3 ms·

30–40 years later we might be saying the same thing about social media.

by kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

dfee 9y ago
Probably not cancer, instead I’ll guess we’ll link it to the onset of serious mental diseases.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I think it's a proxy for our unwillingness or inability to tackle cognitive processing issues. Sometimes I talk about my mental health symptoms and people are 'well social media is making you ill,' but I have been struggling to articulate my cognitive difficulties to people since the 1970s. If I ever find myself with a large money surplus I would really like to spend some of it on MRIs or whatever sort of brain scan could help me figure out where my cognitive bottlenecks are.
noncoml 9y ago
I wonder if people 80-100 years ago were as hysteric about radio and TV as we are today about social media.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  They weren't. Television and especially radio were both cherished sources of reasonably reliable information in the beginning.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    No, they weren't. They became, over time, accepted sources of trusted and emotionally engaging information, but IIRC studies many decades ago showed that—controlling for consumption of other news media like newspapers—increased consumption of news content from either or both broadcast media was associated with decreased knowledge of current events. They were never sources of reliable information (and, yes, from early on there were negative reactions against the mass acceptance, just as there are today for social media.)
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  You may be interested in the writings of Marshall McLuhan. He was a philosopher and analyst of media who wrote about the effects of television (and all other forms of media) and gained popularity in the 60's and 70's. One point he noted was how instantaneous global communication via television (and later the internet) enabled terrorists to hijack global attention: >Terrorism is an invention through which any two armed people can take over an entire industry, namely television, with the eager cooperation of its owners. -Matshall McLuhan
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Social media amplifies the hysteria. E.g. us lot on HN which itself is social media of a sort.
- vlehto 9y ago
  Has that been shown false? Especially TV does not seem like a thing that promotes mental health.
tlb 9y ago
That our industry sponsored studies on the effects of social media, and buried the studies that showed harm? One hopes not, but the scenario where an industry sponsors studies into the harmfulness of its own products, has proven over and over again to be a recipe for bad science. And as this article shows, the file drawer effect can cause billions of QALYs of harm. Now would be the time do do something about it, not 30-40 years from now. The high bit is that all studies must be registered in advance and report their data. If you're a researcher, you shouldn't agree to do a study where the results won't be reported if the sponsor doesn't like them.

30–40 years later we might be saying the same thing about social media.

dfee 9y ago

Probably not cancer, instead I’ll guess we’ll link it to the onset of serious mental diseases.

anigbrowl 9y ago
I think it's a proxy for our unwillingness or inability to tackle cognitive processing issues. Sometimes I talk about my mental health symptoms and people are 'well social media is making you ill,' but I have been struggling to articulate my cognitive difficulties to people since the 1970s. If I ever find myself with a large money surplus I would really like to spend some of it on MRIs or whatever sort of brain scan could help me figure out where my cognitive bottlenecks are.

noncoml 9y ago

I wonder if people 80-100 years ago were as hysteric about radio and TV as we are today about social media.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago
They weren't. Television and especially radio were both cherished sources of reasonably reliable information in the beginning.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  No, they weren't. They became, over time, accepted sources of trusted and emotionally engaging information, but IIRC studies many decades ago showed that—controlling for consumption of other news media like newspapers—increased consumption of news content from either or both broadcast media was associated with decreased knowledge of current events. They were never sources of reliable information (and, yes, from early on there were negative reactions against the mass acceptance, just as there are today for social media.)
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
You may be interested in the writings of Marshall McLuhan. He was a philosopher and analyst of media who wrote about the effects of television (and all other forms of media) and gained popularity in the 60's and 70's. One point he noted was how instantaneous global communication via television (and later the internet) enabled terrorists to hijack global attention: >Terrorism is an invention through which any two armed people can take over an entire industry, namely television, with the eager cooperation of its owners. -Matshall McLuhan
quickthrower2 9y ago
Social media amplifies the hysteria. E.g. us lot on HN which itself is social media of a sort.
vlehto 9y ago
Has that been shown false? Especially TV does not seem like a thing that promotes mental health.

tlb 9y ago

That our industry sponsored studies on the effects of social media, and buried the studies that showed harm? One hopes not, but the scenario where an industry sponsors studies into the harmfulness of its own products, has proven over and over again to be a recipe for bad science. And as this article shows, the file drawer effect can cause billions of QALYs of harm. Now would be the time do do something about it, not 30-40 years from now. The high bit is that all studies must be registered in advance and report their data. If you're a researcher, you shouldn't agree to do a study where the results won't be reported if the sponsor doesn't like them.