Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

https://www.iafrikan.com/2017/12/11/social-networking-sites-may-be-controlling-your-mind/

by iafrikan • 9 years ago

105 79 9 years ago

cdancette• 9 years ago

I feel like there's at least one article per day about this on the front page of HN.

Though it's good more and more people become conscious about the issues with social networks and addiction / attention loss.

yoz-y3• 9 years ago

Will these articles reach people that are not already convinced? I'd like to see how viral they get (if ever) on social media, where most people find content to consume.

chillingeffect• 9 years ago

I believe the reason the "problem" doesn't go away is because it's constantly framed in black and white terms: "Is social good or bad?" and usually supported with the same bleak facts: "it's makes use depressed, it gives marketers information about us."

It's a really a form of media control a la the Chomsky model of "allowing lively debate, but only within certain range of discussion." It's becoming tedious and conditioning us to stop considering how to bring our use of it under our control.

What would bring resolution (and great mental health) would be articles that talk more about how to use social media in a healthy ways. These comments are the ones the spring up in forums, including HN, where people have a bit of distance and self-reflection. For example, don't overly fetishize friendships from decades ago. don't give personal details. Don't give overly idealistic presentations of ones' self, etc.

RpFLCL• 9 years ago

For example, don't overly fetishize friendships from decades ago. don't give personal details. Don't give overly idealistic presentations of ones' self, etc

Unfortunately these are the sorts of activities that social media sites encourage. The rush of dopamine from a flood of likes and comments is real and encouraged like a game.

As long as these sites operate as massive companies (selling ads), they'll keep encouraging the things that increase screen time.

It's a really a form of media control a la the Chomsky model of "allowing lively debate, but only within certain range of discussion."

I do agree with your point about increasing the scope of the conversation, but I'm not convinced that the healthy habits you mentioned are actionable for most users.

j7ake2• 9 years ago

It's kind of the junk food or cigarettes equivalent for our brain (previously was TV but now it's back more addictive than ever)

We will probably look back at this period with the same sense of disgust at ourselves and at companies as we do now when we look back at the tobacco and junk food craze.

ghostbrainalpha• 9 years ago

Is the junk food craze over?

j7ake2• 9 years ago

No but the tobacco craze is not over either. I think the difference is now there are heavy regulations in both industries (advertising to children, warning labels, dietary information) but analogous regulations have not yet been implemented in the eyeballs on screen industry.

michaelchisari3• 9 years ago

In LA, there's plenty of people who are vegan, non-smoking yoga instructors who are glued to their phones.

It isn't yet an accepted idea that these things are addicting and bad for you, unlike junk food and tobacco.

b111coins• 9 years ago

Its probably nothing in comparison to video games and we dont talk much about that.

yoz-y3• 9 years ago

I disagree on both points. Human population spends less time in aggregate playing games that on social media. I don't have a quote from somewhere but just from the monthly active users from various social networks it is quite safe to say that almost everybody is on at least one social network.

The second thing is, that people do talk about the addictiveness and bad effects of games all the time, and have been doing so since games existed.

watwut3• 9 years ago

Monthly active is nowhere near any kind of problem.

I know no one who would flunk the school cause he can't glue out of Facebook. I know multiple people who had huge problems in school due to being unable to stop playing or woke up multiple times during night to care about kingdom.

quadyeast• 9 years ago

It compares quite well to video games. Social Media is very much like a MMORPG.

rn3aoh• 9 years ago

I've read an article like this so many times... They called it "internet addiction" before, and accused people of persistent need to check their email.

What all of these authors seem to conveniently ignore is that "social media" is not television, not a single source broadcast, even though social media companies would really want it to be. Just a single chokepoint. Social media has real people on the other end. Mediated by social media companies, sure, but perfectly real otherwise.

Saying that people are addicted to it is largely equivalent to saying that people are addicted to other people.

ohtwenty• 9 years ago

I mean I get what you're saying but sex addiction is also a thing with real people on the other side. It's not as straightforward as the article implies, you're right, but that doesn't mean there isn't a middle ground

0xJRS• 9 years ago

I have the opposite, I never want to check my email.

gaius• 9 years ago

Saying that people are addicted to it is largely equivalent to saying that people are addicted to other people

Think about it this way: a little sugar, salt and fat isn't harmful. In fact you need salt and fat as part of your diet to be healthy, and sugar was a rare treat - that's why they taste good. But if companies start adding more and more of these things to food, such that the consumers start to forget what real food tastes like, and then start making foods that are nearly all sugar and fat, well that is very bad for your health. That's what social media is. It's food without nutrients, and only the most shallow form of human contact.

ForRealsies• 9 years ago

I find the same in regards to Reddit. It is glorified trivia porn. Knowledge without nutrients, interesting but overall fleeting and forgotten in mere hours.

imartin2k• 9 years ago

“The 21st-century challenge will be how to live when others know us better than we know ourselves.”

I think this is very well put.

thinkMOAR• 9 years ago

I guess that would/could be correct. Though you have to account for the amount of 'propaganda' people post on their social media. It's not always sunshine as people portray on social media.

cousin_it• 9 years ago

I think of TV/gaming/internet/Facebook addiction as a generalized addiction to screens. You probably can't kick it cold turkey if your job involves looking at a screen. But you can do the next best thing: avoid all screens except your work screen. No smartphones, tablets, consoles, TVs... (A dumb phone is allowed.)

ashark2• 9 years ago

TV with no antenna and putting part of what used to be your Internet+services money to a dvd or two a month, and maybe a game every couple months on some older console, probably wouldn’t be too bad. Or just using the library for movies. The Internet and its never-ending content are the main problem, IMO.

kokol998• 9 years ago

Main problem, how? Wouldn't doing what you say feel incredibly limiting since you know you could be enjoying so much more? Do you do what you describe?

wutbrodo3• 9 years ago

Fwiw, this doesn't align with the experience of myself and my friends. If anything, the correlation runs the other way: the people that I know who spend the most time on screens are the least active on social media, and include a couple of people who don't have any social media accounts at all.

jchw2• 9 years ago

Social media and people on social media do not know us better than we know ourselves because all of us lie and try to look cool on social media. Like, can you think of the last time you saw someone clearly trying to act smart on a forum, maybe even... right here?

As far as I'm concerned, all social media knows is how to exploit us. It hones in on what gets us engaged. I think that is far worse than 'knowing us' - I'd actually find that comforting, in some ways.

As an example, I don't think social networks really want to work on ending abusive behavior or harassment because often those behaviors create engagement. People logging on to argue at random people about whether or not you should've voted for $CANDIDATE vehemently all day long are people using the platform and showing up in the numbers. It's good business. Verifying an actual nazi on Twitter? People may have been angry but they expressed it _by using the platform itself_. Whether Twitter was right to verify them is up to you, but the reaction is undeniable.

But honestly, we're all bullshit artists. I would never go liking all of the stuff I like in real life on a Facebook in my name. Do I want all of my friends and future employers to know how obsessed I am with some subculture? Not really. I'd rather like things that make me look normal and fit in.

I haven't been on Facebook in a long time, but the Internet as a whole has felt worse since engaging socially as my real life identity. I felt it was more fun and genuine when it wasn't real life identities, although that ship may have sailed thanks to bots and vandalism.

Vinnl• 9 years ago

On the one hand this is true: the things we tell social media are really unreliable indicators of ourselves.

On the other hand, the knowledge social media has about us goes beyond what we enter in it. They know what we read, often what website we visit, what we click on, what we hover over but don't click on, whose profiles we view, what posts/comments we start to type but then remove, etc. Those can reveal a lot of things we don't know about ourselves.

addicted• 9 years ago

Facebook also knows a lot about what you do offline, such as the stores you visited and the purchases you’ve made.

jchw2• 9 years ago

I think that's exactly why companies fight so hard to watch our behavior everywhere: it's because they want to know the true us, or at least feed as much of the data about the real us to it's ad algorithms.

two2two• 9 years ago

You're right, most people present the best them, as they see it, to the online world, and some just act like themselves online, "Ooh a piece of candy, ooh a piece of candy." For those who act true-to-self, the parameters (locations and actions) the internet provides for people to bounce around in, never expose that deep of an image of a person.

This also occurs during real life interactions as well. Few are completely genuine even when looking at them directly in the eyes. People omit information, some embellish, and others downright lie to make themselves appear the best possible.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone whom you connect with deeply and for a mere second you can see the true them? You can almost imagine them as a child because their truest essence comes out for a second during a laugh, or a cry. The truest external example of self.

We're a long way from software being able to grasp that level of understanding of a single person. Even if, it would be hard to categorize and sell ads to a person based on that. In other words, I hold out hope for the resurgence of appreciation of the other.

bowlich• 9 years ago

I'm starting to think that the hyper-engagement of fighting over every $CANDIDATE, $CAUSE, and $OUTRAGE is going to drive people away from Social Media.

I started doing blackouts on Twitter and Facebook every time some major news event occurs because I just don't want to hear about it. And the one thing that I have noticed is a slow consolidation of my Facebook feed to just a narrow slice of hyper-engaged people who post multiple times a day about whatever the latest outrage is -- the broader spectrum of users haven't deleted their accounts, but most on my "Friends" list haven't posted in years. I suspect a lot of my friends are disengaged from the platform precisely because they have zero interest in fighting their loud, opinionated relatives of opposing political sides.

I miss the days where everyone was just avatars, nick-names, personalities. It still seems odd to me to be expected to mix my virtual and real identities, since the "internet culture" when I got online insisted that you do not share your real-life identity* and Facebook came along and turned that entirely upside down.

*It was common practice on some of the bulletin boards that I frequented in the late nineties for users to maintain multiple accounts under different nicknames and personas, and even have conversations with themselves.

flyinghamster• 9 years ago

since the "internet culture" when I got online insisted that you do not share your real-life identity* and Facebook came along and turned that entirely upside down.

That has been my number one objection to Facebook right from the start. I was long out of school when Facebook was first established, but the second I found out about the "real name" policy I thought to myself, "This can't end well."

mkstowegnv• 9 years ago

In my life some of the most interesting lasting friendships were made with strangers I met in hostels while traveling and at weddings. But my recent experiences with hostels and weddings and bus stops and pretty much everywhere (even in remote areas in the third world) is that instead of talking to each other everyone is giving their attention to their smartphones. Social media needs to start making its emphasis the creation of more real world social interaction. What about an opt-in geoaware app tied into or within FB (or other) that runs in the background and when it notes a critical mass of people nearby looks for common friends and interests in the crowd and after appropriate reactions to prompts, makes introductions or even proposes a flashmob activity from among those that some of these people have stored (in the app or somewhere that the app can access) in the hopes that just such a moment would arrive.

d33• 9 years ago

That would have some pretty interesting privacy implications, not to mention the room for manipulation...

en-us• 9 years ago

Current social media has those exact same problems. Corporations violate our privacy daily and successfully work to manipulate the population. We already crossed that bridge unfortunately.

kristiandupont• 9 years ago

Perhaps. But I would never activate such a thing. I'd expect to run into weirdos that are impossible to get rid of.

It's a cliché to say that we as engineers look to solve all problems with more tech, even the problem of too much tech. But in this case I think it's really warranted.

I've had two experiences here in Copenhagen that were interesting to me. Once, I was on a bus that got stuck in a pile of snow. Everybody got out and helped push it. Another time, the ATM's collectively stopped working for a half hour or so. In both instances, people were almost delighted to have a reason to speak to strangers around them. The bus ride turned into a small party, and with the ATM situation I saw a person giving a stranger cash (not a lot, but completely out of the blue). Both times I had the feeling that it was like people were waking up from a zombie-sleep and I wonder if things were more like this in villages in the old days.

shrimp_emoji• 9 years ago

It seems true that comfort breeds alienation while adversity encourages interaction and interdependence, and, being that that's what we evolved for, many people seem to enjoy the latter. For my part, though, I'd like that limited to WoW guilds; communication greatly disrupts my comfort unless done in the most abstract and expedient environments possible, like cyberspace. The smartphone has done wonders to make meatspace more bearable for me.

notacoward2• 9 years ago

It really is sad that public spaces are now full of people doing private things. Yes, they're often being social in a way, but in most of those cases they're interacting with people they already know at the expense of getting to know the new people around them. That impedes the formation of the broad and diverse web of relationships important to civic community.

I don't think there's a simple answer to this. There just needs to be more of an understanding that mobile devices and social media can either enhance or detract from real human interaction, and that using them in ways that detract is rude.

tomjen33• 9 years ago

That is one social norm. My norm is that I don't owe people my time, which you may consider rude.

jamesrcole2• 9 years ago

Social media needs to start making its emphasis the creation of more real world social interaction.

They could also try to do better at fostering more-meaningful online interactions.

samschooler• 9 years ago

The Couchsurfing [1] app has something similar to this! You just say you want to hang out, say what you want to do (grab drinks, etc.) and people can see you if you're nearby and message you. I used it to find friends to go out with in Romania last month.

[1] https://couchsurfing.com

jhiska• 9 years ago

Articles on social media detailing how to combat social media addiction or "the crisis of attention" or whatever clickbait title is the latest way that social media is capturing our attention.

supernovae• 9 years ago

yeah, do people not realize hackernews is "social media"?

zaarn2• 9 years ago

I've deleted my facebook account a decade ago, the last time I logged in when facebook revived the account and told me it was hacked.

I don't think I've ever really had the desire myself to reactivate it, my fellow students started posting into some shared group there but eventually everyone moved to whatsapp as that was more widely deployed and direct.

FB, for me, has no actual value other than capturing users like a venus flytrap.

acheron• 9 years ago

everyone moved to whatsapp

Maybe the distinction is worthwhile to make if you try, but in general “I don’t use Facebook, I use [thing that is also Facebook]” is not really a convincing argument.

sp332• 9 years ago

Facebook is more public. Even if your posts are only visible to "friends" it's more about browsing and less about actually starting conversations. It also gets data-mined more heavily, compared to WhatsApp which has end-to-end encryption using the same underlying protocol as Signal.

Toast_25• 9 years ago

While owned by the same company I don't think it traps you in the same way. Whenever I log into facebook it turns into a 10 to 15 minute thing that could have been one or two. I avoid that thing as much as possible, but that's not really a problem with whatsapp.

I do dislike the "status" feature they put in though...

zaarn2• 9 years ago

Whatsapp is a much different product and atm everything is end-to-end encrypted, so I trust that more than facebook itself.

There is also little binding to the service, the entire semester could switch to a new service within a week (we've played out the scenario "what if whatsapp goes belly up" as part of a course)

partycoder• 9 years ago

Every now and then, try to have an offline day. To me it has been very beneficial.

e.g: to get into the habit of reading, exercise, etc.

You will naturally end up doing something better than browsing a feed.

killjoywashere• 9 years ago

As the father of a teenager daughter who is entirely too addicted to screens (they're all confiscated, spending the semester in my office), I highly recommend Catherine Steiner-Adair's book, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.

It's not just the kids' fault. You taught them to do it by ignoring them when they were little (because they were boring, remember?)

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0062082434/

dvdhnt• 9 years ago

killjoywashere

Name checks out.

In all seriousness, though, you're absolutely spot on. My youngest is almost 4 and I caught myself repeating the same mistakes with her that I made with my oldest. I'm much more strict with myself now than before, I aim to protect her from myself. Going back to correct missteps, such as taking my oldest daughter's iPad until she's older, has been very tough.

Without going into too much detail, I'd like to acknowledge the escapism epidemic in the United States.

Thank you for the book recommendation, too!

jacquesm3• 9 years ago

I have a little project going for the last couple of weeks. Things I got to replace the screens with: an old typewriter, a world radio and an electronics kit with which you can make a large number of different devices.

Still in the works: an old fashioned wind-up alarm clock, a cassette or tape reel to reel recorder and a polaroid camera.

You can get all of those for pennies or even for free on Ebay or the local equivalent. The kids are absolutely fascinated with all this real world stuff that does only one thing.

And there is no 'app' for the kind of satisfaction you get from receiving a painstakingly type-written letter with a bunch of stuff crossed out or a morse code message just for you. Grandparents will likely much more appreciate one of those too far over and beyond a Facebook message. And what's more magical than to pull some Latin American station out of thin air?

Besides learning a lot about what makes stuff tick they also learn about the evolution of technology and the old stuff is so much more real and easier to relate to that they freely start to figure out how they can do other things in a simpler and low tech way as well.

After that: tools to take things apart and to do some basic repairs on broken stuff that we find.

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

Heh, that'd be a fun rule for your kids: you can only use technology powered by energy you generated and stored. Here's a how-to guide for a simple hand-crank generator and directions to the library, have fun.

Of course, that might also be a good way to wind up with the next David Hahn, but...well just keep an eye on them. Maybe set up some ground rules like, 'no hydrogen.'

mattbettinson• 9 years ago

And what's more magical than to pull some Latin American station out of thin air?

Pulling the entirety of Wikipedia and Youtube out of thin air?

That being said, I totally agree - I love books, my manual film camera, dream of owning a typewriter (but have no use for it) and love records.

tomjen33• 9 years ago

I nearly broke myself at some point because I started to realise that just by typing on a computer I was broadcasting things through space, hammering rays of light under the Atlantic, and getting a reply back in miliseconds.

If I think too much about it, I almost can't do anything because that is magic, made real.

Another good way to break yourself is to go into any reasonably sized supermarket and look, really look, at all the different products and where they come from, then imagine the insane amount of work that goes into making that possible.

I mean a typewriter is pretty cool and all, but it doesn't really compare to sending messages through space, at the speed of light.

jamesrcole2• 9 years ago

there is no 'app' for the kind of satisfaction you get from receiving a painstakingly type-written letter with a bunch of stuff crossed out or a morse code message just for you. ... And what's more magical than to pull some Latin American station out of thin air?

Obviously, I don't know whether you experienced these kinds of things the first time around, or how long you've been experiencing them this time around, but I'm wondering how how much of the satisfaction or magic you're feeling is due to novelty? Will those feelings stick around at that same level of strength?

I didn't experience e-mail till I was 17 (in 1994), and I didn't have a mobile phone (let alone smart phone) until several years later. I remember receiving letters... and certainly the tangibility is cool, but I didn't think it was that great. I don't see why pulling that station out of thin air is any more special than being able to listen to foreign radio stations or podcasts on the internet today.

someguys3• 9 years ago

We (with a friend) think that what people became with social media is really depressing. Nobody goes out anymore and everyone is connected online without really knowing nobody. Facebook, Twitter... made an awful society. The solution would be to connect these people more in real life. What do you guys think of a social media 2.0 that would connect people irl? We are working on something like that, a meetup like improved app. Would love to get feedbacks about the idea.

deadmetheny3• 9 years ago

I miss the days when if you wanted to meet somebody you just went to a bar or coffee shop or started some sort of hobby and talked to people. Trying to push tech as a solution of a problem that was caused by tech to begin with...man, that's something.

someguys3• 9 years ago

I think that it would be realistic to think we will never get back to theses times. Tech has already been pushed too hard into new generations.

Demoneeri• 9 years ago

I find the comments here depressing. Like everything, only a small portion of people are addicted to something. I use social media every day. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. If I read the comments here, I should be alone in a dark room envying other people's lives. But last Thursday, I met some of my friends after work for a 5@7, Friday I had dinner with my wife and her friends. Saturday, a friend couple from another city came for an event in our city and we went walking and stopped to take a beer in an Irish pub. Then Sunday, 2 friends came home for brunch. Yes people checked their phone 1 or 2 times, but nobody was "addicted"...

Most people go on with their life while enjoying social media.

erasemus3• 9 years ago

My predictably unpopular theory is that highly social people are really afraid of other people. Perhaps not without reason if one regards other humans as potential predators. So they designate a group of people friends and use it as protection against all the other people.

Yet they remain afraid, and this fear is what makes social interactions addictive (like gambling; the great the fear the greater the high on the occasions when you don't lose).

magic_beans• 9 years ago

That's ridiculous.

erasemus3• 9 years ago

Agreed.

wutbrodo3• 9 years ago

You may be using a very nonstandard of "highly social", but doesn't it usually also imply that you get along well with new people?

erasemus3• 9 years ago

Yes they get along with new people and have a large number of shallow relationships. Whereas I think normies and aspies tend to have deeper relationships with only a few people. Btw, they're not aware of their motives -- they don't feel afraid (though I suppose they may have felt so when the whole process began, at school).

alexandercrohde• 9 years ago

As a dude who doesn't use social media (no FB, linked-in, twitter, vine, snapchat, instagram, whatever I don't get the big deal.

People love writing angry posts on social media about social media. If you don't like it, don't use it, nobody is stopping you, quit the drama.

Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

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