Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/12/hard-questions-is-spending-time-on-social-media-bad-for-us/

by taylorbuley • 9 years ago

197 112 9 years ago

newsroom.fb.com

ideonexus2• 9 years ago

I have to say, I'm surprised by this post and appreciate it. I think the research presented explains a lot of the issues I've had with Facebook over the last few months--when I hit a point where I didn't have anything to say, but kept visiting the site's endless scroll and grew more dissatisfied with it in the process. I even resorted to using StayFocusd to restrict the time I could sink there each day.

I miss the days of the blogosphere. When I would write long, thoughtful well-researched articles instead of throwaway one-liners and photos. I find the experiment mentioned in the article enlightening, where people reviewed their own profile pages versus those of others and the difference in "self-affirmation" this caused. I recently went back and looked over my 10 years of blogging and I got a huge self-worth boost that inspired me to start writing again. Social media gets characterized as narcissistic, but it sounds like maybe we should be paying more attention to ourselves and our accomplishments for our own sense of self-worth.

drdeadringer• 9 years ago

throwaway one-liners and photos

Oddly enough, this is part of why I quit Facebook and moved to Twitter based on how I personally communicate and consume others' communication.

rconti• 9 years ago

That seems odd. It feels to me that Twitter is vastly more oriented towards one-liners. Though different people use different mediums to different ends, and I understand that.

ct03• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the tobacco companies hiring doctors to disclose the benefits of smoking.

dymk• 9 years ago

It honestly sounds like you didn’t read the article then

ct03• 9 years ago

I was talking more about the point of internal researchers investigating themselves.

linkmotif2• 9 years ago

What they're saying is: smoking isn't the worst thing ever, in moderation. We'll still sell you packs of twenty, but don't smoke them all in one day.

keriati1• 9 years ago

Had the same feeling...

jasonhong• 9 years ago

I can understand people's criticisms that this analysis came from Facebook itself.

I'd like to point out that one of the authors (Moira Burke) was a PhD student in our department at Carnegie Mellon University (the Human Computer Interaction Institute) and she did research of the highest caliber with a high level of rigor and integrity.

She and her doctoral adviser (Robert Kraut) also published a very good peer-reviewed paper in the Communications of the ACM entitled Internet Use and Psychological Well-Being: Effects of Activity and Audience (https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/12/194633-internet-use-a...) which summarizes about 20 years of research in the area, and the post from Facebook echoes a lot of the same themes. The Facebook post also mentions a lot of other very well-executed and highly regarded scientific research in understanding how social media affects us.

So I'd really like to ask folks to please differentiate between the science side of the post (which I'd say is very good) from any of the associated policy or business issues (which is fair game).

randomsearch• 9 years ago

Being a good scientist at one moment does not make you immune to corruption at another.

ideonexus2• 9 years ago

It looks like your post got downvoted, and I don't think that was fair. I completely agree with you that there is some very insightful science in this post that didn't convince me to go back to facebook, but did give me insights into how to interact with all social media in a manner conducive to my emotional well-being.

daodedickinson• 9 years ago

Exactly. There will probably be huge class action lawsuits that will be too late for most.

navls• 9 years ago

"On the other hand, actively interacting with people — especially sharing messages, posts and comments with close friends and reminiscing about past interactions — is linked to improvements in well-being"

Seems sort of self serving that the solution is to generate more content for facebook. The next article is going to conclude disabling ad blockers and making microtransactions will finally make you happy.

bmcooley• 9 years ago

Just because the presented solution serves facebook positively doesn't mean it's bad in some way. It's good to be wary of the bias, but don't dismiss the claim because of it.

denzil_correa• 9 years ago

Here's more from the article

Simply broadcasting status updates wasn’t enough; people had to interact one-on-one with others in their network.

pzone• 9 years ago

To me it just seems like they're identifying extraverted people and finding they're happier. No surprise, that's been known for decades.

xapata• 9 years ago

Depends on the research method. If it was only backwards-looking, you'd be correct. However, it sounds like there was an experiment with a control group and a treatment group.

agumonkey• 9 years ago

Something this decade told me. Everything has limits, even casual "tech" like social networking and internet. To each his own but remember to be curious about subtle changes.

katastic• 9 years ago

As long as you realize: "Social media isn't socializing."

--Sebastian Junger (Anthropologist, journalist, documentary filmmaker)

Joe Rogan's podcast with him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-ZieLlKXYs

yesenadam• 9 years ago

A deepity is “a proposition that seems both important and true—and profound—but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous.”

http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/philosopher_daniel_dennet...

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

Huh, the rare case where Betteridge's Law of Headlines doesn't apply.

The focus on tiny incremental changes is not surprising from Facebook. Great, you made a tool for people to avoid their ex's, but that doesn't fix the core conceit of your service.

jfoutz• 9 years ago

Pr statement vs reporting. News needs the clickbait headline. An official corporate statement can be fully aligned.

hsrada• 9 years ago

I appreciate that they're making an effort at looking into it. However, my newsfeed will still remain blocked/removed until I have more control over what I can see. The snooze functionality is a step in the right direction.

ct03• 9 years ago

How are you blocking the news feed?

tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 9 years ago

There are browser add-ons.

fpisfun2• 9 years ago

My Facebook account will remain deleted from now until forever. Although I may have to open a business ads account because my attempts to replace it with AdWords aren't going very well so far

ProAm2• 9 years ago

They are not looking into it, well they are as much as tobacco companies looked into the ill effects of smoking. This is a PR move in response to recent ex-FB employees talking about how social media is not good for society.

danra• 9 years ago

Harder questions:

- Is it bad for us that Facebook is aggressively monopolizing the social media/interaction space by: * Abusing its data collection (including through its purchase of Onavo) to eliminate/buy out competition * Storing our social data in a closed garden with no easy way to migrate it out into a different platform or even provide an API so that other social platforms can interact with Facebook

thus limiting our options for exploring different options for online social interaction?

- Is profit taken into account in Facebook's feed algorithm, or is it just our well-being (encouraging active social interaction, as the article describes) that's being considered?

camillomiller3• 9 years ago

Is profit taken into account in Facebook's feed algorithm, or is it just our well-being (encouraging active social interaction, as the article describes) that's being considered?

THIS. That's exactly why this "feel good" pseudoscientific bullshit Facebook spits out from time to time sounds so disingenuous: they never take their profit - which is their main motive - into account. Pathetic.

wu-ikkyu• 9 years ago

^Exactly what I thought when I read this bit:

We want Facebook to be a place for meaningful interactions with your friends and family — enhancing your relationships offline, not detracting from them. After all, that’s what Facebook has always been about.

graedus• 9 years ago

Presumably things are discussed in those terms at the shareholder meetings. The "feel good pseudoscientific bullshit" is of course PR and should be ignored.

cityzen• 9 years ago

Are you asking or stating the obvious. Answer is yes to both.

capkutay• 9 years ago

This isn't a trick question. Staring at a screen consuming mindless content...whether its from entertainment companies or your friends...is bad. Bad compared to exercising, studying, taking a walk, being out with friends.

Is it worse than being stuck on the couch watching TV? I'm sure you can argue both ways, but I would say its about the same.

whiddershins• 9 years ago

I feel that I take tv less personally.

neves• 9 years ago

Now I'll get dietary recommendations from Kraft and Coca Cola.

gatsby• 9 years ago

“Social media: not that bad!” -Facebook

andars• 9 years ago

My understanding of the article:

When people use Facebook in ways that reproduce interactions through technology that existed before Facebook, the results are positive (e.g. texts between close friends, IMs, emails, etc). When people use the core features that social media introduced, the results are negative (e.g. status updates to your 1000+ "friends", "likes", etc).

Is this an accurate summary of the findings discussed in the article?

fpisfun2• 9 years ago

Unequivocally the answer is yes

spicymaki• 9 years ago

The answer to me is Yes!

The current Social Media business model is to push us to extremes to lure us into staying on their site. This is great for profits, bad for society.

The irony was that Social Media was supposed to bring us together, now we could not be further apart from each other.

CMay• 9 years ago

I think that meaningful communication brings people together, but many people default away from meaningful communication for a number of reasons.

If you are broadcasting your communication to a group rather than having a one-on-one conversation, that communication is likely to become more impersonal. Being able to efficiently communicate with the family as a group is one of the things that makes something like Facebook seem worthwhile, but if you engage less with family members one-on-one as a result then you may water down the relationships.

If the method of communication is frustrating to you in some way, you may be less likely to fully invest yourself into the communication. You're on a phonecall and you could multitask, but you're having to hold the phone. Someone posts a message of substance that you have a lot of thoughts about, but you've always been bad at typing. You're good at typing, but you've never been great at expressing yourself in writing, etc.

With Facebook not everyone has the choice or convenience of communicating in the way that is most comfortable to them or best captures their personality, yet they may use it anyway. They might use Facebook for the efficiency of the many rather than best expressing themselves.

Sometimes there are workarounds, like recording your voice, a video or taking a photo of an event that may truly capture you. There are times where these work really well and are great communication, but many people aren't professionals at this and you get these staged or dry communications that don't come across as natural. A photo of someone standing there and smiling? A video of people that all know they're being recorded?

Just like when a performance feels off in a movie, something can feel off about all communication on Facebook.

To make matters worse, Facebook is not a private place. It is not a safe place. It is not the warmth of a home or the mistrusted ethereal privacy of a phonecall. Google, Facebook and others have repeatedly been in the news and featured in private conversations between people about how safe their information is online. Many people filter themselves online when it's attached to their identity and we are talking about identified relationships rather than anonymous users here.

Cell phones are terrible communication devices that are so convenient that it's respectful of people's time to have worse communication with them by using it. Voice quality we should be ashamed of in 2017 and text messaging where characters take so long to input that messages with real substance are rare is a sad reality.

These services and devices are better in addition to personal contact rather than as a replacement, but many people are slowly tricked into feeling that going through the effort of meeting in person is now very inefficient. There's that nagging idea in the back of the mind that, well if you're going to go through that trouble you could just Skype or Facetime, but of course you don't for some reason you find hard to define.

An exception is parties or gatherings. That feels efficient, because enough people will be present that you would feel left out or it would be disrespectful not to go due to some special occasion. Unfortunately, it can be harder to have quality one-on-one time at parties. Maybe you want to say things to someone, but you don't want it to be overheard. Maybe the party is too loud, so it's not a good environment for a good conversation.

When you watch a movie with someone, you might have seen them pull out their tablet or their phone and suddenly the movie feels less meaningful. Part of the idea of watching that movie with them, was that it was an experience you were sharing. Every second was something you had in common, but now it is fractured. Part of you is glad, that if they aren't enjoying the movie then they have a quiet alternative. Another part of you is annoyed that surely they know it's rude or distracting, but they did it anyway.

Facebook seems like that, to me. A fractured experience that you accept for convenience or politeness, but also a party where one-on-one interactions just seem hindered.

Every time I see a company anywhere integrate Facebook into their product or service, I feel like it is rude. Whether it is Blizzard's Battle.net client curiously adding Facebook streaming or a simple like button on a website, these integrations aren't trying to enrich my life. It's about business and it's about efficiency. This infection is not Facebook's fault. It's not the fault of cell phones. It's a natural evolution of technology that has unfortunate consequences.

Just as corporations try to optimize for their bottom line and often lose part of their magic along the way, we will naturally optimize our own time for the most impact if provided the easy choice. Cell phones and social networks have given us tools to do just that which has had tremendous benefits, but many people forget that some magic was lost along the way too.

I'm not saying Facebook is all bad and it might be the only option for some people, so there's something to be said for that. It also helps a lot of people meet or coordinate with eachother that might not otherwise. I just don't like that it has become this social catch-all that can be also very effective at unintentionally suppressing other more valuable forms of communication.

sverige• 9 years ago

This article reminds me of the scientific articles on the health benefits of smoking. Big tobacco had to pay to place the articles where they were guaranteed to get lots of eyeballs, though.

gthtjtkt• 9 years ago

Facebook is going to tell us if Facebook is bad for us?

Neat, next we should ask Comcast if Net Neutrality is good for us. Oh wait...

junkscience2017• 9 years ago

Is Smoking Bad for Us? (marlboro.com)

bonsai80• 9 years ago

Obviously someone saying "This thing I profit from you doing is not bad!" is not credible, but the fact that they even had to say this is progress. I think the takeaway here is to hold people/companies accountable and they have to start paying attention to what they're doing. Good stuff.

rad_gruchalski• 9 years ago

Signed out from facebook a few days ago. Did not even have a single temptation to sign back in. Amazing what simply signing out can achieve. So far, it feels like facebook was a massive waste of time.

The question isn't "if spending time is good or bad". The question is "is it needed for one or not". You know, like that choc bar one just grabs at the till right before paying for shopping or paying for the gasoline. I never had any satisfaction from it to begin with, mindless content consumption, sometimes leading to spending hours on youtube sucked in by someone posting something "interesting".

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5898a9203149a12d008... Thanks, but no.

Another aspect is, the views presented by the people on my timeline most often simply aggravated me. Once I unfollowed those people, all that was left was just brands and channels serving content I can live without.

pat_space• 9 years ago

The concept of a news feed is the worst. I stopped using instagram when they switched their algorithim from most recent to AI-curated (or whatever it is). I unfollowed everything on Facebook so my news feed is empty. I still use FB groups, Hacker News, and Subreddits as they seem to have replaced forums for many of my interests. I still use Snapchat to communicate with close friends.

natural219• 9 years ago

What a huge joke.

camillomiller3• 9 years ago

The good: On the other hand, actively interacting with people — especially sharing messages, posts and comments with close friends and reminiscing about past interactions — is linked to improvements in well-being. This ability to connect with relatives, classmates, and colleagues is what drew many of us to Facebook in the first place, and it’s no surprise that staying in touch with these friends and loved ones brings us joy and strengthens our sense of community.

SERIOUSLY? Such a surprise that engagement, which incidentally is what's most valuable for Facebook's data collection and monetization efforts, is good for you! How are these people hoping to be taken seriously on a scientific level?

This is a level of corporate bullshit and denial I've hardly seen before. Wow.

sumeno• 9 years ago

Dismissing it simply because it is Facebook isn't really helpful. The article linked to several independent studies to back up their claims.

It also doesn't just say engagement is the answer, people clicking on clickbait are engaged but the article calls that out as bad engagement despite the fact that clickbait is incredibly profitable for Facebook.

The interesting part of the article is that it actually calls out some of the biggest problems with how people interact with Facebook. It shouldn't all be taken at face value but it is an interesting well documented article.

camillomiller3• 9 years ago

Spending precious time reading corporate propaganda disguised as objective scientific evaluation is also not helping.

The truth is that Facebook has exploited something in our human psychology that was never available before. It fucks up with our heads in a way we can't even recognize because we don't really have "bad mental state" receptors wired in.

I want to be lenient on Zuckerberg and his fellows: they created a Leviathan that started making more money they could ever imagine. Now they're captive in a system that for no reason whatsoever would let them scale back such monstrosity. It's not on them anymore.

yoran• 9 years ago

That’s why we recently pledged $1 million toward research to better understand the relationship between media technologies, youth development and well-being.

Funny that they do their research _after_ they launched Messenger Kids. I would expect someone with good intentions to have swapped the order on that one.

benatkin• 9 years ago

I wonder if as long as most of a team has distractions like facebook and Hacker News turned up full blast, having Slack distract them is probably actually a good thing, if their jobs are more useful than social media and news. Sucks for the few in the team who have their social media and news habits under control, though.

tboyd47• 9 years ago

There's a picture emerging that syncs up a lot with something I've learned in my real life interactions over the last few years.

When two people are interacting on a friendship basis, they should both be talking a roughly equal amount.

For whatever reason, I noticed that I had made a lot of acquaintances where our conversations are always the person essentially just giving me a long monologue. These "friendships" really weren't friendships at all. I was spending a lot of time with these people but they weren't really contributing much to my life, nor vice versa.

I kind of figured out that I had somehow learned to be a really good listener and not a talker in social situations, and that attracts a certain type of person: people who like to talk. Those people aren't necessarily always great friends for me. They might be, but in many cases, they might just be people looking for someone to talk to.

So now I always make sure that when I'm hanging out with someone and having a conversation, I talk about as much as they talk. Even if it's about something pointless or irrelevant, I just do it. That's how I filter the people who find me interesting or have things in common with me from people who just need someone to talk to.

I suspect a lot of people have been having this same experience that I had, only online, and the solution is probably the same.

codinghorror2• 9 years ago

Great insight. This is also true of online discourse, though the presence of {x} voices at once can make it overwhelming.

watwut• 9 years ago

It is not that simple. I had periods when I did not really wanted to talk and strongly prefered when the other person talked more. I liked listening them during those periods.

Conversely, when I was socially isolated long term, people listening to my flood of monologue were God send.

It all depends on what whose needs are at the moment.

eric_h• 9 years ago

I think GPs point was that aiming for parity in time talked allowed him to filter out people who wouldn't listen to that flood of monologue when it needed to happen.

rhizome4• 9 years ago

It's not transactional like that. You know when you are with someone for whom "listening" is just another word that means "waiting to talk again," or when you're just a receiver for whatever they want to talk about.

moneytide12• 9 years ago

You said the keyword - "filter".

When you're talking in person, you have an implied fixed amount of time for interaction. Therefore, both parties only touch on things that are important given that time restraint. With social media, we lose this natural content policing since its "always on".

And the monologues... Speech is about speaking in gaps, or waiting turns, or as you said - "talk about as much as they talk."

When you have seconds, minutes, or days to respond on social media... we start adding exhausting fluff.

briankelly• 9 years ago

Timing of this makes me wonder if someone there read that other thread with the "Facebook Free February" idea people were kicking around. No doubt there are plenty of FBers here and if that idea gained enough traction it could do some nontrivial damage to their bottom line. Granted - probably had to be in the works ahead of time.

JoshMnem2• 9 years ago

Looks like a great idea.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-free...

harryf• 9 years ago

Interesting indeed that they published this. Someone spent quite a bit of time making this; animated videos, interviews and it looks like multiple departments involved (research, marketing). Does seem like the current level anti-Facebook discussion in the press is worrying them enough to make this.

basic-gongfu2• 9 years ago

I find it encouraging that they are getting desperate enough to produce crap like this.

Farewell Zucker, make sure you don't stumble over Myspace on your way out.

dang• 9 years ago

Please don't post like this to HN. You may not owe better to "Zucker" but you owe the community better if you're participating here. Posts like this damage the container, which we all need to be stronger not weaker.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

basic-gongfu2• 9 years ago

Isn't that his name?

Who are you anyways? The saint of corporate assholes? Any time anyone says anything less than positive about anyone with a pile of money, you're always first in line to defend them and shoot down the discussion.

Good luck dealing with that karma moving forward...

realworldview• 9 years ago

It’s unfortunate that I’m clearly biased when I read the title and source, and William Morris immediately comes to mind. I sincerely wish them well with this and I’ll hold-off making rash, ill-considered and abrupt judgements.

659087• 9 years ago

I'm sure this Facebook propaganda will give us an unbiased and honest point of view on this!

"In this post, we want to give you some insights into how the research team at Facebook works with our product teams to incorporate well-being principles"

This must be why they perform unconsented-to psychological studies to see if they can make hundreds of thousands of users more depressed.

ACow_Adonis• 9 years ago

As the saying goes, it is hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

Currently there are pros and cons to social media use, but I doubt we're going to find them from this source.

It is not nice to call out people as shills for a particular industry, but there's also a point of truthfulness in the conversation that is lost or avoided when you do not do so.

This is a marketing peice by facebook who's only purpose is to market for their product.

Apologies for my short response, but I feel that's the closest summary of the article, when push comes to shove.

bogomipz• 9 years ago

"We’re working to make Facebook more about social interaction and less about spending time."

Except its not actually a "social interaction", its a "social media interaction." FB seems to willfully conflate the two.

This was an interesting study that showed that people do in fact differentiate between a "social interaction" and a "social media interaction"

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/21340/Ha...

tgragnato2• 9 years ago

The paper you're quoting seems very insightful, even if I do not consider it an authoritative source, it seemed balanced and sensible.

For "TL;DR" folks, you can scroll at page 24

Without a more careful theoretical foundation explaining why social media affects users, research risks comparing behaviors that are simply not equivalent. Passively browsing information on Facebook is simply not comparable to having a conversation, theoretically or from the perspective of users themselves.

People in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14213868] (Pavel Durov Has Unfriended Everyone) dismissed Durov's action as a marketing move (it is, but NOT ONLY).

After reading the piece I immediately thought about his words

Everyone a person needs has long been on messengers. It's pointless and time-consuming to maintain increasingly obsolete friend lists on public networks. Reading other people's news is brain clutter. To clear out room for the new, one shouldn't fear getting rid of old baggage.

The "new FB" is as unsuitable to some kind of people as the "old one".

brickmort• 9 years ago

"Is Facebook Bad?" By Facebook

DoodleBuggy• 9 years ago

Yes.

pesenti2• 9 years ago

Oh the irony of this thread.... Here is a social media site (Hackers News) that prides itself in being different because its comments are much more informed and knowledgeable, criticizing the leading social media site (Facebook) for putting out an informed and knowledgeable self reflection on its own value with a bunch of opinionated comments without any supportive evidence.

So the better question for this crowd should be: is Hacker News any better than Facebook?

ravenstine• 9 years ago

They're not even comparable beyond having a comment system. As stated by others, Hacker News doesn't have a team of psychologists working to addict you to its content so they can then gradually replace that content with ads.

Hacker News doesn't have corporate tentacles in mass marketing, VR, photo blogging, viral videos, breaking news, dining(facebook.com/orderfood), self-driving cars, etc.

Hacker News doesn't punish you for using a pseudonym.

Hacker News doesn't sort content into a "personalized" feed based on how popular it predicts the content will be.

Hacker News doesn't cheapen human interaction by reminding you to say "Happy Birthday" to people you hardly know.

Hacker News doesn't host everyone's entire life stories, and thereby doesn't take away reasons to just talk to others. In other words, it doesn't tell you more than you need to know about other people.

Not to be a sycophant, but yes, we are better than what most people think of as social media(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) That isn't because we pride ourselves in being smarter, which I'm not claiming.

pesenti2• 9 years ago

Thanks for exemplifying my point!

dTal• 9 years ago

As stated by others, Hacker News doesn't have a team of psychologists working to addict you to its content so they can then gradually replace that content with ads.

I dunno, this feels like more of a difference in degree than in kind. HN does have secret content-ranking algorithms (that are clearly optimised for engagement in some capacity - don't tell me it's not addictive!) and opaque moderation. Periodically, hiring "ads" for Ycombinator-funded companies appear mixed in - indeed, in a sense the entire site is an advertisement for Ycombinator.

And it does punish you for using a pseudonym, after a fashion - new accounts are flagged green, and comments are ranked not just by vote but by the user's accumulated karma. So there is an incentive to have just one "main account", which naturally compromises anonymity in the long run, effectively by "hosting their life stories" (you can extract a lot, I imagine, from years of HN postings). Nor can you delete content, unlike Facebook I might add, and also unlike Facebook it's publically hosted forever. In real terms, HN is more hostile to user privacy - it's just more transparent about it.

moneytide12• 9 years ago

Natural social interaction means transmitting specific information that is relevant to all parties. You have limited time to interact, therefore you condense.

Social media has no such regulation, there is no longer a filter.

We won't need facial muscles or body language anymore.

How awesome.

CodeWriter23• 9 years ago

Leave it to some industry-paid “scientists” to present an industry-favoring article. So glad to know the FB-induced dopamine addiction I weaned myself off of was all my fault.

killjoywashere2• 9 years ago

I feel like I just read an article by a scientist working for Philip Morris.

They found that stressed students were twice as likely to choose Facebook to make themselves feel better as compared with students who hadn’t been put under stress.

I need a dopamine hit. Where can I get a dopamine hit? Facebooooooook!

we recently pledged $1 million toward research to better understand the relationship between media technologies, youth development and well-being.

$1M? Seriously? They'll spend that much on the bandwidth to Milwaukee. Today. Just salary + benefits for these two people is probably close to $1M.

We recently released suicide prevention support on Facebook Live and introduced artificial intelligence to detect suicidal posts

Dead users don't click.

Facebook has always been about bringing people together

Um, no. The foundations of Facebook are "Wow, we can get rich shaming and and objectifying people? For the cost of bandwidth? I'm in!"

We employ social psychologists, social scientists and sociologists, and we collaborate with top scholars to better understand well-being and work to make Facebook a place that contributes in a positive way.

And tobacco employs microbiologists, geneticists, molecular biologists, I'll bet they even employ some physicians (pulmonologists?). Oil employs organic chemists, geologists, physicists, and scads of engineers. Who you employ tells us what kind of work you do, not why you do it.

Also, that video of a white guy with a beard? That's not David Ginsberg. I can't imagine why they would pick a splash image of an old white guy with a beard in front of a wall of books though... Oh, no, I can: they're psychologists. They know how to borrow symbols to manipulate your impression of the situation.

dvfjsdhgfv2• 9 years ago

In general I agree with your feelings. However...

Um, no. The foundations of Facebook are "Wow, we can get rich shaming and and objectifying people? For the cost of bandwidth? I'm in!"

I think it's an exaggeration. Sure they want to get rich, but I don't think they have bad intentions nor use shaming. Objectifying people - yes, but they do it in a similar way most other companies do.

ghostbrainalpha• 9 years ago

I feel like GP was referring to the scene in Social Network where the original use of Facebook was basically a never ending yearbook party for fraternities and sororities.

PhasmaFelis• 9 years ago

Sure they want to get rich, but I don't think they have bad intentions

    Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
    Zuckerberg: Just ask. 
    Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
    [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
    Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. 
    Zuckerberg: I don't know why. 
    Zuckerberg: They "trust me" 
    Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks.

mr_spothawk2• 9 years ago

Dead users don't click.

I wish this could be my mission statement.

killjoywashere2• 9 years ago

Why? How?....

sethrin• 9 years ago

In the same vein as, "Charlie don't surf" ?

dvfjsdhgfv2• 9 years ago

The fundamental question regarding the article is: Can these scientists afford to be honest? Can you do research that shows spending time on FB is bad for people and be allowed to publish this information?

On a superficial level, they seem to be honest. They start with the bad news, admitting that using FB the way many (most?) do makes them feel bad. But they counteract it immediately saying if you interact with others, you'll feel more happy.

You can overlook one critical difference. What FB makes you feel and whether FB is good for you are two different issues that may or may not be related. You may feel negative emotions when going to a doctor but it's still good for you. You can engage in endless chat online, but is it good for you? It's much harder to answer.

stanislavb• 9 years ago

"Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?" - YES. Dot.

johnwheeler• 9 years ago

This is damage control masquerading as concern over the comments Chamath Palihapitiya made about how facebook is ruining society.

Anyone who has a significant other or kids addicted to facebook knows it monopolizes attention and affects relationships negatively.

amelius• 9 years ago

Why isn't there AI/ML yet that can determine what kind of posts make me sad? I would have expected a "dislike" button by now that doesn't necessarily publish one's dislike, but instead trains the social media software what (not) to show.

systoll• 9 years ago

Facebook has 'Hide Post: show fewer posts like this' in the menu associated with each post.

nautilus12• 9 years ago

Oh passively reading facebook is not good for you but posting and adding more data to your ecosystem and furthering your algorithms is? You dont say? Oh and buying things from targeted ads is good for you too? Wow i didnt even know...thank you facebook, you clearly have my back.

Seriously how gullible do they think we are?

simonebrunozzi• 9 years ago

This is dumb.

Facebook should grant $10M to a neutral third party - a research facility - and let them conduct an unbiased study on the effect of social media. Then report the results no matter what.

It will never happen, for two reasons.

1) Facebook should well know that social media is bad for us (how much bad, I'm not sure), and therefore would never fund anything like this.

2) Even if an anonymous Bitcoin millionaire funds the research, it's hard to find a research institute / entity / team that would gladly take some money, only to know that any chance of receiving future grants from FB/Google/Microsoft/Amazon just went to zero.

I think these two FB researchers are well intentioned. But I would never trust anything like this.

ProAm2• 9 years ago

Good and evil is always relative to ones position.

This is a PR response to former FB employees posting/blogging in recent weeks that FB is bad and they wished they had not done what they did.[1] This is strictly a counter PR move FB had to make.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chamath-palihapitiya-former-fac...

tgragnato2• 9 years ago

A minimization of the issue through relativism, lack of objectivity (perpetrated through the omission of the most relevant details) is certainly what Facebook hopes.

This is a PR response [...]

There comes a time when there is a need for change, words only serve as a mean to manufacture consent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

A fallacious consensus is not what the community needs, nor is in Facebook long term interest.

JoshMnem2• 9 years ago

The cognitive dissonance over at Facebook must be immense. The idea that the solution is to post more things on Facebook is absurd, considering that it's how they snare users.

I know many people who interact with other users non-stop -- they are addicted, and it's totally a waste of their time.

kruhft• 9 years ago

No.

audiolion• 9 years ago

Facebook is a technology built to facilitate social interaction. When problems arise, Facebook naturally finds technological solutions to solve these problems. Perhaps the underlying cause is the technology. We did manage for many many many years without it.

chmln• 9 years ago

Unrelated: the font chosen for the article body is way too thin to read comfortably. I've noticed this trend over the past few years and it makes for appalling UX.

RHSman2• 9 years ago

Is spending time on social media reading about social media being bad for you, bad for you?

squarefoot• 9 years ago

They're bad even for those who refuse to use them, like when the neighbor rings you at 7:30 in the morning because his "facebook stopped working" and you got to bed at 3:00 after fighting with a customer windows PC.

Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?

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