
Connected, but at what cost? - nithinj
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/279.1
======
jl2718
I sort of wish I had a better hobby than reading hacker news. Today I saw a
house for sale, built in the 80s, lots of outdoor entertainment stuff for
neighborhood parties. Vacant, crumbling, dead. Reminded me. Kids, seriously,
this used to really happen. Every day, all the neighborhood kids would play
ball games at somebody’s house, and the adults would walk over for about an
hour and talk to each other. Adults all tried to outdo each other for the
nicest house and best backyard for this kind of thing. Nobody does this
anymore. Might as well buy that trailer in Space Park Way and a VR headset. I
always thought RP1 was so banal; I was hoping for a more nuanced and
unpredictable dystopia.

~~~
nine_k
Yes, but why.

I mean, most often I see my friends online, and they are likely equally or
more interesting than my neighbors who I did not choose (but you never know,
of course). It also takes less time, and the time is more convenient; if the
only option to see my friends were a Saturday 6pm party, I would interact with
my friends a whole lot less.

Ball games — well, at least they exercise the body. For that, I can go to a
park.

~~~
godelski
Being friends with neighbors can be mutually beneficial. People borrow tools,
easy advice, don't have to go far for a beer, someone to watch your house when
you're gone, or get in if you left the stove on, etc.

I'm not saying that having online friends is bad, but being friends with your
neighbors is a mutually beneficial. Pretty much for the same reasons living in
a society is beneficial to all players.

You should really have both.

~~~
andykx
But how many of those friendships with neighbors really boiled down to
friendships of convenience? I’ve always liked the people I live near, but I’ve
never felt that I connect to them on a deeper level.

If I couldn’t spend time shooting the breeze with my actual friends on
Discord, maybe I’d be more inclined to spend time with my neighbors. Even if
we didn’t really connect a deep level, at least we could converse for a few
hours.

I have no interest in that though. I have no need for that kind of
interaction. If I want to be social, I can contact people that I feel a deep
connection to at any time.

~~~
PakG1
I think that if you don't have connection with people who are not like you,
you lose perspective. I think we need a diversity of friendships in order to
not just be happy, but also to stay grounded. Otherwise, we get into bubbles
and lose our ability to communicate with people, especially people who are not
like ourselves. We can say that technology has enabled and accelerated this
trend to society's detriment.

Like Steve Jobs creating a corporate building layout that forced random and
disparate people to bump into each other in order to have random conversations
and create innovation, friendships of convenience due to geographical
realities also enabled for innovation, diversity of thought, and an
interesting sense of community in its own way.

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Mediterraneo10
I am surprised that deleting Facebook led people to socialize offline _more_.
After I deleted Facebook about seven years ago, my social life took a big dive
because I was no longer getting word of events that my friends were organizing
– they would solely post the announcements solely to Facebook. Now I am
wondering if this doesn’t happen to people today because Facebook is
increasingly passé, and so all those event announcements are going over
Whatsapp instead and no one is deleting that.

But even today, without Facebook it must be difficult to hear of many general
events happening in one’s city where one could make new friends. Meetup.com
used to be a great platform for this, but where I live or in the cities I
travel to, it has been reduced to either lecture evenings for software
developers or thinly-veiled ways for yoga teachers and entrepreneurs to build
businesses off of the people who show up.

~~~
godelski
I deleted mine years ago. It increased my offline interaction. But like my
sibling comment suggests, I had to be more proactive. Yeah, it is more work,
but it has felt more rewarding and the relationships feel more real. It gets a
lot easier real fast too. Basically you have to get your friends to realize
that they can't be lazy with you and if they want to be friends they have to
put in effort too. "Why didn't you show up to my BBQ?" "Because you didn't
invite me?" "What? I told everyone on Facebook". "I don't have one. If you
want me to come you'll have to text me." And people end up texting you. I can
say one of the reasons if feels more real is because you're showing up to an
outing with an explicit invitation, not a generic group invite.

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vondro
I had a problem with Facebook use, you could call it addiction even. Because I
like some features of it (instant messaging to anybody connected, events), I
decided to unfollow everything and everybody.

Now I have almost empty main page/wall, following only the page of Tristan da
Cunha (oh, the remoteness!) and nothing else. Nothing to scroll mindlessly
through.

I didn't find better solution than to manually unfollow everything that popped
up on my wall at that time, but this operation took perhaps 1-2 hours in total
but since then saved A LOT of time. The addiction disappeared, I can still
message anybody, I can still organize and be invited to events. Great stuff.

~~~
krtkush
This is exactly how I separated myself from facebook while I straight up
deleted my carefully curated instagram account. But I continue to be addicted
to reddit and it is even harder to let go off because I actually find
meaningful stuff on it.

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higeorge13
Quitting facebook, instagram, twitter and all kinds of social media has been
the best decision so far. I will definitely not install social media apps like
tiktok, snapchat or anything similar and the only one i keep is linkedin,
which while is becoming a little bit like facebook it is still a bit relevant
on job searching. Personally i have found myself all these weeks without them;
i realized who my real friends are (the ones who can drop me a call to hang
out, not the ones who will always message me in messenger or viber like i am a
bot on the other side), i have more desire to start new hobbies, read, play
board games and meet new actual people.

I am not the most social person ever, but it makes me sad how people and
society have changed to the worst due to social media. I am seeing older
people who found facebook in their 70s talking to and sharing gifs and silly
emojis with their friends through messenger instead of calling or seeing each
other. Same for all people of younger or similar age i have met; all the
communication goes through social media even for the most complicated matters,
like actual relationships, family discussions, serious talk etc. and even if
you manage to convince them on an actual physical hangout, you have to go
through the torture of multiple photos, posting, chatting, stories and
whatever nonsense these social media platforms are promoting. Where is the
actual fun of going out for a drink, to talk, to meet other people, to go to a
concert or even travel anymore?

------
blfr
_However, the treatment group also became less knowledgeable about current
events._

Apparently, they couldn't identify any downsides to quitting Facebook.

~~~
thundergolfer
What about to post exactly the same sentiment. I'm finding it hard to access
the full study, but I'm guessing "less knowledgeable about current events"
means the treatment group weren't as aware of the various disconnected things
the media puts in the faces of their audience and then drops within a week,
reducing the events to mere trivialities.

~~~
schemescape
Yeah, the OP's link doesn't seem to obviously lead to the actual paper. I
believe I found it here:
[https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658)

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Priem19
Added this article to
[https://www.quitfacebook.org](https://www.quitfacebook.org) a while ago. It's
got other great sources for those who are on the fence.

I just can't stand it that fb is everywhere online and in public. "Follow and
like us on fb" is even displayed in my local swimming pool; ridiculous. For
some people the World Wide Web doesn't amount to more than visiting social
media and that completely defeats the purpose of the internet.

I'm disappointed that the majority normalizes this.

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schemescape
In case the PDF link doesn't work for anyone else, I think this is the paper:
[https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658)

Interesting to note that the abstract mentions that this experiment involved
deactivating Facebook "for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm
election".

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nkingsy
I studied this in college in 2002, reading the book “bowling alone” for a
required general credit class.

I remember feeling like it wasn’t that big of a deal at the time. In hindsight
it’s a huge deal.

Seems like we don’t just naturally socialize with those around us. We need
reasons, even if the reason is extreme boredom.

TV was the first big hit community took in this paradigm, though books
probably were devastating too in their day.

I don’t know how you roll that back. I guess either through cultural backlash
(doubtful) or something better that does encourage community building.

The addiction theme some are mentioning is so true. If the solution
effectively requires putting society through AA, I don’t have much hope.

Is there a wildly addictive, community-building form of boredom avoidance out
there to create or advocate for?

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tzs
> Facebook users, randomized to deactivate their accounts for 4 weeks in
> exchange for $102 [...]

I wonder how they decided on $102? That seems an oddly precise value.

~~~
frabcus
Page 638 of the PDF has a footnote that says:

"We chose $102 because our pilot data correctly suggested that there would be
a point mass of WTAs at $100 and that it would maximize statistical power per
dollar of cost to set an offer price just high enough to induce those
participants to deactivate. We chose $170 as the top of the uniform
distribution because it was the maximum that we could pay participants without
requiring ­­tax-related paperwork."

(The $170 refers to a small percentage of their sample which they offered a
random amount between $0 and $170 to, presumably to check there were no odd
effects from the exact amount.

WTA means "willingness-to-accept")

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mnm1
So no downsides to dropping Facebook permanently. Being disconnected from
current events is definitely an upside. Not unlike many addictive drugs,
really. The benefits long term are great too.

