
The relationship between social media use and well-being - j_s
https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-the-more-you-use-facebook-the-worse-you-feel
======
lsc
I feel the 'social media is bad for you' thing, but for different reasons.

I mean, I don't really understand the 'feeling inadequate because of my
cousin's baby pictures' thing. I mean, I am happy for them, but that isn't the
life I want, so I don't feel bad that I don't have it. Alternately, I could be
less jealous than most people, but let's run with the more realistic first
reason.

For me, the problem with social media is a fundamental lack of self control; I
get into 'someone is wrong on the internet' discussions, and for me, those are
the 'addictive but not pleasant' aspects of social media. For me, a
conversation is not fun if we aren't arguing in good faith ; if we can't
acknowledge one another's good points and rhetorical flourishes, it is just
not fun, and I end up feeling frustrated and rejected. The unhealthy part is
that I feel the discussion is unfinished, and walking away takes a tremendous
act of will, and even then, my mind keeps coming back to the conversation.

I hope it is just a matter of practice; I mostly have left other mediums with
these sorts of unfufilling conversations, or at least learned to restrain
myself from participating in the most obviously unproductive conversations.

I think the big difference with social media is largely cultural; lots of
people are there who lack a background in early internet culture or academic
culture, and our shared vocabulary doesn't run much past "you are wrong " and
there isn't the social pressure to be civil like we have here, or to be smart,
like there was in the heyday of kuro5hin.

~~~
Swizec
> lots of people are there who lack a background in early internet culture or
> academic culture

I think this hits it. Many (most?) people just aren't used to having people
disagree with them. Let alone voice those disagreements and be expected to
defend their beliefs and explain _why_ they think they're right.

For many people the way they think is correct, just _is_ correct. It's not
something that needs defending or even investigating. It's just how things
are.

Perhaps the problem is fundamentally how many different people social media
exposes us to. And maybe if you weren't exposed to that in your formative
years, it's a hard thing to get used to.

~~~
platz
Framing that difference as a "lack" the other person has, may be right, but
creates a sense of superiority over that person which also seems wrong, for
certain people that are aware of their differences (they may not be "lacking"
anything").

Some people are emotivists
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism)),
which means that for them preferences _are_ moral positions in themselves, not
just reasons _about_ the morality of preferences.

it is “… the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all
moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of
attitude or feeling.”

In other words, emotivism holds that there can be no way of rationally
justifying one’s claims about controversial issues.

I think this view describes a great many number of people; though it's true
that academia, STEM, and rational enlightenment thinking tends to filter it
out or select against it.

~~~
Swizec
TIL! I've never heard of emotivism before.

And I don't think that's what I was pointing towards. My comment is about the
idea that people aren't used to having their beliefs investigated or
challenged. No matter what the basis is for their existence.

It's more a lack in their environment than in themselves I think. You can't
get used to defending your beliefs until you're exposed to people and ideas
that challenge them.

I mean it's fine if your defense is "That's what feels right". But it's not
fine if your response to "I think you're wrong" is to think you're being
attacked and it makes you feel superbad.

~~~
platz
sure, though I think emotivism is pertinent here, for example

> "I think you're wrong" is to think you're being attacked

This is exactly what the emotivist thinks because challenging an idea means
challenging a preference which is directly challenging the moral character of
the individual. There is no ability to discuss things in a detached way for
them; this seems to check out anecdotally.

Is that "not fine?" \- I certainly don't like it, and I don't think it's fine
for people i choose to interact with, but my first step is to understand it,
if only because there are so many people like this. Folks will continue to act
like this despite my desire to see the opposite behavior, so it's good to be
prepared and not self-deceive what other people are really like.

> My comment is about the idea that people aren't used to having their beliefs
> investigated or challenged.

I think I get where you're coming from. someone people not used to something
could be said to having a deficiency in dealing with that situation and
presumably with more experience they would change their behavior.

But I think there may be a slight difference in what I was saying, which
includes some overlap with your point, but also allows for people who are
quite familiar with being challenged, but yet immediately disapprove of such
behavior anyways, due to the explanations above.

~~~
braveo
Having an opinion or idea doesn't make it correct or worthy of attention by
other people.

If I come across someone who really thinks that way, they get dismissed and I
lose 100% of any shred of respect I may have had for that person.

I don't care if that's considered closed minded, the mindset is wrong,
fullstop, and it's obvious to anyone with a modicum of thinking skills.

The idea you've described here can be true _sometimes_ depending on the
subject matter, but it is not nearly true all the time, and if someone is
unable to recognize that, then I cannot trust anything they say, and it's not
worth the mental or emotional energy to engage them.

~~~
platz
> Having an opinion or idea doesn't make it correct or worthy of attention by
> other people.

Very well, but I don't believe that is what I described or claimed.

~~~
braveo
I didn't mean to imply that you did, my point is that someone being being "an
emotivist" isn't understandable, and it doesnt' mean the people around them
should be inclusive of such an outlook on life.

~~~
platz
Ok, I didn't say that such people should be accepted, description is not
prescription.

~~~
braveo
yep, no argument there, I was just weighing in with my (admittedly strong)
opinionon the matter.

------
overcast
I came to the same conclusion a few years ago, when I delete my social
accounts like Facebook. They only show you the best slices of individual
lives, all day, every day. When compared to your life, it makes it look like
you're doing nothing with your life. That it's completely boring, while all of
these people are living these amazing adventures everyday. Combine that with
all of the vitriol comments plaguing all of these sites, and it's easy to see
why someone would think less of themselves. It's good to be social, but these
networks are not the answer.

~~~
davehtaylor
>They only show you the best slices of individual lives, all day, every day.
When compared to your life, it makes it look like you're doing nothing with
your life.

Exactly. You end up judging your interior by others' exterior. They show you a
highly edited version of their life, made to impress everyone else. You're
doing nothing but constantly chasing a phantom life you can never have,
because no one else really has it either.

~~~
rconti
So many people complain about this, and I just don't get it. Maybe if I'm not
part of the solution, I'm part of the problem?

When I'm stuck at my desk and I see someone posting vacation pictures from
Spain, I say "man, that looks nice, I wish I was there!" And that's it. Maybe
it makes me think about where I want to go next, but it doesn't send me into
some existential crisis.

I wonder if there are personality types more prone to being affected by stuff
like this? If anything, I'd think _I_ would -- certainly prone to depression,
particularly in my younger years. But I just don't care. I wonder why that is,
and what is different among people who are affected by these things
differently.

~~~
enraged_camel
The entire idea is that the effect is subconscious. Sure, seeing one person
post vacation pictures from Spain won't affect you then and there, but over
time as everyone posts awesome pictures you will inevitably _feel_ that
something must be lacking in or wrong with _your_ life.

~~~
rconti
I don't know. I see all of these people complaining about these effects, and
it simply doesn't bother me in the same way (not to say it couldn't possibly
have a subconscious effect).

But I feel as if it caused the same effect in me as it causes in others, I'd
be talking about how I'm going to "take a break" from $socialnetwork for a
month, and how much better I feel, and so on. But I don't. It's just a tool. I
use it and enjoy it. If I didn't, I wouldn't.

------
brightball
100% confirm. I quit FB after being on it for a decade and I'm significantly
happier.

More productive at work. Significantly less angry.

The big one is that I'm making much more of a point to spend time with people
who actually live near me rather than chatting it up with my friends from
college.

I think people take for granted how much of a motivator a little bit of
loneliness can be.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The big one is that I'm making much more of a point to spend time with
> people who actually live near me rather than chatting it up with my friends
> from college.

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-
end.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html)

"It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up
93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time.
We’re in the tail end.

It’s a similar story with my two sisters. After living in a house with them
for 10 and 13 years respectively, I now live across the country from both of
them and spend maybe 15 days with each of them a year. Hopefully, that leaves
us with about 15% of our total hangout time left.

The same often goes for old friends. In high school, I sat around playing
hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we
probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with
totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at
the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.

So what do we do with this information?

Setting aside my secret hope that technological advances will let me live to
700, I see three takeaways here:

1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have
10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people
who live somewhere else.

2) Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely
on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this
list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.

3) Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you
love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat
that time as what it actually is: precious."

~~~
Expez
Incredibly poignant and insightful post. Thank you!

------
seanwilson
Just for some balance but I don't understand the hate for Facebook, I use it
fairly often and it's been a positive impact for me. I use it occasionally to
connect with people I've just met, see what friends are up to, send messages
to meet up and keep in contact with people out of the country. I've connected
to people I otherwise wouldn't have through it, got closer to people I know
through it and met up with people because of it. I'm completely aware that
people only share the best slices of their life on it and it doesn't depress
me.

I think if you let Facebook consume your life and it somehow impacts you a lot
you need to think about why that is and not blame Facebook. You could get
equally obsessed with hackernews comparing yourself to other users and
clamouring for upvotes.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386)

> We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social
> network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental
> health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results
> showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with
> well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in "likes clicked"
> (clicking "like" on someone else's content), "links clicked" (clicking a
> link to another site or article), or "status updates" (updating one's own
> Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%-8% of a standard
> deviation in self-reported mental health.

So it's not a causal link then? If it's not there's surely many reasons why
having low well-being would make you spend more time on social networks (e.g.
you'd go out less so have more time to spend on social networks)?

~~~
frenchy
> ... I don't understand the hate for Facebook ...

I suspect that any hate of facebook has a fair bit to do with the fact that it
is 1) pervasive, 2) a fairly closed system, and 3) comes with a lot of strings
attached. The fact that it's a closed system is really the crux of the issue,
everything else just kind of accentuates the problem. Here's an example of why
facebook's existence is annoying

My local climbing gym, for example, has a website, but instead of posting
information there, they post most of their updates (like competition dates) on
Facebook. Without having a facebook account (and regularly checking it!)
there's no way to keep up-to-date on these postings. Now, if you create a
facebook account, there's no good way to tell people "don't send me messages
here, just email me", so now you have to keep an eye on your facebook
messages, otherwise your friends will get annoyed that you're ignoring them.
Facebook doesn't implement IMAP or anything though, so your also stuck going
to their website regularly, or install their software on your phone and saying
goodbye to your once-long battery life.

------
jgrahamc
"Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were
positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was
negatively associated with overall well-being."

This is not a surprise. I quit Facebook specifically because of the endless
stream of "my life is amazing" posts of people beig happy without any balance.
Reminds me of those awful Christmas letters people send round about how
wonderful their entire year had been and how _amazing_ their children are.

~~~
rconti
Serious question: Would you prefer to not receive those Christmas letters? Or
is it more tolerable because it's only once a year, so the benefit of staying
in touch is greater than the cost of the annoyance of the letter itself?

------
borplk
Only on internet forums like this I see people claiming about quitting
facebook and so on.

I don't see the signs in the real world.

Having said that I too almost never used it from the beginning. I didn't need
so many years to figure out why I'm not going to like it. I was on it in the
early days just as a techy interested in internet technology then I gave it up
and never looked back.

Mind you it has become only more socially costly to not be on it. A few times
I tempted to get back in again at least in a limited capacity (just having a
basic profile so people can message me if needed). But didn't.

I have also heard harsh comments and so on.

Like one person said (not directly to me) ... "what do you mean?!! don't you
have any friends?".

More than anything what I find annoying is this expectation from the society
that every person in the world must subject themselves to the invasion of
Facebook for their convenience and amusement.

I don't go around ordering everyone must eat at my favorite Pizza joint. Why
should the people be pressured to some private social network?

If it was more like email that isn't owned by any one entity I would be more
understanding.

~~~
gvurrdon
> If it was more like email that isn't owned by any one entity I would be more
> understanding.

Definitely. If it operated in a Manner similar to Mastodon then FB would be a
lot more tempting to use for the limited purposes I feel I need access. All I
would like to use it for is to get an RSS feed of news from various clubs and
to be able to reply to such posts (e.g. to confirm that I'll attend an event
they've advertised). Unfortunately, FB disabled the RSS feed some time ago and
to use rss-bridge ([https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-
bridge](https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge)) requires configuring
proxies or trying to solve captchas. Even browsing the public page for an
event will shove login boxes or random captchas in my face, and the more it is
rammed down my throat the more I wish to avoid it.

------
rybosome
I removed the FB app from my phone and have the willpower not to use a browser
to check it. Stopped short of deactivating my account so that I can still get
the occasional message on Messenger.

After the insanely contentious, toxic US election and cry of grief and fear
from the left over the results, I got so burnt out with getting on FB and
seeing so many reasons to be angry and afraid. Cut myself off completely and
after a short time I completely forgot about it. The urge to check FB is
totally gone, I feel like I'm missing nothing. It was a great decision, only
wish I had made it sooner.

~~~
sandov
you can deactivate your profile (i.e. You can't log on facebook) without
deactivating your messenger account. I did this and chat normally from
messenger.com, but can't log on facebook.com

------
huangc10
Sometime in the next few yrs or so (if not already), I suspect we'll see many
research papers related to social media and suicide rates. Furthermore, it'll
be interesting in cross examining this data with cultural views ie. Western
culture vs. Asian culture where social media has really taken off.

------
castle-bravo
facebook's business is advertising, and the more time people spend on
facebook, the more valuable facebook's ad space is. If depressed people spend
more time on facebook instead of getting out, then it's in facebook's interest
to have their product make people depressed. If angry people spend more time
writing rants on facebook, then it's in facebook's interest to make people
angry. I may be confusing causation with correlation, but I am willing to bet
that the reason facebook's product has repeatedly been shown to cause harm is
because the harm is good for facebook, not by accident of design.

The article linked below describes some of the anti-features that make slack
addictive. I have no reason to believe that slack and facebook are not aware
of the addictive power of their products and do not cynically designin their
products to enhance their addictive potential.
[https://medium.com/@satyavh/the-real-reason-
slack](https://medium.com/@satyavh/the-real-reason-slack)

~~~
rogual
I wonder how many of these design decisions were actually made consciously,
and how many are just the result of things like blind A/B testing.

If your scientific test shows you that feature set A has better user retention
than feature set B, you don't need to worry yourself over why.

------
pdelbarba
I've definitely noticed this myself. Friends that I've known to be depressed
almost always posted very frequently on Facebook and those that had some
negative life event occur almost always seemed to post way more than usual in
the following months. It got to the point that back when I used FB, I would
make a point of asking old friends how they were doing when I noticed an
uptick in their posting habits.

------
orschiro
For me, Facebook is the new yellow pages telephone book that contains all
addresses to people I may want to contact. That's about it. I do not see any
other value in Facebook.

------
cknight
My use case is going to be in a minority, but I find Facebook vital for
keeping in touch with friends and especially family back home.

I was thinking about ditching the platform before making a rather abrupt
decision to move to the other side of the world for a couple of years. That
couple of years has turned in to 5 and counting, and it's really come in to
its own.

I've got a fairly heavily curated feed after I stopped following a bunch of
people and pages, so I don't really feel like anything is being shoved in my
face any more than other places I frequent online.

It works. It's asynchronous so the timezone difference doesn't get in the way,
while still being a heap more useful than email. It definitely maintains
connections that I'd struggle to keep otherwise. Now, will I keep it once I
return home? There's a good question.

------
drenvuk
I know that it's easy to rag on Facebook specifically but it should be noted
that this effect most likely exists in all forms of media where the user is
able to compare their lives to someone else's. Even while using this site I
doubt I'm immune to finding someone who's accomplished something cool while
I'm still hacking away on the same thing from last month or whatever.

It's just seems better for my health to live my life instead of seeing someone
else live their's. Hell, maybe some day my accomplishments will make someone
else feel bad about their lack of any. I mean, even Caesar cried when he read
about Alexander's conquests.

------
leepowers
Social media is a game, just like MMORPG's are games, and slot gambling is a
game, or call of duty is a game. For some reason a large chunk of society has
been convinced that social media is the "real" game and more normative than
all other games.

Overplaying any game is bad for the mental health of the player. Relatedly, a
game becomes unhealthy whenever the game becomes the center of the player's
life. This applies equally to WoW, Civilization, Facebook, or Twitter, or any
other game.

So, social media is a game that can be fun to play, but it shouldn't be a
component of the player's identity.

------
M_Grey
I don't understand the appeal of FB; we have other means to be connected with
the people we care about. I've never understood the appeal of broadcasting
yourself to the entire planet either... it's bizarre.

------
educar
I strongly feel that social media must become a pull based model instead of a
push based model - so like RSS where I subscribe. On the client side, we
should use simple machine learning and filtering to show content that is truly
useful to us (I love to know what is happening is my sister's life).

The current setup of giving info to a company and that company pushing all
sort of crap on me is not for me. Granted they could do the machine learning
on their side but these for-profit ad driven corporations do not have the
users best interest in mind. They just want to get us hooked.

Ghost can have this feature!

~~~
apozem
I'm with you- I love RSS and hate Facebook's news feed. Unfortunately, that is
one of the biggest reasons why the masses chose Facebook over Twitter.

> Facebook, meanwhile, continued to add to the variety of posts available to
> their algorithmically generated feed. Yes, the early adopters who had gone
> to the trouble to tune their feed complained, but the real beneficiaries
> were users who didn’t want to go to the trouble of making sure they saw
> something interesting — whether related to friends and family or not —
> whenever they visited Facebook. And, starting in 2009, those users had even
> less motivation to get Twitter working: Facebook was good enough.

[https://stratechery.com/2016/how-facebook-squashed-
twitter/](https://stratechery.com/2016/how-facebook-squashed-twitter/)

------
stevehiehn
Ironically, I find the only internet interactions that stress me out is not FB
or twitter its when i post on hacker news (like this:)) I think mostly because
i care and also people here can be very confrontational.

~~~
sandov
When I use facebook, I get angry at the stupidity of people. On HN I feel
humbled because of how smart people are here.

------
kirykl
I quit Facebook because it warped my perception of others gratification,
making it appear instantly achieved for everyone and everything but me.

The cumulative impact of a constant feed of this was incredibly demotivating.

------
abalashov
I can certainly agree with the study abstract and most posts here, but would
add a twist: social media use is depressing, but falling out of touch with
faraway friends is even more depressing. I've been on and off FB over the
years, and what I've found is that the only thing worse than being on FB is
not being on FB. There are many people I'd just never talk to if I didn't use
FB, and I do think the connection is something I'd miss -- with some of them.

It's even worse when you're struggling through serious financial problems
and/or a divorce, or some event like that. Nobody really wants to be your
friend, and nobody wants to hear about it.

Online:

(a) One is more likely to find others in the same boat sooner or later,
although those people are also more likely to have turned into embittered
cranks/ideologues. But at least it's someone.

Divorce IRL is a very lonely experience; just when you are most
psychologically vulnerable and could really use a friend, you become
radioactive. Double if you're a bootstrapped entrepreneur, since your already
existing problems have just leapt from "minor-league brush fire" to
"apocalyptic conflagration seen from low orbit".

(b) While, one's not going to post much about these types of issues on social
media in general, it allows you to keep conforming with your wider circle. You
can keep on riding this carousel of wide-eyed, facile, optimistic
communication on trivial or theoretical topics. It's much harder IRL, where
it's harder to conceal that actually, real talk, things are really, really
shitty.

~~~
lacampbell
The real thing with not having FB and connecting with friends is FB chat. A
lot of people don't use any other IM service except for FB chat.

~~~
abalashov
Indeed. Outside the US, WhatsApp is often the gold standard, but in the US, FB
Messenger seems to be the standard messenger of most ordinary portals,
notwithstanding the teens and 18-24s off in Snapchat/Kik/whatever land.

------
esemor
I was reluctant when I removed my fb account about six months ago but it felt
like it was what I needed as it intruded on what I really wanted to focus my
time and energy on.

A few weeks in I was amazed at how I did not miss the social network at all
and surprised that the contacts that previously only contactef me on fb now
wrote email and text messages.

~~~
omnimus
Same here. Deleted account just before end of 2014 (facebook changed their
data policy). We did it with couple of friends and were amazed by the effect.
After two weeks we realized we all feel better and we never needed fb. None of
us came back (just more our friends left).

Really the only pain for me were fb events. In my country fb events are the
most important calendar to the point that many of the venues/places put events
just on fb. The problem is that i organize events from time to time and its
impossible without account. Its also getting pretty hard to make fake account
(they require copy of ID for new accounts now).

The events are even more pain because they dont have api. Its on purpose.
Venues for example cant have automated posting of events from their site. You
have to make events in the fb ui. They are read only so people started
opposite aproach, they post ebents on fb and consume them in their site. Its
limiting and just againts everything internet used to be about.

------
dhruvkar
Anecdotally, I completely fall in this category. I had a Facebook account from
2006-2010. Never missed it in the last 6 years. I don't really use other
social networks either (HN counts?), email & phone is generally more than
enough for me.

However, also anecdotally, my mom and brother seem to thrive on it. It's a
part of their daily ritual, and the few times they've decided to get rid of
Facebook, they claim (and seem) to be missing a part of their identity. They
don't live "amazing" lives, and most posts are pretty ordinary.

>5,208 adults from a national longitudinal panel maintained by the Gallup
organization

So, anecdotally, I do think that there is a subsection of the population for
which this this a positive influence. Or they've found a way to use it
positively. It may help to study narrower bands of populations to determine if
this holds true across the board.

------
tutufan
Deleted mine a few months ago, and I do think I feel better.

Only regret is that I probably can't get hired by Facebook now... :-)

~~~
eunoia
Didn't get the job but I interviewed with FB a couple years ago. Flew me out
to the Bay for a day of whiteboarding.

Haven't had an actual FB account in 4 or 5 years. I'm sure they were aware but
to their credit no one ever asked me about it.

~~~
rconti
I wouldn't be surprised if nobody looked or noticed. Perhaps they're a big
enough organization to check on this stuff, but the average interviewer has
better stuff to do, and likely doesn't care.

------
moonka
>These results then may be relevant for other forms of social media.

Does this mean they only studied Facebook, or did they look at other social
media networks as well? It seems to me that it is the former, but I'm not
sure. I imagine different networks would have different effects based on the
way people use them.

~~~
zzalpha
Facebook only based on my reading.

------
shivagit
Being overly obsessed with the social experience of the internet in general is
detrimental to one's well-being, in my opinion.

You can't live a full life if you spend most of your time interacting with
people on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, FourChan, Instagram,
etc. It's just not the social experience we evolved to enjoy.

Also there's the danger that you're being subtly manipulated by the moderators
or programmers of such sites, or the wider community. Are these 'people' you
talk to really real? You can never know for sure.

In the end, if you want a quality social experience, you have to get out of
your basement and enjoy the company of people in real life.

------
Redditshill
I think my experience and satisfaction with Facebook has steadily decreased in
a linear relationship with how many friends I have on my friends list. My
guess is because:

1) the more friends I add, the more likely I am to add _that_ guy on Facebook.
The guy who always posts very annoying political posts, or the guy who posts
very smug+condescending posts.

2) I find myself comparing with my friends, especially when they post pics of
them on vacation or news of some promotion.

3) I spend too much time worrying about how to curate posts and post stuff
that a. impresses people and b. doesn't offend anyone.

I probably just care too much what others think, but that's my 2c.

~~~
5thaccount
I think it is simpler than that - we like most people because we really don't
know them that well, and the inverse si true as well.

We all have quirks that other people might find distasteful. As an easy jump
off point, the pr0n habits of people vary wildly, and I'd wager if everyone
knew what someone was into... The more you know about many people, the more
chance there is that a part you uniquely find distasteful will emerge.

On top of that, the modern world in general, and SM specifically, has melded
the public world, the private world and, most annoying of all, the inner world
into a single, undifferentiated miasma. All these posts I see of people who
can't work with Trump voters, or the religious right, or gay people or
whatever shows how this melding causes real problems, even if it alleviates
others.

We now know too much about people, and that isn't a universal positive.

------
hrasyid
Shouldn't we be more critical about the methodology? For example, it's not
clear to me how it proves that the correlation is due to causation.

------
debt
I am curious what's the point of being connected all the time? It's a question
I've been asking myself since the U.S. election. So I can have access to a
bunch of garbage people post on the Internet? So I can chat people quickly?

There's like a handful of truly useful things on the Internet. Most of the
useless things though take up 90% of time on it.

I'm failing to see the value at this point.

~~~
colmvp
I never played WoW because I was afraid of how far I'd fall into an addiction.
Having read "Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business
of Keeping Us Hooked," I was rather relieved to read game developers who have
said they have willingly abstained from WoW for the same reasons. Even device-
makers and tech leaders are cautious about introducing their own devices to
their children.

The book, along with others like Hooked, remind me that we have to be very
careful about the technology we use on a day to day basis, because it effects
our brains in a way we might not want it too. Our brain and willpower is being
tested against the skills of thousands of incredibly smart and talented
designers, developers, product managers, et al.

Having chosen to abstain from apps like Facebook or social media websites, I
don't feel like I lost anything. If anything, I've regained more time and
mental space for things like getting deeper in my career. I'm not a luddite,
as I am still a big believer in the productivity and information gains via the
internet and computers. But our attention is a resource that a lot of
companies want. And yet, I only feel like it's more recently that we've begun
to question whether the benefits these companies give to us is worth the
change in ourselves.

Because of mindfulness, I have recognized the need to distract myself (via
Twitter, Reddit, E-mail, Whatsapp) is sometimes a symptom of not wanting to
deal with something that is hard or uncomfortable (e.g. paperwork, making a
decision, etc.).

Yet we know that become deep at something we care about, we truly do need
focused time (Deep Work by Cal Newport is a worthwhile read). So I think it's
really in our best interest to only choose apps that provide a lot of benefits
with only marginal drawbacks to our mind, and to be very careful about how
often we use them.

~~~
cableshaft
Game developer here who abstained from WoW and pretty much all MMOs or
Free2Play shenanigans.

Although I happily put plenty of hours into single player RPGs (currently
Persona 5 and Breath of the Wild). But those have an ending, and they don't
require me to schedule my life around them in order to play them.

In fact they let me drop in and out of them very quickly, since they suspend
and I don't have to connect to any networks.

------
madiathomas
My mental health improved dramatically when I deactivated facebook. I use
instagram and Twitter sparingly these days. For some reason, I am unable to
use facebook sparingly. When I am active, it is the first thing I check in the
morning. I only use facebook after writing exams and deactivate as soon as I
register for a new semester.

------
midhunsezhi
I deactivated my facebook account and deleted my whatsapp account a little
over a month ago and with the amount of free time i got, I decided against the
use of instagram as well.

This article makes me feel not so antisocial anymore, thank you! :D

------
013a
I'm curious: Which aspects of Facebook cause this? Do other social networks,
like Insta or Twitter, exhibit this behavior?

In a way, this and studies like it are damning to Facebook's core mission to
connect everyone in the world.

~~~
dankoss
This is just my speculation, but I think the utility of facebook declined when
external linking took over user created posts on facebook. I don't go to
facebook because I want to know how my friends feel about political news; I go
to facebook because I want to know what they are up to. I think Instagram and
Snapchat got this right, because even though you can regram something or paste
a screenshot, that's not the default way to interact with the platform.

I would check facebook a lot more often if they had an option to hide all
external links / images. I know there are browser plugins that enable this but
they're not on mobile.

------
tdaltonc
If anyone here is feeling like they spend too much time on Social Media, I
recently made Space a set of apps to help with that.

[http://youjustneedspace.com](http://youjustneedspace.com)

------
gnrlbzik
I have quit facebook for most part, use messenger to sometime send messages to
friends, it opened up lot's of free time. I still use Instagram, but that is
so much more manageable and less invasive.

------
surrey-fringe
Interesting how much of an echo chamber HN is wrt social media use. I
certainly agree, but most people I know would tell us that it's great for
keeping in touch and organizing events.

~~~
sandov
It certainly is, but I think it's a nice contrast to have in comparison with
your day to day friends that are not hackers and wouldn't understand why you
left facebook. You just should have in mind that the average HN user is pretty
far from the average person.

------
skolos
Looks like this might be effect related to social apps which are used as a log
to brag about your awesome life. Should be less of an issue with Twitter and
maybe Snapchat.

------
j_s
Time to put together a study on the relationship between HN use and well-
being!

~~~
rconti
I actually find communities like this far more depressing than your average
social network. I _can_ go on the vacation my friend is on, but I cannot
acquire the expertise of thousands of other brilliant professionals in every
niche I see here.

~~~
castle-bravo
All you can do is learn. In the immortal words of Rush: "Those who wish to be
must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation,
the underlying theme."

------
elastic_church
I've worked on social networks for several venture backed companies, and I
opted out of their use half a decade ago. Drug dealers aren't users.

I like the opium analogy. Socially acceptable as long as the East India
Company is forcing it down our throats. (But at least we'll get Hong Kong out
of it!)

------
DannyB2
I have never been on FaceTwit. Never missed it. (either of them) I've
occasionally wondered if I should. Its amusing to read both about and from
people (here in comments) being happier without it.

There was a point I worried that one or both of them would become a mandatory
authentication mechanism for other sites.

