> Conducted Oct. 8 to 10, the online poll surveyed 1,545 Canadians and cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.
It's a pretty good sample-size, but we don't get error bars. I don't remember if there was anything FB-critical happening that week (when did the study about teen mental health come out?), but the timeframe could also affect the survey.
The formula for error bars under the traditional Binomial assumption is:
+/- sqrt(p * (1-p) / N)
So the errors are around +/- 1% for most values of p in this article. The article (rightly) points out that the binomial assumption is not reasonable given the survey method.
The traditional binomial assumption assumes independence of the samples, as the accepted answer states. The authors are acknowledging that this assumption does not hold.
It's an odd disclaimer. If it's a quota-based sample then the performance in terms of nominal coverage is going to look similar to a probabilistic sample (especially given the current environment for probabilistic samples, which is quite poor). Probabilistic samples don't report design effects or adjust MOEs to reflect them either, the norm is just to report a classical normal approximate binomial confidence interval (e.g. +/- 1/sqrt(n)) even when a real design effect exists.
My guess is the reason for this disclaimer is that it's not a quota sample, it's just literally a completely undirected opt-in survey and there's no reason to believe this is anything resembling a representative sample, probabilistic or not.
This disclaimer is applied to pretty much all polling done online, even if the samples are weighted to match the population. If you go look at election polls, for eg., the non-IVR ones will all have something like this, or a "If this were a traditional phone poll, the margin of error would be..."
Online polls are usually done by letting people opt-in and then sorting and weighting to sample, just like phone polls. The idea though is that because they aren't reached "randomly" in the first place (as they are by war dialing phone numbers for eg.) there's additional sampling biases at play that a margin of error doesn't account for.
Leger is a legitimate polling company in Canada, and I doubt they did it any different from how they do it for election polls. I'm not sure why people are assuming this was just an unweighted facebook poll or something.
But the reality is that "traditional polls" are probably no better because of the extremely high non-response rate these days. Inertia is a thing though.
You replied like you were replying to me. I literally do this for a living. My original post speaks to all of this.
Quota-based sampling -- a preferable term to convenience sampling -- (i.e. non-random samples that allow respondents to opt-in but with invitations to opt in extended to a large pool about whom basic information is gathered in advance, with invitations extended in a manner to quota on population weight targets, often with additional post-survey weighting to hit interaction terms in the targets) is non-probabilistic, but its performance is fine -- and indeed given reasonable quotas, the coverage of the classical MOE -- as I said, a conservative normal approximate binomial CI e.g. +- 1.96 * sqrt(0.5 * 0.5 / n) ~= +- 1/sqrt(n) -- is about the same as it is in a probabilistic survey. If your quotas are exactly correct then it's literally the same.
As you allude to by linking that article, sampling error is a small component of the TSE framework. And crucially, both probabilistic and quota-based samples typically do weighting to targets after they get their sample, and neither typically report the design effect (i.e. how the choice to weight affects the sample variance) when reporting results. The choice not to be honest about design effects is a shame of the polling industry. It probably leads to a good deal of "movement" in the polls being completely illusory, which was part of Gelman's point in his earlier writing on the subject.
What I don't understand is why you would report an estimate like this and not attempt to report any uncertainty. The reader is not likely to take away "design-based inference considerations require that we refuse to state a classical MOE representing sampling error on principled grounds", and instead is likely to take away "number in headline = correct".
I don't think that they "just did a dumb Facebook poll". I am concerned that they did not do a defensible quota sample or that they don't have reasonable population weight targets and that may be the cause for the failure to state any measure of uncertainty.
The article you linked is very, very old, reflecting a fear of convenience sampling within AAPOR a decade ago. YouGov more or less won that argument.
Looking back at your post I definitely see better where you were coming from and I do think I was in error to respond to you, you're right. I was frustrated at a few different posts in this thread and maybe conflated some of what you were saying with what others were saying.
I think you are probably right about the poll as well; there's a more specific statement on leger's own release about the poll[1] about methodology and it does seem as if they just pulled people at random from their panel and does not mention weighting them. Which is surprising to me.
Very unbiased. Only sampled people who were online and ostensibly only those who used Facebook. Since maybe ~60% of people use Facebook, I don't think the results speak for _all_ Canadians. If it did that's saying a lot for secondhand effects of social media platforms.
You don't get "points" for making some hypothetical claim. If you think there is something wrong with an analysis, demonstrate it. Isn't that what "pro-science" people do?
And therein lies the problem with online polling. The randomness, or lack thereof, is not demonstrable without polling people who did not respond to the poll, via a different medium. Hence the standard disclaimer.
It's not a facebook poll, not sure why you thought that. It was a poll taken from a random (presumably population-reflecting) sample of Leger's online polling platform. It's not technically a random poll like wardialing in the 40s got you but it's not just an opt-in facebook poll either.
Without access to the questions I don't know exactly who would have a tendency to respond. But would you answer a poll about how a service is affecting you if you didn't use it? And if not, that's my point -- that both the article's title and contents seem to speak for Canadians en masse but is likely not to, because it likely only sampled the 60% who use Facebook.
I really don't know why you'd assume people wouldn't tbh. Yes, I am (approximately, at least) a non-user of facebook and if I were being polled about it I would answer a question about my views on its effects on society.
Also, the most pertinent question to this discussion is in the post by the polling company I linked to above.
>Its this sort of sensational/half-true reporting that makes people lose faith in media brands.
If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you.
But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful. They are saying that. What does that mean?
> But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful. They are saying that. What does that mean?
It means exactly nothing, obviously. You can substitute literally anything else for Facebook without affecting the truth of that sentence in the slightest.
> But how about you put aside the statistical nuance of this for 10 seconds and acknowledge the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful. They are saying that. What does that mean?
we can probably find 1,545 people who think everything you love and hold dear is ruining the world.
> the fact that real people, when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful.
It is the Internet, you'll find real people who believe democracy is harmful, black people should be slaves and earth is flat. So what does that mean? Nothing!!
>If you think not reporting error bars is what makes people "lose faith in media brands", you are so far away from reality I'm not sure what to tell you.
"If you think.." - Why not ask me what I think instead of assuming and putting up a strawman?
>when asked, actually consider Facebook -- a piece of software-- harmful. They are saying that. What does that mean?
I don't consider opinion polls as pathways to truths. They're interesting data points, but not some kind of absolute truth. Human opinions change, perspectives change, often multiple times when provided new/different data. Opinions can also be in conflict with each other. We're not automations or pinnacles of logical consistency. You can hand-wave it away as "nuance", but it isn't. Its fundamental. It's messy.
He very clearly did not say that not putting up error bars was what makes people lose faith in the media.
According to passivate's commentary, what makes people lose faith in the media is when they report a study that notes "our findings cannot generalize because we used a nonrandom sample" in the terms "most Canadians believe...".
itsoktocry is just putting up a low-effort bad-faith nonrebuttal.
Plenty aren't aware of what harms it might cause due to lack of exposure to it. Plenty of others might be completely biased based only on anecdotes and bad press.
There's no way to tell what the balance is without actually asking them
I used to think, untill recently, that Facebook was just a tool and all this hatred was overblown. After all, I modulated my use of it just fine. My usage is sparse, and I use messenger to talk with people I know, it kept us together. I can see how community and bringing old friends together is precious.
But, recently, I realized someone I used to be very close has mental problems. Undiagnosed, but there is no other way I can explain his behaviour to myself. Obsessive behaviour, can only talk about his conspiratorial obsession, erratic, spends most of his time "learning" about a specific conspiracy. And I see how Facebook is exacerbating this. I see how these things are poisoning his mind, fantasies weaved by other mentally ill people. It's just sad, when I thought about it and dawned on me most of those _wild_ conspiracy theories are people that need help feeding each other's sickness.
And then I look on my dad's wall, and saw the same hatred and resentment growing, and it scared me, the possibility he might drift even more this way.
Now I changed my mind. I think it is harmful and it does induce bad states in people that would otherwise be better, or at least... Surrounded by better support systems. But I still think it's not _just_ Facebook. It's a confluence of factors.
I think FB is probably bad, but I've also noticed that people have a tendency to blame delusional mental illnesses on whatever a person was going through/up to at the time it onset when it is often more like a timer went off.
Yes, most likely the ilness would be there even without Facebook. But the platform enables some destructive behavior while in the real life, I hope, more productive support structures could exist.
While mental illness is something you might be biologically predisposed, the outcome can vary wildly with or without support structures and good help. And I think on this end Facebook is profoundly destructive.
Yes, most likely the ilness would be there even without Facebook. But the platform enables some destructive behavior while in the real life, I hope, more productive support structures could exist.
But, realistically, is the choice social media or real life? Or is choice between one part of the Internet and another part of the Internet? Which is to say, what are you talking about doing? Ending Facebook in particular? Ending "Social Media" but not say, youtube?
So just give up? Do nothing? If we think these things are harmful and those harms outweigh the good, then we should do something.
Even if it is just a higher tax rate for Social Media companies to help pay for the clean up of the damage. Sin taxes work, but in this case you'd have to apply them to the real customers, advertisers, somehow.
Provide help on a variety of levels (peers, professionals, etc). The idea that mechanical restriction social networking could be the answer is just misguided.
And it's not social media that are doing the damage but the interaction of social media and those with existing problems.
If we think these things are harmful and those harms outweigh the good, then we should do something.
I can see many people saying Facebook is "bad" in some way but often the criticism are completely contradictory. Facebook allows too much free speech or Facebook allows too little free speech. Peonple with both criticism "agree" on "harm" until they have to actually do something, then the absurdity appears.
Even if it is just a higher tax rate for Social Media companies to help pay for the clean up of the damage.
What's a "social media company"? Any company that let's people communicate? Social media is just blogging, message, forums and so-forth, put together in a roughly unified way. Acting like it's a single thing that can be managed and controlled seems plausible but is impossible if you think about it for a minute.
I think you have very good points, and, honestly, I have no answer for them. I see the tension between too much/too little censorship.
And obviously, the blame is not only on FB, there is an ecosystem of websites that feed into each other. I mentioned Youtube as also having had a big role in this.
I also see their usefulness. But the damage they are doing needs to be tackled somehow. And me not having a solution does not mean there is none. Surely other, smarter people can find one.
One thing to tackle would be the algorithm and the way it feeds into this addiction. It obviously is good for FB but bad for the user. And absolutely no one says... "Gee, I so love that FB is addictive." You could get the benefits of FB without the feed that pulls you the most it can to stay.
FB could also downrank _all_ political or polarizing content (hah, came to agree with HN on this, incredible). Obviously, FB is not a place to have reasoned discussion about politics and news and things of consistence. So downgrade them in the algo, and then the self-enforcing feedback loop should tone down in this area.
It's a tough problem but one that exists and cannot be ignored.
A person's mental illness can have drastically different outcomes depending on who they are surrounded by. Even before Facebook there were plenty of cases where people exploited the emotionally and socially naive or unstable, for their own gain or amusement. I worry social media can enable something similar.
But it's really not social media in particular. It seems pretty clear that when delusions are coming on, a person will seek out those who humor those delusions. If you're talking pre-social media Internet, you'd have the person on BBSes and email lists for whatever they find appealing.
And it's worth considering that the situation isn't some mentally ill people and some opportunistic/predatory people. You have a mixture of delusion and predation over a substantial population and you have the ability of people in these groups to seek each other out. Maybe if you shut down usenet and everything past that, you could stop this phenomena, at the expense of more or less shutting down the Internet. But otherwise, the discussions blaming social media in particular for this stuff seem misguided. Social media is about connecting with people you know whereas "socially resonant insanity" or whatever wants to call it, involves find new friends and new facts.
But there are healthy connections and unhealthy connections. Is it possible that there might be a way to encourage the healthy ones and discourage the unhealthy ones?
Just because social media works the way it does now doesn't mean it has to always work like that. These things are constructed by humans and we can change them if we want. There is nothing intrinsic in Facebook or YouTube that says they must promote "engagement" above all else.
Maybe they might make a few less dollars, wouldn't that be sad.
But there are healthy connections and unhealthy connections. Is it possible that there might be a way to encourage the healthy ones and discourage the unhealthy ones?
There has been talk of Facebook actually using algorithms to make mental health interventions. The problem is that I don't think that many users find some automatically generated warning credible.
Just because social media works the way it does now doesn't mean it has to always work like that.
Either you something like a single, state approved connection system or each social media network will serve up anything that users will buy. That's both because of the profit motive and because someone, somewhere thinks X sort of content is totally cool, both factor are in play. What's the plan to counter that?
They can make the interventions much more subtle and palatable than just a dry warning. Subtly changing the feed to nudge the person on another path could do this. It is manipulation, but maybe some people need it.
This happened to a family member, they had undiagnosed schizophrenia and started posting craaaaaazy stuff on YouTube, got a following of fellow like-minded folk that only made things worse until it all exploded into a huge melt down / insane asylum situation. Crazy times.
> And I see how [language] is exacerbating this. I see how these things are poisoning his mind, fantasies weaved by other mentally ill people. It's just sad, when I thought about it and dawned on me most of those _wild_ conspiracy theories are people that need help feeding each other's sickness.
> I think it is harmful and [language] does induce bad states in people that would otherwise be better, or at least... Surrounded by better support systems. But I still think it's not _just_ [language]. It's a confluence of factors.
Wow this is such a bad faith attempt at exonerating Facebook that I don't know where to even start.
No the issue isn't language, the issue is Facebook way of pushing outrage-inducing content and isolating people in bubbles of ever more radicalized content. Spend some time on https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ and come back tell us how the problem is "language" and not social medias.
The fact it is impotent for you does not mean it is impotent in general. That is my exact point. I have hardly any problem with FB usage, but I see many people dear to me that do.
I imagined that this is a problem that will go by itself. That people will inoculate themselves against conspiracy. But now, I'm not so sure.
But without language, how could they communicate these harmful ideas? People use language to spread hate speech. Even the code base of Facebook is written in a language. This is why we need a doubleplusgood conlang alternative like Newspeak! We can then unfollow crimethink terrorinfo and hatespeak. Facebook is just a plusvictim here of enemy agitprop.
As a side note, I'm a little saddened when I see friends apologize for their posts. There's such a reaction to "influencer culture" that people feel like foodgrams and humblebrags are a terrible thing, and in excess they certainly can be, but I think from most people it's a billion times better than strawman political arguments and manipulative media that is far worse for our mental health than just comparing ourselves to someone's good day.
I had a friend post a picture of food made from ingredients they had made in their own garden, and it made them feel so good to eat it because they had had a rough year and it was a good personal win, so they apologetically posted a photo of it.
Forget the rest of the trash on Facebook - seeing a friend I haven't seen in a while experience something good and being able to share that with them is something we need more of in the world. I'd trade away all the "only geniuses can remember the order of operations for this future scam page" or "you won't believe how this person misrepresents their opponents views and tears that misrepresentation apart!" and keep stuff like this.
We need whatsapp/telegram/signal to display a feed based on user's status and nothing more. It's almost free, frictionless and free from ads (for now). But sharing without the widest audience (just to the social graph of your contacts).
It could bring back Google+'s circles so you don't share the same stuff with colleagues and friends and family, but your feed page would display it all the same.
Decentralized micro blogging without the huge tech cost and barrier of entry of mastodon.
People could choose how people are allowed to react to their status: limited in time, to the latest status update, limited to emoji/thumbs up reactions, allows starting new chat with that status as a topic, etc.
There's no money in it though, so maybe bring back the old whatsapp model ? 1€ for 6 months or something ?
Or maybe just tell people to start a group chat in which they post updates ? Facebook/Twitter/Instagram got that easy to post/single tunnel thing simplified to the max, I don't think you can do better without being centralized.
I find group chats with different groups of friends and family has filled this niche. There's no ads. There's no technical barrier to entry. No need to even sign up for a service. The stakes are low, messages can just be a meme or some nice photos from a day trip. The only downside is the ephemeral nature of texting. Even then, my MIL figured out how to save pictures to her phone and they occasionally show up in the calendars she makes as Christmas gifts.
Imho, the big toxic thing on Facebook wasn't the "news", it was "your friend liked this" and "your friend commented on this". That's where we get inundated with awfulness. My friends don't post/share terrible stuff, but they do occasionally interact with terrible stuff.
I think the ideal would be if everyone had social account like they do with email where they post their content be it pictures text video what have you. and friending someone was simply subscribbing to a rss feed hosted by that persons provider. possiblly with a automated generation and exchange of pgp key for encryption/signing under the hood
Social media sites generally want a large user base. This approach sounds very technical so I'd imagine this being a big barrier to entry. PGP will make this even worse.
I agree with you that I wish social media was full of more posts like this, but foodgrams and humble brags as you put it are also one of the reasons I avoid social media these days. Seeing a feed of the best moments of other peoples lives leaves me feeling depressed. "Comparison is the thief of joy." I'm happy for my friends, but seeing it all collected in one place makes my own life feel inadequate. I'm much happier when I avoid social media.
It's strange... I thought we were wired as a species to live vicariously, to feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer. You're not the only one that doesn't get that out of Facebook... Why? Is it the quantity? The format? What turns it into a place of covetousness and bitterness?
It's definitely the format and the quantity for me. Seeing an old friend in person and having them tell me about their life and accomplishments, even showing me pictures, does not make me feel the same way. I think it's also the fact that I turn to social media when I'm feeling lonely, so seeing a feed of people at their best moments, on vacation with friends, getting married, having children, etc... makes me feel even more lonely and isolated. Also, social media is full of people that I have lost touch with, who never check in with me or reach out to see how I'm doing. I've found that I feel much more connected by reaching out to old friends one on one and catching up with them via texting or phone calls. Likes and comments just don't cut it.
I think also that the format is different, the link between people is not the same on social media posts. There is a difference between seeing something interesting, thinking of a friend who might be interested and sending it to him with a personal message like "check this out, it made me think of you, you might like it" and just putting something on display for people to see it, and add like to it to give you some small pride and some endorphin reinforcement of the posting behaviour.
It seems to me that the direction of the thinking goes the other way: in one, you think of a friend and contact him, in the other, you think of yourself, show yourself to the world and people send you likes.
When I thought of this, it seemed to me that social media is often some sort of "narcissistic exposure of oneself" and encourages this type of behaviour from me and I didn't like it. This plus the fact that I didn't like Facebook's behaviour with it's user's data made me delete my account, and I didn't miss it since. If I think of friends, I have other means of contacting them that have a more personal feel.
This is very true. And it reminds me that, at first, I did like Facebook, and I thought it was fun and cool. It's only when you realize how little meaning there is to the interactions that they start to feel shallow and depressing.
I feel the same way, and to me it's all about the authenticity. The context of social media takes away from the authenticity of the post. Someone may genuinely just want to share some dish that they just created, but in the context of social media, you can never be sure if they're posting it because of that, or posting it for the easy likes or easy engagement. Social media has commodified human interaction.
I forget where I read it, but it's similar to the idea that if someone you love makes a meal for you, at the end of it, you don't ask "how much do I owe you?" and break out your wallet. It's distasteful. Likewise, you don't do someone for a loved one or friend and afterwards say, "well that will be $X".
Posting on social media has a reward of sharing and liking, and as a result, to me, it turns human interaction into an exchange. (And I will admit that there is an element to that already, in terms of owing people favors etc., but the "bookkeeping" that we do is generally in our heads and is hard to quantify, which makes it a bit fuzzier and less commodified.)
For me, it's the dishonesty of facebook and instagram. The whole culture seems to be based around lying about misrepresenting how good your life is.
I love seeing a post about something that made a friend happy, but so much of the content on facebook is so obviously not an honest post about something that made somebody happy, but rather something they felt should have made them happy, or something that somebody else would be jealous of, or worst of all a brand trying to co-opt the "something that made me happy" style of posting, that it's ruined the few honest moments of joy.
Facebook isn't doing anything new. This sort of phenomenon is something of a universal human experience. For example, "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a phrase that's been in the English language for at least a century. All social media does is crank its input gain as high as it will go.
It's the bias. You _only_ see the best moments out of the lives of others. When watching TV or movies, we used to become depressed about comparing ourselves to celebrities and their silly TV lives, until some of the sheen of Hollywood has been torn down to reveal how utterly awful achieving and keeping a 6-pack of abs can be. Or how 6 broke idiots could never actually afford a huge flat in NYC. Now I think people see it for what it is, and it doesn't depress them anymore.
But seeing people who are your peers, who have mostly followed the same paths as you being far happier and living much full and rich lives (by appearance), and _only_ seeing that, I think, becomes a subtle reminder of your own failings.
We just need to see some of that sheen taken down. If, somehow, we saw _all_ of the shit people go through in their lives, and not just the good, maybe social media would be way different.
Personally, I find it incredibly shallow to post about food you're eating or places you're visiting. That's just money, and you might as well just take a picture of the money you're spending. I prefer to see things people make in my feed (art, woodworking, metalworking, electronics, etc.). It impresses and inspires me to see people out there making the world better with their minds and bodies, not just consuming.
It's one thing to feel joy when others do. But when everything's joy, then it's just normalcy. But when you know it isn't really the case that everything's joy, then the appearance of it comes off as fake. Because it is fake. Then you feel jaded. But we also can't help but have a part of us that thinks "no, this is normal."
There's also the asynchronous nature. If you're out with friends and hear about their engagement after the fact (among other catching up), that's one thing. But when you're sitting on the couch lonely and see photos from moments after the engagement (and nothing else), it's just that much more of a gap.
Then throw in everyone's highlights with their outrage and some random shared clickbait (fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:You won't believe what this evil politician did!), and it's just toxic.
Maybe the distance and the volume? I belong to some whatsapp and Telegram groups with people I know and I meet with at least every few months. We share stuff, even foodgrams. It's ok to hear from them. I can't just cope with all the stuff posted by some people I know but I didn't meet with for years. There are too many of them. I need time to live my life so I gave up Facebook, downsized my network and do things with people I meet.
> feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer.
Most people will probably acknowledge that it's more complicated than that. I think it might have to do with how easily comparable the other person's life is to our own.
I can't explain it well, but here's an example:
I saw a video of a child surprising their step-dad with paperwork for the official name change (kid accepting the Dad's last name). The Dad cried out of joy.
The video made me feel good.
On the other hand, seeing someone that I graduated highschool with getting promoted and being more successful than me makes me jealous.
Why? Because he has something and I don't, but would be within the realm of possibility to achieve. This behavior can also be observed in monkeys, so I don't question it too much.
Because people only share happy moments on Facebook. When you're catching up with someone, you're probably in a "normal" state of mind. They'll share a happy moment and the mood will spike up, then drop to baseline. Then you'll share a sad moment and the mood will spike down, return to baseline, etc. Facebook is always happy, never normal, never sad (unless it's in some way a humblebrag. "Ugh had to put in 20 hours of overtime at my killer job"). Imagine living in the crest of a manic depressive's life, forever. That's Facebook.
that's a very simplistic idea of humanity. yes, people can feel joy when others are blessed, but they can feel anything else they can feel also. surely you're familiar with envy at least.
How do you suppose Tiktok fits into all this? On the one hand, it's still a glamorous best-of reel, but it's also a lot more silliness, with sketch comedy and various remix formats (lipsync, duet, etc) being a big thing, not to mention significant subcommunities posting earnestly about topics like self esteem, mental health, etc (and with the needed community-management tools to enable the resulting discussion to not just become a Twitter-style free for all).
I'm not a super active user, but as an observer, I do wonder if much of it is pushing those same buttons but in a perhaps more subtle way— like a lot of "wellness" creators who cultivate an apparently authentic persona from which to deliver a never ending stream of motivational you're-worth-it type content meant to encourage and uplift, but that ultimately rings a bit hollow.
I think community plays a huge part. I'm not a tiktok user but I get the impression that a lot of the early tiktok users were heavily creative users. It's like a flywheel.
As these sites/services gain more popularity communities tend to splinter and it's up to the service to keep things going in whatever direction they want to via things like the fyp algorithm.
i also avoid social media, but for the opposite reason. i'm not bothered seeing everyone else's greatest hits, but curating my life and thoughts to present to an audience was wearing me down, and when i finally realized that's what i was doing, i got off it.
presumably there are some personality types that social media works well for, as opposed to personality types that work well for social media, of which there are clearly a lot.
Maybe it's not the healthiest thing, but I kind of enjoy having that as a secondary motivation, especially for projects I'm on the edge for— things like bread baking, kombucha making, small electronics repair, etc. If I know I can take a few pictures and tell a fun story around it, then it can be the motivation to get something started or power it through.
I guess the one boundary is that I don't generally mine my interactions with my kids for internet kudos— I don't want my camera in their faces when we're at the park or reading a book, making them feel like I'm only there spending time with them to score internet kudos later.
Facebook was good when it was just about adding your people and then seeing posts of your Facebook friends and messaging with them. It turned harmful when they forced the news feed content on everyone.
I'd like to share the most coherent conversation regarding the harms of Facebook (to a certain extent big tech algorithms/ML/AI). This is with Tristan Harris, Daniel Schmachtenberger and Frank Luntz. I didn't find any dull moment so please watch the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPAOzlqcGIQ
A lot of social media posts come down to bragging under the guise of "celebrating life". People will go on a vacation and then meter out the pictures from it over months to appear like they're on perpetual vacations. I don't mind people apologizing for those.
Yeah that's fair, and I've seen that. I think the key is authenticity. As others have mentioned sometimes it's just a firehose of good things happening to other people. I've also seen a friend speak candidly about their struggle with mental health and suicide - again great to see everyone rally around them, and be aware of it. Probably a good way for them to get more support, and make other people aware that (a) current mental health resources kinda suck, (b) other people might be struggling just like you, and (c) everyone realize that their friend needs help.
But yeah - being vulnerable and open like that is hard and not for everyone. And it can also be faked for attention. Ultimately I don't know what a platform is supposed to do if everyone starts optimizing for the algorithm or is constantly consuming the very content that is bad for them but doesn't want censorship. There's no win - social media would be amazing if everyone was kind, honest and authentic. But I realize that's asking the impossible on a global scale.
> People will go on a vacation and then meter out the pictures from it over months to appear like they're on perpetual vacations. I don't mind people apologizing for those.
I've noticed this increasingly. It's sorta bizarre?
People won't look at a entire catalog of 100+ photos. But if you do a few at a time you will get more eye balls.
People who stream usually don't dump an entire 8 hour stream in one video on YouTube. How many people would sit through the entire 8 hour video? But do clips and more people will watch more content. From what I've seen at least. (I'm not a streamer FYI)
The "pretending to be on vacation" thing is super wired. Haven't been on Facebook in years. Is it a new trend.
Stick to messenger apps. It's tough, I know, because of network effects, but I managed to convert about 20 friends of mine to use Signal. I deliberately avoid Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp since they can be intercepted easily, and if you're caught making a joke about ISIS, the Whatsapp police can unencrypt your messages which kinda sucks.
Instant messages are more personal and you're not broadcasting your life to 5000 randos, who could potentially weaponize that data if they wanted (potential employer saw your meme about binge drinking & alcohol consumption? Too bad).
> if you're caught making a joke about ISIS, the Whatsapp police can unencrypt your messages
Would you please clarify this? I know that messages flagged by the recipient can be read by moderators [1], but I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here.
I'm not defending WhatsApp (I've advocated for Signal since the days of TextSecure), but AFAIK the messages are encrypted using the Signal protocol, so I'm not sure how the "WhatsApp police" would be able to determine if you said something specific without the recipient reporting it.
Yes I was referring to this when I meant the `Whatsapp police`. I actually tried to dig up the article to backup my claims, but was at a loss, since I didn't bookmark it.
So in this case we have Whatsapp users essentially snitching on each other and getting posts flagged for the purposes of law enforcement, and having those message unencrypted. Whilst this is largely helpful, there is the potential for false positives (e.g a meme about ISIS getting flagged as 'extremist' and 'violent')
It's a tricky one, because although the feature may help save lives and such, I am just uncomfortable with it, since the E2E encryption is slightly broken because of this mechanism in place.
Right? My pandemic hobby was cocktails. Never even tried drinking anything more complicated than a screwdriver before, but fell down the cocktail youtube rabbit hole because of "how to drink".
So, over the course of a year I made a hundred different cocktails and blogged my experiences on my blog, twitter, and Facebook. Most of the cocktails were simple 3-ingredient things based on what I had available, but a few were elaborate messes like eggnog or a Ramos gin fizz.
I had my neighbors coming over to me when I was outside thanking me for the cocktail blogging and saying it was one of their favourite things to see on Facebook, and asked me to keep posting them.
Agreed. Personal responsibility is always a factor. Some people game the system by raising the victim flag which makes them a protected class and the idea that they had a hand in the situation is not talked about cuz victim blaming.
Claims like these hurt your case against Facebook. For most people Facebook shows completely innocuous stuff. I have absolutely nothing political timeline, and the only political thing I have seen in 5 years was by an Aunt (who I muted). For those who love heated political debates and conspiracy theories, Facebook will serve up that content (trash). Other people hear about all the awful stuff on Facebook, check their feed, see pictures of their grand-babies, and wonder what the heck everyone is talking about.
I don't even have a Facebook account. But with my relatives that do, this stuff leaks in from seeing their coworkers' & acquaintances' posts and escalates over time once there's even the slightest hook with the algorithm. Any reasonable political opinion they might have in thumbs-upping some innocuous content eventually routes into the algo feeding more extremist content.
Most people don't outright block offtopic material, they just gloss over it, and it still ends up with influence because that's what Facebook optimizes for. Plus people will still take the occasional click of curiosity to see what some posts are all about, even if they're not really into that content.
Yes, if you do have the discipline to take a zero-tolerance personal policy and immediately block even inoffensive things that just touch into the realm of polarizing, you can probably keep your feeds clean. But most people (eg, non-HN types) don't understand what Facebook is doing and don't think to actively defend against it, and just absent-mindedly consume the feed with no click discipline.
It may be easier for adults to see those highlight reels for what they are, and minimize the feelings of inadequacy and envy. At this point though, it's pretty much established that they do harm young adults and teenagers.
While I don't really follow any food social media, I've certainly sent pictures of strange food I've bought or made to my wife or parents. Food is literally one of the most universal things on earth, so it can be interesting if I go to a country and try a dish I've never had before, and to send pictures in the process.
I never really understood shitting on people posting food pics. How exactly is it hurting anyone?
In essence, the algorithms created to give each user the feed they want has, in fact, given every user the feed the masses want.
That is to say, some people want real, individual, original and ultimately personal content. But the overwhelming activity and reactions to content has driven that out, and left us only with "mass appeal" - the things that get reactions and shares.
The only reasons there is value in facebook (to me)
1) To get updates on friends or family I don't talk to regularly, including their garden food pictures.
2) To use facebook marketplace, because in my region its basically taken over the online classifieds and if I want to buy or sell something facebook is the way to go currently.
Yeah, I mean, this is among Canadians willing to fill out a survey online. Frankly it feels like another push in the media world to shift blame to FB.
As far as specifically Canadian factors, maybe don’t survey us in October when the days are getting noticeably shorter? I feel like we are all a little melancholy right now preparing for our lightless morning commutes.
Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, and TikTok don't have megalomaniac CEOs who got rich selling out their users to advertisers while spending that money on PR messages like "privacy is dead" and then turning around to buy all the mansions around theirs so that they can protect their privacy.
Also there's that little itty bitty issue where Facebook was purposely manipulating people's timeline feeds to see if they could produce depression-like symptoms, without informed consent.
Don't forget the hostile attempts at monopolizing information access in India and 3rd world countries with INTERNET.org that was so nefarious I was very scared, fortunately india thwarted facebook, inc's malicious plan and rejected it... but internet.org still went on to poison other 3rd world countries like the philippines and indonesia, before their nescient tech industry even had a chance to stop it.
In addition, the nefarious bribery of brazilian telcoms to allow whatsapp to have unlimited and free network bandwidth, so as to out-muscle any competitors.
Indeed, fb did push out PR messages like privacy is dead, although I'd love to cite some source on that... all I want to say is, Privacy isn't dead facebook, you're dead!
I don't think YT or Reddit are any where near as insidious as FB, Twitter, and TikTok.
YouTube's feed basically shows me what I am subscribed to which is interesting shit I am legit interested in. I don't see any of my friends talking about their amazing lives, or any political BS, at all. The comments section is a 3rd class citizen in much of their UI and less toxic than friends all piling in and arguing about crap.
Reddit is global conversations, the topics and comments can be toxic but it's not an echochamber by design. I will say though, Reddit does make me sad sometimes so I have to work at it to use it in a healthy way.
Twitter, Tiktok, and unfortunately more and more Instagram are also sludge pools IMO.
I am actively disappointed that this organization chose to use such a weak survey to prove their point. It feels pretty darn accurate as a Canadian on the ground so paying out for a phone survey could have dodged all this doubt.
I'm so happy to see awareness around the negative mental health effects of social media. You also don't get all that much from it, back when I was heavy into social media I was miserable, online dating never brought me a worthwhile person. The rare times I'd actually meet a real person, it was almost certain to be someone who was 30 plus and not interested in working.
Deleted all my online dating profiles, limited my social media usage and I was making fantastic friends and meeting amazing girls in real life. This was very good for my mental health, during some of my really dark moments I'd spend hours per day on Reddit and Facebook arguing with other angry people. We don't need to be angry, you don't need to argue.
You don't need to give the Match group $60 a month to chat with bots. You can still wave at someone at a concert and ask if they want drinks after the show.
It seems like there's a standard format "I quit social media and everything is great" post. Usually the poster implies they stepped into ready-made in-real-life contacts and maybe they did. But the implication that this is generally viable strategy for everyone seems wrong.
I actually used to use Instagram quite a lot because it brought me quite a bit of happiness seeing what my friends were up to and IG had defensive measures to protect me:
- The “you’re all caught up” screen that stops me from scrolling
- The fact that stories signify whether they’re watched
- The fact that my posts feed only contained followed stuff plus ads
So there was the sense of “I’m caught up with my friends’ lives”. Anyway, they’ve changed it:
- They now place random stuff below the list of my friends’ posts
- They place people I don’t follow into the ad slots for stories
Anyway, I use it much less now and we just end up sharing photos in group chats.
Does anyone know of what a true IG replacement is? Like something for your friends and you.
Yes but I have found that, in the case of Google News, the content prioritized up by the algorithm tends to be things I am interested in; which tend to be more commercial in nature. For example, boardgames.
If I was clicking on outrageous type news headlines, it might look different.
I have disciplined my curiosity to not click on obnoxious viral headlines.
I see a click as a vote, so I don't do that.
Social Media is trickier because the media and the social part is mixed up.
I quit social media about 7 months ago and I don't see going back.
I never had an issue with facebook (granted I haven't used either for years), rather instagram. When I was in college instagram really took a toll on my mental health. I'd see friends post the exact same photos as I did and get 2x-3x-4x more likes, and I'd follow people who wouldn't follow me back, It made me question my self worth or social standing. I think facebooks system of "friends" rather than "followers" and reduced emphasis on likes is much less harmful, I always felt like I was being rated in front of everyone on insta.
Looking back on it, it really bothers me because I had a lot of good friends that I am still close with, partied a lot, had good relationships, and overall had a really good college experience. I feel like instagram took a bit of that away from me. At some point I realized this and deleted the app, shortly after I was happy as could be.
What I've realized about Facebook is that there is no way I can convey a really convey anything really meaningful in such a short post.
What I started doing is writing a quarterly e-mail newsletter to about 80 of my closest friends and family about details thoughts I've had about life, travel, and personal experiences.
Some friends have told me I should write a blog and put all my thoughts out there on the Internet, but I think this kind of defeats the whole purpose to share something intimate to a smaller crowd that the general Internet will never see.
I think that's a fair point, but I wonder if I can probe HNs brain on what a "healthy" online social network would look like.
Here are some thoughts I have:
1) The platform does not have a user-engagement incentive.
2) Personal network sizes are restricted. You can't be "friends" with everyone. Adding friends perhaps comes at some cost or is just strictly capped.
3) Sharing outside your friends network from the platform is not possible. This platform is for sharing with your friends, not the world.
4) Trust in the platform and how it shares your data. The easiest way to trust the server is if everything is E2EE, but we all know that's not trivial. Perhaps the limits in scaling E2EE can work synergistically with (2) and (3)
(1) seems to be the hardest thing here in my mind.
Anybody have thoughts on what could make a social network "healthy"?
> Anybody have thoughts on what could make a social network "healthy"?
Personally? I was thinking about this the other day and how I wish it was more like email - use whatever provider you want or host your own - either way you can post and share with other users.
That's at least one criteria after seeing how so much of the network effects are created by the need to use one platform in order to communicate on that platform.
Then I started thinking about how this would work. Subscribing to the feeds of people you care about, being able to browse and search updates, etc. and in the end I realized I was basically describing RSS with easy publishing tools.
Host your stuff on whatever platform/host/provider you prefer and see fit, but have some common format "calling card" or address that you can use to share your subscription address.
Competition would come in the form of hosting options, reader features, etc. but the conflict would likely result from some providers "innovating" features that only work on their platforms, devices, etc. Sort of like how I can message with anyone with full functionality...unless they're on an iPhone and default to iMessage. Then I'm downgraded to SMS/MMS.
That said, I would still prefer a nonFacebook that still allowed me to follow/converse with people on Facebook, even if it stuck me with the shitty interface when dealing with non-standardized platform "features".
Local implementations. It's so bizarre to me that locality is never mentioned in these discussions. Our overly-globalized infrastructure is a weird, bad, and ad-hoc system to meet essentially local needs. I say to people, "I wish I knew when a new restaurant opened in the area," and the nigh-universal reply is: check Facebook. Sorry, come again? I should look to a global data provider to find information about local resources? It's foolish for our data structures and it's foolish for our lives.
My dream: a federated union of localnets that act like banks and data banks in one. A local facility I can resort to for my financial and computational needs. My email, phone services, VPN, and bank all rolled up nicely into one area. And, of course, it should also keep me anonymous except to the provider. The IT would be a nightmare.
> The platform does not have a user-engagement incentive.
Then you lose to a platform that does. There does need to be a level of incentive for user-engagement. Either that or users will invent one.
> Personal network sizes are restricted. You can't be "friends" with everyone. Adding friends perhaps comes at some cost or is just strictly capped.
Facebook is capped at 5000 connections where a connection is defined as a friend or page like. You can argue whether or not this should be a smaller number, but technically Facebook does have this.
> Sharing outside your friends network from the platform is not possible. This platform is for sharing with your friends, not the world.
What about Friend-of-a-friends? How do two people find out they're both on the platform? Some information has to be publicly available. I think if you stop making "public" an option, users will just find some way to make things more public. Like sharing images via avatar image. Or taking screenshots and passing those among their friends (and their friends share with their friends, etc).
> Trust in the platform and how it shares your data. The easiest way to trust the server is if everything is E2EE, but we all know that's not trivial. Perhaps the limits in scaling E2EE can work synergistically with (2) and (3)
Eh. End to end encryption only matters for information you want to be kept private. And the information isn't being shared between you and me, it's being shared between Facebook and me, then Facebook and you. The problem is that Facebook is the one selling the data. It's the fact that they're the hub.
It's a hard problem all over because in a lot of places, you're fighting human nature.
Maybe a P2P/torrent style system, where all the information is encrypted and your data exists as a hash. To contribute to that hash, you need the private key, to read that hash, you need the public key. Connections are made by swapping public keys with people. You'd need a way to get your own private key from some source if you want to use multiple platforms. But if the private key was stored in some central hub, but encrypted, you could request the encrypted private key and then use your password/phrase to decrypt it on your device.
From an evolutionary perspective, the thing that grows and is used is the thing that wins. If you take away the growth incentive you can’t compete by definition unless you change the rules of the game (worldwide government regulation?).
5) limit how many posts / pictures / content you can share per day to avoid information overload. This should make people double thing what they are writing and hopefully more higher quality content.
6) automatically limit time spend for everyone on social media for e.g. 30-60 min per person per day.
I just only added features that IMO would make a healthier social network. It's different problem how to implement in a way to avoid people try to game it. Maybe it's not even possible and only utopia.
The only problem is how to implement it in a way to avoid people gaming it.
You didn't "add features", you made a wish list.
What's your "solution" for online advertising? Ads that are noticeable but unobtrusive? Now all we got to do is get the nerds down in R&D to make it happen. It's a miracle no one has thought of this before.
How do you figure 50%? It's not like groups of friends are going to put it to a vote and say "Let's go use this other thing". And even if they did, alternatives to Facebook simply don't exist for people to switch to (I'd be happy for somebody to give me an example of a comparable service to what Facebook offers in terms of features and ease of use).
And even if one does exist, most groups of people aren't going to abandon the <50% of those who do want to stay on the platform.
From the article:
> However, more than three in four believe the social network helps them stay connected to their loved ones, with just over 50 per cent saying it is key to sharing information and positive for free expression.
The "they can just quit it" part is directly at odds with the "harms their mental health" part. Not being able to quit something that is harming you is at the core of addiction.
We don't ban alcohol, videogames, twitter, tv shows, or buying excessive amounts of food, despite a giant number of people in the US suffering from addiction to those. War on drugs was a failure.
At some point, you have to draw a line at where you take personal responsibility. The utility to those who can use those things I listed above responsibly outweighs the potential danger and plies of those who use "addiction" as their primary argument for bans (aka I have no self-control, so you should not be able to use those things responsibly either).
I am not saying "let's make heroin recreationally legal, just use it responsibly", since both utility and danger are gradients, and for heroin they are of very dubious value. But for something that has no physical addiction component at all, like videogames or facebook, I am sorry, it is on you.
And please, no pedantry with "I get hits of dopamine when I browse my FB feed, so it is a physical addiction too!". This is not what physical addiction means in the context.
I never suggested banning anything. I was merely pointing out that those two points are contradictory.
The way you talk about addiction, however, makes me think you don't really understand how it works and seemingly view any addiction that isn't physical as invalid and that is not how it works.
>The way you talk about addiction, however, makes me think you don't really understand how it works and seemingly view any addiction that isn't physical as invalid and that is not how it works.
Poor assumption. Psychological addictions are just as valid as physical, and I've never claimed otherwise. I just believe that you cannot legislate the sources of psychological addictions like you can with sources of physical ones. Primarily because literally anything can be a source of psychological addiction, depending on the flavor of the month.
Cannabis has a strong psychological addiction component, and yet people tend to conveniently forget about it when it comes to legalizing it recreationally (I am in full support of the legalization btw).
Why? I think we know why, it is because people decided that it is the responsibility of an individual to not abuse something that doesn't have a physical addiction component. But if they end up getting psychologically addicted and need help, then sure, I am all in favor of supporting those people and helping them to get out of the addiction rut they are in.
Exactly. How is this even an argument point?
If you support banning Facebook because of addictive potential, then add about 50 other things to the list to ban as well.
If it's to regulate Facebook more, what exact kind of regulation would make it OK again? Age limit, as in 18+ to use? Don't porn sites use that and children still have no issues logging onto those sites.
The knee jerk reaction to this is likely one to push for regulation but I don't think that is the solution. We should keep in mind that we still have choice, we can choose not to use Facebook. That choice is likely to have a powerful effect on the direction Facebook (or any other platform) takes. My fear is that government control of social media is such a tempting power it would be hard for politicians not abuse it. It strikes me that this is more of an issue with our culture than anything. That begs the question: can we choose to self moderate social media? The pandemic sure isn't helping.
You're looking at this from a western perspective. Some non-western countries are entirely linked by Facebook products. When Facebook went down last week, some people couldn't access their BANKS. You OK with that?
That's what Facebook wants: to become something you simply MUST use to survive.
It goes deeper in the US as well but not as deep: some restaurants and small shops don't have websites, they have facebook/instragram pages, which means I cannot access them.
We need legislation to stop Facebook creep, because that "creep" eventually makes it mandatory.
> You're looking at this from a western perspective. Some non-western countries are entirely linked by Facebook products. When Facebook went down last week, some people couldn't access their BANKS. You OK with that?
I'm not ok with that at all however I would guess that those decisions are being reevaluated as we speak!
>That's what Facebook wants: to become something you simply MUST use to survive.
But if you choose not to use the platform they will never have the power to make that happen. Anyone in power would be tempted to make themselves indispensable. It is a very human thing and let's not forget how flawed we all are.
>We need legislation to stop Facebook creep, because that "creep" eventually makes it mandatory.
You just move the power from Facebook to the government, it doesn't solve the core problem.
> But if you choose not to use the platform they will never have the power
It is far too late for that. Facebook is too big.
I'm guessing you don't know that there are countries in the world where Facebook is the only internet, am I right? Free Basic is a service that they offered with free internet in poor countries, but Facebook is the only internet. It has changed a little as governments have realized this is a problem but it is still the dominant form of internet in some places.
There are 2.8 billion monthly users, but only 200 million are from the US, yet it is a US company. [1]
> You just move the power from Facebook to the government, it doesn't solve the core problem.
You are assuming Facebook and the government are the same thing. (US I presume.) They are not the same. A government isn't a corporation. This is a totally different discussion.
>You are assuming Facebook and the government are the same thing. (US I presume.) They are not the same. A government isn't a corporation. This is a totally different discussion.
I'm saying that social media is a form of power. If you take control from Facebook and regulate it (give the power to the government) you are simply just shift the power from one potential abuser to another.
Anyone can abuse power. A government can be changed by the people. Like I said, this is a different discussion. If you're coming to the discussion that cynical about government already, there's not much I can say.
> You're looking at this from a western perspective. Some non-western countries are entirely linked by Facebook products. When Facebook went down last week, some people couldn't access their BANKS. You OK with that?
Wasn't this because DNS servers were effectively DDoS'd when applications overwhelmed them with requests looking for Facebook without caching the response? Or are there actually banks out there that require Facebook to log in?
So many people these days instead of creating separate account to some websites (login/password) the use instead integrated Login via Facebook button. I tried to educate friends and family not to use this feature even for the reason that if their FB account will be blocked they will loose access to many other websites. However many people give up because it's not so convenient as to just clicking one FB button.
I agree that single sign on takes advantage of people not understanding what they give up when they choose FB/Google for SSO. What government policy could fix that? The fallback seems to be that people just re-use their email address in all their accounts.
which probably brings them back to a google or microsoft email account. back in the early twenty teens facebook even tried running a email service but killed it latter. if this were to happen it would probably make a comeback.
gambling, cigarettes and alcohol are tightly regulated where I'm from. Let's stop pretending that people are able to act in their own best interest.
When I was a kid *all* advertising in F1 was for cigarettes. We stopped that shit because smoking fucking sucks for all of society.
Fuck Facebook. It's an evil company. Not because Zuck or the people working there are inherently evil, it's just that their incentives (profit) happens to coincidentally and unfortunately be aligned with extreme negative externalities.
It's probably true of any social network and not specific to Facebook. Here in Russia, we have our own alternatives which are more popular than Facebook, and the symptoms are pretty much same
Social media, ultimately, is information. There is no point in polarizing Facebook as good or bad. It is access to certain types of information and one must learn to discern if it can serve them or not.
Wrong, facebook is a politically involved corporate entity. Additionally they've proven relentlessly over the past decade plus to give zero fucks about improving their scorched earth method of making money.
Facebook (and most other businesses in the space) is a system of manipulating and editorializing individuals' social communication in order to extract engagement-related profit.
This is not a common carrier, but an active distorter.
Sorry, but 0.00004% [0] of Canadians can't remotely be described as "most".
Unfortunately, the qualifying words "survey suggests" was chopped off the end of the article title, making it seem far more of an authoritative assertion than it really is. :(
I make a conscious effort to not get sucked into Facebook. One rule I have is to never browse past the first ad unless I've got the day off. That minimizes a lot of the time I spend there. Unfortunately I am involved in a few special interest groups in there, but at least the information we share serves a purpose. For everything else, I simply use the standalone Messenger app. That way I can still keep in touch with my friends, without having to scroll through mostly pointless Fb posts and ads.
I'd say most sane people don't only believe that social media in general is unhealthy, they know it. Some might push for regulation but I would just suggest these people quit it all. I did so a few years ago (well I guess with the exception of HN) and haven't looked back. Sure I might not learn about a high school acquaintance's new baby or the like but the people I truly care about know how to get in touch with me and vice versa.
I use it to promote my hobbies (digital art, photography). I don't believe it is unhealthy in general. Calling people who don't agree with you insane is not really a great way to have a healthy conversation.
This is a link to the actual poll details from Leger, who conducted it. Contrary to a lot of the replies here that seem to think it was just a haphazard facebook poll or something, it's an online panel poll:
I've been hearing this for over 5 years now, but social media is still booming, and most people are still on Facebook, and similar apps, and spending more time than ever.
It feels weird as if everyone agrees, and knows that smoking kills but continue to smokes more and more.
Alcoholics know they are destroying their liver buy still drink, heavy caffeine addicts know their sleep cycle is being disrupted but still drink coffee. Thing is, there is a socially acceptable amount that not significantly destructive. I can drink a coffee at 8 am and still get to sleep, I can have a beer at the monthly game night and still have a functional healthy liver. How much social media can I consume and not fall in depression, compulsive behavior or be polarized in a fringe ideology?
Well for me I have mostly quit Facebook (other than messenger and using it for event scheduling for game night.) I don't do TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram. I only use Reddit for niche interest/hobbies and deleted all the default subs. I only use Snapchat to talk to a couple of people because its the best way to get ahold of them, and then there a couple of forums like hackernews i lurk and occasionaly post in and that enough for me.
Used in moderation social media is fine. Just like a beer every month or so or a coffee in the morning
I’ve asked this question to a few non-tech friends. They definitely know and recognize the harms of using social media, but for many them just struggle to quit. They don’t even know how to put their addictions into words.
There were a few who also used it because it’s easy to keep up with family or friends who might live far away (which is a really valid use case!) and have no problem quitting it or never checking.
These products are designed to be addicting. My hypothesis is that folks might recognize the harm but since the downside is reducing the quality of your mental state (FB doesn’t increase your risk of cancer ala smoking). It’s just not a priority to fix the addiction.
I stopped using Facebook for over 3 years now and I have been happier. I am still connected to friends, family and community over whatsapp. WhatsApp is much better because you are only connected with your friends, groups and not the whole world.
While I hate FB I also hate headlines like this, why poll the public on something the media affects? Just report what findings are and the effects.
It’s like a couple months ago having headlines saying “more American’s (USA) are afraid of crime rising than any time in the past 20 years!” and crime only rose slightly… it’s the cart leading the horse.
I think in this particular case the problem is not FB but people themselves.
I am Canadian and it does not harm my mental health for a simple reason that I simply do not use FB or other "social media". I really do not give a hoot about somebody else's lifestyle and what they had for dinner.
FB happens to be the platform by which people share. In an alternative universe where "ShareBook" was the dominant micro-blobbing platform, that would have been the target of these critiques. Depressed people says something about those people and about our culture in general.
Yeah that was the first thing that went through my mind too. There are few traditional news outlets that don't try and incite rage driven attention. The globe and mail is not a tabloid (last I checked, I'm 10 years into a boycott) but it still tries to bait people into viewing its stories in a way that's tailored to its readership.
It’s interesting comparing this to internet pornography, which is bigger than FB as a whole, and which (according to youth self surveys) harms mental health (according to ~60% in some surveys).
You can ask that for every single behavior that anyone claims goes against their deeper values like good health. Why do people keep smoking or eating junk food or staying up too late or yelling at family and friends when they lose their temper?
It's true that deeds speak louder than words. But it's also true that habits are hard to break, and there's the thinking-fast-and-slow ideas that our judgments, actions, and values are different when we are in the immediate flow of emotion vs considering the big picture with detachment.
If you ask "why" in a sincere curious way, there's a ton of interesting things to investigate. I hope that was the attitude you meant as opposed to the anti-curious condescending "why" that amounts to just being a doubter.
No, I was asking why in a frustrated rhetorical way. I get annoyed by the frequency with which people complain about social media, which is usually followed by requests for a government intervention or for a stricter moderation by the network owners. Just quit, I want to say. The internet is huge. Find yourself another hobby. A better network. Or, if you think you are addicted, as you may be to alcohol or drugs, seek help. It should be your responsibility, don't put it on others.
I totally get your reaction, and I have similar reactions myself all the time.
Some wisdom I got from elsewhere which I'm still working to practice is to eat-your-projections. We notice how other people are complainers and blamers and they make excuses and don't take responsibility. So, we turn it around and ask, "how am I being a complainer and blamer?" And we might notice how we're complaining about the complainers. And best to find this self-reflection humorous. If we switch to blaming ourselves for complaining, we're still blaming and complaining. Ideally, we find some empathy as we realize now something about how the complainers feel, and we realize that we didn't stop to be really curious about what is going on in their experience.
I agree with you completely about the value of taking responsibility. It's SO SO hard (I'm speaking for myself here!) to turn that around and literally ask, "what am I doing to take responsibility for this situation?" I.e. the situation in which other people were complaining, and their complaining triggered you, and you're unconsciously blaming them for your annoyed feelings instead of taking responsibility for your failure to be stoic.
Sorry for all the meta, this is stuff I am practicing, and it really seems the only "out" to the pattern. And really, take everything I just wrote as me noticing your patterns because I have them myself. I'm working on leading by example before telling you what you "should" do ("shoulding you" in one way to say it).
I'm laughing about this and about myself here, so I hope somehow that comes across in this overlong plain-text which I should expect to be misunderstood if I take my own damn advice. Haha ;)
>You can ask that for every single behavior that anyone claims goes against their deeper values like good health. Why do people keep smoking or eating junk food or staying up too late or yelling at family and friends when they lose their temper?
Okay, but who other than that individual person is to blame for their behavior? If we blame external agents for all of societies ills, that completely devalues personal responsibility. I don't buy the "facebook made me do it" defense.
You're already in a less open, less curious state when your language is that of "blame".
The more open-minded curious approach uses language more around cause and effect and studying causes vs correlations and looking for empirical evidence about how the world works.
When you notice that you are looking for who to blame, then the best thing for learning is to investigate your own reactive (though perhaps very subtly reactive) state.
"Facebook made me do it" is a blaming state too, and it leads nowhere to get stuck in that blaming mindset.
Wow, that was rude of you. Sorry, you being judgy and condescending about my mental state and whether I am or not curious is not conducive to a conversation here. I'll let you have the last word.
Oh, oops, I'm sorry about my sloppy writing that seemed rude. I intended the generic "you". I see now how that failed to come across.
I wrote:
> You're already in a less open, less curious state when your language is that of "blame".
And DUH, that reads first to almost anyone (including myself on re-reading) as "you (yes, you, person I'm replying to) are in a less open state… blah blah blah"
When what I meant to express was the other way around in the emphasis. The better edit could be:
When our language is that of "blame", it's a good indicator of being in a less open, less curious state.
And I only mean that in terms of a general idea that being in a blaming mindset is a common thing, and it's not as conducive to real curious learning as other ways of talking about something.
I didn't really know what your mindset was before, but I think I now know that at least after reading my poorly-phrased post, you then were in a triggered and reactive state. I'm sorry about that. Thanks for replying so that I could learn from this instead of me not noticing the issues with my post.
P.S. I think condescension is the worst derailer of any communication, and I don't blame you for reacting when you read my post as having that tone. I didn't actually have a condescending view. I get into reactive blaming states too, and I don't think I'm any better than you, and I don't think there's any shame in having common reactive feelings.
Ah, sorry yes I think I did misread your comment. Thanks for explaining!! I wasn't offended or anything, I just didn't see a path forward in the conversation.
Anyhoo, I'm not saying we need to abandon looking at how external agents influence behavior, all I'm saying is that personal responsibility is critical in informing how we look at behavior. Without that lens, it would almost impossible to implement a fair justice system. We can all work towards structural changes while still adopting a punitive stance when it comes to egregious violations of criminal and civil law.
Glad to actually get clarification of the misunderstanding. Thanks for being responsive!
I agree with you fully here. The semantic thing is that there's this useful self-reflective framing of contrasting "responsibility" from "blame" similarly to contrasting restoration vs retribution. The idea is that blame is about accountability, about finding fault, and it's commonly the mindset we're in when we're reactive in the sort of sense of not being stoic, being stuck on being mad that the world is the way it is and so on. By contrast, if we are taking responsibility, we are asking ourselves how to actually respond to the reality we face instead of focusing on figuring out who to blame. I know that's not a universally recognized distinction, but I find it very useful.
I'm getting kind of tired of the narrative that "x is evil/bad/harmful, but I'm too weak (we won't admit addiction) to not use x. Everyone I know uses x. Government needs to regulate x (so I don't have to change my ways)."
I deleted my account over a year ago now, because I do view them as evil and do cause overall societal harm. It's not life ending. You'll adjust and then wonder why you didn't do it sooner. I made the choice for myself. The only people you'll lose touch with were superficial relationships to begin with. Do you honestly care what that dude you went to gradeschool with but haven't seen for 30 years does? Real relationships don't depend on x platform. All they require is you, and the other person.
I'd take that further. When I felt lonely sometimes, I'd boot up social media and see what people are up to. Now, without social media, when I feel lonely I'll text friends. Unsurprisingly, it's more healthy. And when I reach out more, they reach out more. And instead of getting a button click invitation, people will text or call with an invitation and we'll actually talk a bit too. Turns out them telling me a thing and me telling them I like it is more fulfilling than facebook telling me they did a thing, and me clicking a like button.
The argument isn't, "so I don't have to change my behaviors."
The argument is, OTHER people are too weak to change their behaviors, so we need to have the government regulate THEIR behavior. (The greater good.)
It's bad enough to be lazy and want someone else to fix your problems. It's almost worse to decide you know what other people's problems are, and decide what needs to happen for them. (Or phrased differently... What needs to happen to them.)
No - since this is a social network this isn't all about personal responsibility. People hate-use facebook because everyone hate-uses facebook. There is no sane alternative because everyone needs to hate-use the same platform to be on it with everyone else.
I think it is plausible that a different kind of social media could be created that does not involve hate (at least not in the same quantities), that some people would find to be preferable to the current toxic ones everyone is one. It wouldn't happen overnight, but if no one ever builds anything, we may be stuck on these forever, or until we tear society part.
Good for you, and, I quit too. But the reason I joined is that I miss out on a lot of in-person interactions, because friends of mine use fb to invite folks to events. What you're describing as a "superficial relationship" was actually "membership of a few small groups." Interacting with those people was a positive in my life, and I miss them. It's not just okay, but actually healthy, to have relationships that aren't lifelong and deep.
I bemoan the loss of "church community" despite never having been a churchgoer. It's nice to show up, blend in, make time with a few familiar faces, and leave. Non-intense social interactions are good. People who only have intense social interactions tend to have bad social anxiety, because their brain isn't accustomed to anything between zero and 100. The good part about fb is that it can be used to facilitate that. I'd happily have a profile on the Facebook Events platform, if it existed as a separate product. But since it necessarily comes with all the other baggage, it's healthier for me to miss out.
These are trillion dollar operations that hire teams of behavioral scientists to design user experiences that "increase engagement" by exploiting psychology in all the same ways exploitative industries like the gambling and advertising industries do. It might even be worse as interactive computer services are not regulated in the same ways that gambling, advertising, or alcohol companies are regulated.
This is like complaining that people who can't stop smoking cigarettes are just whining unless they quit themselves. Billion dollar industries spent decades formulating cigarettes to be as maximally addictive as they could possibly make them, and cigarettes are the #1 cause of preventable mortality, and kill about 500,000 people in the US each year. Despite those obvious, clear and unavoidable consequences, millions of people still struggle to stop smoking.
Isn't "x is evil/bad/harmful. Government needs to regulate x." basically the entire purpose of society?
I enjoy living in a society, and not having to worry about if every food I eat might poison me, or every bridge I walk over might fall down. If we decide, as a society, it would be better to ban Facebook, why shouldn't we?
If we decide as a society that certain races are evil/bad/harmful and should have fewer rights, would that make it okay?
Just because a lot of people agree on something doesn't make it right or good. I'm not sure where you get the idea that society is just a platform for banning unpopular things. A lot of modern civics was designed specifically to counter that actually, things like constitutional laws, representative democracy, high courts, political parties; they all serve to counterbalance and moderate the pure majority opinion on how to run society.
You know, I also enjoy living in a society and not having to worry if any media I want to use or any business I ran might be banned because someone somewhere didn't like it.
People can't choose their race, and one's race doesn't impact other people negatively. People can and do choose to engage in exploitative business practices for profit, despite any negative externalities those practices have on other people.
We, as a society, have tomes of legislation and case law that regulate business practices and their negative impacts on individuals or society as whole.
Banning things is a bit short-sighted and misses the point. IMHO, Its better to think about types of long-term incentive structures that we can create so that more companies will be incentivized to do the right thing - or at least behave in a way that we agree as a society.
The issue is primarily that some folks have moved all of their online connections onto facebook - they've put all of their eggs in that basket. If you want to keep up with them at all you need to at least have the bearest presence on the platform.
This is less about that dude from highschool and more about your cousin.
This sounds like a you and your cousin problem. It seems pretty strange that it would be suggested that the government step in to regulate a third party because you and your cousin can't manage to stay in touch.
People don't change numbers that often. Unless your cousin is a drug dealer in which case you were only on their burner phone, meaning you must have just been a customer to them, and not even an important one.
I think this is a class and age thing. A lot of less wealthy and young people use prepaid wireless carriers because of cost, and end up just getting new phone numbers when they buy a new shitty phone or switch to a plan that's a better deal for them.
It costs money to port numbers between carriers, and it's a pain to set up when you can just pop in a SIM card and start making calls/texts right away with your new number.
On one hand I get it because having a global centralized media source running bleeding edge optimization algorithms against humans is highly unprecedented till recently.
But at the same time I don't like the trend in recent years to completely "minimize individual responsibility"
It makes sense why these narratives are popular too.
It means I don't have to admit my lack of discipline.
In fact I don't know anyone in my close or more distant friend circles who haven't abbandonned facebook in one way or another. I am puzzled by facebook still being the centre of attention (for this, control of news, influence on elections, influence on vaccination).
I know Facebook is the great evil, but we really need to start looking at the mental health impacts of all social media. The unhappiest people I know are not on Facebook - they are religiously devoted to Twitter and Reddit. Heck, I'd like to know what sort of damage this post right here is doing to me.
This is our generation's smoking but everyone only wants to know how harmful Marlboros are.
Edit: Please upvote this more. I need to feel like my views are validated.
We could start by calling it what it is -- antisocial. Spending time on media content aggregators is an antisocial activity. Not that spending some time on an antisocial activity is inherently bad... studying and research are also antisocial activities. But let's not call something "social" when it is the antithesis of anything that could be considered as such. I think this could be a decent start!
Antisocial - "when a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others".
I don't think antisocial fits as a descriptor, at all. When I think of antisocial behavior I think of graffiti or arson and other property damage without regard for the owners or the public sphere.
I think it would be one thing if they were just aggregators. It's the community aspect that's harmful - it's clearly addicting and gives people the feeling of being social with fewer of the benefits.
Nextdoor is another example. At least with FB or Twitter, it's a opt-in model -- you have to friend or follow someone to see their posts. With Nextdoor anyone can post to their neighbors, so (at least where I live) many people use it as a soapbox to air any trivial complaint/grump/vendetta to hundreds or thousands of neighbors; I see a lot of toxic flamewars on there.
Ultimately I think social media is an amplifier, taking whatever individual or collective insecurities that were latent, and just projecting them for better or worse.
Disclosure: FB employee but only speaking for myself
Reddit is an interesting one. Since it's an anonymous experience, I guess it'd be the same issues with any internet community. It can be stressful to see seemingly abhorrent viewpoints in such concentrated numbers. And it can be stressful when you feel a community is turning against you, even if your connections to that community are extremely tendentious.
It's interesting you call relationships on Reddit para-social, I don't know if that quite fits the word because Reddit is more of a two-way reciprocal relationship between commenters. Perhaps Twitter fits that description better since you get a lot of power users like Trump and other celebrities which broadcast out to their followers but don't typically respond to normies.
Twitter, at least, is utterly worthless and entirely voluntary. Nobody uses the platform to announce or coordinate family events or to reach out to loved ones when they need help. I have a mostly inactive facebook account in case family messages me on there and I need to help out - I don't have a twitter account because I don't find brigading to be a worthwhile activity. I'd say with a moderate level of confidence that nothing that's announced on twitter has ever been vital to know - if Whirlpool is forced to recall a certain dishwasher brand they'll send out emails and potentially physical letters - no government agent is going to watch them tweet and say "Yup - you just informed the public in a responsible manner".
Isn't twitter an extremely inefficient way to convey technical information? Why hasn't your specialty broken out a self-hosted forum or even, I guess, a heavily moderated subreddit?
In my, admittedly very brief, experience with twitter, I found it nearly impossible to actually grasp whole conversations. Little snippets and snipes get RT'd to the sky while the main discussion thread gets forced ever downward in the interest sorted feed.
I see toxicity not as twitter’s problem, but as its feature. I go to twitter to find out people’s gut reactions to current events, and in that role it is a uniquely capable and succinct resource.
What you will not find there is rational and reasonable debate, but imho that’s not what twitter is for.
What do you define "social media" as? If it's communication kept within circles of family, friends, colleagues, and enthusiast/interest groups, I really don't see much problem with it, just as forums/blogs/etc before it.
The two big problems poisoning this well are:
1) monetization usually reaches for manipulating people's personal socialization stream, and
2) public broadcast of personal content to the feeds of strangers, usually the most inflammatory subset because of point 1.
Facebook and it's ilk are one of the most addictive forces ever conceived. It's hard enough to change significantly embedded habits, nearly impossible when those behaviours are expertly designed and continually refined to be as pervasive, addictive, and manipulative as possible.
> Conducted Oct. 8 to 10, the online poll surveyed 1,545 Canadians and cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.
It's a pretty good sample-size, but we don't get error bars. I don't remember if there was anything FB-critical happening that week (when did the study about teen mental health come out?), but the timeframe could also affect the survey.