
America’s social-media addiction is getting worse - seagullz
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/08/08/americas-social-media-addiction-is-getting-worse
======
jumbopapa
The biggest concern to me is the attention span most people have today. They
can't go longer than a few minutes without checking their phone. It impacts
work and leisure. An assignment at work is delayed or low quality because you
checked your phone every few minutes, you don't understand what's happening in
a TV show/movie because you kept checking your phone, you can't get interested
in a good book because you can't read more than a page or two without checking
your phone.

I am guilty of this behavior myself and it's something that I've been working
on a lot lately. I recognize that this is a problem, but I don't really
support the government saving us from ourselves. I think this is something
that average person just needs to educate themselves on and make the decision
for themselves. It's not impossible to break free from it.

I highly suggest everyone checkout Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. It's a
fantastic read.

~~~
heinrichhartman
> but I don't really support the government saving us from ourselves.

I don't understand that argument. By the same reasoning all drugs should be
legal:

Everyone know's it's bad. People get trapped. It has severe consequences for
personal health and the society as a whole. But, hey, "it's not impossible to
break free from it" by yourself. No need for Government action.

The key metric for me is impact to society. You can do all bad things to you
if you want to, and they only impact yourself, but if things have large impact
on:

\- Social fabric (stability of families and communities)

\- Political Culture (erosion of discourse culture)

\- Education (lower attention span)

\- Healthcare (burnout!)

\- Working productivity

It might be a good idea to change the rules to prevent these effects.

~~~
jumbopapa
> I don't understand that argument. By the same reasoning all drugs should be
> legal.

Do you really believe it's the illegal nature of drugs that keep the vast
majority of people from using them? It's the fact that they know it's bad. In
the future social media could be no different.

I don't know if I would be in favor of legalization, but Portugal has had
reasonable success with decriminalizing all drugs.

~~~
wutbrodo
This doesn't seem as unreasonable as your incredulity makes it sound. Alcohol
is uncontroversially wayyy more dangerous than a handful of illegal drugs, and
it's in incredibly wide usage. Same for cigarettes in the past: it took a sui
generis effort to dramatically shift culture to lower cigarette's popularity
(in the US), and it was fragile enough that a rebranding to "Juul" is starting
to undo a lot of that work.

FWIW, from a selfish perspective, I wish most drugs were legal: ; I used
marijuana responsibly before it was legal and continue to use psychedelics
responsibly, and the reason I don't do meth or cocaine isn't because it's
difficult to get, but because I'm aware of how dangerous they are. But I'm
genuinely curious as to what could make you think that, for the average
person, legality doesn't drive a substantial amount of their attitudes towards
usage of a given drug.

------
malvosenior
> _On July 30th the junior senator from Missouri unveiled the “Social Media
> Addiction Reduction Technology Act”, or SMART Act. The bill would limit
> social-media usage to half an hour a day (users would be able to bypass the
> limit by adjusting their app settings). It would also ban addictive
> features, such as “infinite scroll” (when a user’s entire feed can be seen
> in one visit) and “autoplay” (when online videos load automatically one
> after another)._

We should never let the government dictate UI through laws. It’s shocking that
it’s even being proposed.

~~~
dustinmoris
Why is it shocking?

The government has always had a say in the UI if it was for the greater
benefit of it's citizen:

\- Off putting images printed on cigarette packages

\- Warning stickers put on microwaves to prevent people from drying their
house cats in the microwave

\- Forcing speed meters in cars

\- Forcing head lights of cars to be turned on after a certain hour of the day

\- Lot's of "UX" regulations in casinos and other addictive establishments

\- Licenses to sell alcohol which basically influences where people can find
and shop alcohol

\- Recently the UK has drafted a law which prohibits supermarkets to stock and
display addictive unhealthy food close to the checkout tilts (Mars, Snickers,
fat crisps, etc.)

Why should it be different on the internet? Social media has a damaging and
addictive negative impact on society, so it need's to be regulated to protect
citizens from the exploitative patterns which these companies purposefully
implement to hook vulnerable people into their system.

I wonder what makes people believe that the internet should be this sort of
"law free" place where anyone can implement all the exploitative behaviour
which is otherwise forbidden elsewhere?

~~~
toomuchequate
>I wonder what makes people believe that the internet should be this sort of
"law free" place where anyone can implement all the exploitative behaviour
which is otherwise forbidden elsewhere?

Violent crime doesnt happen on the internet. The only thing to prevent is
fraud. And that weirdly isnt huge, at least in my life.

Not everyone subscribes to the thought that government makes better decisions
than individuals. Having laws are often used for corrupt purposes.

~~~
TheBranca18
>Violent crime doesn't happen on the internet. The only thing to prevent is
fraud.

I couldn't disagree more with these statements. Human and sex trafficking
occur through the net, hell you can hire hitmen! Then there's the grooming of
underage kids, etc. To say only fraud happens on the net just seems wild.

>Not everyone subscribes to the thought that government makes better decisions
than individuals. Having laws are often used for corrupt purposes.

This is a pretty general statement. What specifically in the proposed law are
you against?

~~~
Kaiyou
All those crimes happen offline, though. Internet is just a communication
channel.

------
rohan1024
I'm pretty sure India's is worst but nobody is performing these kind of
studies in India. We will learn damages when it's too late.

It's exactly like pollution nobody gives a damn here about it. This is going
offtopic but check pollution data for India its same as that of China. At
least China has proper facilities for measuring the air quality.

~~~
chewz
> check pollution data for India its same as that of China. At least China has
> proper facilities for measuring the air quality.

I have checked. It is not the same.

World Most Polluted Cities in 2018 - PM2.5 Ranking | AirVisual –
[https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-
cities](https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-cities)

~~~
rohan1024
Note that this is the case when we have limited data points. If we do full
fledged studies we would reveal severe issues with pollution in India.

Coming back to social media there's a growing number of foreign youtubers who
react to Indian media. The ammount traffic they are receiving is phenomenal.
This though not a correct indicator definitely highlights growing social media
in India.

~~~
ugexe
If you don’t believe there is enough data points then why did you ask us to
check the data?

------
pjc50
How about America's TV addiction, or even talk-radio addiction? Or even, you
know, the actual _addiction_ addiction of the opiate crisis?

~~~
the-dude
"According to a Nielsen report, United States adults are watching five hours
and four minutes of television per day on average (35.5 h/week, slightly more
than 77 days per year)."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption)

Nielsen may be biased though.

~~~
jumbopapa
That seems insane... I get off work around 4:30pm and get home from the gym
around 6pm. I make dinner and it's basically 7pm and then I have leisure time
to read a book, work a personal project, or watch TV. I aim to go to bed 10pm.
I never spend 3 hours watching TV and I'm not sure how some of these people
are doing more than that! The weekends could skew the numbers, but even then I
don't watch it that much.

~~~
matwood
> get home from the gym around 6pm. I make dinner

These are 2 things that apparently large parts of the population do not do.
Instead they grab fast food on the way home and watch TV until bed. At least
that's the responses I get anytime I say people should work out every day, and
eat healthier by spending a few minutes cooking.

------
maxwellito
I don't find the data precise enough to make conclusions. Yes, we spend more
time on social apps, but it's also our main way of communication. I wouldn't
be surprised to know that 80% of the time spend is in private conversations.
We are just switching from classic apps (SMS, email, WhatsApp) to messaging in
social media apps.

~~~
acollins1331
Also just because the app is open on my screen doesn't mean I'm looking at it.
Bad science is bad, only one upped by the bad reporting.

------
afarrell
One important part of solving this is allowing apps which provide the ability
for an individual to bind his future actions. If there should be any
government policy, it should be to make these tools which help augment
individuals' own strivings for self-discipline.

It would be really nice if Apple would re-allow content-blocking apps on the
iPhone.

[https://support.freedom.to/en/articles/2259444-freedom-
app-s...](https://support.freedom.to/en/articles/2259444-freedom-app-store-
removal-status)

It would also be nice if someone would develop a subscription service like
SelfControl.app, but which took recurring payments in order to support an
engineer making continual improvements.
[https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/issues?q=is%3A...](https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen)

\-------

By the way, there exists some similar fintech for substance addictions:
[https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/next_step-
card-...](https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/next_step-card-
recovering-addicts-debt-1273.php)

~~~
tfha
I think the approach of "have more self control" is doomed to fail. We have a
social media addiction problem because there are literally teams of scientests
using machine learning, A/B testing, and other techniques to get you hooked
onto the app.

If you want to break the addiction, the only thing you can do is abstinence
from the apps that employ these tactics. I don't think that you can win
against adversaries that literally make a living out of getting you to keep
clicking.

Media like HN is fine, self control techniques work here because YC isn't
doing all of the same dark patterns and addiction strategies that are being
employed by facebook, youtube, twitter, snapchat, etc.

If you realize you are addicted to one of these opiate-like apps, you really
have to choose cold-turkey.

~~~
read_if_gay_
> Media like HN is fine

There might not be anything purposefully done to get you hooked, but link
aggregators have some "innate" features that your brain really likes, such as
getting upvotes and discovering cool stuff on a random basis.

------
gedy
I went to Disneyland for the first time in 20+ years and it struck me how much
people stare into phones. In lines of course, but also in the middle of rides?
Just didn't seem healthy, like we are running a huge social experiment which
eliminates talking and paying attention to those around you.

~~~
cylinder
I hadn't thought of that because I hadn't been to a theme park in years, since
smartphones took off. Wow. I couldn't imagine a line full of kids staring at
phones. Lines were always tedious, but we joked around and generally
entertained ourselves through it. Man, we are becoming a dull bunch of people.

------
briga
And if these companies had their way users would be spending every waking
minute on their platform, collecting that sweet sweet ad revenue. That's what
happens when primary business success metrics are engagement and hundreds of
micro-experiments are run every day to make these platforms addictive as
possible.

------
5trokerac3
Imagine a Star Trek episode where they go to a planet were everyone is staring
at a personal device and not interacting with each other. That's what walking
into a bar in 2019 is like.

We're living in the part of the dystopian movie, in the beginning, where they
explain the timeline of how everything got so bad.

------
lota-putty
Addictions are good for business.

Addictions are predictable & can be channelled to make profit. Like they say,
"Make hay while the Sun shines". Whole private business community rides on
such waves of addictions(good/bad).

Some successful businessmen with guilty conscience do charity.

------
nottorp
Is Youtube a social site now?

I think it should go in the other corner where it says 'TV Addiction'...

~~~
ryanmercer
>Is Youtube a social site now?

Absolutely, go pick a video at random from a YT account with more than say
half a million subscribers. Go look at the comments, go look at the
'community' tab on one of those accounts pages and look at the engagement in
their non-video shares as well. Go watch one of these accounts when they do a
live video and the chat is often flying by faster than you can read more than
one or two lines.

------
faissaloo
My solution to this problem is simply that these websites shouldn't exist. A
network of more than a thousand or so people can't reasonably give you any
real sense of community. All these sites have a commonality: they are ad
supported, so in order to end this the consumer ad industry must be collapsed,
block ads and avoid purchasing products advertised to you. Once the ad
industry is collapsed such sites will either be paid for or will be setup to
facilitate a genuine need. This will maximise the benefits and avoid creating
a constant stream of broadly irrelevant and useless information.

~~~
luckylion
What makes you think that people don't value those sites enough to pay for
using them? People pay huge sums for cable packages which is essentially a
monthly fee for "make the time go by more quickly". Social media is similar in
that regard, so it might just be worth money to them as well.

~~~
faissaloo
If people valued the existing sites enough to pay for them they'd already be
doing that, it would simply be a more reliable stream of income.

~~~
luckylion
There is no option to pay instead of getting ads. I'd happily pay for Google's
search sans ads/tracking and their focus on the dumbest user possible, but I
can't because they don't offer the option.

I do agree that most people won't prefer paying with money instead of
attention, but that doesn't mean they won't prefer paying with money over not
having the service.

~~~
faissaloo
There have been countless services who've attempted this model, none of them
suceeded, in fact I can't even remember their names off the top of my head
because no one bothered.

~~~
luckylion
That's while they are _competing with free_. It's hard to compete with free.
It's much easier to compete with non-existant.

~~~
wutbrodo
Sure, but free is the defect state in the Prisoner's Dilemma. If Google
provides a paid option, they'll still be competing with their free option. If
they switch entirely to paid, Bing immediately starts advertising as "the free
search engine".

This dynamic is even more powerful for network-effects-driven platforms like
Twitter or fb

~~~
luckylion
Sure, but the premise was that it would go away if you took away ads as a
funding model. I doubt that FB would simply fold and say "oh well" if, by some
miraculous law, ads were no longer an option for funding. And Youtube (which
is counted as social media here) already has Youtube Premium/Red, where people
(at least in some countries) can pay to get an ad-free experience and some
extra content.

When people perceive a value, they'll pay an appropriate price in some way (be
it by spending money or watching ads), that's all I'm saying. And they appear
to value social media or they wouldn't spend that much time on it. So if you
remove "just watch some ads" as a payment form, I'm pretty sure that at least
some will switch to handing over money.

~~~
wutbrodo
Ah I see, by "remove" you mean remove at an industry-wide level, eg through
regulation. Sure that's a classic solution to Prisoner's Dilemmas

------
jake2110
Regulation the usage of private websites and something as specific as infinite
scroll on an app is ridiculous. I understand we regulate things like
cigarettes and alcohol, but I absolutely hate the idea of government getting
involved in regulations of software and the internet. I just don't personally
think that if I'm going through multiple private businesses (phone
manufacturer, ISP, social network) that I should be restricted by government
regulation on something as mundane as spending too much time on Reddit.

That being said, that's my personal opinion.

------
scarejunba
Yeah, people are in touch with each other. I’m glued to my phone on transit
because I’m catching up with my friends who I haven’t seen in days, something
I can’t do at work. Fucking insufferable, the paternalism.

~~~
siphon22
Well said.

Another factor is that not everyone, especially women, _do not want_ to leave
themselves open to strangers to bother or even harass them. The best way to do
that these days is to be busy on your phone, or to put on some ear/headphones
in public. Looking busy is almost a must on public transit or else you risk
looking like prey to unwanted solicitations.

------
chaoticmass
I helped crack down on my own social media usage by getting a feature phone
for calling and a really cheap low-end smart phone ($40) for those times when
I really need an app for something.

------
luckylion
Are they using social media more and more additionally to watching TV, or is
it shifting more towards social media? And if it is: is social media worse
than TV, and why?

------
rolltiide
The use cases expand and contract year over year, iterating towards ones that
create longer sessions without necessarily being dopamine like addictions

Just pointing out that people merely use a service for X minutes doesn't tell
what people are doing

Over the last year the instagram service added IGTV, which can be replacing TV
and youtube for some people, for example

These can be completely exempt from the messed up frustrating picture feeds
and the use case of attracting likes.

------
Youcandothis
It's strange that people still believe in internet addiction.

------
ryanmercer
I applied to the most recent winter YC batch with the idea of, I want to help
people put tech down and plug back into the world. Sadly, they weren't
interested as it won't make 1 billion dollars in a few years for them to make
bank on.

I think purely the attention companies get at demo day would have been a very
powerful thing and I know there are countless tech types the world around that
are fed up with technology in front of them all the time (and it's nothing
new, I knew a programmer in the late 90s that got rid of his computer, then
his game consoles, then his television because he just didn't want to be
around the stuff outside of work). I mean, look at how many CS types buy hobby
farms or talk about someday buying hobby farms. Look at a lot of the van life
and tiny home types, same kinda thing.

I would love to help people take a step away from tech, if anything just to
help myself.

Here's a snippet of something I wrote in 2017, it's probably the first time I
really put thought into ME and tech

>In 1995 when I discovered the internet we got 60 hours a month, shortly after
we got 120 hours a month. If the weather was nice you didn't give a shit about
the internet, you were outside. If the weather was bad you'd connect to the
internet, get lost in the text of a MUD. I remember the first time I saw an
image on a website, the first time I saw video on a computer.

Here's another bit, this grows and evolves in me almost daily

>I've got 21st century burnout. I'm not alone, I know I'm not. I've got two
friends that are of a similar mind. I want to live in a world where community
is a thing, where life is simple, where the only real concerns are who's
bringing what to the block party or what book I want to read next.

[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-
th...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-the-20th-
century)

What's really crazy is just look at video games, the time we spend in video
games is dumbfounding

>ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX BILLION HOURS A YEAR. That's 17,808,219 man-YEARS
spent on video games annually. 17 million years wasted every year playing
video games. Seventeen MILLION.

I break that out, using great works we've done, to show what we might
accomplish if we just put down video games

[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys-...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys-
end-the-time-we-waste-on-virtual-lives)

And that doesn't include the obscene amounts of time people, hell I, spend on
Instagram, Facebook, HN, Reddit, Tinder-like apps, sending gifs and memes in a
dozen message/chat threads.

We've gotta do something about this.

~~~
Youcandothis
"I want to help people put tech down and plug back into the world"

But they are plugged to the world, and more so than in the past when they were
limited to people around them, books, newspapers etc.

~~~
ryanmercer
They're plugged into the highly curated social media shares of people they
went to grade school with and haven't seen in 15 years, or worse they're
plugged into the curated 'life' of complete strangers.

This is leading to anxiety, depression and even suicides

[https://www.healthline.com/health-news/social-media-use-
incr...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/social-media-use-increases-
depression-and-loneliness)

[https://www.psycom.net/social-media-depression-
teens](https://www.psycom.net/social-media-depression-teens)

[https://adaa.org/social-media-obsession](https://adaa.org/social-media-
obsession)

[https://blog.pcc.com/social-media-self-esteem-and-teen-
suici...](https://blog.pcc.com/social-media-self-esteem-and-teen-suicide)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-
contributi...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-contributing-
rising-teen-suicide-rate-n812426)

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/30/social-
media-u...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/30/social-media-urged-
to-take-moment-to-reflect-after-girls-death)

~~~
Youcandothis
Anxiety, depression and suicides are nothing new. I don't blame on either
ordinary or online social interaction. Instead I think social interaction is
healthy, given it has a good quality, whether it's online or not.

~~~
wilsonchaney
Yes - anxiety, depression, and suicides are not new. But the rates have risen
drastically.

~~~
Youcandothis
A quick search gave me the information that death by suicide is going down. If
there is an increase in anxiety and depression, I see no reason to blame
social media. If used in a good way, social media make us feel well.

------
Theodores
This is quite a visible moral panic as we can see people glued to their phones
in public places, e.g. on the train or bus.

I am not a Facebook person myself but I see no harm in someone spending their
time commuting on a train using Facebook instead of something more worthy,
e.g. reading a newspaper.

Behind closed doors people plug in to regular TV programming and spend hours
on games consoles. There are only so many hours in the day and people who
spend hours on social media are spending less time watching regular TV.

Instead of moral panic we need some better numbers. For instance we have
unemployment numbers, we could also do with numbers of how many people lost
their lives to Facebook/X-Boxes/YouTube/trawling Wikipedia this month.

~~~
pojzon
I fail to understand how "reading a newspaper" is more worthy than reading
facebook. Both are used for pushing some propaganda and to sell ads..

~~~
ericmcer
Newspaper articles, especially pre-internet era, require an attention span
longer than 3 seconds to get through. Content had an editorial process, a
physical body was held accountable for content. There are tons of differences
that make a newspaper a better media for your brain to consume.

~~~
poloniculmov
Most people I saw reading the newspaper on the subway were reading either a
cheap tabloid or the free paper distributed on the subway.

