website.
I keep mine to keep in touch with people, but I don't view other people's stupid thoughts. Of course that's not going to be fun.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480687/
This article is just a hit piece. This is the trash on HN these days.
It’s like one person has juice and the other has brandy.
Social Networking is not inherently toxic, and quitting many things: sugar, television, even meat, might have the similar effects for some small group of people.
In fact, the entire thread is based on three levels of indirection of misinformation: the Bloomberg article misquoted the paper, and the short-summary referencing Bloomberg made it worse.
Here is the summary of the findings [1]:
"We find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election (i) reduced online activity while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use"
So that's a little bit more information now isn't it? And completely conflates the Facebook/wellbeing issue with a host of other things.
Most poignantly, stopping Facebook usage reduced the amount of factual knowledge a person had access too. So maybe that's not so good?
Maybe by 'removing Facebook' people are simply a little bit more removed from the issues of the day (like elections) many of which can be contentious.
So 'ignorance is bliss' is the result of the study? Or is it really something materially related to Social Networking.
I think we'll need to do some more studying to find out.
[] http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf
How can we distinguish the effect from a general “I’m making a change” groundswell of feel goodery?
Picking up moderate drinking isn't going to make you healthier / more successful.
It's just that successful people tend to be healthier and also are more likely to have a healthy relationship with alcohol.
(Also, worst Oxford comma ever...)
But I do recall an instance where everyone in some college class or something were supposed to abstain from social media for a week, whether they had a healthy relationship with it or not and the group reported substantial increases in life satisfaction.
If I asked you to abstain from any behavior for a week to see if it would improve your life... I bet most studies would show abstention helped.
The relevant question is how this intervention helped, compared to other interventions that could be seen as similar. Eg, if you didn’t watch tv for a week, how would you feel?
I started out doing this and now I drink a bottle every night. No problem.
Personally, my experiences on FB are extremely tame and similar to yours. However I intentionally sabotaged my experience by unfollowing nearly everyone several years ago. Even my rather fallow feed is an engine of engagement and addictive impulse, in part because of years of conditioning myself to go there when I was bored.
People with lives to lead off social media have fewer of these problems.
Similarly for Twitter, I don't follow people who post ragebait or feel the need to comment on everything.
> I don't get how the site is such a specter of misery for some people
I understand what you're saying; it doesn't have much sway over me either. But it does over a lot of other folks, by design. And that pull is very real, and quite powerful.
But it seems to me that there's a substantive difference between the default-circles of Facebook where you see what your 'friends' post/share, and the default-broadcast of Twitter where more things are shouted publicly to the ether.
To be sure, posts on either can be 100% public, and, in theory, you only see what you 'follow' on Twitter, but the design of the platforms is very different, and they have very different incentive structures. (Despite Facebook's incessant drive to increase engagement).
Take control of your social media. It's great!
And orange website isn't?
facebook is all your friends' racist friends yelling at you, interspersed with bizarre ads for products you'll never buy and sponsored links to phony news sites. it's a completely different dynamic and it's much more insidious.
And I think depression and anxiety comes more from all the terrible "news" you get from around the world, it probably applies to "news" in general.
This has the effect that when I DO inevitably visit these sites, I spend far less time there and it’s much less entertaining since I reach the “bottom” much quicker.
Over time I’ve been able to wean myself off.
I’ve significantly reduced my Social media usage using this because I’m no longer tempted to scratch the itch of a notification, and when I do visit, there’s far less content so I’ll almost always reach the bottom’ now. I basically no longer use Facebook because I’ve made it barren for myself and significantly reduced time spent on Instagram.
"My own sense is that –certainly for males, and maybe for anybody, having a certain amount of fitness and strength makes you proud, and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know." - Stewart Brand
Simply accepting that it's going to be part of my life forever has helped some as well. I look for small pleasures, and it takes my life off of my thoughts for a while.
What I aspire to and think would leave me happier is taking a more deliberate approach to hanging out with friends than my current just going with the flow (and forgetting to hang out with people out of sight).
It's important to note that LSD or any psychedelic therapy isn't a cure-all. It's more like an accelerated, intense meditative/therapeutic state that allows you to reflect upon your life in a way that doesn't involve the ego-center of your brain. I highly recommend everyone to try it as it offers a way to introspect on yourself that is pretty difficult to achieve in normal life.
There is a passage for each day of the year (less than 2 pages of reading) and a theme for each month.
Some of the interesting points from the paper:
1. Deactivation reduced (political) polarization:
"The Treatment group was less likely to say they follow news about politics or the President, and less able to correctly answer factual questions about recent news events. Our overall index of news knowledge fell by 0.19 standard deviations. There is no detectable effect on political engagement, as measured by voter turnout in the midterm election and the likelihood of clicking on email links to support political causes. Deactivation significantly reduced polarization of views on policy issues and a measure of exposure to polarizing news. Deactivation did not statistically significantly reduce affective polarization (i.e. negative feelings about the other political party) or polarization in factual beliefs about current events, although the coefficient estimates also point in that direction. Our overall index of political polarization fell by 0.16 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, prior work has found that a different index of political polarization rose by 0.38 standard deviations between 1996 and 2018 (Boxell 2018)."
2. Deactivation increased "well-being", by about 20-40% the amount you'd expect for someone getting therapy:
"Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular in self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. Effects on subjective well-being as measured by responses to brief daily text messages are positive but not significant. Our overall index of subjective well-being improved by 0.09 standard deviations. As a point of comparison, this is about 25-40 percent of the effect of psychological interventions including self-help therapy, group training, and individual therapy, as reported in a meta-analysis by Bolier et al. (2013). These results are consistent with prior studies."
3. After the experiment ended, people in the treatment group didn't feel like they needed to go back:
"As the experiment ended, participants reported planning to use Facebook much less in the future."
"About 80 percent of the Treatment group agreed that the deactivation was good for them."
I suppose 10 years ago they would have been on yahoo groups. 10 years before that, mailing lists. Now they're on FB and I guess that's alright if you don't mind FB knowing everything about your kids problems.
So yeah FB still evil warmongers against privacy but its power to organize moms does some little bit of good in this world.
Basically I know less about my friends living far from me but they are second/third tier friends anyway: the time spent together in real life is what matters.
It's perfect recipe for feeling inadequate. I console myself by knowing someone is lurking my profile, thinking the same thing.
It's much like a drug- if you can use it responsibly, that's great. But we are just animals and all too often we gradually use FB more and more as a dopamine trigger. Often, this is in the form of edgy memes, angry politics, soft-core porn or just status-seeking. Add some FOMO to the mix and you will assuredly feel pretty crummy.
The FB like button is such an insanely powerful feedback mechanism. I never would have thought, 15 years ago, that such a simple thing could take over people's minds so completely. But it's becoming abundantly clear that not only is FB playing to our weakness, they are playing us against each other. In the scramble for likes, we obsessively refresh our pages. Likes cost FB nothing but the chase for them leads its users to churn in circles, all the while generating ad revenue and which finally resolves itself as Zuckerberg's 18th mansion.