
On Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation - prostoalex
https://www.gq.com/story/cal-newport-screen-time-coronavirus
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shmageggy
The description of social media features such as heart buttons coming into
being almost accidentally via some "geek" searching for efficiency is wrong.
These features are very specifically designed, engineered, and tested with
purpose to increase engagement, usually with input from psychologists. When
the only metric is ad revenue via eyeball time and one of the best ways to
increase that is outrage and anxiousness, you get increased outrage and
anxiousness.

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pjc50
It's a complex subject, because we're now in a situation where screens are our
main form of socialization. It's not necessarily good to cut yourself off
entirely; a number of friends of mine have been self-organising entertainment
of various forms, and it can be a good place to find some of the huge number
of musician and entertainer livestreams that have sprung up. (Remember to tip
your musicians who no longer have an income!)

But yes, there's a big risk of "doomscrolling". It's a good idea to quietly
unfollow people who post too much doom. Or use the ability of Twitter to turn
off retweets from someone. And expand your blocklist. I have blocked a few
people who I _agree with_ simply because their political posting is too
endlessly retweeted into my timeline.

Normal politics is suspended for the duration. See how many are dead by (US)
election day and vote accordingly.

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arberavdullahu
Did anyone read Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World? If
so, do you recommend it?

~~~
lordgrenville
I have and I absolutely do not! It might be worth it if it inspires you to cut
back on screen time for a bit, but the book is mostly fluff, anecdotes and
ridiculous predictions about the future.

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whywhywhywhy
Twitter could honestly solve the issue that just using the app has a seriously
negative effect on the mental and therefore physical wellbeing of it's users
by offering a simple "Politics" toggle switch in their preferences.

They will never do this of course because it will reduce the power and
influence of their platform.

~~~
Nasrudith
Being "political" only tells if it is contested - it says nothing about right
or wrong. The implementability of it is dubious as are claims that this would
help mental health.

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DrBazza
Since the "lockdown" in the UK, I'm not going on social media much more than
once every couple of days at most just to check up on friends. And when I do,
it just reinforces why: it is full idiots. It is full of more idiots than
usual.

If your national health advisor / chief medical officer / government advisor
hasn't mentioned it, then it is wrong and likely will always be wrong.

But Sarah on Facebook / Mark on Twitter has an alleged top tip on COVID19,
then which one should you share? It seems the general public would now prefer
to take their advice from "a bloke down the pub", rather than a qualified
expert in the field with 30+ years of experience.

I'm much happier without social media, not that I was on it much to start
with. Silver linings and all that.

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pjc50
Several countries' official advice has already turned out to be wrong or
misleading, resulting in sudden changes of messaging.

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DrBazza
This is true, however governments use expert advice (or ignore it depending on
your country).

Trusting advice on social media is considerably more misleading or wrong.

~~~
Nasrudith
Really it doesn't matter if the advice is from the court jester or the viser -
only the validity of the advice itself.

Between the child and the imperial tailor who do you believe is valid when one
says the emperor is naked and the other insists that he is wearing opulent
garments? The one whom the facts support. Telling what is the truth is easier
said than done however.

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pcmoney
Overall I agree but I take issue with the Twitter smear.

People who were on Twitter saw this coming weeks ahead of everyone else. There
is a reason Twitter the company (and square) went full remote before anyone
else did and that reason is that there is data on Twitter that is immensely
useful (yes there are trolls and fear mongering too) Twitter outperformed our
CDC, the WHO and many others in terms of 1. Sounding the alarm 2. Promoting
solutions 3. Challenging erroneous solutions/stories championed by our leaders
(eg “we stopped this”) and institutions (eg “face masks don’t help”) AND it
did this a full 2 weeks BEFORE mainstream media.

It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority
of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of
respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though)

Twitter can be just has “heartwarming” as other mediums and other mediums can
be just as toxic. Follow smartly.

All the other mediums are based on “look at me” Twitter is based on “look at
this”, its not social media. It is vital and useful news. What you will hear
filtered through a biased secondary source next week on CNN/Fox (or in 2 weeks
via a tertiary source on FB) you can see live on Twitter now.

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fruffy
I had to make a comment because I disagree so strongly with this sentiment. I
am biased of course because I do not like Twitter in the first place, but I
genuinely believe Twitter has made this crisis worse than it is.

Twitter naturally "outperforms" all other agencies because it thrives on
disaster and outrage porn. Of course you will encounter all kind of alarm
bells because that is what gets retweeted. Constantly and year-round. A broken
clock may be right twice a day.

>It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority
of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of
respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though)

I passionately disagree, Twitter is not a better source information. It is
merely a firehose of information, which is largely low-grade, easily
digestible news that is often incorrect or misrepresented. None of it is vital
nor useful. This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the
website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news
aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Twitter is
instant gratification for news addicts. Everyone wants to be the town herald
that gets there first.

Sources on Twitter are also biased, even more so. I rather trust processed and
digested news than person X that said Y and shows some shaky video of Z. Best
recent example of the disastrous consequences are the comments made by a
German official in the Berlin senate (hardly an important position) who went
on Twitter to complain about the US holding back masks. That turned out to be
incorrect but spread like wildfire and caused an international incident. The
"slow" news actually investigated and called him out on it but by then the
damage had been done.

~~~
randomsearch
Absolutely correct, thank you.

The only people on twitter who know what they’re talking about are the subset
of scientific experts who happen to have a twitter account. But their papers
and public press conferences are more informative than tweeting over the noise
of twitter.

A really great example is the current hysteria over the “mask conspiracy
theory”. A few minutes reading the WHO’s advice months ago told me more than
everything people have posted since. Still, people post accusations at the
WHO, apparently not even bothering to read their position.

People don’t seem to like experts, and twitter is an exaggeration of all that
is irrational amongst people.

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Pfhreak
I am a person who gives in easily to accessible compulsions. Whether it's
snacks that are sitting out or picking up my phone and quickly checking
twitter. I recognize these things are unhealthy, but they are so immediately
available it's hard to avoid nibbling on them when they are around.

I've decided to try and disengage from Twitter by getting into mobile gacha
games -- you know those games where you randomly collect stuff to play? (I
chose Granblue Fantasy which is a JRPG with random characters/loot, but I've
also played Puzzle and Dragons which is a match 3 with random loot).

While these games have, at best, a predatory financing model, I have noticed a
significant uptick in my own mental health by replacing the casual Twitter
check with the casual loot farm. I sleep better, I'm less anxious, I'm less
impatient. Especially because a lot of the time I was looking at Twitter right
before bed and seeing a constant stream of terrible news (and people being
wrong on the internet, which must not stand.)

So, I dunno, I can't say I'd recommend getting into a grindy, random slot
machine, but I can say it has been a salve for me right now.

~~~
hilbert42
_" I am a person who gives in easily to accessible compulsions. "_

As a person who doesn't use Twitter or any other social media myself, I ask
you had this virus arrived in the days before the internet and you were
similarly confined then how would you occupy yourself?

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azangru
> in the days before the internet and you were similarly confined then how
> would you occupy yourself?

Not the OP — but books and TV?

~~~
karatestomp
Board games, card games (in a pinch, solitaire's not just a program that ships
with Windows), puzzles, puzzle books, music, radio. Writing, drawing, playing
music, math. It's not like we had nothing to do before the Internet. We just
couldn't watch/read/listen-to _anything_ we wanted on a whim. It took a little
planning. There was always plenty to do, you just couldn't go "I suddenly want
to watch this movie I've not thought about in years, don't already own on VHS,
and no-one I know has it either" then _be watching it_ inside five minutes and
without leaving the house. Or easily and quickly answer silly trivia questions
("who was the guy in that one thing?") unless you had the relevant trivia book
(remember topic-specific books of trivia?) which meant you had to actually
kinda care about the topic (enough to have bought the book) and couldn't just
indulge every low-value "hm, I wonder".

[EDIT] oh and top-lists were less available so we were kinda happier with
whatever was around, so far as media went. You had to be kind of a nerd for a
topic to be exposed to much in the way of rankings or best-of lists (buy
relevant magazines and books that contained them). Outside one's actual strong
interests the thought "this may not be the _best_ thing in this category I
could be experiencing right now, I better go find out what that is" just never
came to mind.

~~~
JadeNB
> We just couldn't watch/read/listen-to _anything_ we wanted on a whim.

And that's often a good thing! I find that I read books a lot less now,
because there's less motivation to invest deeply in any one book when it's
almost certainly not the best one, and there's that niggling background
feeling that I could go out and find something even better to read if I
browsed a little more ….

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cryoshon
>if you're spending your day on Twitter right now, it's shredding your
psychological health

>Twitter seems to have evolved more into just really stressed out people
yelling at public officials

these are both good points, but i think that there should be a bit of context:
by and large in the US, public officials are performing unexpectedly,
astoundingly, and utterly unforgivably poorly in their responses to the
coronavirus.

it's the correct response to be anxious about the wholesale failure of public
and private institutions, and it's the correct response to be livid about it
and to channel anger towards those who are letting the country down in its
greatest time of need.

it's fashionable to say that disconnecting is important for your mental
health. it isn't that the idea of disconnecting for the sake of mental health
is in any way incorrect. but democracies function via the will of the public
being reflected in the actions of individuals and institutions. if public
officials don't have people giving them an earful, they will in all likelihood
continue to act in a way which harms the public.

in other words: without the endless hammering of the anxious and unstable
twitterati and those like them, the public health response to the coronavirus
in the US would likely be even worse than the near worst-case response that
we're seeing. it's bad for the people doing it, but it's part of the
democratic process at this point.

~~~
whatshisface
There's an assumption hidden in that: how do we know that "hammering" on the
social media teams of elected officials will have any influence on their
behavior?

~~~
SuoDuanDao
Or, for that matter, a positive influence assuming it has one?

The masks thing is a great example - simple enough to tell the public to leave
professionally made masks for the professionals and post good advice on how to
make a functional one at home. When the public looks like a screaming mob of
idiots, why wouldn't you mistrust their ability to act selflessly and
carefully.

