
Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression - T-A
https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751
======
prolikewh0a
I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point
where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched
into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed.
I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and
just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out.

My friends are always telling me about cool events on Facebook, their
Instagram stories at the really fun and cool places they work non-profit, all
of these cool groups. I feel super detached from even my best friends, and
feel like I don't get a full friend experience. While our relationships are
strong and have been for years, they're kinda dull because they use social
media so much. They understand why I don't use it and don't give me a hard
time (anymore), but always bother me to come back.

~~~
abledon
Do you program for a living or have a job that requires lots of human
interaction? I find coder jobs amplify the unbalancing nature of loneliness.
On the other hand , loneliness is just a symptom of the human not knowing how
to be alone and remain content. If only we were born with the user manual
around our neck

~~~
prolikewh0a
I have a tech job that requires a lot of non face-to-face human interaction
through slack, with people I never build relationships with. Still super
lonely :D

Dating is also near impossible because I don't want to use social media.

~~~
abledon
Get a coffee job on the weekends or go volunteer , really fun way to make
friends . The coffee job requires zero brain work so it’s not mentally
exhausting when you sit down Monday’s to not move and just code all day. Might
take some guts to get into social zone but after breaking through its way
worth it . Easier to just think about impermanence of your life each 10
minutes, you will die in a couple decades and rot into the earth like every
other human, then the small issues become meaningless when faced with death
reminder .

------
jelly_dev
About half way through my college education I decided I would only use
Facebook for messages and otherwise eliminated all social media from my life
aside from Reddit and Hacker news. Since then I found my outlook on life has
improved dramatically and recommend most people do that.

The problem with social media is you only see the interesting parts of
people's lives, so you're forced into a loop of thinking your life is
pointless and boring, while for the most part everyone's life is pretty boring
aside from some brief moments

~~~
kopo
HN and Reddit arent that different from other social media sites.

All of them in my mind are "All You Can Eat" info buffet tables.

This is just the current approach we have of dealing with a new world
overloaded by info. It will change as we learn more and more about how it
effects people.

In the real world nobody healthy visits an "All You Can Eat" buffet everyday.
Same thing will eventually happen with information.

~~~
lettergram
I think it's a bit different, on HN and Reddit it's much less about sharing
ones life (there are subreddits for this, but in general, no). It's more about
sharing interesting discussion and insight around content.

More than that, it's semi-anonymous, meaning it's not so much the relationship
between people it's the relationship between content (or topics). This is a
dramatic difference because it's harder to get into the loop of seeing other
people happy.

Finally, there aren't push notifications for HN. I actually wrote a chrome
extension to enable following discussions and push notifications.. I didn't
really think it was appropriate to release because it would lead to more
engagement, which is kind of a bad thing (e.g. lead to flame wars).

Anyway, they may not be "that different", except in a few key aspects.

~~~
kopo
I have been reading Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication and
according to that book - seeing people happy or seeing peoples interesting
thoughts or seeing their appearance etc etc can all lead to
comparative/judgemental thinking which leads to all kinds of unintended side
effects. He references Dan Greenberg's book How To Make Yourself Miserable.

Yet to be seen if sites can somehow employ mechanics to reduce
comparative/judgemental thinking...but its something they all
intentionally/unintentionally fuel currently imho.

------
schindlabua
My policy is to decrease on push notifications as far as possible. WhatsApp
and Telegram still have the privilege but that's it. I feel like by seeking
out information rather than it coming to me, I at least am making a conscious
decision to waste time on social media.

Interestingly, implementing that had the effect of me now spending hardly any
time on there at all. Funny how that works!

~~~
captainbland
Yeah I've been doing much the same, I've given mastodon a pass for now for
direct mentions only (which tootdon lets you configure) because those
notifications are people's actual interactions with me - whereas with Twitter
and Facebook it's generally any old crap that happens to one of my friends or
follows, or sometimes even somebody else who some people I know have followed
(who cares?!) so that gets turned right off. In fact I don't even have the
Facebook app, I just look at it in my browser - sometimes it still manages to
sneak a few notifications through Chrome even though I was sure I turned those
off.

Mostly it's just very annoying when for some reason my phone doesn't manage to
prioritise push messages which come from direct messages or SMS and so they
somehow manage to get buried under a honking slew of social media detritus.

~~~
djsumdog
My websockets for my mastodon instance were broken due to a screwup in my
nginx configuration, so for the first several weeks I ran it, I didn't even
get browser notifications (mastodon's web UI is pretty good at falling back to
polling).

It is quite different getting an alert popup now. I should probably go back to
disabling them.

------
rwnspace
I've deleted all my social media accounts besides Reddit and HN. The only
thing that's stopping me from visiting these two is addiction. I don't read
the news, mostly, why bother? It does much more harm than good. You don't need
1000 hrs of newsreading to vote effectively.

My next step is to make a personal website with some contact details and a
scraper script for the links in the HN top 30-40 that I can run as a cronjob.

While cutting social media is not a panacea, I have found a significant
improvement in the amount of free time I have, and I don't compulsively think
about what other people are doing.

It's a good exercise to assume that engagement in social media is work and
multiply how many hours you've sunk into it by your usual hourly wage...

~~~
icelancer
> I don't read the news, mostly, why bother? It does much more harm than good.

It's weird that this is a minority opinion (I happen to agree with you). Some
20 years ago we lacked the ability to consume even 10% of the news we are
exposed to today if we just open Twitter, and democracy wasn't collapsing.

 _(some argue we are in a worse spot today, though I disagree - strife does
not equal inequality)_

The cable news cycle combined with social media with the majority of people
thinking that their opinion is worth something has led to some interesting
results. I expect the next generation of people in the United States to mostly
get over this bug in the system via selective apathy.

~~~
rtpg
I... think it's important to know what's up. It especially helps to give a
reason to participate in the electoral process.

But soooooo much political reporting nowadays is basically gossip columns.
They talk a lot of inside baseball and completely neglect the "the thing
happening is actually bad!" aspect. Instead of debating policy, people want to
debate the optics of policies.

Cable news is awful about this, but I think newspapers are even worse with
their opinion pages. People getting paid 6-digit salaries to just say what
their opinion on a thing is! And of course with basically no fact checking.
They're just bloggers!

Meanwhile the journalists twist themselves into knots to give the benefit of
the doubt to the most cynical leaders we've had in decades. Unless one of them
insults journalism, in which case it's a holy war. But if the discussion is
just a policy position, there's no issue.

~~~
eric_h
If I hadn’t gotten mildly addicted to Twitter (with my fairly well curated
list of people I’m following) I’d not have spent the ~700 bucks to start my
naturalization process so that I will finally have the right to vote after 34
years living here as a permanent resident (well it’ll be 35 since
naturalization takes a while).

I realized that my running joke of the last 18 years: “I can’t vote, but at
least I don’t have to do jury duty” is recklessly irresponsible and I will do
the research and be an informed voter in every election for the rest of my
life.

[edit: admittedly this was largely inspired by indisputable things that
happened a little more than 2 years ago and the following aftermath, but my
twitter feed was my window to them - I do not watch cable news]

~~~
rtpg
Yeah I think that Twitter has been a major gateway drug to remember that
Politics Matter.

But after you've reached that point, Twitter becomes the place where you read
the same take 20 times over. Then you get the push notification from whatever
news app you have installed on your phone.

There's a huge amount of diminishing returns to following journalists on
Twitter if you're already convinced that stuff is important. But it sure
helped to establish the feeling that everything is on fire (and.... kind of
always have been but right now's not great)

------
zwarag
When you open Social Media there is a reason for that. I figured - for me at
least - it comes from an emotional impulse. By concentrating on that impulse,
I discovered that it comes from “need” to socialize. Trying to fulfill that
need by going on a social media platform is just convenient but does not
really satisfy that need. So instead, I now call or meet with some family
members/friends.

In the progress of growing up I kinda unlearned that. But know that I
rediscovered it, I feel much better/balanced. Other benefits are that I can
concentrate and perform at my studies/work much better than before.

I don’t know if that helps anybody but I thought I’d share this experience.

------
FahadUddin92
So let me explain it. I started being active on the internet after learning no
one would be friends with me (I was in class 6 back then). I would spend time
figuring out things, talking to people and then social media evolved. I am
still pretty active on social media but the main reason people are active on
social media is they don't have people around them that listen to them.

~~~
hippich
That what many miss about social networks (and long-distance communication
overall, i.e. IRC, ICQ, etc) - it is not always about looking at other people
fancy moments (which is probably some type of social networks promote today)
but it is to have a connection with people, which otherwise you would not get
locally.

------
yyww
This is probably true, but I don't know what else to do (counting HN as social
media) - I don't really have any friends or interesting activities. Basically
go to work, do work, go home, repeat. Anyone have any suggestions on how I
could live a more interesting life and/or have friends?

Sorta pathetic to be posting this here but since every other comment is
talking out eliminating social media use, maybe some comments on what to
replace it with would be helpful.

~~~
kstenerud
Take a job in another country; every day becomes an adventure as you navigate
different cultures, different people, different customs, different cities,
different bureaucracies, different governments, different foods, different
activities, etc. Plus, you become a more well rounded individual. It also
gives you valuable soft skills (cultural relations).

Many places offer working holiay visas.

------
8bitsrule
My favorite long-term shared-post-and-comments site - far and away the most
friendly and community-like - does not have downvotes. You can only 'favorite'
a user comment. If your comment is not 'favorited' it is also not slapped with
a downvote. (I find downvotes to be counterproductive and often arbitrary if
not malicious. And one sows another.)

Moderators decide only what posts are productive. A dozen or so a day result.
No topic is too 'far out' or rarified. The posts themselves may also be
heavily-favorited, but almost always are at least lightly-favorited by a few
readers.

There is _very rarely_ any criticism or argument. The are not nested, they
only appear in time-order. This keeps directed replies (and extended snark-
fests) to a minimum.

The resulting 'civilized adultness' of the site is fairly unique on the
Internet. Oh, and there's a small fee to join.

~~~
newen
Metafilter? Pretty sure the reason there are no arguments is they purged
everyone who doesn't follow the groupthink. And the fee helps with banned
people not rejoining ofcourse.

~~~
nhauz
So mefi is the same as HN but you even have to pay on top of it? ;P

~~~
8bitsrule
I'm pretty sure that what I described is -not- the same as HN. New here?

The advantage of one, small, upfront payment is that it discourages
sockpuppeting, and thus anonymous sniping. The only way to 'downvote'
something is with another piece of text with a username on it ... a lot more
revealing of motive than a reflexive button-click. Discouraging for sick
puppies.

You know (or don't) ... like _The Well_ was back in the day.

------
szilardboy
The abstract mentions limiting social media use to about 30 minutes a day. Why
not eliminate it completely? I'd imagine the gains from maintaining
relationships can be found elsewhere (e.g. phone calls or real life meetups).

~~~
KozmoNau7
For all its faults, Facebook is very useful for arranging events and makes it
easy for people to RSVP and provide/ask for more information in the event
posting itself. It also provides a low barrier of entry and low complexity way
of creating groups for discussion and sharing between friends. This is
extremely helpful for people who aren't super tech-savvy.

Yes, you can do this stuff elsewhere, manually keeping email and phone chains
going, but FB does put all of this stuff in one place and makes it relatively
easy to use.

That is not the problem with FB. The problem is all of the other junk they
keep pushing, all the ads and games and gamification.

------
kobiguru
I agree with the conclusions. I got rid of all social media except for Reddit
( for ML related discussions) and Hacker News. I always calmer since. It
amazing how fast my mind felt better from the negativity.

~~~
Kiro
Hacker News and Reddit are the worst though.

~~~
stareatgoats
Reddit can be, but HN is IMO the best social media site there is in the IT
space, because of the clear guidelines, active moderation and well thought out
mechanics which for example enables both flame-war suppression and anonymity,
no small feat.

~~~
clarry
IMO the guidelines, moderation and mechanics all work way better on lobste.rs
than here. Here the hivemind effect is pretty damn strong too, so it's going
to be frustrating to try have a fruitful discussion if your opinion doesn't
align with the group. Here there are enough toxic people that discussions
often turn into tiresome, flamey back-and-forth between a handful of people.
And here there are too many people with opinions but no expertise. So the
signal to noise ratio gets really bad and you can't assume the people reading
your comments can understand subtler points; if you do, it's quite inevitable
that a bunch of people with opinions but no expertise will pile up on the
comment and it feels like flamebait.

When I post here, I kinda have to indulge in a ton of self-censorship. Most of
the time I end up not posting the comment I wrote because it feels like it
won't be a worthwhile discussion. Or it'll be just another comment buried
among a few hundred others; just noise, not discussion. It's not satisfying.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
I'm surprised you are not getting downvoted (more) by mentioning the hivemind.

The first rule of the HN hivemind is that you don't mention it.

~~~
FiveSquared
Its the worst with Rust

------
KozmoNau7
Luckily I never got into Instagram or Twitter, but I was big into both Reddit
and Facebook for a long time.

I cut off Reddit completely after a run-in with yet another subreddit wannabe
dictator mod. It just wasn't worth the drama, not to mention the crappy
usability of the site, especially on mobile.

For Facebook, I can't cut it off completely, it is unfortunately indispensable
for arranging events and interacting with my group of friends/acquaintances. I
mostly interact in a couple of concert/festival-related groups, and run one of
them myself. That said, I have cut off all games and apps, and I mute all the
stupid meme pages that people like to share from. New ones do pop up once in a
while, and obviously those get muted too. The result is that my Facebook
experience is 90% chatting with like-minded people about music. I use a
Chromium plugin to delete all of posts and likes that are more than ~6 months
old, because nobody should care about old FB posts.

I also keep my FB account for Messenger, as it has become the de facto
standard instant messaging service here in Denmark.

For discussion on other subjects, I'm a long-time member of an old-school
forum that charges $10 for an account. That seems to weed out most of the low-
content trolls and idiots, and aside from a few deliberately stupid subforums,
the discussions are relatively intelligent and entertaining.

~~~
selimthegrim
If this is the forum I suspect (goon?), I’m certainly pleasantly surprised it
is no longer known as a source of trolls.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Yeah, the days of troll raids are long gone, thankfully.

------
greendestiny_re
Social media use Pavlovian conditioning to drive adoption. Even the
notification icon is – a bell. I stopped using all of them and I suggest you
do too. If needed to stay in touch, send your friends and family a voice
message as an email attachment, they'll appreciate the sound of your voice
more than generic emojis.

~~~
rdruxn
>a voice message as an email attachment

Dear god why

~~~
greendestiny_re
Normal speaking speed is 150 words per minute, which when recorded equals to a
~1MB M4A file. I typically send 7-minute audio recordings, meaning roughly
1,000 words or about 2 pages of A4 text.

Rather than getting slammed with a wall of text, the recipient of my audio
message can listen to it as they're driving, cooking or eating breakfast.
Human voice is expressive and the audio message conveys nuance that gets lost
texting. Finally, all text messages are being monitored in some fashion but I
do believe audio recordings are still relatively safe and private.

------
nercht12
I joined Meetup.com, and now I have a growing number of friends every week.

It helps to have an interest that other people can join you in. You could
start a tech group, a language group, a movie group. Find a place to have a
discussion, a small conference, or give a presentation.

The fact is, social media isn't going to satisfy your craving with feeling
connected. The digital world isn't a substitute for face-to-face conversation,
so it's sad to see people resort to text-messaging the person in front of
them. However, you CAN look for events for where to connect to people. That
said, Meetup.com is a huge blessing.

------
strikelaserclaw
Humans are social creatures, and we are more isolated than we've ever been
even though we are better connected than we've ever been. I don't think social
media is to blame, just as i don't think fast food is to blame for obscenity
epidemic, but i do think that social media has certainly, consciously
leveraged certain weakness of humans in modern society to create addictive
substances which cause more harm than good for most people.

------
jeromebaek
I think social media is fine as a way to connect, it just shouldn't be the
only or even major way to connect. In particular I think News Feed is a
horrible way to "connect" with anyone.

So I unfollowed every one of my friends on Facebook and keep a pristine blank
news feed. If I want to know what someone's up to, I message them or visit
their profile. It makes social media usage a lot more deliberate.

------
vthallam
My life has come a full circle. Moved to the facebook messenger, WhatsApp,
Snapchat for texting and now only prefer iMessage or text messages. The number
of groups you added to in WhatsApp and the meaningless forwards make me open
those apps even lesser.

On the social sharing front, I only use Snapchat to share what I am up to some
close friends. Limited FB, Instagram to once a week casual check-in and never
been happier.

------
internet555
Frankly, I only go on Facebook a few times a month to occasionally check in. I
feel like logging in daily is not the point of the service.

~~~
jaggednad
It shouldn’t be the point, but Facebook wants it to be, because the more
eyeballs looking at their site, the more money they get. In order to maximize
eyeballs, they make their site as addictive as possible.

------
laurex
It's interesting that messaging and social media are conflated by some people
and not others. It stands to reason that direct communication is helpful to
the problem of loneliness, whereas "observing the sanitised version of other
people's lives from the outside" is not.

------
Maro
Recently I did an experiment with myself where I didn't use FB for 30 days.
After about 5 days I didn't miss it, but I was not happier. After the
experiment, my usage rebounded, but significantly below prior levels (I post a
lot less, so there's less feedback to get me to engage).

------
anoncoward111
Social media is literally my only hobby and has kept me very happy and safe-
feeling for years now. I love browsing and discovering random things.
Interacting with people in person can be very taxing after a long day of work,
aka, interacting with people.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Is it a concern that you don’t consider social media usage as “interacting
with people”?

If you were browsing wikipedia I’d understand. But your in the comment section
talking to me, believe it or not, a real person.

~~~
genidoi
Who are you? In the absence of knowing literally anything about you it's
challenging to "humanize" your comment. It's just another in a sea of
anonymous comments written by arbitrary commentators.

Sure I can trawl through your post history to try to better understand through
what lens you see the world, but I don't have the time to do that for every
single comment that I read on HN/Reddit.

------
nilshauk
I quit my Facebook account in April and have not looked back. I connect with
people in Signal, Twitter, Slack and LinkedIn. Quitting Facebook felt like
uninstalling a program which was eating up a lot of ram in my life.

------
Chazprime
Facebook was so much better before it started hosting news sites, and
Twitter...it’s just a toilet.

I think the best thing a parent can do for their children now is limit
exposure to these sites, and emphasize real-life engagement.

------
annadane
How do we define social media, though? I think Facebook is more damaging than
all of them just by their use of attention grabbing techniques and total lack
of privacy options.

------
rubellion82
try Diaspora (social network)

------
User23
Sartre was right

~~~
baumgarn
can you add some context?

~~~
0xcde4c3db
One of Sartre's most (in)famous quotations is usually translated as "Hell is
other people".

In context, he was apparently getting at something closer to: Hell is the
inevitability of seeing yourself through the eyes of others, as an object
rather than a subject.

