
Evidence Grows That Online Social Networks Have Negative Effects - ca98am79
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/530401/evidence-grows-that-online-social-networks-have-insidious-negative-effects/
======
QuantumChaos
This is my summary based on skimming the article:

The authors find that social network usage has a negative correlation with
happiness.

To control for unhappy people turning to social networks (reverse causality),
the use instrumental variables (IV). This involves finding an instrument, that
is something that causes people to use social networks more/less in a quasi-
random way. Their instrument is availability of DSL. I'm not sure how they
deal with DSL availability also affecting happiness through other mechanisms
(e.g. general internet usage). In any case, the correlation between social
network usage and happiness is _not_ significant once they use the IV
strategy.

They then use a method I'm not familiar with (structural equation modelling,
SEM) to obtain some other results which are discussed in the abstract.

I believe that the abstract (and the popular article discussing it) should
have mentioned the insignificance of the correlation when using the IV
strategy, since I doubt many casual readers would by able to critically
evaluate the SEM strategy (which yielded the results that the abstract and
journalistic article discussed).

------
xux
The title is misleading. Spending time on social networks doesn't cause
unhapiness, in fact it's the opposite. It gives you a jolt of brief happiness.

This can explain the correlation. It's not hard to see why people who are
unhappy with their lives would spend more time on Facebook.

Facebook is an alternative place where you can get a brief sense of "social"
feeling. If you're perpetually unhappy and lonely, you crave it more. And the
more you time you spend on it, the worse you feel about your life, causing you
to crave it even more. Vicious cycle.

~~~
wutbrodo
> Spending time on social networks doesn't cause unhapiness

> And the more you time you spend on it, the worse you feel about your life

These two statements directly contradict each other. If something gives you a
brief jolt of happiness and "the more time you spend on it, the worse you feel
about your life", it's only superficially true that it gives you happiness,
and it's much much more correct to say that it causes unhappiness.

I'm literally only using the propositions from your own comment here.

~~~
marcosdumay
They don't contradict each other. It's "correlation does not imply causation"
framed differently.

~~~
wutbrodo
I think you're misreading his comment. His latter proposition pretty clearly
implies causation: "The more time you spend on it, the worse you feel [if
you're already unhappy]". It certainly limits the domain, but that's about as
clear about causation as one can be when speaking colloquially.

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Havoc
Online social networks are fine on a conceptual level...beautiful even. Its
the commercial interpretation that is completely screwed.

Profit driven, privacy invading, dark pattern driven kind of bullsht. Today my
phone wanted me to install this (additional) facebook app to read my friend's
2 line message to me. i.e. Blocking the 2nd half of the message and giving me
two options - link to useless help article and an install their app button
(hiding the fact that the existing app can read the message - which btw
strangely didn't trigger the usual alert). So...Dear Facebook...go * yourself.
And yes FB employees reading this - I really do feel like that.

~~~
dwaltrip
The faults you are identifying are not related to the article. The implication
of the article is broader. It would seem to imply that the statement

 _Online social networks are fine on a conceptual level...beautiful even._

may not be true. Of course, this topic needs further study.

~~~
nardi
I agree. This comment seems off-topic. Not sure why it's the top comment.

~~~
Havoc
Off-topic indeed & for that I apologize - was just mighty annoyed at the time
& the semi related headline trigger a reaction.

>Not sure why it's the top comment.

The new FB app is universally hated - see app store ratings. I wasn't
specifically aiming at that but looking back it makes sense that my angry
comment resonated widely despite off-topic.

Anyway - sorry for the derail.

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tim333
Reading the paper the article is based on
([http://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3550v1.pdf)-](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3550v1.pdf\)-)
the evidence seems pretty weak:

"Subjective well-being is observed through the answers to the question “How
satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?”. Answers range on a
scale from 0 (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied)"

The average results are about 7 ( between 7.25 and 7.76 in the North, 7.02 and
7.21 in the Center and 6.85 and 7.26 in the South)

And for social networking sites "the total net effect is negative and amounts
to about -0.15%."

So that's a change of like 7.25 down to 7.24 approx

Which seems a pretty marginal result to me. I know they've tried to correct
for spurious correlations and the like but it's an inexact science. I mean the
change is 1/40 of that of moving from north Italy to the south for example.

------
kreutz
Relevant: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-defining-
decade/2012...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-defining-
decade/201203/just-say-no-facebook-social-comparisons)

~~~
nextweek2
This is the reason I don't use social networks. So many people are comparing
each other and only seeing highlights.

Where is the balance and objectivity? Where is the truth in our relationships
when viewed through a filter?

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istjohn
I am unconvinced that social networks are the cause of the correlation here.
The proposed mechanism, that social network use engenders a loss of trust,
just doesn't make sense to me. Exactly what is it about social networks that
would cause trust to erode? More plausible is that people who lack strong
social ties with mutual trust use social networks more instead of interacting
face to face.

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walru
When all you do is view everyone's best moments from that day it's no wonder
it leads to a certain kind of depression. I saw it in spades in my ex-gf who
is a lawyer working 10-12hrs/day. She would get so depressed looking at
'everyone playing outside' while she was stuck inside working that she would
inevitably take it out on me.

Facebook is the Billy Mays of interacting with your friends. The sooner one
steps away from the herd they realize the toxicity of the life that's being
sold.

Disclaimer: I 'deactivated' my account a month ago and feel fantastic!

------
chrismai
The online to offline social networks can solve the faceless social
networking; however, you can lead the horses to the water, but you cannot make
them drink the water.

"They found for example that face-to-face interactions and the trust people
place in one another are strongly correlated with well-being in a positive
way. In other words, if you tend to trust people and have lots of face-to-face
interactions, you will probably assess your well-being more highly."

------
marcosscriven
Whenever I read about the downsides of social media, for some reason I clearly
remember a line from the film To Die For (meant as satire):

"Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching?
And if people are watching, it makes you a better person."

I feel much the same way about it myself. It seems so many are crazily self
obsessed.

------
bronbron
Hm,

I don't think the title quite follows from the article. There might be an
association, but even supposing there is causation the independent/dependent
variables aren't necessarily known here: people with low social trust (for
other reasons) could be more likely to engage in online social networks as
opposed to meatspace social networks.

~~~
anigbrowl
Endogenous factors are addressed in the paper. Nothing personal, but I'm
getting _so_ tired of people on HN saying 'well, maybe they made an elementary
statistical mistake...' They're professional statisticans working with a large
and robust dataset,a nd they devoted 6-7 pages of the paper to discussing how
they controlled for such factors. And they brought up your exact point in the
very first paragraph of that discussion:

 _[...] In particular, while the effect on well-being has been largely
explored in the case of face-to-face interactions, we do not have conclusive
evidence about the endogenous relationship between online interactions and
well-being. This weakness suggests caution about the generality of the results
provided by previous literature. Individual effects such as personal
characteristics may be correlated with both participation in SNSs and well-
being. Happier people may also be more outgoing and open-minded, and may have
a higher propensity for various kinds of social interaction. [...]_

It's fine to be skeptical, but couldn't you at least do the authors the
courtesy of looking at their methods and pointing out where you think they
fall short?

~~~
QuantumChaos
I agree that we should always at least read the linked article (and sometimes
the original paper) before bringing out "correlation does not equal
causation".

However, you are overstating the case for the author's having dealt with
reverse causality. From the conclusion:

 _When we addressed causality in IV estimates, the significance of the
correlation between participation in social networking sites and subjective
well-being disappeared._

See my top level comment for my own take on the article.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not trying to make any comment on the significance of the result; the
authors discuss those factors in detail in the body of the paper (around page
20) as well as mentioning the limitations in the abstract and conclusion.

My gripe is with reflexive and unjustified statistical one-upmanship in HN
discussions.

------
arjn
I've long suspected this and have been off social networks since 2007/08\.
Have taken a lot of grief from friends about it though.

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lostmsu
Bad title. Article only says about correlation.

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notastartup
I signed up on facebook because my friends went on a trip and I wanted to see
the photos of the foreign country they are visiting.

When you add people you barely know, I think it would be a different feel when
they upload how beautiful their life is.

~~~
fein
That's just it though: No one has much of an interest of presenting anything
less than a "beautiful" life on FB. What you're watching in that news feed
isn't reality, it's a carefully curated set of ideal content to make that
person look better/happier/richer than they actually are.

Everyone has demons, but no one wants to air that to their peers.

~~~
thinkmassive
I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the point being made by
notastartup though. Given that people are going to try to make their selves
look good regardless, it's wise to be selective in who you let into your
newsfeed. Someone who connects with a lot of people they barely know will be
worse off than someone who only accepts (and requests) connections to people
with whom they have a close enough relationship that the happiness will always
be mutual.

~~~
fein
My point was to remind people that they simply shouldn't care. It's like
getting mad at yourself because you don't look like that perfectly cut (and
photoshopped) Abercrombie model.

It's not an accurate representation of reality. I don't use facebook outside
of what is required for API usage on whatever random dev project I get thrown
into this week. The people that are truly in your circle of acquaintances
probably don't need FB to stay in touch.

