
Study Satirises Measures of Social Media Addiction - EndXA
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/04/15/are-you-addicted-to-spending-time-with-your-friends-study-satirises-measures-of-social-media-addiction/
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mrxd
I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that social media has some negative
consequences, but I still think this is a really valuable satirical measure.

What I've seen is that journalists often seem to think that if social
scientists can measure something, it proves that it is real. A typical
headline will be something like "Studies show that 29% of us are addicted to
social media." What they miss is that these studies starts with researchers
making value judgements, and those judgements aren't more legitimate because a
researcher made them.

This kind of research doesn't answer the question "Is social media an
addiction?" It tries to answer the question, "If you think social media is an
addiction, how serious is the problem?" That's why you can create a satirical
measure that answers the question "How serious is the problem of friend
addiction?"

The addiction classification is especially difficult. Often we call something
an addiction if someone routinely engages in behavior where the negatives
outweigh the positives. But when there's no common standard of measurement
between the pros and cons, another value judgement has to be made about how to
weight the various consequences.

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notechback
> What they miss is that these studies starts with researchers making value
> judgements, and those judgements aren't more legitimate because a researcher
> made them.

I disagree. That a researcher (aka expert with significant theoretical and
methodological knowledge and experience) makes a judgement on something makes
it likely a better judgement than that of a random person.

But more importantly I doubt the problem is (usually) the researchers. Most
good social science will give confidence intervals, careful language, etc. But
how it is then spun and interpreted by university communication departments,
news, science bloggers etc is often far from the actual findings.

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LionBlack8
Any addiction is a disease. I have just read an interesting article on this
issue here -
[https://addictionresource.com/drugs/fiorinal/](https://addictionresource.com/drugs/fiorinal/)
. Pretty informative

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trts
I think I understand the point of the satire ... partially?In most cases we
speak about engagement on social media with an assumption that more is worse.

But it seems like a weird thing to satirize in this way because aren't there
already many real-world studies that demonstrate that spending less time with
people IRL can be detrimental to people emotionally and even physically, and
that sometimes this trade-off comes from increased time spent on social media?

Also, nobody is profiting from my gatherings with my friends or has any
financial incentive to increase the amount of time I spend doing it.

I don't really get it.

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Nasrudith
The satire is of the shallow sensationalism and panic mongering if reapplied
shows how specious the claims are. If it can be straight transferred it shows
the focus for criticism is misplaced. Working a job or reading a book may also
result in less time spent with friends.

As for profiting from gatherings it depends upon where they spend time
together. Resturants, bars, karoke clubs, (mini)-golf, etc. may say hi. Even
hiking in the woods does so indirectly shoe wear and any exercise means any
food sellers have an incentive.

