I deleted my Facebook account because I wasn't really using it for much and haven't felt any sort of a downside at all.
I found that for social media, platforms like Mastodon feel more comfy and less commercialized, whereas for chatting with other people either 1:1 or group chats across various apps feel nicer without being directly tied to a social media platform. At the same time, platforms that are more focused on a particular set of topics/activities like Reddit/Discord/HN/... instead of people just trying to advertise their lives or build a brand in a sense or whatever are more meaningful to me as well.
To some degree, it probably has something to do with the size of those communities: Mastodon is niche enough not to get spammed with as many bots or adverts or people trying to push a certain narrative, it going under that radar is one of the best things about it, instead it's more organic content.
I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends, college friends, and distant family without having to see irrelevant posts, like some stupid remark from a politician halfway around the world or influencers doing something outrageous just for attention.
Reading this I'm reminded that Facebook used to be like this.
It was still kinda shit because your friends & family still share stuff/rage bait you don't want to see.
But you at least had the option to control. I remember having enough of it with news and rage bait through Facebook in college, and went on to "mute" 95% of all my friends. (following the criterion of muting everyone that shared content that affected me emotionally in a negative way, the number ended up being 95%)
Facebook was actually kinda useful after that, but I also think the 95% number showed to me that even then, without algorithm as strong as now, people just reached out to click bait and shared it.
This has moved heavily into group chats and I’m not sure it’s coming back.
Group chats are basically the Circles that Google+ saw the need for but could never get fully set up. A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances.
Meanwhile Instagram and Facebook keep evolving. Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Instagram is turning into a hipper LinkedIn, where artists, musicians, and local businesses share career and business updates and advertise their wares.
People love LinkedIn cringe on instagram and twitter - but on LinkedIn itself you have to confront the reality that these people, often colleagues / former colleagues etc. are being serious
Well, serious in the same way cult members have to be serious.
If you crack and admit it’s fake, everything falls apart and it’s your fault. Expulsion out onto the street follows.
Even worse, now everyone else is going ‘how could you be so dumb to believe it’ and/or ‘you sure fucked up by admitting it was fake’ all at the same time.
That's great if you are the kind of person wo is added into fun social group chats. But my group chats are mostly functional, like for hobbies, or parents groups for the kids' classes, and so on. There is one family group which sees annoying memes every now and then, and one group with friends from university which is also rarely used.
Old school social networks used to be this noncommital, low-threshold way to connect with others around you. It was really great if you were a socially awkward teen or twenty-something. It's no big deal to friend somebody on facebook (or MySpace, or your universities gamified campus management system or whatever) and see what they are doing, or strike up a conversation. I really miss that kind of network.
The best social networks i have are imessage group chats. One with my old college friends, one with my immediate family, and another with extended family. My kids have their own group chats with their classmates. They're much better than the social platforms.
Eh, I'd disagree on the Instagram front. If you look at the reels section, where most spend their time, it's just a more deplorable tiktox. 80% of the content on there is soft core porn advertising one OnlyFans girl or another. The other 20% seems to be brain rot memes. I reinstalled it recently after 8 years of not having it, and immediately deleted it.
I read Facebook with the special URL[1] that gives a traditional reverse chronological feed (plus ads, of course), but it's all my friends and family.
Unfortunately, some of my family post insane political views, usually about now in the early AM. Being told that a King of the USA and the elimination of due process are good things doesn't help my mental health.
While there will always be unhinged relatives, maybe the problem would be less pronounced without the polarization that comes with the networks pushing polarizing posts into their faces in their never ending quest for more "engagement" by users.
The issue they've been told is important, right? For example it was vital in the minds of some in USA to put import taxes (tariffs) >100% on all Chinese goods.
They would have seemed to care about that, until Trump got told that wasn't working (or, as likely, the market had been swung far enough) and did a 180 removing tariffs on what the public were told were the most vital things to tariff...
All those people didn't change their mind at the exact moment it was needed to swing the stock market back and for you mate the oligarchs money - just Musk et al. have built a brainwash machine at a national level.
It's an important distinction - when interviewed it seems barely any of those being manipulated can form a coherent thought about "the issue they care about".
I think the EU should flex their regulatory muscle and forbid algorithmic feeds on by default unless the networks break european society as the US is broken.
I don’t know how much of a difference it would make, as then we just become the algorithm.
I quit Facebook over a decade ago, because others used it to go “look at my shiny car/wife/house”, and I would use it to lose friends and alienate people.
These online environments do not foster any kind of human connection.
Blue sky allows you to have many different kinds of feeds and I can say the difference in adrenaline level and mood is palpable depending on the feed I use.
News items - frustration at the state the world is in.
Urban bicycle feed: annoyance at the atrocities of the inept drivers.
Feed with cycle side trip pictures: fun.
Rust projects, Electronics: the curiosity of learning.
Also: Bluesky has an absolutely amazing feature which is you can subscribe to someone else’s block lists. That changes the experience quite a lot, to the better.
They should just say that algorithm is editorialised and needs to be subject to the same regulations as newspapers (fined for fake news, editor can lose his journalist status).
Newspapers can publish all the fake news they want. There's no special carve out for e.g. tabloids. The only constraint they have is they aren't protected by section 230, so they can be sued for things like defamation or libel.
The big one to me is paid content should be clearly labeled as paid content and should be skippable programmatically and in bulk. Things like product placement.
The result of a purely chronological feed is that you have to scroll through 10 posts from the same person and never see anything from people that post good content rarely.
Plenty of people like and enjoy "algorithmic feeds". I can enjoy occasionally scrolling through a feed. Banning it is like banning alcohol because there are alcoholics in society.
Obviously there’s a balance to be struck here. We could legalise fentanyl and tell people to just not use it, but that probably wouldn’t have a very positive impact on society.
At the very least we should acknowledge the negative externalities. Just leaving it up to the market to figure out (especially if we allow the current tech monopolies to exist) will result in serious societal impact.
"The result of a purely chronological feed is that you have to scroll through 10 posts from the same person and never see anything from people that post good content rarely."
But who made the demand, to have everything shown from everyone?
Imagine a social network, where you make your own rules for your feed. That special person who posts rarely, but good will have special visibility. And from that bored family member that basically spams, you will see the message "X has posted 50 pictures and text today" and with a click you can go there.
I'm sure that would work out fine. Just like the GDPR regulation made the web so much better & more private, and the promise of the AI act is boosting innovation in Europe...
The GDPR regulation is great and arguably does make the web more private and better. At the very least, it's better than having no regulations.
I've even been able to successfully use it to remove something private about me from the internet. I don't think I would have even gotten a response had there been no legal precedent.
You can always argue about how some regulations are badly implemented or incomplete but I believe it would be very misguided to believe that no regulations are instead the better alternative.
Intellectually many want this. But the feed shortcuts our reptile brain and gains more engagement minutes / day. As you say, the algorithmic feed is superior for creators wanting reach, and more importantly, advertisers who want eyeballs on their ads. Due to network effects, it is likely impossible to get friends and family to join a boring and non-profit alternative.
Instead of pausing social media altogether, I recently took some time off from the endless scrolling feeds only. When returning it's so apparent how everything is bait for engagement.
The feed hijacks the human attention process on a visceral level. Either with visual stimulus that's extremely intriguing for evolved apes like us (cutting a cake that looks like a dog), or by activating an emotional response from a tribal species like us (stupid takes on politics, in- and out-group stuff).
The rest of most social media apps is fine and offers much of what you are asking for.
I've got a personal policy: No websites that have an infinite scroll. That means no new Reddit, mobile Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, or similar. This also means I can't use food delivery services, since those tend to be infinite as well.
If they're paginated that's fine, even if they're infinitely so. Infinite scrolling is just a very good touchstone as to the quality and addictiveness of a site, and I'll avoid anything that has it.
For this reason I get my news through RSS and like using Discord -- both have finite ends (even if there may be a lot of content in bursts.)
I’m reminded of how junk food was seen as a dominant and crushing force, and how today we have moved to people willingly embracing healthier lifestyles.
I rue the amount of damage caused, before people and society began resisting and arresting its deleterious effects.
But perhaps this is the same process being followed here. New shiny for the reptile brain, eventually the costs are made clear and people decide they would rather not become statistics and instead find joy in other formats and tools.
Then People make those formats or invent ways of engaging with our tools that includes self care and leads to more happiness. We grow older and we eventually get tired of all the online health fads and become crotchety older humans.
> Intellectually many want this. But the feed shortcuts our reptile brain and gains more engagement minutes / day.
I’m not sure if that’s actually a “shortcut” to the reptile brain and it’s just about “I have to scroll more to get stuff I’m interested in. At least for me it feels like that and it causes me to use these social media things far less.
For me it feels more like intermittent rewards vs full rewards at once.
Obviously for the ad-industry the intermittent rewards are more useful, that’s why we can’t have nice things
> it is likely impossible to get friends and family to join a boring and non-profit alternative.
Isn’t this just WhatsApp now though? The addition of Statuses, Following and now Communities almost confirms this. People are dropping Facebook and IG, but can’t give up WhatsApp (yet).
Social media started as a way to stay connected with people you actually know, but it's morphed into this performative attention economy where the loudest, most extreme content wins.
You're talking about something exactly like the ‘Moments’ of WeChat, China's largest social media. It doesn't have a feed, but only updates from friends and family. But still, people spend so much time on that - 900 million people spending an average of 1 hour and 42 minutes per person per day.
Instagram used to be closer to this when they showed posts in chronological order. Of course, Facebook got to work and ended this by showing posts in algo-sorted order, added an explore page, and even started showing non-followed people's viral content on the main feed. So unfortunately the trend has been a slow frog-boiling march towards engagement and enshittification.
In the meantime, maybe I should just share more photos in the group chat instead...
The “like” button killed genuine engagement, and made Facebook an exercise in lever-pressing. The problem is that in a lot of cases (not all), those stupid remarks and outrageous influencers are being “liked” and “reposted” by your network in order to gather reflected glory and dopamine hits.
A social network is no better than the sum of its parts, and to create something really worthwhile, you have to limit what people are allowed to post (original content only, for example).
You mean, what it was to begin with? Right now WhatsApp is basically my family Facebook. Images, videos, chat. Separate groups of people so you can remain friends with two former friends who are now mortal enemies. Facebook is just another toxic, addictive social media.
The single problem with social media is that they are not public, but are heavily thought of (and propagandized) as such.
Any marketplace that is privately owned, is not a free market place. And, the elephant in the room, these social media marketplaces are owned by parties with very particular interests. As long as don't recognise that, we will let ourselves be distracted by details that are always the result of this private control.
Something social must be public, or it isn't social, and it isn't what you and I really want.
I logged into classmates a couple of years ago. I had a message waiting from 2005 from one of my sister's insane ex-friends. That was a blast from the past and hilarious. 18 years without bothering to log in.
Then I realized their business model is so low-rent, they had web 1.0 style protections on scraping all their scanned yearbooks. So I liberated all the ones with anyone I was likely to know and posted them to Archive.org.
I wrote my own client for Twitter, which was later adapted to also support Bluesky. The idea behind the project was to scrape porn easily, but it's also an amazing tool where it shows me the feed I personally want to see. This is pretty much the only way I interact with these services.
> This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media... Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends
This sort of longing for a cozy social media circles exists a lot in tech adjacent circles. However, unless you can align the needs of users with the revenue goals of the company, which in other words simply means that users pay for the pay for the product, this is not gonna happen. While you may be willing to do so, I'm sure many people would simply stop communicating with you because of the additional friction caused, especially when a free alternative exists.
Additionally, the "viral content" you speak of exists for two reasons, which I'm not sure it could be entirely solved even if you had users pay for the product.
Most people (me included) have very little intellectual capacity after work and other responsibilities, and need some easily absorbed "slop" to kill their time. I've personally tried engaging in more creative pursuits, but I can't do a good job at it at with all my energy sapped. This is where viral content, such as posts from politicians and celebrities, gain their initial spread.
I would also like to note that someone may want to follow a politician or celebrity because they think what they're doing is generally useful or entertaining, respectively.
This leads me to my second point, where even if you self-opted to not interact with viral content, I'm not sure your social circles would also follow through with the same choice. This ultimately means the platform has to take specific measures to suppress some posts based on its content or not show any of your friends' activity, both of which has disadvantages. Further, the former is in itself controversial depending upon which politician is in power and the current Overton window[1].
(Re downvotes: I'd like to know what part of all of this people disagree with.)
> However, unless you can align the needs of users with the revenue goals of the company
I’m reading this as: The corporate internet is unable to fulfill the actual social needs of its users.
>Most people (me included) have very little intellectual capacity after work and other responsibilities, and need some easily absorbed "slop" to kill their time. I've personally tried engaging in more creative pursuits, but I can't do a good job at it at with all my energy sapped.
And this translates to: Our economic system drains us of so much of our energy that living a fulfilling life is no longer possible, and so we fill our valuable time with the slop that same system serves us.
I think you’re being downvoted because your comment speaks to an uncomfortable truth, namely that none of this is working to advance quality of life but rather to advance the contents of a few wallets.
I'm certainly an anomaly but since to me the downsides of social media have always been quite prominent and seemed to outweigh the benefits by a margin, I never jumped on the social media train.
But I've got to say, it's getting harder and harder to keep that up. As our kids get older especially, almost all of their social activities are somehow tied to social media one way or the other: no matter what they're joining, minimally there's a WhatsApp group. My wife has reluctantly joined WhatsApp and if it wasn't for that, it feels like we would pretty much be destined to become social outcasts.
In one recent instance, we weren't even aware of a parent group for one of our children's school class until someone asked us (in person!) why we didn't come bowling the previous night. We had no idea, and no-one sees the necessity to include someone who - for whatever reason - is not on WhatsApp.
I can see the argument that we are inconveniencing others by not wanting to be reachable to what has now become a standard means of being in touch, and that we cannot expect others to jump through hoops just to include us. But a few years back, I was quite deeply involved in privacy research and I definitely feel no inclination to share all of my communications (and pictures) with Meta.
I'd still not class WhatsApp as a social media platform as your story implies. It is a communication tool for the most part with some social features slowly being baked in. The downsides you're speaking of are far more applicable to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and similar, more than WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord.
I don't know where you're based, but in general these days at least one "chat app" of some kind is the de facto standard in most countries. For a lot of the world, that's WhatsApp.
The US is an outlier in still relying majorly on SMS as the communications platform.
I’m with the GP on this on. WhatsApp should absolutely be covered under the same umbrella here due to it being owned by Meta, who have a long history of breaking promises regarding privacy.
And since a lot of people do keep in contact via WhatsApp group chats, it’s hard to ignore the social implications of WhatsApp too. It’s as much a social platform as the others albeit with a different broadcast model.
As a parent, I have to monitor my child’s WhatsApp groups to check they’re safe, just like I would their YouTube and Instagram feeds. And I have to check they’re also being safe with the stuff that they share on WhatsApp, just like you would on any other social network.
I feel your point but I don't think WhatsApp counts as social media. It's a group messaging app, same as Facebook Messenger, Signal, etc. Those messaging apps don't have the typical social media downsides -- you don't need to maintain a profile, there's no doom scrolling, etc.
Social media (and apps like WhatsApp) have basically become the new default infrastructure for everyday communication, and opting out can unintentionally make you feel like you're opting out of life, especially when it comes to your kids' social circles.
It's not that bad or that hard to avoid social media. I'm in my early twenties and never had much social media. You're right in that WhatsApp is almost everywhere (in certain countries) and hard to avoid. But WhatsApp is still a messaging app and not as bad as Instagram, TikTok etc. I'd say, use something like Signal for all your close communication with family and close friends. If those are close friends I'm sure they'll use Signal to communicate with you too. I guess keep WhatsApp installed but use it only for those groups and not really for any personal chats.
As for the really attention grabbing social media like Instagram and TikTok, if your kids want to get on there I'd say provide a good alternative. Something they can use or open if boredom strikes, because there definitely are those moments when that happens and one just grabs the phone. For me it's mostly been HN and books, some YouTube channels with NewPipe and some podcasts.
I never used any "social media" besides the instant messengers. I try to minimize WhatsApp in favor of better options.
It's a constant, uphill battle. I feel that dating is impossible w/o WhatsApp, if you exchange phone numbers with someone at a bar, it's completely useless if you can't contact them on WhatsApp afterwards. Almost nobody (at least here in central Europe) has any other messenger, and every other avenue of contact would be either considered very pushy (like calling) or from the 90s (like SMS).
Taking part in group events also becomes a headache if you don't join the related WhatsApp group.
I find it appalling that basic features of human social functions are subject to the whims and profiteering of a quasi-monopolist company. There should be heavy regulations, at the very least.
The OP doesn't seem to make a difference between social media for consuming content that the "algorithm" crams down your throat and simple group chats that are usually closed and invite only.
Tbh I have a feeling it's the kids' fault. They call everything social media now. No separate names for FB and WhatsApp even though they do totally different things.
> Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, Letterboxd, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Viber, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok.
The broad interpretation that includes Reddit would also categorise HN as social media which I think is fair.
I think the problem actually is the adults that are not being specific about which problems they want to stop when they broadly say that social media is bad.
Like you say, the problem is specifically things like algorithms that are tuned for engagement, which results in all kinds of negative effects.
That being said even this is not specific enough. HN although different is also run on an algorithm that is meant to surface the most interesting things. The site rules on HN avoid some of the bad effects, but it’s still possible to be negatively impacted in other ways like checking HN too often and too long instead of doing other things.
> Look at how broad the definition on Wikipedia is.
But wikipedia doesn't make up definitions, just lists the commonly used meaning.
> I think the problem actually is the adults that are not being specific about which problems they want to stop when they broadly say that social media is bad.
Adults are also talking about cell phone addiction, like browsing FB/Instagram on your laptop is any better.
> HN although different is also run on an algorithm that is meant to surface the most interesting things.
Is it? I thought it was human upvotes and maybe a few human mods...
It would be interesting to determine why HN still works btw. It's a pretty unified community that is fairly large.
Is the main reason that it's basically a non profit?
I see the opposite trend, as the (imo much needed) shock from Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation' is only starting to really resonate in the minds of educators and parents.
No smartphones allowed at school, strict usage limits for older kids at home, etc.
If only somehow we managed to make social media uncool for the kids, that’s the most sure way they’d stay away from it.
I guess proper education on the real aspects of the social media phenomenon would be the real deal. For example, explaining how/why the companies use their algorithms to keep you in there; influencers only want to sell you a product; why posts/stories don’t reflect reality at all, etc.
But understanding all that would require quite some amount of emotional maturity from both the kids and parents themselves. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the reality at all, there are adults that still can’t see through the cracks..
Surprised FB is even in this category anymore. Anecdotally, not many people post there anymore. I stay mostly for the groups not what people who I am connected to as a friend are doing. Status updates and check in’s seem like a thing of the past. It’s an easy way to share pictures with family. Group feature is very good. Our HOA has a group on there.
Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.
This was my biggest source of joy on the modern internet.
When the walls fell and everybody left, I dropped 200 followers to 500 but by X's own metrics no one sees my tweets. I would estimate between 13 and 20 is my average view count. When I do post, I am lucky a single person interacts, and it is almost always someone I know in the real world.
I have presences on Mastodon and Bluesky, but my follower count on both remains in the low teens. I don't think the market is there anymore for "dude that ponders technology questions". I tweet like it's 2010 and no one cares anymore.
This was the death of social media for me. This was the last place I was really "social" on the internet and it died.
Genuinely this has had a very negative effect on me, the only somewhat of a silver lining is that I now have these conversations with ChatGPT. It's not as much fun though.
Instagram is just brainrot these days. I'd used it for years to post my absolute best photos as a sort of curated gallery. No one cares anymore. Nothing I post ever gets seen. Why bother.
That sums up my general opinion of all social media these days, why bother.
> Genuinely this has had a very negative effect on me
I think that's an issue. I totally see why you were negatively impacted but I think we tend to forget it is not real life and in 99% of cases not important conversations/debates we are having with random people on the internet - they could be fun to have (or not) but important they are not.
We treat social media popularity as if it is part of our identity, as if its almost as important as actual family and friends - and it really isn't.
My sense is that Twitter’s fall was an opportunity for a lot of people to just drop out. I know for me it’s become a very occasional thing and neither Bluesky nor Mastodon ever achieved critical mass. As far as I’m concerned the format is largely done.
And you all made place for guys like me; I don’t get booed away by 90% of the users anymore when engaging in discussion, more often I get an actual discussion out of it. Before that it was just a highly toxic “noo my opinion is the right one and I’m rigid on that and you’re an idiot” ambience.
Funny how things shift like that. Also never engaged with political stuff.
Whatever works for you personally I find there is no longer a critical mass of professional peers to engage with so I’ve mostly reluctantly just dropped it.
This has been my experience as well. I was a heavy lurker during peak Twitter phase, but I still got lots of value from it.
I tried posting about tech and stuff and there’s absolute silence. No one cares anymore as if there are only tumbleweeds out there.
I logged out of all my social media accounts (except HN) and moved them to hidden apps category. As a result I managed to read 3 lovely books and finished my side project ever since.
Because twitter has been gutted, its history the information sector equivallent of vulture capitalism. Take platform, gut its credibility and audience for some end goal (e.g. buying an election, redefining the truth in the minds of many) and leave a smouldering corpse behind.
Twitter is dead, and its grave is marked with nothing more than an X.
I have the complete opposite experience. I now get the aha moments I got from reddit before its private api downfall. I get actual discussions. There’s an equal split between opinions.
I think the difference here is that you were already “in” it, and it changed. I wasn’t “in” it because I hated the vibe and fakeness and just denying of my experience, but now I get the opportunity to join in a “resetting” environment. It’s refreshing and just way more real.
I blocked a few political accounts at the start and now I don’t see that at all btw
I downgraded my Instagram from curated feed of "interesting" things to just basically a journal of my travels and hobbies. Just less stressful this way.
I think Substack fills that gap for me. If you haven't already explored it then by the sounds of it I think you'd like it.
It functions more as a platform for blogs, but if you use the app there are blog-specific group chats, you can follow people, and the home page contains 'notes' that are pretty tweet-like in format. Once you have a collection of say 15-20 blogs that your subscribed to I found that the notes I got recommended were quite good and could spark some interesting conversations.
A few tech related ones I like are The Pragmatic Engineer, ByteByteGo, Bad Software Advice, and Exponential View.
Probably at some point soon social media companies will recognise this and provide everyone with very nearly human-like bots that engage happily with your content. This will probably be even more addictive than their previous products.
This sycophant-as-a-service feature is already close to the way the major LLMs currently work. Discuss any moderately controversial topic with them, and they'll lean into your opinion within a couple of comments.
Theres a boom and bust cycle that social media platforms seem to go through. Build something nice for socializing. Add ad breaks to the socializing. Replace content you want with content that can only be described as political / informatiom warefare.
people move to new platform that is nice for socializing. The cycle begins anew.
I for one dont have the energy for it anymore. Im done. Im burnt out. If it isnt a real human in front of me it can fuck off and burn in hell. I make an exception for hacker news, because it doesnt seem trashed to shit by bots astroturfing just about every post to sway public opinion, but the moment it starts I will unplug from the public net for good, and nothing of value will be lost.
The surprise here is how little of an effect it has. Deactivating facebook makes you only 1/16th of one standard deviation happier. And instagram even less. And this was measured during elections, when the effect is likely to be greatest.
Kinda crazy that the magnitude is so small! (my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")
I think this is an important and often overlooked phenomenon actually. Studies of Internet engagement are filled with these skewed distributions that follow something like a Pareto principle, or I've heard it termed the 90-9-1 distribution in engagement where 90% of users just lurk a bit, 9% contribute casually, and then 1% are contributing like half of the content on the platform.
It would follow logically that whatever kind of brain rot social media causes, would affect 1% of the population very dramatically, another 9% somewhat more noticeably, and then there would be this vast ocean of people who are only marginally aware/affected. From the perspective of online activity they appear to not even exist.
This always seems counterintuitive to the 9% or the 1% (and just by commenting we're already in one of those demogs). But there's lots of data out there supporting these skewed distributions in online activity.
These percentages are similar to those that one sees for alcohol consumption or problematic gambling.
The business model of the casinos and the drug dealers and the alcohol venders is the same - you need a huge pool of unproblematic recreational users to find the problematic users who generate the bulk of your profits.
The same model works for video games and social media.
I’d be interested in the results of a study that cuts out all social media, but the problem I can already see with that is self-selection bias (the people that would volunteer for it are probably already eager to get away from social media so the results would likely be skewed).
Personally I’ve been mentally in a better place since getting rid of my social media accounts during COVID, but it does cause problems because Facebook has become a utility as well (schools and real-life social groups use it for co-ordinating activities).
The perceived utility of social media seems pretty variable, not just across people, but with the same person in different circumstances. With covid, social media might scare people out who were regular users previously, and yet for other occasional or reluctant users it's suddenly seen as the only option for human contact and they use it constantly. After lock-downs are over, people flip to the polar opposite of their previous preference. With recessions, social media might be the only affordable entertainment but during better times, many would rather do something else. In general I bet it's insanely hard to run good experiments for behavioural economics in volatile times, even if you're really trying to be careful about methodology.
> The fact that less than one percent of the people who were invited to the study completed the experiment underscores that one should be cautious in generalizing results outside our sample. Most of this sample selection is driven by the fact that only a few percent of people click on research study invitations or social media ad
The self selection bias in these ad based invitation studies is just out of whack.
I suspect that those who participate were already considering quitting.
> The surprise here is how little of an effect it has [..] measured during elections, when the effect is likely to be greatest.
If you were depressed because of divisive politics on social media, then you leave social media during elections where divisive politics is everywhere in the real world anyway.. self-reported depression seems like it would not change much. So the results might make sense as long as they are targeting people that are old enough to be depressed by politics in the first place, and assuming politics rather than body-image issues etc is the main driver.
Some follow up questions.. does social media make divisive political issues in the real world worse? Seems like it! How old is old enough to be depressed by politics? Probably everyone now, which phenomenon is also likely caused by social media. Honestly regardless of elections, you can't actually leave social media by leaving social media anymore, it's kinda in the very fabric of things.
> my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")
Same, I mean this seems to be going against most of the other research on this. For what it's worth, here's a paper with some of the same authors on digital addiction ( https://www.nber.org/papers/w28936 ). Abstract states that
> Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use.
So.. not necessarily painting social media as wonderful. Social media companies would be interested in research about social media addiction for obvious reasons, but probably do not in general want that research public. Unless of course it hurts competitors more than it hurts them, and this paper is in the middle of drama about a tiktok ban. Maybe the authors just say what people in power want to hear at the time?
Removing one dopamine addicting and cortisol antagonising source might just be replaced by more of all the other sources that are being consumed.
Perhaps they just watched TV news more, for example?
But perhaps the study shows that the effect works in the right direction even if small and even when replaced by any other behaviours that cause unhappiness, depression and anxiety.
50 years from now, we are going to be looking back at Social Media and Smartphone addiction like we currently look at smoking. “How insane were we to have allowed it and allowed it to be promoted?” our grandchildren will rightly ask!
Maybe the record of history itself will change. When it’s all LLM’s feeding into each other then how long until every whackadoo conspiracy theory becomes a historical fact?
“Perfectly fine” is a bit of a stretch. No amount of alcohol is good for health. WHO now say even small amounts increase risk of cancer and liver disease.
I'd argue that small amounts of alcohol facilitate relaxation and socialization, which probably saves a lot more lives from preventing homicide and suicide than it costs in cancer and liver disease.
Hope you are right but I think it's different. Smoking has very visible side effects fairly soon though- types of cancer, photos of rotten lungs and throat everywhere on cigarette packs etc.
Social media only seems to have psychological side effects which aren't as openly visible to our eyes.
Your attitude is exactly what the parent comment is describing. You have the benefit of decades of scientific research and government mandates that didn't exist for previous generations. Modern cigarettes date to the late 1800's but the link between smoking and cancer wasn't established until the 1950's. It took over a decade after that for the first warning labels to appear on packs, and the photo type you're describing didn't exist until the 2000's.
It seems obvious to you because it has been made obvious to you. It wasn't the same for people in the first half of the 1900's. The parent comment is making the same point: it's not obvious to most people today, but in fifty years from now, people will look at the research, the decline in the birth rate, the increase of anxiety, and effects we can't imagine today and go "social media has very visible side effects fairly soon, how did they not know?"
Anecdotal: Stopping commenting on reddit reduced
emotional stress significantly.
Reddit is one of those "social" anti-social circles where
you can't afford to be on the "wrong side of argument" and
every discussion can quickly spiral out.
I've done the same with HN, somewhat. I log out by default, just to add a barrier between reading something and responding to it. Has to be something I really feel I must reply to or worth adding more information to, to make me log in.
I agree to some extent, but even highly specialised / niche topics on dedicated subs are getting slammed by the "hivemind". I guess it's more apparent for non-us users, as we're not the target audience, but the political brigading is showing even on subs like space and ML related. Reddit is now very similar to ~2015-16 reddit when the-donald and other subs really peaked, just the other way around. 10/25 posts on all are bad orange man and bad space man related. The technology sub is a mess of weaponised autism. And then you get the same political bs coming from weird subs, like the cute pics sub, or the knitting sub suddenly having political submissions w/ 3k-6k upvotes, all saying the same thing.
It doesn't help that it is still the easiest "social network" to create accounts on, and bot on. With the advances in LLMs I sometimes truly can't say if an account is real or a bot. And I work in this space...
I don't think the hivemind thing can be solved so long as people can see each others' comments. But then it's difficult to have a social media site without that.
I used to edit Wikipedia and I was heavily involved in many, many disputes. And in fact, I would seek out disputes, even ones outside my topic area; it's not difficult to do on Wikipedia because there are entire notice boards where people go to have public disputes. We called them "dramaboards", especially the admins' disciplinary ones.
And I would have these disputes, of course, over utterly trivial things, like how to spell something or where to place the apostrophe, or some manual-of-style nitpick in an infobox. And the disputes would drag on for weeks and we could utterly stall the editing process by disputing on talk pages. And yet we could edit-war over it, usually in slow-motion. And often the dispute would be couched in quite polite language but I would hate the guys' guts.
And the tipping point came when I began to have dreams about Wikipedia, and I would wake up angry. I would wake up fighting. I would wake up and immediately tear into the web browser and catch-up on the discussion, or not, just to post my next riposte, because I'd composed it in my sleep, in my dreamless dreams.
And I woke up angry more often than waking up in any other mood. And I was telling my psychiatrist this, and she said I should probably stop looking at blue light before bedtime. And I was incredulous that she would think if I turned my arguments red-hued that they would anger me less, or cause me to wake up happy and agreeable or something?
And I know I wasn't taking enough medication to make anyone happy, but these guys on Wikipedia really knew how to piss me off, and if you've ever heard of "brinkers" it's a certain type of troll who will play by the rules, and basically trigger anyone with a hot temper, and that triggered person would forget their ethics and commit a fatal error, and get banned, and the brinker would go on to live another day and cause others to fall into similar traps. And many of us do that, if we have the volatile temperament. I lasted about 17 years on Wikipedia without a single block and with some low-grade warnings, but generally a clean discipline record, but finally it got to me.
And a lot of time on Wikipedia I had spent fighting trolls and vandals and very disruptive editors. And I made sure a lot of them were banned. I filed a lot of reports. I was a petty bureaucrat there, filing reports and compiling evidence and arguing cases. There was no shortage of "wikilawyering". From the very beginning I was finding disputes and diving into them. Especially when they didn't concern me, didn't concern any topic I cared about. Just to have the disputes.
And I kept waking up angry. And finally I got control of that. Nowadays I wake up frightened. I wake up traumatized. I wake up scared of something I dreamed about. It's spiritual torment, and it's attributable to nothing I did the night before. Perhaps the F.U.D. of Hacker News gets to me. But not on that level. At least I don't go on crusades or jihads against Wikipedia editors anymore.
Re: "brinkers", this is where it's very useful to have a certain amount of mod discretion so that people who probe the fences like velociraptors in Jurassic Park eventually get banned for that. The downside is that it looks even more cliquey than it is.
> and if you've ever heard of "brinkers" it's a certain type of troll who will play by the rules, and basically trigger anyone with a hot temper
Didn't know there was a term for this, good to know it wasn't just me seeing things. Witnessed this happen countless times while assisting with moderation on Discord. The only worse thing than the rules defending these people's behavior is when fellow moderators decide to cover for them too.
The number of replies I cut & paste to my notes archive far exceeds the amount of posts I actually make. I still find it valuable to work through my own thoughts to better prepare myself to have the same conversations in more impactful circumstances, but there are some things I just don't care enough about persuading the other person - or believe the other person is actually going to consider the words as carefully as I put them together.
I can’t help but notice how all those points are centered around you being the bearer of truth and others being the source of dismay.
While these may be easy ways to avoid exposing yourself to sources of discomfort it might also not be a bad idea to learn how to deal with confrontation and dissonance in a productive manner.
Besides being contrarian, I am nothing if not that, I honestly think our society at large will benefit from learning how to deal constructively with opposing perspectives and mindsets - assuming we ever get to that point.
While I ostensibly agree about learning how to deal constructively with opposing perspectives, I also don't think online discourse (main stream avenues) will ever be the place to learn or partake in those sorts of conversations. Even in smaller subreddits, your comments will be viewed by thousands of people, some of whom are explicitly there to troll or to argue in bad faith or even people literally having mental breakdowns. You also end up in situations where every reply is to a new person, so you're not really having a discourse with anyone just an amorphous entity. Look at things like "Godwin's law" or "Poe's law", for some long running beliefs/commentary on internet discourse.
There's a correlation between being really obnoxious and continuing threads on HN or anywhere else.
Occasionally there are good real conversations where people are generally interested and curious but the most common are either marginally interested or very interested in worthless conflict.
Your comment is proof to the contrary. You are thus lying and everything you say or do is now severely tainted. I will now produce a seven-pronged argument for why exactly this type of behavior is the hidden root cause of climate change and why you should feel bad. (/s)
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
I know the feeling, but I have to admit that people being obtuse helped me to take them and myself less serious. That said, there are better ways to foster that kind of experience.
Weird. There is little that depresses me more than watching my wife sit at the table for hours a day slowly scrolling Facebook while ignoring me and the kids. We have talked about it and she's tried to reduce it to no avail.
There's something about the social media influencer industrial complex that short circuits women's brains worse, as far as I can tell. Most of my friends quit social media years to a decade ago but our wives are all on it. Men seem to get sucked into Youtube wormholes instead.
I think the only way out is cold turkey. The number of conversations my wife starts with telling me about some distant acquaintances recent vacation (as seen thru IG) is distressing.
My "social" internet use is more hobby based - forum/reddit hobby focussed content.
It is anecdotal but eg. me and my brother and some of my male friends "burned out" on silly meme feeds on sites like Memebase and what not before there was any very addictive feeds. Maybe fewer women was full of it by the time Instagram came?
Semantic point: nice and kind are not the same thing.
The nice thing to do when somebody is behaving poorly, is to ignore it until it becomes untenable (firing them, leaving them, and so on). The kind thing is to address it and let them change their ways.
Wanting to be nice is baked into our social structures - nobody wants to be seen as the un-nice person - but being kind is where relationships and interactions get strong. You just need to do it with empathy.
If she tried to reduce it she wouldn't do it. Nobody is holding a gun to her head. She does it because she wants to do it. Until she takes responsibility for her actions she will not change.
Well yes, the essential working part of all interventions and therapies is to help the client understand how they can take responsibility and what control they have, and to believe in it. They aren’t pure victims, no one is.
Yeah this is how all therapy works. It’s about learning what change you can make and taking responsibility and making that change. Not sure why you’re being downvoted but likely because there’s an idea floating around now that all such issues are purely externally imposed by a defect in society, and that it has nothing to do with the actions of the individual who is portrayed as helpless. I think that is a deeply depressing and disturbing trend. I’ve literally seen communities of people telling others they should kill themselves because it’s impossible to be happy under capitalism…
> People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls.
Can anyone translate? Random web search find suggests multiplying by 37 to get a percentage, which sounds very questionable, but even then these improvements seem negligible.
This doesn't really line up with my lived experience. Getting myself out of shitty platforms and community spaces improved my mental state significantly (although the damage that's been done remains).
> We estimate that users in the Facebook deactivation group reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, anxiety, and depression, relative to control users. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p < 0.01 level, both when considered individually and after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the full set of political outcomes considered in Allcott et al. (2024). Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Facebook on people over 35, undecided voters, and people without a college degree.
> We estimate that users in the Instagram deactivation group reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement in the emotional state index relative to control. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p = 0.016 level when considered individually, and at the p = 0.14 level after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the outcomes in Allcott et al. (2024). The latter estimate does not meet our pre-registered p = 0.05 significance threshold. Substitution analyses imply this improvement is achieved without shifts to offline activities. Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Instagram on women aged 1824.
Perhaps it wasn't clear what I meant. When I said significantly, I meant it in the colloquial sense, not in the statistical significance sense.
I was looking for a more digestable figure describing the extent of improvements, not whether the study found them confidently distinguishable (which I just assumed they did based on the wording, good to know they didn't for Instagram).
The best thing you can do is compare it to another study, since turning 0.06 standard deviations into a percentage of happiness isn’t going to be that telling.
In general, 0.2 is considered a small effect.
So 0.06 is quite small — likely not a practically noticeable change in well-being. But impressive to me when I compare it to effect sizes of therapy interventions which can lie around 0.3 for 12 weeks.
Quote:
> “50 randomized controlled trials that were published in 51 articles between 1998 and August 2018. We found standardized mean differences of Hedges’ g = 0.34 for subjective well-being, Hedges’ g = 0.39 for psychological well-being, indicating small to moderate effects, and Hedges’ g = 0.29 for depression, and Hedges’ g = 0.35 for anxiety and stress, indicating small effects.”
A 0.060 standard deviation improvement is super small. If the average person rates their happiness/anxiety/depression score at, say, 50 out of 100, and the standard deviation (how spread out people’s scores are) is around 10 points, then 0.060 SD = 0.6 points. So quitting Facebook gave an average person a ~1% bump in mood score. Instagram was even smaller: ~0.4 points, or 0.8%.
It's real, but barely noticeable for most people—unless you're in a more affected subgroup (e.g. undecided voters or younger women). Your experience feeling way better likely means you were an outlier (in a good way).
On the contrary, reporting changes relative to the standard deviation of a control group frees you from scales and their meanings, because it relates the observed change to the normal spread of scores before the intervention. In this way, you don't need to know the scale and its meaning to know if a change is big or small, and from a statistical perspective, that's (almost) all you need to find if a change is significant or due to random chance. Of course, looking back at the original scale and its meaning can help interpreting the meaning of the results in other ways
People who use Facebook also may feel depression, from very strong to none at all. In the middle of this interval there's the "expected value" point, sort of an average level of feeling depressed. This point is at an equal distance from the "most depressed users" group, and from the "not depressed at all" group. Let's call this distance of depression strength a "standard deviation".
Now, the users who stopped using Facebook became slightly less depressed, by 6% of that "standard deviation" range. If you buy a small coke at a McDonald's, then take one sip, you make it about 6% smaller. It's not unnoticeable (you've made that refreshing sip), but about 15 more such sips still remain!
In other words, there is an effect which can definitely be noticed ("statistically significant"), but it's not a big deal either.
It means that there is a statistically significant improvement, but that improvement is tiny, and will not make you happier than your peers all by itself (assuming a standard peer group of 200 people - you'd likely swap places with 1 or 2 people).
Of course, this study only considered normative people, not marginalized or those who were experiencing active harm from exposure to social media - your personal results may vary and it's important to remember that science is imperfect and social sciences are doubly so.
If going off Facebook improves your life - you do you.
As far as I can tell, the algorithm can really harm people during times of mental illness/stress/anxiety. Part of it is that it is like a feedback loop.
When we lost our pet and my wife was very upset for a while, the algo kept showing her more and more content associated with pet loss. It got to the point that some random content pushed to her social media was upsetting her daily.
I can imagine someone experiencing depression, suicidal thoughts, etc can easily be pushed over the edge by the algorithmic feedback loop.
In a way this perfectly captures my experiences too, despite my struggles revolving around a different topic, and sometimes it wouldn't even be algorithmically inflicted, but self-inflicted.
I'd keep coming across, and sometimes seeking out, threads with political content. But beyond that, I'd keep stumbling upon or even seeking out people who are being (in my view) inciteful or misleading. This would then piss me off, and I'd start to spiral. Naturally, these are not the kind of people who'd be posting in good faith, adding even more fuel to the fire when I engaged with them and their replies would eventually come about, which of course I'd "helpfully" get a notification for.
If I understand you, just read the paper for its analysis and interpretation of those numbers.
Alternatively, you'll want to grasp the meaning of "standard deviation" (you're right that you can't multiply all standard deviations by a number and get a percentage - and a percentage of what?), and then find the "index of happiness, depression, and anxiety" they use and grasp its meaning.
Bad time to do it during what turned out to be very emotionally charged election where traditional news turns in to social media style instantaneous reporting and is inescapable. I’d also suggest 6 weeks is not long enough to fully recover. In fact in that time frame you may still be experiencing FOMO type symptoms. Would have been interesting to see how the participants faired after a year/two years.
How is traditional news "inescapable"? You can just not go to the websites and not watch it on TV. It is very easy not to consume breathless mainstream media rubbish.
Deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts years ago and my inner peace increased immediately, my meditations became deeper, better within days. I never would have guessed how much negative energy these platforms created within me. People will post mostly how perfect their life is on these platforms. Distorting reality, inducing jealousy, guilt, and other forms of negative emotions. And finally a sense of depression.
Recently, I've been thinking about creating an Instagram account. I've never used it before, and I dislike it in general, but because of recent circumstances in my life (a breakup that almost gave me depression, and some other things), I need to go out more and meet new people IRL, and Instagram is the de facto way to meet people in my country, at least for those of us under 30, to the point that you're seen as weird if you don't have one.
But I know that once I create an account, I'll get hooked to the feed, to uploading pictures, etc. because I know myself.
I don't know if the positive social aspect (meeting people, or creating a lasting connection with people that I meet once IRL) is going to offset that addiction and the general anxiety that comes with having an account.
There are people out there - probably many people - in your country under the age of 30 who feels the same way about Instagram as you do. These are the people you want to meet, not the people on Instagram.
If you hate Instagram and the anxiety it gives you, the people you meet on there will never be really on your level, or you on theirs. You will waste your time and effort on shallower relationships that can't get deep because you want to engage with life differently and not be on social media.
Dig deep into the hobbies that give you joy, and go to as many meetups and social occasions around them as you can. Leverage your friend and family network - the people who know you, and get you - and build on it.
Those are good tips but what to do when you are new in location and your family/friends doesn't have contacts with people that like your hobby? Joining new social circles isn't that easy for less social ones.
I know this post is for Facebook, but I've noticed my mood improving when I decided to leave LinkedIn.
Even though I am rationally aware that people work in better environments and get paid while I'm job searching for the past 6 months, it feels like seeing any sort of announcement regarding other people's successes hits a subconscious chord my brain hates. It felt like I'm being actively intimidated, making my already depressed and sad state of job searching worse. The "highlights reel effect" on LinkedIn is deliberate and I'd argue inevitable, because everyone is trying their best to show how good they are as candidates and workers.
Now that I closed it, and I'm sticking to the usual communities (Discord, etc.) may be running into better engineers than me but I see it either as a neutral event or a positive one, because they share their code and insights which I can learn from.
Removing Instagram from my daily routine has been the best change I did, apart from adopting a cat. Just saw some stuff on my feed I had no desire to see apart from brainrot, and the algorithm kept shovelling some controversial figures too, which I had no interest in, so that also did not help its cause.
Sadly passed as a dignified old cat many, many years ago now.
The digital camera was barely a thing back then let alone a camera in your pocket 24 hours a day! Nevertheless, lots of happy memories captured in the only way that really matters - in person without a screen.
Facebook can be hard to get rid of if you actually have hobbies and things because so much gets organised via it. I tried to get rid but my Running club exclusively posts stuff on Facebook.
For Instagram with you needing to log in to view pages, you find that you can’t find opening times for restaurants etc because many places use it to advertise that they’re open/closed at short notice.
If you really value your running club, why not help them set something else up?
You could offer to help the people who do all that posting to get it onto an email list or some other platform away from Facebook. A small indie website somewhere, even a blog.
I know this sounds like work, and you just want to enjoy your running club, but if it gets sticky, the people who are currently posting everything on FB will eventually realise there's value elsewhere and they'll keep it ticking over.
My idea is that as long as there is a social idea, in the same small circle, there are also "Internet celebrities" who are considered by everyone to post some of their photos. It is essentially social. In WeChat's circle of friends, people already need to make money by doing e-commerce in this private domain, not to mention that his friends may be the people around him, but his work forces him to...
Well, let me tell you its far better. I had been using in collage upto 2013 i suppose. It use to make me sick in multiple ways. Now i use mastodon, almost same goes with it as well. But i just check things in mastodon which you can check without signing up as well. The Urge to check news multiple times a day is there. But i am getting hang of it. I didn't knew that how these companies suck your brain. With adblock and using just few times the phone makes me feel better.
First, I was an avid Facebook user. I cared about what photos I put up, my status updates, what groups I was in, the lot.
Then life got busy and somewhat difficult, and I had no more time for this. Still, I'd occasionally go on Facebook and get really down. I'd see all my "friends" living it up, having fun etc while I was stuck in my rut. Very depressing.
But then, a few things happened. One, I understood it's really all fake. Two, all my real human friends stopped using Facebook, basically. And anyway, Facebook now just shows me AI slop that is nothing to do with anything - weird videos, people definitely shutting down a 5000 year old family business, you-wont-believe-what-she-did videos etc. Not that I use it much, just some friends for whatever reason are still on Messenger.
Quit all social media 8 years ago, never missed it one bit. It was all good and i truly enjoyed it before ~2014 but then it started deteriorating so rapidly due to political polarisation and domination of "influencers" that kept peddling worthless trash, by about 2016 i no longer understood wtf i was doing there.
Since then, only tried reddit, but it has a different problem - it's an echo chamber where no real discussion is possible on any topic as anyone who disagrees with even minute details in dominating dogma of every subreddit, gets downvoted to invisibility. Plus too many subreddits are merely karma mills that people use to boost their karma to allow themselves at least some actual voice in other subreddits - and those useless-by-design subreddits dominate the whole thing because you need to do a lot of those "filler" posts to allow oneself one real one, thus SNR on the platform is ridiculously low - but it's not some evil bots who's creating noise, but actual live people, and not even dumb ones, just because they HAVE to. And going through this - for what? To get a chance to participate in one more "someone on the internet is wrong" debate?
Meaningful talk is possible in groups where people are united by at least something and where is at least some real barrier of entry. These are not the social media. They can't afford filtering who gets in because that way they'll lose viewership and leave a lot of money on the table. I wonder why that comes as a surprise to anyone.
They’re regular human beings. If we believe we’re stronger than them, I think we should stand up for them rather than laugh at them.
One could just as easily write something like “lol anyone who leaves disparaging comments on the internet is so weak. Imagine not being able to resist ridiculing unfortunate people”. But the world is more nuanced than that. It requires a more constructive attitude. And it requires people looking out for one another. We can care about the people who can’t resist a random website. It was designed to be hard to resist by intelligent, competent people. It’s meant to exploit their weaknesses.
That is not the only possible explanation. A more likely explanation imho is that social media falls into the long list of things you do for a short term reward even though you know you shouldn't, like smoking a cigarette or getting drunk.
You know it is not good for you but your executive function and ability to plan long term are compromised (whether chronically or acutely), so you do it anyway, and regret it later.
There really is something to this. Living in NYC you meet a lot of people from different walks of life and levels of wealth.
Over and over the most stressed out anxious people I meet are the underemployed/nonworking spouse in very wealthy couples. Especially the childless ones.
Remember when the feed was just a reverse chronological list of stuff you told Facebook you wanted to see? That was the peak. Once they started engagement farming using recommendation algorithms the site lost all of its appeal.
Append ?sk=h_chr at the end of its URL to get that. Can also be found by dumpster diving in the UI somewhere I'm sure. Be aware that they're very intent on redirecting you to the regular feed though.
Thanks for the genuinely useful tip. I didn’t know that was a thing, but I can’t test it since I deleted my account almost a decade ago. I’m tired of adversarially wrestling usefulness out of a trillion dollar company.
> I’m tired of adversarially wrestling usefulness out of a trillion dollar company.
Hopefully people will learn to get tired of this sort of thing a LOT quicker, and this will be one good thing about out our new improved and now extremely shortened attention spans. Impatience could actually have an upside if it prevents decades of escalating arms racing with enshittification vs new-current-work-around. It’s like with stages of grief, right? Denial / bargaining. Whatever is broken in a trillion dollar corporation is broken on purpose, and it's getting worse, not better.. waiting around and hoping for improvement is a fools errand.
Up until now, boiling the frog/consumer slowly has been one tactic. Or corporations can leverage their size and simply make things so bad for so long that a new generation arrives on the scene and has no idea how bad the stuff on offer actually is. Enough completely ubiquitous impatience in consumers really does undermine both of those strategies.. if there's actually meaningful competition that's still left around to choose from
I think the downfall was earlier then that. When businesses got on their. The first few times it was maybe clever, the Deli shop is my friend or what ever but I think that was the turning point for it's just friends connecting and the start of becoming ads and engagement.
It is not _completely_ naive to believe that in order for a service like Facebook to continue being successful, they must do _something_ that makes their users want to use it.
And therefore, it is not completely illogical to think that Meta’s interests and users’ interests must align.
(Not my opinion, just responding to your question)
I deleted my Facebook account because I wasn't really using it for much and haven't felt any sort of a downside at all.
I found that for social media, platforms like Mastodon feel more comfy and less commercialized, whereas for chatting with other people either 1:1 or group chats across various apps feel nicer without being directly tied to a social media platform. At the same time, platforms that are more focused on a particular set of topics/activities like Reddit/Discord/HN/... instead of people just trying to advertise their lives or build a brand in a sense or whatever are more meaningful to me as well.
To some degree, it probably has something to do with the size of those communities: Mastodon is niche enough not to get spammed with as many bots or adverts or people trying to push a certain narrative, it going under that radar is one of the best things about it, instead it's more organic content.
I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends, college friends, and distant family without having to see irrelevant posts, like some stupid remark from a politician halfway around the world or influencers doing something outrageous just for attention.
Reading this I'm reminded that Facebook used to be like this.
It was still kinda shit because your friends & family still share stuff/rage bait you don't want to see.
But you at least had the option to control. I remember having enough of it with news and rage bait through Facebook in college, and went on to "mute" 95% of all my friends. (following the criterion of muting everyone that shared content that affected me emotionally in a negative way, the number ended up being 95%)
Facebook was actually kinda useful after that, but I also think the 95% number showed to me that even then, without algorithm as strong as now, people just reached out to click bait and shared it.
This has moved heavily into group chats and I’m not sure it’s coming back.
Group chats are basically the Circles that Google+ saw the need for but could never get fully set up. A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances.
Meanwhile Instagram and Facebook keep evolving. Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Instagram is turning into a hipper LinkedIn, where artists, musicians, and local businesses share career and business updates and advertise their wares.
Google+ by any other name and four years earlier would have been an incredible platform. Circles were so neat.
Wife went cold turkey on social media and then had to join Instagram and LinkedIn for her business. Now she's addicted to Instagram.
No LinkedIn, not you, you boring Ted Talk humblebrag.
People love LinkedIn cringe on instagram and twitter - but on LinkedIn itself you have to confront the reality that these people, often colleagues / former colleagues etc. are being serious
Well, serious in the same way cult members have to be serious.
If you crack and admit it’s fake, everything falls apart and it’s your fault. Expulsion out onto the street follows.
Even worse, now everyone else is going ‘how could you be so dumb to believe it’ and/or ‘you sure fucked up by admitting it was fake’ all at the same time.
That's great if you are the kind of person wo is added into fun social group chats. But my group chats are mostly functional, like for hobbies, or parents groups for the kids' classes, and so on. There is one family group which sees annoying memes every now and then, and one group with friends from university which is also rarely used.
Old school social networks used to be this noncommital, low-threshold way to connect with others around you. It was really great if you were a socially awkward teen or twenty-something. It's no big deal to friend somebody on facebook (or MySpace, or your universities gamified campus management system or whatever) and see what they are doing, or strike up a conversation. I really miss that kind of network.
The best social networks i have are imessage group chats. One with my old college friends, one with my immediate family, and another with extended family. My kids have their own group chats with their classmates. They're much better than the social platforms.
Eh, I'd disagree on the Instagram front. If you look at the reels section, where most spend their time, it's just a more deplorable tiktox. 80% of the content on there is soft core porn advertising one OnlyFans girl or another. The other 20% seems to be brain rot memes. I reinstalled it recently after 8 years of not having it, and immediately deleted it.
I read Facebook with the special URL[1] that gives a traditional reverse chronological feed (plus ads, of course), but it's all my friends and family.
Unfortunately, some of my family post insane political views, usually about now in the early AM. Being told that a King of the USA and the elimination of due process are good things doesn't help my mental health.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr
I unfollow quickly and swiftly if I don't enjoy your posts. I don't care how close family you are or how long I've known you.
While there will always be unhinged relatives, maybe the problem would be less pronounced without the polarization that comes with the networks pushing polarizing posts into their faces in their never ending quest for more "engagement" by users.
> some of my family post insane political views
Would they still if any such poster's feed would strictly only be viewable by families and friends?
(I have no idea)
Yes. Crazy political people are crazy political people and think the issue they care about is the most important thing ever.
The issue they've been told is important, right? For example it was vital in the minds of some in USA to put import taxes (tariffs) >100% on all Chinese goods.
They would have seemed to care about that, until Trump got told that wasn't working (or, as likely, the market had been swung far enough) and did a 180 removing tariffs on what the public were told were the most vital things to tariff...
All those people didn't change their mind at the exact moment it was needed to swing the stock market back and for you mate the oligarchs money - just Musk et al. have built a brainwash machine at a national level.
It's an important distinction - when interviewed it seems barely any of those being manipulated can form a coherent thought about "the issue they care about".
But remember that this is supported by traditional media (Fox news). It's not just social media.
I think the EU should flex their regulatory muscle and forbid algorithmic feeds on by default unless the networks break european society as the US is broken.
I don’t know how much of a difference it would make, as then we just become the algorithm.
I quit Facebook over a decade ago, because others used it to go “look at my shiny car/wife/house”, and I would use it to lose friends and alienate people.
These online environments do not foster any kind of human connection.
Blue sky allows you to have many different kinds of feeds and I can say the difference in adrenaline level and mood is palpable depending on the feed I use.
News items - frustration at the state the world is in.
Urban bicycle feed: annoyance at the atrocities of the inept drivers.
Feed with cycle side trip pictures: fun.
Rust projects, Electronics: the curiosity of learning.
Also: Bluesky has an absolutely amazing feature which is you can subscribe to someone else’s block lists. That changes the experience quite a lot, to the better.
madaxe_again checked in at the First Class lounge.
They should just say that algorithm is editorialised and needs to be subject to the same regulations as newspapers (fined for fake news, editor can lose his journalist status).
Newspapers can publish all the fake news they want. There's no special carve out for e.g. tabloids. The only constraint they have is they aren't protected by section 230, so they can be sued for things like defamation or libel.
The big one to me is paid content should be clearly labeled as paid content and should be skippable programmatically and in bulk. Things like product placement.
EU companies benefit from the feeds, because that is where many ad slots are.
The result of a purely chronological feed is that you have to scroll through 10 posts from the same person and never see anything from people that post good content rarely.
Plenty of people like and enjoy "algorithmic feeds". I can enjoy occasionally scrolling through a feed. Banning it is like banning alcohol because there are alcoholics in society.
If you can't handle it, switch it off.
Alcohol consumption is gated behind age laws.
There are society level effects based on the consumption of several goods and services.
Gambling, alcohol, drugs, for example.
The individuals story, in aggregate, mm impacts, over and over, has effects that we must address when arguing for the optimal friction for that good.
Obviously there’s a balance to be struck here. We could legalise fentanyl and tell people to just not use it, but that probably wouldn’t have a very positive impact on society.
At the very least we should acknowledge the negative externalities. Just leaving it up to the market to figure out (especially if we allow the current tech monopolies to exist) will result in serious societal impact.
"The result of a purely chronological feed is that you have to scroll through 10 posts from the same person and never see anything from people that post good content rarely."
But who made the demand, to have everything shown from everyone?
Imagine a social network, where you make your own rules for your feed. That special person who posts rarely, but good will have special visibility. And from that bored family member that basically spams, you will see the message "X has posted 50 pictures and text today" and with a click you can go there.
Having algorithmic feeds as an option, not the default, would be a huge step forward
Plenty of people like and enjoy "algorithmic feeds".
Plenty of people like heroin too. Liking something doesn't make it good.
I'm sure that would work out fine. Just like the GDPR regulation made the web so much better & more private, and the promise of the AI act is boosting innovation in Europe...
You probably mean the visible cooky thing.
But behind the scenes companies did start to think about customer data gathering, retention and deletion in terms of maximal fine of 4% of turnover.
Yes, the Americas are a hot bed for innovation. Enshittification is also an innovation.
The GDPR regulation is great and arguably does make the web more private and better. At the very least, it's better than having no regulations.
I've even been able to successfully use it to remove something private about me from the internet. I don't think I would have even gotten a response had there been no legal precedent.
You can always argue about how some regulations are badly implemented or incomplete but I believe it would be very misguided to believe that no regulations are instead the better alternative.
Intellectually many want this. But the feed shortcuts our reptile brain and gains more engagement minutes / day. As you say, the algorithmic feed is superior for creators wanting reach, and more importantly, advertisers who want eyeballs on their ads. Due to network effects, it is likely impossible to get friends and family to join a boring and non-profit alternative.
Instead of pausing social media altogether, I recently took some time off from the endless scrolling feeds only. When returning it's so apparent how everything is bait for engagement.
The feed hijacks the human attention process on a visceral level. Either with visual stimulus that's extremely intriguing for evolved apes like us (cutting a cake that looks like a dog), or by activating an emotional response from a tribal species like us (stupid takes on politics, in- and out-group stuff).
The rest of most social media apps is fine and offers much of what you are asking for.
> endless scrolling feeds only
I've got a personal policy: No websites that have an infinite scroll. That means no new Reddit, mobile Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, or similar. This also means I can't use food delivery services, since those tend to be infinite as well.
If they're paginated that's fine, even if they're infinitely so. Infinite scrolling is just a very good touchstone as to the quality and addictiveness of a site, and I'll avoid anything that has it.
For this reason I get my news through RSS and like using Discord -- both have finite ends (even if there may be a lot of content in bursts.)
I’m reminded of how junk food was seen as a dominant and crushing force, and how today we have moved to people willingly embracing healthier lifestyles.
I rue the amount of damage caused, before people and society began resisting and arresting its deleterious effects.
But perhaps this is the same process being followed here. New shiny for the reptile brain, eventually the costs are made clear and people decide they would rather not become statistics and instead find joy in other formats and tools.
Then People make those formats or invent ways of engaging with our tools that includes self care and leads to more happiness. We grow older and we eventually get tired of all the online health fads and become crotchety older humans.
Get off my lawn, in advance.
> Intellectually many want this. But the feed shortcuts our reptile brain and gains more engagement minutes / day.
I’m not sure if that’s actually a “shortcut” to the reptile brain and it’s just about “I have to scroll more to get stuff I’m interested in. At least for me it feels like that and it causes me to use these social media things far less.
For me it feels more like intermittent rewards vs full rewards at once. Obviously for the ad-industry the intermittent rewards are more useful, that’s why we can’t have nice things
> it is likely impossible to get friends and family to join a boring and non-profit alternative.
Isn’t this just WhatsApp now though? The addition of Statuses, Following and now Communities almost confirms this. People are dropping Facebook and IG, but can’t give up WhatsApp (yet).
Social media started as a way to stay connected with people you actually know, but it's morphed into this performative attention economy where the loudest, most extreme content wins.
You're talking about something exactly like the ‘Moments’ of WeChat, China's largest social media. It doesn't have a feed, but only updates from friends and family. But still, people spend so much time on that - 900 million people spending an average of 1 hour and 42 minutes per person per day.
From Feeds in the sidebar, select Friends.
https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
Instagram used to be closer to this when they showed posts in chronological order. Of course, Facebook got to work and ended this by showing posts in algo-sorted order, added an explore page, and even started showing non-followed people's viral content on the main feed. So unfortunately the trend has been a slow frog-boiling march towards engagement and enshittification.
In the meantime, maybe I should just share more photos in the group chat instead...
i used facebook back when it functioned like that. and it was still retarded then
But less :D
I got shot 7 times in the head rather than 10.
The “like” button killed genuine engagement, and made Facebook an exercise in lever-pressing. The problem is that in a lot of cases (not all), those stupid remarks and outrageous influencers are being “liked” and “reposted” by your network in order to gather reflected glory and dopamine hits.
A social network is no better than the sum of its parts, and to create something really worthwhile, you have to limit what people are allowed to post (original content only, for example).
Doing that at scale I think is very hard.
You mean, what it was to begin with? Right now WhatsApp is basically my family Facebook. Images, videos, chat. Separate groups of people so you can remain friends with two former friends who are now mortal enemies. Facebook is just another toxic, addictive social media.
The single problem with social media is that they are not public, but are heavily thought of (and propagandized) as such.
Any marketplace that is privately owned, is not a free market place. And, the elephant in the room, these social media marketplaces are owned by parties with very particular interests. As long as don't recognise that, we will let ourselves be distracted by details that are always the result of this private control.
Something social must be public, or it isn't social, and it isn't what you and I really want.
Whatsapp stories
You described Mastodon.
its what whatsapp is for many and why the metastasis crams feeds, ai and horrors to it.
Try MySpace, classmates.com? They are still around.
The trouble is: broadly speaking, no one uses those.
I logged into classmates a couple of years ago. I had a message waiting from 2005 from one of my sister's insane ex-friends. That was a blast from the past and hilarious. 18 years without bothering to log in.
Then I realized their business model is so low-rent, they had web 1.0 style protections on scraping all their scanned yearbooks. So I liberated all the ones with anyone I was likely to know and posted them to Archive.org.
You're welcome.
Also: #deletefacebook
I wrote my own client for Twitter, which was later adapted to also support Bluesky. The idea behind the project was to scrape porn easily, but it's also an amazing tool where it shows me the feed I personally want to see. This is pretty much the only way I interact with these services.
> This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media... Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends
This sort of longing for a cozy social media circles exists a lot in tech adjacent circles. However, unless you can align the needs of users with the revenue goals of the company, which in other words simply means that users pay for the pay for the product, this is not gonna happen. While you may be willing to do so, I'm sure many people would simply stop communicating with you because of the additional friction caused, especially when a free alternative exists.
Additionally, the "viral content" you speak of exists for two reasons, which I'm not sure it could be entirely solved even if you had users pay for the product.
Most people (me included) have very little intellectual capacity after work and other responsibilities, and need some easily absorbed "slop" to kill their time. I've personally tried engaging in more creative pursuits, but I can't do a good job at it at with all my energy sapped. This is where viral content, such as posts from politicians and celebrities, gain their initial spread.
I would also like to note that someone may want to follow a politician or celebrity because they think what they're doing is generally useful or entertaining, respectively.
This leads me to my second point, where even if you self-opted to not interact with viral content, I'm not sure your social circles would also follow through with the same choice. This ultimately means the platform has to take specific measures to suppress some posts based on its content or not show any of your friends' activity, both of which has disadvantages. Further, the former is in itself controversial depending upon which politician is in power and the current Overton window[1].
(Re downvotes: I'd like to know what part of all of this people disagree with.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window#
> However, unless you can align the needs of users with the revenue goals of the company
I’m reading this as: The corporate internet is unable to fulfill the actual social needs of its users.
>Most people (me included) have very little intellectual capacity after work and other responsibilities, and need some easily absorbed "slop" to kill their time. I've personally tried engaging in more creative pursuits, but I can't do a good job at it at with all my energy sapped.
And this translates to: Our economic system drains us of so much of our energy that living a fulfilling life is no longer possible, and so we fill our valuable time with the slop that same system serves us.
I think you’re being downvoted because your comment speaks to an uncomfortable truth, namely that none of this is working to advance quality of life but rather to advance the contents of a few wallets.
I'm certainly an anomaly but since to me the downsides of social media have always been quite prominent and seemed to outweigh the benefits by a margin, I never jumped on the social media train.
But I've got to say, it's getting harder and harder to keep that up. As our kids get older especially, almost all of their social activities are somehow tied to social media one way or the other: no matter what they're joining, minimally there's a WhatsApp group. My wife has reluctantly joined WhatsApp and if it wasn't for that, it feels like we would pretty much be destined to become social outcasts.
In one recent instance, we weren't even aware of a parent group for one of our children's school class until someone asked us (in person!) why we didn't come bowling the previous night. We had no idea, and no-one sees the necessity to include someone who - for whatever reason - is not on WhatsApp.
I can see the argument that we are inconveniencing others by not wanting to be reachable to what has now become a standard means of being in touch, and that we cannot expect others to jump through hoops just to include us. But a few years back, I was quite deeply involved in privacy research and I definitely feel no inclination to share all of my communications (and pictures) with Meta.
I'd still not class WhatsApp as a social media platform as your story implies. It is a communication tool for the most part with some social features slowly being baked in. The downsides you're speaking of are far more applicable to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and similar, more than WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord.
I don't know where you're based, but in general these days at least one "chat app" of some kind is the de facto standard in most countries. For a lot of the world, that's WhatsApp.
The US is an outlier in still relying majorly on SMS as the communications platform.
I’m with the GP on this on. WhatsApp should absolutely be covered under the same umbrella here due to it being owned by Meta, who have a long history of breaking promises regarding privacy.
And since a lot of people do keep in contact via WhatsApp group chats, it’s hard to ignore the social implications of WhatsApp too. It’s as much a social platform as the others albeit with a different broadcast model.
As a parent, I have to monitor my child’s WhatsApp groups to check they’re safe, just like I would their YouTube and Instagram feeds. And I have to check they’re also being safe with the stuff that they share on WhatsApp, just like you would on any other social network.
I feel your point but I don't think WhatsApp counts as social media. It's a group messaging app, same as Facebook Messenger, Signal, etc. Those messaging apps don't have the typical social media downsides -- you don't need to maintain a profile, there's no doom scrolling, etc.
Social media (and apps like WhatsApp) have basically become the new default infrastructure for everyday communication, and opting out can unintentionally make you feel like you're opting out of life, especially when it comes to your kids' social circles.
It's not that bad or that hard to avoid social media. I'm in my early twenties and never had much social media. You're right in that WhatsApp is almost everywhere (in certain countries) and hard to avoid. But WhatsApp is still a messaging app and not as bad as Instagram, TikTok etc. I'd say, use something like Signal for all your close communication with family and close friends. If those are close friends I'm sure they'll use Signal to communicate with you too. I guess keep WhatsApp installed but use it only for those groups and not really for any personal chats.
As for the really attention grabbing social media like Instagram and TikTok, if your kids want to get on there I'd say provide a good alternative. Something they can use or open if boredom strikes, because there definitely are those moments when that happens and one just grabs the phone. For me it's mostly been HN and books, some YouTube channels with NewPipe and some podcasts.
I never used any "social media" besides the instant messengers. I try to minimize WhatsApp in favor of better options. It's a constant, uphill battle. I feel that dating is impossible w/o WhatsApp, if you exchange phone numbers with someone at a bar, it's completely useless if you can't contact them on WhatsApp afterwards. Almost nobody (at least here in central Europe) has any other messenger, and every other avenue of contact would be either considered very pushy (like calling) or from the 90s (like SMS).
Taking part in group events also becomes a headache if you don't join the related WhatsApp group.
I find it appalling that basic features of human social functions are subject to the whims and profiteering of a quasi-monopolist company. There should be heavy regulations, at the very least.
I think the problem are not group chats, but algorithms optimizing for engagement, and therefore for outrage. Think of the facebook feed.
The OP doesn't seem to make a difference between social media for consuming content that the "algorithm" crams down your throat and simple group chats that are usually closed and invite only.
Tbh I have a feeling it's the kids' fault. They call everything social media now. No separate names for FB and WhatsApp even though they do totally different things.
> I have a feeling it’s the kids’ fault.
Look at how broad the definition on Wikipedia is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
I don’t think that’s the kids fault.
Also, from that Wikipedia article:
> Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, Letterboxd, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Viber, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok.
The broad interpretation that includes Reddit would also categorise HN as social media which I think is fair.
I think the problem actually is the adults that are not being specific about which problems they want to stop when they broadly say that social media is bad.
Like you say, the problem is specifically things like algorithms that are tuned for engagement, which results in all kinds of negative effects.
That being said even this is not specific enough. HN although different is also run on an algorithm that is meant to surface the most interesting things. The site rules on HN avoid some of the bad effects, but it’s still possible to be negatively impacted in other ways like checking HN too often and too long instead of doing other things.
> Look at how broad the definition on Wikipedia is.
But wikipedia doesn't make up definitions, just lists the commonly used meaning.
> I think the problem actually is the adults that are not being specific about which problems they want to stop when they broadly say that social media is bad.
Adults are also talking about cell phone addiction, like browsing FB/Instagram on your laptop is any better.
> HN although different is also run on an algorithm that is meant to surface the most interesting things.
Is it? I thought it was human upvotes and maybe a few human mods...
It would be interesting to determine why HN still works btw. It's a pretty unified community that is fairly large.
Is the main reason that it's basically a non profit?
I see the opposite trend, as the (imo much needed) shock from Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation' is only starting to really resonate in the minds of educators and parents.
No smartphones allowed at school, strict usage limits for older kids at home, etc.
If only somehow we managed to make social media uncool for the kids, that’s the most sure way they’d stay away from it.
I guess proper education on the real aspects of the social media phenomenon would be the real deal. For example, explaining how/why the companies use their algorithms to keep you in there; influencers only want to sell you a product; why posts/stories don’t reflect reality at all, etc.
But understanding all that would require quite some amount of emotional maturity from both the kids and parents themselves. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the reality at all, there are adults that still can’t see through the cracks..
Surprised FB is even in this category anymore. Anecdotally, not many people post there anymore. I stay mostly for the groups not what people who I am connected to as a friend are doing. Status updates and check in’s seem like a thing of the past. It’s an easy way to share pictures with family. Group feature is very good. Our HOA has a group on there.
Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.
This was my biggest source of joy on the modern internet.
When the walls fell and everybody left, I dropped 200 followers to 500 but by X's own metrics no one sees my tweets. I would estimate between 13 and 20 is my average view count. When I do post, I am lucky a single person interacts, and it is almost always someone I know in the real world.
I have presences on Mastodon and Bluesky, but my follower count on both remains in the low teens. I don't think the market is there anymore for "dude that ponders technology questions". I tweet like it's 2010 and no one cares anymore.
This was the death of social media for me. This was the last place I was really "social" on the internet and it died.
Genuinely this has had a very negative effect on me, the only somewhat of a silver lining is that I now have these conversations with ChatGPT. It's not as much fun though.
Instagram is just brainrot these days. I'd used it for years to post my absolute best photos as a sort of curated gallery. No one cares anymore. Nothing I post ever gets seen. Why bother.
That sums up my general opinion of all social media these days, why bother.
That era of Twitter where you could toss out a random thought and instantly end up in a rabbit hole with strangers who knew stuff...
> Genuinely this has had a very negative effect on me
I think that's an issue. I totally see why you were negatively impacted but I think we tend to forget it is not real life and in 99% of cases not important conversations/debates we are having with random people on the internet - they could be fun to have (or not) but important they are not. We treat social media popularity as if it is part of our identity, as if its almost as important as actual family and friends - and it really isn't.
My sense is that Twitter’s fall was an opportunity for a lot of people to just drop out. I know for me it’s become a very occasional thing and neither Bluesky nor Mastodon ever achieved critical mass. As far as I’m concerned the format is largely done.
Never engaged with the political stuff.
And you all made place for guys like me; I don’t get booed away by 90% of the users anymore when engaging in discussion, more often I get an actual discussion out of it. Before that it was just a highly toxic “noo my opinion is the right one and I’m rigid on that and you’re an idiot” ambience.
Funny how things shift like that. Also never engaged with political stuff.
Whatever works for you personally I find there is no longer a critical mass of professional peers to engage with so I’ve mostly reluctantly just dropped it.
> I have presences on Mastodon and Bluesky, but my follower count on both remains in the low teens.
I've been on Bluesky for a few months.
Around 300 followers, mostly generic female names being caricatures of progressive or traditional values, often "looking for true love".
I can post almost anything I want and no one reacts.
Ditto. 100%. Touché
This has been my experience as well. I was a heavy lurker during peak Twitter phase, but I still got lots of value from it.
I tried posting about tech and stuff and there’s absolute silence. No one cares anymore as if there are only tumbleweeds out there.
I logged out of all my social media accounts (except HN) and moved them to hidden apps category. As a result I managed to read 3 lovely books and finished my side project ever since.
Because twitter has been gutted, its history the information sector equivallent of vulture capitalism. Take platform, gut its credibility and audience for some end goal (e.g. buying an election, redefining the truth in the minds of many) and leave a smouldering corpse behind.
Twitter is dead, and its grave is marked with nothing more than an X.
All the interesting conversations, all the aha moments are now gone and buried behind the walled garden
Once in a while we’ll see screenshots of these insightful tweets but they’ll be lost forever, like tears in the rain.
I have the complete opposite experience. I now get the aha moments I got from reddit before its private api downfall. I get actual discussions. There’s an equal split between opinions.
I think the difference here is that you were already “in” it, and it changed. I wasn’t “in” it because I hated the vibe and fakeness and just denying of my experience, but now I get the opportunity to join in a “resetting” environment. It’s refreshing and just way more real.
I blocked a few political accounts at the start and now I don’t see that at all btw
I downgraded my Instagram from curated feed of "interesting" things to just basically a journal of my travels and hobbies. Just less stressful this way.
I think Substack fills that gap for me. If you haven't already explored it then by the sounds of it I think you'd like it.
It functions more as a platform for blogs, but if you use the app there are blog-specific group chats, you can follow people, and the home page contains 'notes' that are pretty tweet-like in format. Once you have a collection of say 15-20 blogs that your subscribed to I found that the notes I got recommended were quite good and could spark some interesting conversations.
A few tech related ones I like are The Pragmatic Engineer, ByteByteGo, Bad Software Advice, and Exponential View.
Probably at some point soon social media companies will recognise this and provide everyone with very nearly human-like bots that engage happily with your content. This will probably be even more addictive than their previous products.
This sycophant-as-a-service feature is already close to the way the major LLMs currently work. Discuss any moderately controversial topic with them, and they'll lean into your opinion within a couple of comments.
That is totally coming, facebook is already winding up for it. It's also enormously dystopian and kind of pathetic.
Imagine the anti social network a billion people talking to the pigfeed robot. What a hellscape, what deformed characters ..
Theres a boom and bust cycle that social media platforms seem to go through. Build something nice for socializing. Add ad breaks to the socializing. Replace content you want with content that can only be described as political / informatiom warefare.
people move to new platform that is nice for socializing. The cycle begins anew.
I for one dont have the energy for it anymore. Im done. Im burnt out. If it isnt a real human in front of me it can fuck off and burn in hell. I make an exception for hacker news, because it doesnt seem trashed to shit by bots astroturfing just about every post to sway public opinion, but the moment it starts I will unplug from the public net for good, and nothing of value will be lost.
>I don't think the market is there anymore for "dude that ponders technology questions".
What do you mean? Aren't you looking at it right now?
This is just nostalgia porn. You used a lot of words to say you miss the past. Get over it and keep going.
The surprise here is how little of an effect it has. Deactivating facebook makes you only 1/16th of one standard deviation happier. And instagram even less. And this was measured during elections, when the effect is likely to be greatest.
Kinda crazy that the magnitude is so small! (my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")
I think this is an important and often overlooked phenomenon actually. Studies of Internet engagement are filled with these skewed distributions that follow something like a Pareto principle, or I've heard it termed the 90-9-1 distribution in engagement where 90% of users just lurk a bit, 9% contribute casually, and then 1% are contributing like half of the content on the platform.
It would follow logically that whatever kind of brain rot social media causes, would affect 1% of the population very dramatically, another 9% somewhat more noticeably, and then there would be this vast ocean of people who are only marginally aware/affected. From the perspective of online activity they appear to not even exist.
This always seems counterintuitive to the 9% or the 1% (and just by commenting we're already in one of those demogs). But there's lots of data out there supporting these skewed distributions in online activity.
These percentages are similar to those that one sees for alcohol consumption or problematic gambling.
The business model of the casinos and the drug dealers and the alcohol venders is the same - you need a huge pool of unproblematic recreational users to find the problematic users who generate the bulk of your profits.
The same model works for video games and social media.
I’d be interested in the results of a study that cuts out all social media, but the problem I can already see with that is self-selection bias (the people that would volunteer for it are probably already eager to get away from social media so the results would likely be skewed).
Personally I’ve been mentally in a better place since getting rid of my social media accounts during COVID, but it does cause problems because Facebook has become a utility as well (schools and real-life social groups use it for co-ordinating activities).
The perceived utility of social media seems pretty variable, not just across people, but with the same person in different circumstances. With covid, social media might scare people out who were regular users previously, and yet for other occasional or reluctant users it's suddenly seen as the only option for human contact and they use it constantly. After lock-downs are over, people flip to the polar opposite of their previous preference. With recessions, social media might be the only affordable entertainment but during better times, many would rather do something else. In general I bet it's insanely hard to run good experiments for behavioural economics in volatile times, even if you're really trying to be careful about methodology.
> The fact that less than one percent of the people who were invited to the study completed the experiment underscores that one should be cautious in generalizing results outside our sample. Most of this sample selection is driven by the fact that only a few percent of people click on research study invitations or social media ad
The self selection bias in these ad based invitation studies is just out of whack.
I suspect that those who participate were already considering quitting.
> The surprise here is how little of an effect it has [..] measured during elections, when the effect is likely to be greatest.
If you were depressed because of divisive politics on social media, then you leave social media during elections where divisive politics is everywhere in the real world anyway.. self-reported depression seems like it would not change much. So the results might make sense as long as they are targeting people that are old enough to be depressed by politics in the first place, and assuming politics rather than body-image issues etc is the main driver.
Some follow up questions.. does social media make divisive political issues in the real world worse? Seems like it! How old is old enough to be depressed by politics? Probably everyone now, which phenomenon is also likely caused by social media. Honestly regardless of elections, you can't actually leave social media by leaving social media anymore, it's kinda in the very fabric of things.
> my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")
Same, I mean this seems to be going against most of the other research on this. For what it's worth, here's a paper with some of the same authors on digital addiction ( https://www.nber.org/papers/w28936 ). Abstract states that
> Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use.
So.. not necessarily painting social media as wonderful. Social media companies would be interested in research about social media addiction for obvious reasons, but probably do not in general want that research public. Unless of course it hurts competitors more than it hurts them, and this paper is in the middle of drama about a tiktok ban. Maybe the authors just say what people in power want to hear at the time?
Maybe social media usage is a symptom of unhappiness and not the cause?
Removing one dopamine addicting and cortisol antagonising source might just be replaced by more of all the other sources that are being consumed. Perhaps they just watched TV news more, for example?
But perhaps the study shows that the effect works in the right direction even if small and even when replaced by any other behaviours that cause unhappiness, depression and anxiety.
> Kinda crazy that the magnitude is so small! (my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")
If a significant part of someone's Social life is run through Facebook, it's surprising that there's even a net positive in the end.
follow the money ...
50 years from now, we are going to be looking back at Social Media and Smartphone addiction like we currently look at smoking. “How insane were we to have allowed it and allowed it to be promoted?” our grandchildren will rightly ask!
tbf, I think pre-AI social media will barely receive a paragraph in a 2075 history book.
No it will. Because it's the beginning of all that happened after it.
Maybe the record of history itself will change. When it’s all LLM’s feeding into each other then how long until every whackadoo conspiracy theory becomes a historical fact?
No. It is like alcohol: perfectly fine in reasonable doses, but harmful to people that get addicted.
“Perfectly fine” is a bit of a stretch. No amount of alcohol is good for health. WHO now say even small amounts increase risk of cancer and liver disease.
I'd argue that small amounts of alcohol facilitate relaxation and socialization, which probably saves a lot more lives from preventing homicide and suicide than it costs in cancer and liver disease.
After socialization comes drunk driving which alone kills a quarter million people annually.
It's deeply fascinating to many europeans living in cities that one would need to drive to go to a bar.
My closest bar is 100 meters away. If I'm willing to walk 20 minutes, the radius can probably hit around 100 different ones.
I’m European and live in a city. There are still plenty of drunk driving fatalities here.
Hope you are right but I think it's different. Smoking has very visible side effects fairly soon though- types of cancer, photos of rotten lungs and throat everywhere on cigarette packs etc.
Social media only seems to have psychological side effects which aren't as openly visible to our eyes.
Your attitude is exactly what the parent comment is describing. You have the benefit of decades of scientific research and government mandates that didn't exist for previous generations. Modern cigarettes date to the late 1800's but the link between smoking and cancer wasn't established until the 1950's. It took over a decade after that for the first warning labels to appear on packs, and the photo type you're describing didn't exist until the 2000's.
It seems obvious to you because it has been made obvious to you. It wasn't the same for people in the first half of the 1900's. The parent comment is making the same point: it's not obvious to most people today, but in fifty years from now, people will look at the research, the decline in the birth rate, the increase of anxiety, and effects we can't imagine today and go "social media has very visible side effects fairly soon, how did they not know?"
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Anecdotal: Stopping commenting on reddit reduced emotional stress significantly. Reddit is one of those "social" anti-social circles where you can't afford to be on the "wrong side of argument" and every discussion can quickly spiral out.
I've done the same with HN, somewhat. I log out by default, just to add a barrier between reading something and responding to it. Has to be something I really feel I must reply to or worth adding more information to, to make me log in.
Depends on what you do on Reddit.
Politics, relationships, those are not things to talk about. But being able to respond to major FOSS contributors, that I'll do.
> Depends on what you do on Reddit.
I agree to some extent, but even highly specialised / niche topics on dedicated subs are getting slammed by the "hivemind". I guess it's more apparent for non-us users, as we're not the target audience, but the political brigading is showing even on subs like space and ML related. Reddit is now very similar to ~2015-16 reddit when the-donald and other subs really peaked, just the other way around. 10/25 posts on all are bad orange man and bad space man related. The technology sub is a mess of weaponised autism. And then you get the same political bs coming from weird subs, like the cute pics sub, or the knitting sub suddenly having political submissions w/ 3k-6k upvotes, all saying the same thing.
It doesn't help that it is still the easiest "social network" to create accounts on, and bot on. With the advances in LLMs I sometimes truly can't say if an account is real or a bot. And I work in this space...
I don't think the hivemind thing can be solved so long as people can see each others' comments. But then it's difficult to have a social media site without that.
I used to edit Wikipedia and I was heavily involved in many, many disputes. And in fact, I would seek out disputes, even ones outside my topic area; it's not difficult to do on Wikipedia because there are entire notice boards where people go to have public disputes. We called them "dramaboards", especially the admins' disciplinary ones.
And I would have these disputes, of course, over utterly trivial things, like how to spell something or where to place the apostrophe, or some manual-of-style nitpick in an infobox. And the disputes would drag on for weeks and we could utterly stall the editing process by disputing on talk pages. And yet we could edit-war over it, usually in slow-motion. And often the dispute would be couched in quite polite language but I would hate the guys' guts.
And the tipping point came when I began to have dreams about Wikipedia, and I would wake up angry. I would wake up fighting. I would wake up and immediately tear into the web browser and catch-up on the discussion, or not, just to post my next riposte, because I'd composed it in my sleep, in my dreamless dreams.
And I woke up angry more often than waking up in any other mood. And I was telling my psychiatrist this, and she said I should probably stop looking at blue light before bedtime. And I was incredulous that she would think if I turned my arguments red-hued that they would anger me less, or cause me to wake up happy and agreeable or something?
And I know I wasn't taking enough medication to make anyone happy, but these guys on Wikipedia really knew how to piss me off, and if you've ever heard of "brinkers" it's a certain type of troll who will play by the rules, and basically trigger anyone with a hot temper, and that triggered person would forget their ethics and commit a fatal error, and get banned, and the brinker would go on to live another day and cause others to fall into similar traps. And many of us do that, if we have the volatile temperament. I lasted about 17 years on Wikipedia without a single block and with some low-grade warnings, but generally a clean discipline record, but finally it got to me.
And a lot of time on Wikipedia I had spent fighting trolls and vandals and very disruptive editors. And I made sure a lot of them were banned. I filed a lot of reports. I was a petty bureaucrat there, filing reports and compiling evidence and arguing cases. There was no shortage of "wikilawyering". From the very beginning I was finding disputes and diving into them. Especially when they didn't concern me, didn't concern any topic I cared about. Just to have the disputes.
And I kept waking up angry. And finally I got control of that. Nowadays I wake up frightened. I wake up traumatized. I wake up scared of something I dreamed about. It's spiritual torment, and it's attributable to nothing I did the night before. Perhaps the F.U.D. of Hacker News gets to me. But not on that level. At least I don't go on crusades or jihads against Wikipedia editors anymore.
Re: "brinkers", this is where it's very useful to have a certain amount of mod discretion so that people who probe the fences like velociraptors in Jurassic Park eventually get banned for that. The downside is that it looks even more cliquey than it is.
> and if you've ever heard of "brinkers" it's a certain type of troll who will play by the rules, and basically trigger anyone with a hot temper
Didn't know there was a term for this, good to know it wasn't just me seeing things. Witnessed this happen countless times while assisting with moderation on Discord. The only worse thing than the rules defending these people's behavior is when fellow moderators decide to cover for them too.
I think the trap is that many social platforms were genuinely fun, but then became a disaster
Same with stopping replyhing to HN. I just downvote and upvote. Emotional stress significantly reduced.
The number of replies I cut & paste to my notes archive far exceeds the amount of posts I actually make. I still find it valuable to work through my own thoughts to better prepare myself to have the same conversations in more impactful circumstances, but there are some things I just don't care enough about persuading the other person - or believe the other person is actually going to consider the words as carefully as I put them together.
but then.... how did you say this!?!?!! and how will you answer this question!?!???!???!
Bring out the pitchforks!!
Procrastination Mode on HN (see links in footer) helps significantly. I wish I enabled it earlier, I just kept putting it off.
There’s a few things that help:
- do not engage with the technically correct but missing the point people
- don’t check your threads if you posted something that the groupthink disagrees with
- don’t try to win arguments if you know you’re right
I can’t help but notice how all those points are centered around you being the bearer of truth and others being the source of dismay.
While these may be easy ways to avoid exposing yourself to sources of discomfort it might also not be a bad idea to learn how to deal with confrontation and dissonance in a productive manner.
Besides being contrarian, I am nothing if not that, I honestly think our society at large will benefit from learning how to deal constructively with opposing perspectives and mindsets - assuming we ever get to that point.
While I ostensibly agree about learning how to deal constructively with opposing perspectives, I also don't think online discourse (main stream avenues) will ever be the place to learn or partake in those sorts of conversations. Even in smaller subreddits, your comments will be viewed by thousands of people, some of whom are explicitly there to troll or to argue in bad faith or even people literally having mental breakdowns. You also end up in situations where every reply is to a new person, so you're not really having a discourse with anyone just an amorphous entity. Look at things like "Godwin's law" or "Poe's law", for some long running beliefs/commentary on internet discourse.
> don’t try to win arguments if you know you’re right
Caveats:
- I can be wrong (sometimes need some pointing out)
- it is ok to post for the benefit of lurkers (inform others of fake news and such)
>Same with stopping replyhing to HN. I just downvote and upvote.
I can’t really put my finger on why, but I don’t think I believe you.
There's a correlation between being really obnoxious and continuing threads on HN or anywhere else.
Occasionally there are good real conversations where people are generally interested and curious but the most common are either marginally interested or very interested in worthless conflict.
Your comment is proof to the contrary. You are thus lying and everything you say or do is now severely tainted. I will now produce a seven-pronged argument for why exactly this type of behavior is the hidden root cause of climate change and why you should feel bad. (/s)
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
I know the feeling, but I have to admit that people being obtuse helped me to take them and myself less serious. That said, there are better ways to foster that kind of experience.
I 100% knew a reply like this was coming :). So I kind of thank you for saying this...
Weird. There is little that depresses me more than watching my wife sit at the table for hours a day slowly scrolling Facebook while ignoring me and the kids. We have talked about it and she's tried to reduce it to no avail.
There's something about the social media influencer industrial complex that short circuits women's brains worse, as far as I can tell. Most of my friends quit social media years to a decade ago but our wives are all on it. Men seem to get sucked into Youtube wormholes instead.
I think the only way out is cold turkey. The number of conversations my wife starts with telling me about some distant acquaintances recent vacation (as seen thru IG) is distressing.
My "social" internet use is more hobby based - forum/reddit hobby focussed content.
It is anecdotal but eg. me and my brother and some of my male friends "burned out" on silly meme feeds on sites like Memebase and what not before there was any very addictive feeds. Maybe fewer women was full of it by the time Instagram came?
You're enabling it by being kind. Stop being so nice.
Semantic point: nice and kind are not the same thing.
The nice thing to do when somebody is behaving poorly, is to ignore it until it becomes untenable (firing them, leaving them, and so on). The kind thing is to address it and let them change their ways.
Wanting to be nice is baked into our social structures - nobody wants to be seen as the un-nice person - but being kind is where relationships and interactions get strong. You just need to do it with empathy.
If she tried to reduce it she wouldn't do it. Nobody is holding a gun to her head. She does it because she wants to do it. Until she takes responsibility for her actions she will not change.
Hey, you just solved drug dependency issues all over the world. Just stop doing it!
Well yes, the essential working part of all interventions and therapies is to help the client understand how they can take responsibility and what control they have, and to believe in it. They aren’t pure victims, no one is.
"Why don't people just stop taking heroin"
Yeah this is how all therapy works. It’s about learning what change you can make and taking responsibility and making that change. Not sure why you’re being downvoted but likely because there’s an idea floating around now that all such issues are purely externally imposed by a defect in society, and that it has nothing to do with the actions of the individual who is portrayed as helpless. I think that is a deeply depressing and disturbing trend. I’ve literally seen communities of people telling others they should kill themselves because it’s impossible to be happy under capitalism…
> People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls.
Can anyone translate? Random web search find suggests multiplying by 37 to get a percentage, which sounds very questionable, but even then these improvements seem negligible.
This doesn't really line up with my lived experience. Getting myself out of shitty platforms and community spaces improved my mental state significantly (although the damage that's been done remains).
From the paper PDF (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33697/w336...):
> We estimate that users in the Facebook deactivation group reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, anxiety, and depression, relative to control users. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p < 0.01 level, both when considered individually and after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the full set of political outcomes considered in Allcott et al. (2024). Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Facebook on people over 35, undecided voters, and people without a college degree.
> We estimate that users in the Instagram deactivation group reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement in the emotional state index relative to control. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p = 0.016 level when considered individually, and at the p = 0.14 level after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the outcomes in Allcott et al. (2024). The latter estimate does not meet our pre-registered p = 0.05 significance threshold. Substitution analyses imply this improvement is achieved without shifts to offline activities. Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Instagram on women aged 1824.
Perhaps it wasn't clear what I meant. When I said significantly, I meant it in the colloquial sense, not in the statistical significance sense.
I was looking for a more digestable figure describing the extent of improvements, not whether the study found them confidently distinguishable (which I just assumed they did based on the wording, good to know they didn't for Instagram).
The best thing you can do is compare it to another study, since turning 0.06 standard deviations into a percentage of happiness isn’t going to be that telling.
In general, 0.2 is considered a small effect. So 0.06 is quite small — likely not a practically noticeable change in well-being. But impressive to me when I compare it to effect sizes of therapy interventions which can lie around 0.3 for 12 weeks.
Quote:
> “50 randomized controlled trials that were published in 51 articles between 1998 and August 2018. We found standardized mean differences of Hedges’ g = 0.34 for subjective well-being, Hedges’ g = 0.39 for psychological well-being, indicating small to moderate effects, and Hedges’ g = 0.29 for depression, and Hedges’ g = 0.35 for anxiety and stress, indicating small effects.”
(Source: The efficacy of multi-component positive psychology interventions, 2019 — https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331028589_The_Effic...)
This is a very useful insight, thank you. Wouldn't have occurred to me to check something like that.
A 0.060 standard deviation improvement is super small. If the average person rates their happiness/anxiety/depression score at, say, 50 out of 100, and the standard deviation (how spread out people’s scores are) is around 10 points, then 0.060 SD = 0.6 points. So quitting Facebook gave an average person a ~1% bump in mood score. Instagram was even smaller: ~0.4 points, or 0.8%.
It's real, but barely noticeable for most people—unless you're in a more affected subgroup (e.g. undecided voters or younger women). Your experience feeling way better likely means you were an outlier (in a good way).
On what scale? What do 'points' on the scale mean? Without knowing those things, we can't say what 6 or 60 points mean.
On the contrary, reporting changes relative to the standard deviation of a control group frees you from scales and their meanings, because it relates the observed change to the normal spread of scores before the intervention. In this way, you don't need to know the scale and its meaning to know if a change is big or small, and from a statistical perspective, that's (almost) all you need to find if a change is significant or due to random chance. Of course, looking back at the original scale and its meaning can help interpreting the meaning of the results in other ways
This is what I was interested in, thank you!
So, ELI5 level.
People who use Facebook also may feel depression, from very strong to none at all. In the middle of this interval there's the "expected value" point, sort of an average level of feeling depressed. This point is at an equal distance from the "most depressed users" group, and from the "not depressed at all" group. Let's call this distance of depression strength a "standard deviation".
Now, the users who stopped using Facebook became slightly less depressed, by 6% of that "standard deviation" range. If you buy a small coke at a McDonald's, then take one sip, you make it about 6% smaller. It's not unnoticeable (you've made that refreshing sip), but about 15 more such sips still remain!
In other words, there is an effect which can definitely be noticed ("statistically significant"), but it's not a big deal either.
>Getting myself out of shitty platforms and community spaces improved my mental state significantly
True. I've experienced it too
It means that there is a statistically significant improvement, but that improvement is tiny, and will not make you happier than your peers all by itself (assuming a standard peer group of 200 people - you'd likely swap places with 1 or 2 people).
Of course, this study only considered normative people, not marginalized or those who were experiencing active harm from exposure to social media - your personal results may vary and it's important to remember that science is imperfect and social sciences are doubly so.
If going off Facebook improves your life - you do you.
As far as I can tell, the algorithm can really harm people during times of mental illness/stress/anxiety. Part of it is that it is like a feedback loop.
When we lost our pet and my wife was very upset for a while, the algo kept showing her more and more content associated with pet loss. It got to the point that some random content pushed to her social media was upsetting her daily.
I can imagine someone experiencing depression, suicidal thoughts, etc can easily be pushed over the edge by the algorithmic feedback loop.
In a way this perfectly captures my experiences too, despite my struggles revolving around a different topic, and sometimes it wouldn't even be algorithmically inflicted, but self-inflicted.
I'd keep coming across, and sometimes seeking out, threads with political content. But beyond that, I'd keep stumbling upon or even seeking out people who are being (in my view) inciteful or misleading. This would then piss me off, and I'd start to spiral. Naturally, these are not the kind of people who'd be posting in good faith, adding even more fuel to the fire when I engaged with them and their replies would eventually come about, which of course I'd "helpfully" get a notification for.
If I understand you, just read the paper for its analysis and interpretation of those numbers.
Alternatively, you'll want to grasp the meaning of "standard deviation" (you're right that you can't multiply all standard deviations by a number and get a percentage - and a percentage of what?), and then find the "index of happiness, depression, and anxiety" they use and grasp its meaning.
I'm not sure you understood me. I want to specifically avoid doing all that, to save time and effort.
Even if it's statistically significant, it's a laughably tiny effect.
Like have one nice meal or a one walk in the woods 2 months ago and rate your mood today kind of effect size.
0.06 std deviation is not anything to write home about and really doubtfully real, given the general quality of psychological science.
Perhaps, how much better of a day would you have if you found a dollar on the ground.
Bad time to do it during what turned out to be very emotionally charged election where traditional news turns in to social media style instantaneous reporting and is inescapable. I’d also suggest 6 weeks is not long enough to fully recover. In fact in that time frame you may still be experiencing FOMO type symptoms. Would have been interesting to see how the participants faired after a year/two years.
Also fb and instagram are just two of many social media platforms, so this study doesn’t sound like a full cold turkey test.
How is traditional news "inescapable"? You can just not go to the websites and not watch it on TV. It is very easy not to consume breathless mainstream media rubbish.
Deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts years ago and my inner peace increased immediately, my meditations became deeper, better within days. I never would have guessed how much negative energy these platforms created within me. People will post mostly how perfect their life is on these platforms. Distorting reality, inducing jealousy, guilt, and other forms of negative emotions. And finally a sense of depression.
I still have a Facebook account, but never log in. Haven’t done so, in months.
The only reason I had it, in the first place, was so I could participate in a technical forum for an infrastructure platform that I authored.
That platform has long since left the nest, and is in very capable hands. Like a spent first-stage booster, I am no longer relevant.
Before completely walking away from Facebook, I had turned off all notifications, and never doomscrolled. Made walking away, much easier.
I miss it like it like I miss a painful boil on my arse. It was just old white people, screaming at each other.
Recently, I've been thinking about creating an Instagram account. I've never used it before, and I dislike it in general, but because of recent circumstances in my life (a breakup that almost gave me depression, and some other things), I need to go out more and meet new people IRL, and Instagram is the de facto way to meet people in my country, at least for those of us under 30, to the point that you're seen as weird if you don't have one.
But I know that once I create an account, I'll get hooked to the feed, to uploading pictures, etc. because I know myself.
I don't know if the positive social aspect (meeting people, or creating a lasting connection with people that I meet once IRL) is going to offset that addiction and the general anxiety that comes with having an account.
There are people out there - probably many people - in your country under the age of 30 who feels the same way about Instagram as you do. These are the people you want to meet, not the people on Instagram.
If you hate Instagram and the anxiety it gives you, the people you meet on there will never be really on your level, or you on theirs. You will waste your time and effort on shallower relationships that can't get deep because you want to engage with life differently and not be on social media.
Dig deep into the hobbies that give you joy, and go to as many meetups and social occasions around them as you can. Leverage your friend and family network - the people who know you, and get you - and build on it.
Those are good tips but what to do when you are new in location and your family/friends doesn't have contacts with people that like your hobby? Joining new social circles isn't that easy for less social ones.
I know this post is for Facebook, but I've noticed my mood improving when I decided to leave LinkedIn.
Even though I am rationally aware that people work in better environments and get paid while I'm job searching for the past 6 months, it feels like seeing any sort of announcement regarding other people's successes hits a subconscious chord my brain hates. It felt like I'm being actively intimidated, making my already depressed and sad state of job searching worse. The "highlights reel effect" on LinkedIn is deliberate and I'd argue inevitable, because everyone is trying their best to show how good they are as candidates and workers.
Now that I closed it, and I'm sticking to the usual communities (Discord, etc.) may be running into better engineers than me but I see it either as a neutral event or a positive one, because they share their code and insights which I can learn from.
Removing Instagram from my daily routine has been the best change I did, apart from adopting a cat. Just saw some stuff on my feed I had no desire to see apart from brainrot, and the algorithm kept shovelling some controversial figures too, which I had no interest in, so that also did not help its cause.
I wish my cat was around in the phone camera and instagram days, he would have cleaned up online.
Never too late you know... assuming you still have your catto.
Sadly passed as a dignified old cat many, many years ago now.
The digital camera was barely a thing back then let alone a camera in your pocket 24 hours a day! Nevertheless, lots of happy memories captured in the only way that really matters - in person without a screen.
Have you considered creating an IG account for the cat? Could be really famous. The next "Tardar Sauce".
Have given it thought yes, my photography skills are not that great, but I do have good shots of him here and there.
here's one: https://unsplash.com/photos/GuK3U7typ18
What I'd love to see next is whether the improvements last after reactivation, or if it's just a temporary detox effect
I only watch standup bits, and Instagram keeps trying to show me other things, I skip them as often as I can.
Also cats.
I just scroll for like 10min before going to bed.
Been using it for about 6 months now.
Facebook can be hard to get rid of if you actually have hobbies and things because so much gets organised via it. I tried to get rid but my Running club exclusively posts stuff on Facebook.
For Instagram with you needing to log in to view pages, you find that you can’t find opening times for restaurants etc because many places use it to advertise that they’re open/closed at short notice.
If you really value your running club, why not help them set something else up?
You could offer to help the people who do all that posting to get it onto an email list or some other platform away from Facebook. A small indie website somewhere, even a blog.
I know this sounds like work, and you just want to enjoy your running club, but if it gets sticky, the people who are currently posting everything on FB will eventually realise there's value elsewhere and they'll keep it ticking over.
My idea is that as long as there is a social idea, in the same small circle, there are also "Internet celebrities" who are considered by everyone to post some of their photos. It is essentially social. In WeChat's circle of friends, people already need to make money by doing e-commerce in this private domain, not to mention that his friends may be the people around him, but his work forces him to...
Direct PDF link:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33697/w336...
Possibly relevant that the 6 week trial period occurred in the 6 weeks leading up to the American election in 2020.
Well, let me tell you its far better. I had been using in collage upto 2013 i suppose. It use to make me sick in multiple ways. Now i use mastodon, almost same goes with it as well. But i just check things in mastodon which you can check without signing up as well. The Urge to check news multiple times a day is there. But i am getting hang of it. I didn't knew that how these companies suck your brain. With adblock and using just few times the phone makes me feel better.
The people who remain on social media deserve it. It's social media darwinism.
First, I was an avid Facebook user. I cared about what photos I put up, my status updates, what groups I was in, the lot.
Then life got busy and somewhat difficult, and I had no more time for this. Still, I'd occasionally go on Facebook and get really down. I'd see all my "friends" living it up, having fun etc while I was stuck in my rut. Very depressing.
But then, a few things happened. One, I understood it's really all fake. Two, all my real human friends stopped using Facebook, basically. And anyway, Facebook now just shows me AI slop that is nothing to do with anything - weird videos, people definitely shutting down a 5000 year old family business, you-wont-believe-what-she-did videos etc. Not that I use it much, just some friends for whatever reason are still on Messenger.
I mean, you can install only messenger without installing fb. Messenger even has own website
Quit all social media 8 years ago, never missed it one bit. It was all good and i truly enjoyed it before ~2014 but then it started deteriorating so rapidly due to political polarisation and domination of "influencers" that kept peddling worthless trash, by about 2016 i no longer understood wtf i was doing there.
Since then, only tried reddit, but it has a different problem - it's an echo chamber where no real discussion is possible on any topic as anyone who disagrees with even minute details in dominating dogma of every subreddit, gets downvoted to invisibility. Plus too many subreddits are merely karma mills that people use to boost their karma to allow themselves at least some actual voice in other subreddits - and those useless-by-design subreddits dominate the whole thing because you need to do a lot of those "filler" posts to allow oneself one real one, thus SNR on the platform is ridiculously low - but it's not some evil bots who's creating noise, but actual live people, and not even dumb ones, just because they HAVE to. And going through this - for what? To get a chance to participate in one more "someone on the internet is wrong" debate?
Meaningful talk is possible in groups where people are united by at least something and where is at least some real barrier of entry. These are not the social media. They can't afford filtering who gets in because that way they'll lose viewership and leave a lot of money on the table. I wonder why that comes as a surprise to anyone.
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TLDR?
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They’re regular human beings. If we believe we’re stronger than them, I think we should stand up for them rather than laugh at them.
One could just as easily write something like “lol anyone who leaves disparaging comments on the internet is so weak. Imagine not being able to resist ridiculing unfortunate people”. But the world is more nuanced than that. It requires a more constructive attitude. And it requires people looking out for one another. We can care about the people who can’t resist a random website. It was designed to be hard to resist by intelligent, competent people. It’s meant to exploit their weaknesses.
If people didn’t like the way these apps make them feel, they would stop using them.
Many people prefer having anxiety about drama to being bored.
That is not the only possible explanation. A more likely explanation imho is that social media falls into the long list of things you do for a short term reward even though you know you shouldn't, like smoking a cigarette or getting drunk.
You know it is not good for you but your executive function and ability to plan long term are compromised (whether chronically or acutely), so you do it anyway, and regret it later.
Some people regret it. Some people prefer a marshmallow now to two tomorrow.
There really is something to this. Living in NYC you meet a lot of people from different walks of life and levels of wealth.
Over and over the most stressed out anxious people I meet are the underemployed/nonworking spouse in very wealthy couples. Especially the childless ones.
Have you heard of smoking addiction?
With ai, i hope the feed is more useful to me.
The ML model exists to benefit Facebook, not you. It maximizes for your engagement with the platform, not your happiness or usefulness.
That's why i hope.
Then it is misplaced.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this right here ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Remember when the feed was just a reverse chronological list of stuff you told Facebook you wanted to see? That was the peak. Once they started engagement farming using recommendation algorithms the site lost all of its appeal.
Append ?sk=h_chr at the end of its URL to get that. Can also be found by dumpster diving in the UI somewhere I'm sure. Be aware that they're very intent on redirecting you to the regular feed though.
Thanks for the genuinely useful tip. I didn’t know that was a thing, but I can’t test it since I deleted my account almost a decade ago. I’m tired of adversarially wrestling usefulness out of a trillion dollar company.
> I’m tired of adversarially wrestling usefulness out of a trillion dollar company.
Hopefully people will learn to get tired of this sort of thing a LOT quicker, and this will be one good thing about out our new improved and now extremely shortened attention spans. Impatience could actually have an upside if it prevents decades of escalating arms racing with enshittification vs new-current-work-around. It’s like with stages of grief, right? Denial / bargaining. Whatever is broken in a trillion dollar corporation is broken on purpose, and it's getting worse, not better.. waiting around and hoping for improvement is a fools errand.
Up until now, boiling the frog/consumer slowly has been one tactic. Or corporations can leverage their size and simply make things so bad for so long that a new generation arrives on the scene and has no idea how bad the stuff on offer actually is. Enough completely ubiquitous impatience in consumers really does undermine both of those strategies.. if there's actually meaningful competition that's still left around to choose from
> I’m tired of adversarially wrestling usefulness out of a trillion dollar company.
Very well put.
I think the downfall was earlier then that. When businesses got on their. The first few times it was maybe clever, the Deli shop is my friend or what ever but I think that was the turning point for it's just friends connecting and the start of becoming ads and engagement.
On Facebook, I started seeing a lot of tiktok-type content and apparently you can turn that off in the settings. It works pretty well.
How could you _possibly_ believe a company like meta would use a new technology to act in your interests rather than theirs?
It is not _completely_ naive to believe that in order for a service like Facebook to continue being successful, they must do _something_ that makes their users want to use it.
And therefore, it is not completely illogical to think that Meta’s interests and users’ interests must align.
(Not my opinion, just responding to your question)
The same way people think a politician would?
The politicians in my state do a fairly good job, so that is easy to believe.
it's obvious meritocracy in institutions is dead. people with half baked ideas float to the top for no reason now
Sounds like a great way to totally kill Facebook
I mean more inteligent recommendation.
You can hope, but certainly you don’t expect it?
Yes. No expectation.