14 ms·

Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

317 points by brahmwg 8y ago

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
The most surprising thing to me about this report is that it was self reported. I have no doubt that there are an immense, and seemingly increasing, number of people that stake their self worth on social acceptance. What is surprising to me is that people do this while being consciously aware of it!
- RealityVoid 8y ago
  I think this is by no means a new phenomenon. We as humans have staked our self-worth on social acceptance for millenia, seeing how we are social animals and most of our successes were the consequence of our societal organization. What Facebook might have changed is whom our peers who we derive social acceptance are. That peer group seems to have changed from people close both as proximity and emotionally to people further away from us, who might not care as much about out emotional well being and feelings.
  - Satam 8y ago
    That is a very interesting idea; I'd also say it makes things more scary. Social media might not necessarily creating something new but it is abusing circuits that had already been instilled by evolution - quite powerful and important circuits at that.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    This is a really interesting idea, but I have a fundamental disagreement about society. I completely agree that small groups (family and very small collections of families) would have relied on social acceptance as being important, but I would argue that the giant leap forward that actually created society was specifically working with people without concern for acceptance. Look at chimps for instance. They also form these very small groups that can number in the tens of chimps. But their little groups are based almost entirely on acceptance and domination, and it prevents them from developing further. They instead just go to war and kill other chimp groups that reach these comparable sizes. And it never ends. They cannot seem to get over 'in group good, out group die'. By contrast, it seems extremely likely that we all started extremely similarly but at some point realized that instead of each of our little in groups killing each other, if we worked together we would become even stronger and able to kill even more groups to our mutual benefit. Add in some basic rules we agree to abide by, and you have what would be the seed of what would become 'society.' So as paradoxical as it sounds, I would argue that directly seeking approval as a means of self affirmation could even be a regression away from what creates society. Because working with the 'enemy' is hardly socially acceptable, yet that is precisely what's required for societies to continue to function. You'll never be accepted by everybody so it drives people into ever smaller insular chambers, which then go to metaphorical war with all the other groups, that may over time become less metaphorical. Come to think of it, this does not really seem all that far off from the state of contemporary society. So I would hypothesize something relatively similar sounding, but fundamentally different. In that social media is perhaps driving some to form these 'chimp style' groups, yet the nature of the internet and worldwide communication has turned these warring insular groups drive largely by acceptance, from the tens of people into the millions of people.
- eterm 8y ago
  To clarify for anyone reading this comment, self-reported means data obtained by questionnaires rather than observation by trained assessors. The key take-away is this paragraph: """ In other words, people who agreed with statements such as “My self-esteem depends on the opinions others hold of me” tended to also agree with statements such as “I spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook”, “I am using Facebook in order to forget my personal problems”, and “I use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on my job or studies.” """ So they were self-reporting is their feelings toward facebook and their feelings about their self-esteem, they weren't self-reporting the connection. They may not be aware of the connection between the two.
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    I'd like to see this replicated with a few tweaks for the « I am using $x » where $x could be porn, bets, games, books.. any means of escapism.
  - motohagiography 8y ago
    Important comment. I was just trying to figure out how using a self-reported survey to assess whether respondents have an underlying need for personal attention from others is not the most basic example of sample bias ever conceived of. The general early childhood emphasis on "pro-social," behaviors and performative identity is almost certainly creating generations of incompetent narcissists, but the way to test that hypothesis is probably not by offering them validation in exchange for their opinion, unless you are measuring them against an isolated control group.
lolive 8y ago
Anything about Twitter addiction? [That would avoid me the cost of a psychotherapy]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
iamben 8y ago
Pop science, but this probably helps explain why Facebook/Snapchat/etc are so popular with the teen demographic. I'm kinda glad we didn't have any of that when I was that age. Remembering back to how insecure I felt personally, I can't really begin to imagine the pressure of being on a 'social' platform at that age.
- cutety 8y ago
  > I can't really begin to imagine the pressure of being on a 'social' platform at that age. Completely agree, and I’m not too far removed from the social media madness of today. My 7th-8th grade (12-14 y/o) years where during MySpace’s hay day. And, at least amongst my peers, a lot of our world revolved around it. I remember people bragging about how many “friends” they had, there were actual fights about so-and-so being in (or not) someone’s top 8, and all sorts of petty drama in bulletin’s and comments. But, it was still just kind of a fun thing, while there were arguments such people got over them and quickly forgot, nobody took it that seriously. There was still a pretty solid divide between your MySpace life and real life. Nobody was always online, you would just get on MySpace when you were bored and wanted to talk to people/post passive aggressive/super teenage angsty bulletins about your crush that doesn’t like you. Then when I got to High School, that’s when Facebook became popular. I actually was a hold out, as I didn’t like Facebook as it didn’t feel the same, it felt more connected to real life (if that makes sense). But I eventually succumbed as nobody was getting on MySpace anymore. Fortunately I graduated before Snapchat existed, and Instagram was just becoming popular. And I can’t even imagine what stupid bullshit all these new always online, highly intimate, and tightly connected to your real life/identity social media’s bring about. My little brother just graduated high school, and from what I could see, a lot of his and his friends interactions were through social media, with some friends trying desperately to become internet famous, and a lot of subtweeting. I’m just glad this crap wasn’t around when I was a teen, because unlike MySpace, the things they’re posting/doing online aren’t likely to go away anytime soon (and I don’t think a lot of them realize that). Nowadays, the only social media I actively check is instagram. I still have my Facebook, but it gets checked maybe once a week, Snapchat is installed, but I haven’t sent anything in months, really only there for when someone sends me something so they don’t ask me why I didn’t open it. But, I even feel a small pressure to engage with social media, and the dopamine hits from getting likes is still nice. I can’t imagine what teens, most of which depend greatly on peer acceptance to determine their self-worth, deal with. Though, I’m interested in seeing how these always online, social media teens, grow up, and how social media will evolve because of it.
rcar1046 8y ago
Follow up: Jumping in pool linked to being wet
spr1ted 8y ago
People should get rid of facebook.. not because of your privacy, but for your own state of mind. Teenagers should not be on such platforms as the social norm will change and grow.
00__00 8y ago
Facebook is a cesspit. How did people come to see it as somewhere acceptable - a walled garden, akin to AOL circa 1997. Awful, Besides, what if it's not addiction, but something worse! http://www.netopia.eu/not-tech-addiction-something-worse/ http://www.netopia.eu/not-tech-addiction-something-worse/
austincheney 8y ago
How horrible. If I had a dime for every time somebody on the internet took a civil disagreement of opinion to an emotional level I would be a trillionaire. If this is how I qualified my self-worth I would be in a very bad place. This is also the reason I deleted my Reddit account. God forbid you offer technical advise or attempt to explain a complex subject and the answer somehow becomes extremely political. The biggest example I remember is the folks at r/programming really REALLY want WASM to replace JavaScript. I, being a long time JavaScript programmer, explained how WASM isn't replacing JavaScript for technical reasons and the stated goals around that technology. Immediate emotional failure on an epic scale. I could have said something about harming children and would have been less reviled. This isn't even a political subject. I imagine an actual political subreddit being quite comical. People get emotional online for all kinds of reasons. PRO TIP: there are many people online that cannot follow a conversation, possibly their own conversation, or who have trouble with basic reading comprehension. ANOTHER PRO TIP: echo chambers and conformity are very real qualities that easily feel threatened for nonthreatening reasons.
- lihaciudaniel 8y ago
  You are right.. But what made you to still use HN, it is still like reddit but more technical. Edit 1: assuming that you deleted reddit and you don't even browse it.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  > I could have said something about harming children and would have been less reviled. Yes, but that's literally because people see their technologies as being more human than most humans. It's something that goes down to an individuals core and is intrinsically defining of how they understand and express. Not saying it makes sense to average Joe. Just a different breed of person. For example, the soundness property of a language. Think about why that might be what creates the echo chamber, rather than thinking about how the echo chamber reacts when whatever contributes to verifying soundness is modified. The reaction might be a side effect, rather than an outright planned action.
  - austincheney 8y ago
bdz 8y ago
Social media is the new smoking. Cancer destroys you physically but these sites destroy your mental health. Not just Facebook but Instagram too for example, it's even worse. And don't forget Twitter.
- logicchains 8y ago
  That's just absurd. Maybe people with underlying psychological issues are somehow damaged by Facebook, but in my experience the majority of users (at the very least the people I know who use it) just see it as a convenient way to keep up with what friends are up to and share interesting jokes/memes, it's certainly not destroying their mental health. If someone suffers when they see other people doing well, because their self-worth is based on comparing themselves to others, that's a character flaw. It's going to keep making their lives miserable until they learn to address it, without or without Facebook around. People blaming Facebook seems like a classic case of addressing the symptoms not the disease; some people are so unwilling to make any effort to grow and better themselves that they'll do whatever they can to find an external source of blame for the effects of their unhealthy thinking patterns. It's so much easier to think "Facebook is evil" than to think "It's not healthy for me to judge myself in comparisons to others, I should work to learn to be happy at their success".
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > but in my experience the majority of users (at the very least the people I know who use it) just see it as a convenient way to keep up with what friends are up to and share interesting jokes/memes, it's certainly not destroying their mental health. It's a distraction. And a lot of people are addicted by it, so much they feel they need to "share" what they are doing or what they are thinking at least once a day. This focus on the Self and the ubiquity of social networks makes for a phenomenon that did not exist before. As for whether it is positive or negative, well it's a net loss of time (and mental attention since social networks tend to disrupt you the whole time with notifications) that could be spent somewhere else, and it's difficult to argue with that. Are there emotional benefits? Sure. Are such benefits more rewarding than the ones you would get from real-life networking and real-life activities? That should be the proper benchmark to use to make a judgment. For people who have lived before social networks existed, such evaluation could take the form of a simple question "has Facebook made your life any better?".
DanielGee 8y ago
What about HN's addiction to news about facebook? I thought after a year of relentless facebook spam, we were past this. Now the top two posts are about facebook. We have to kick this habit.
- hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
  1) It's a phenomenally successful tech company. 2) It's not uncommon in HN to dislike and/or distrust Facebook.
- bsheir74 8y ago
  When facebook stops being an important facet in many peoples lives, we can stop talking about it. Until then, we cant.
zerealshadowban 8y ago
Since modern philosophy has been teaching that reality is a social construct, why wouldn't it follow that each individual self is too? Further, we have been taught that values are socially determined (market prices, fashion, popular arts, ...) and that for the individual the highest moral compass resides in the well-being of others (e.g. utilitarianism, charity drives, altruism, welfare programs, ...). Given this, wouldn't it be abnormal to eschew social networks and the daily, hourly, validation they provide? of course people used to seek social acceptance in person, but physical social intercourse has been shrinking, so the online world is now where we can most easily obtain it. And soon, virtual worlds will provide in even greater abundance.
- lkrubner 8y ago
  This doesn't follow at all. I am very committed to the well-being of others, and donate my time and money in various ways to help, but I'm not on social media because it is so clearly a game that takes people away from their best ideals. As an example, consider people who post photos of the party they went to last night, or the vacation they took last week. There is a competition to suggest that their life is amazing. I don't judge them, and they are free to live however they wish, but that focus takes people away from the ideals of helping others. You mention that notion that reality is a social construct. This makes me think of Jean Baudrillard[1] and his assertion that the Gulf War I did not occur, it was simply a television show that we all watched. Baudrillard would obviously assert that Facebook is part of the Simulacra. (I don't think anyone can doubt that, so I'm not qualifying the sentence.) If one is trying to get back to something real, the path does not lead through Facebook. If one is trying to find real connections with other human beings, the path does not lead through Facebook. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
- cubano 8y ago
  Social highly-if-not-totally weights appearance over almost all other forms of human interactions. In my experience, photos get about 10x the likes of text-based posts. We can argue the exact amount, but we all must notice that pictures get far most attention then everything else, correct? Given this, isn't that quite obviously the wrong type of validation people should be seeking? The superficiality of how one looks should certainly not be weighted 10x over all other aspects of one's personality, and brings to mind the worst aspects of high-school-based in/out-group mechanics. At it's best, it's simply welfare for the rich. People who look good already get the lion's share of "likes" and attention in the real world. It hardly seems like a good thing it should be so online as well.
hardwaresofton 8y ago
The way this is titled makes the relation seem directional, and in the wrong direction... Basing self worth on social acceptance definitely predates Facebook, and Facebook addiction is a pretty obvious consequence of the positive feedback loop that you'd get form using Facebook to feed that part of yourself. Not defending Facebook or any other social network here, I personally think Facebook is likely toxic -- but I think it's pretty hard for a social network to exist without having this flaw.
- dekhn 8y ago
  in any scientific article, if you reverse the causation in the title and it makes more sense, the author probably made an error. As a wise professor sitting in the audience said to the lecturer: "Normally we put the dependent variable on the Y axis".
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - emeraldbird 8y ago
    That is not correct. There are many processes which are self-augmenting. It is scientifically valid that heat causes fire. It is equally valid that fire causes heat. Other examples: A reduced reflection of sunlight on the Earth surface causes the surface to become warmer. In places where the surface is covered with ice, a warming surface reduces the reflection. Climate change is caused by an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate change is also very likely causing the amount of carbon dioxide to rise further, by releasing methane from methane hydrate on the seafloor, by releasing methane from the arctic tundra soils, and by causing wildfires. Another example: Poverty causes a lack of access to education. But a reduced access to education also causes poverty. All these are self-augmenting processes. This kind of feedback loop is also something typical for addiction.
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  I'm not so sure, a Skinner Box is designed to condition its occupants. Facebook cultivates a user's thirst for validation from other users. On a much, much smaller scale, Hacker News does it with the point system. That's not surprising, everybody is going for engagement. I disagree that every obsessed Facebook user is innately hooked on approval from others. Facebook pays the big bucks, has hundreds if not thousands of employees focused on this specific goal.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
calahad 8y ago
Seems right, but borders on being tautological.
1sttimeposter 8y ago
What about TV addiction, video game addiction, addiction to foods laden with high fructose corn syrup, or an other number of “addictions”? Point here is anything can have a good effect or negative effect. Everyone on HN has an addiction to talking negatively about things people have built or are building. Very rarely is anyone speaking about the good that results from what people are working on. People have and will always gravitate towards staking self worth on social-acceptance regardless of the communication channel. Whether it is their family, friends, classmates, colleagues and interaction happens over IM, email, in school cafeterias, locker rooms, people are looking for social acceptance and depending on how that goes there is a good or bad experience with it. Nothing new here nor does Facebook have anything to do with it. Facebook exposes you to more people and it doesn’t inherently do anything to you either negatively or positively. For every negative article there are hundreds of examples of good that comes from it. (My 2 cents)
- matz1 8y ago
  Probably due to HN demographics like myself, mostly introvert people who understandably despise social media.
- sridca 8y ago
  > People have and will always gravitate towards staking self worth on social-acceptance regardless of the communication channel. Indeed. Incidentally I always scroll further down to look for comments that acknowledge the problem at the profound level.
varshithr 8y ago
That's a bit much
oftenwrong 8y ago
Hacker News addiction linked to staking your self-worth on...
- freehunter 8y ago
  I came here to say this exactly. I'm only a hobbyist programmer even though I'm pretty darn good in my niche technical (non-programming) field. But almost every time I jump into the comments section my self-worth goes down a bit and I feel just a bit worse because really this is a community of programmers. And even though I'm not a programmer, I do write computer programs occasionally, and quite often I see people calling out my style of programming as the worst thing in the world. I have a side business, but I haven't created fifteen startups with successful exits, so I feel less important than a lot of people here. I don't have a Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition running Arch, so I'm not as pure as a lot of people here. I use Facebook and not Mastodon, so I'm a sheep contributing to the downfall of society. I live in the Midwest, where nothing happens and land is worthless and colleges are even worse and we don't even have the Internet here do we? If you think Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram are damaging to the self-worth of its consumers, try being someone who doesn't live in SV and 10x some Phoenix/Elixir at an AI-owned biomed non-profit stealth-mode VC-backed startup collective. I've never even wheeled a suitcase into Paul Graham's office! I'm basically worthless.
fallat 8y ago
HNers: Others studies relating to this?
snarfy 8y ago
What would hacker news addiction be?
naveen99 8y ago
Facebook, reddit, twitter, blind are like halfway betazoid telepathy on start trek. If you knew exactly how others judged you internally without them saying it, you would be devastated as a human. But the betazoids were fine. Maybe we just need time to develop coping mechanisms.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > But the betazoids were fine They’re also fictional. Privacy, i.e. the ability to hold thoughts and preferences to oneself, is intrinsically linked to agency. If everyone is looking for acceptance, we lose our places for madmen and geniuses.
- waterhouse 8y ago
  It's easy for writers to create a species that supposedly has a working society without figuring out the details of it, or even demonstrating that the details can be figured out. I furthermore suspect that several races are actually unworkable in the way they've been presented. Take the race from Darmok, whose entire method of communication is referencing scenes from history, and who don't seem to have any method of communicating mathematics or quantities; how could they develop civilization and technology to the point of building spaceships? Does every engineer have to learn the strength of every joint, the power requirements of every component, by reverse engineering, or what? It seems others have made this complaint before, and someone spends a whole article arguing that it's possible if we assume they're just extremely sophisticated[1]. (One also wonders how the Klingons managed to develop spacefaring technology while holding their scientists and engineers in contempt.) Star Trek has enough WTFs with biology (see e.g. "Genesis", where some virus that alters people's DNA causes extreme body modification including bone growth over a period of a few days, and changing their DNA back to normal also undoes all the body modification; everyone who's lost a limb wishes DNA worked that way) and physics (to give just one example: in "The Next Phase", Geordi is "phased out" and can walk through walls but doesn't fall through the floor; [2] claims the writers had an explanation that was cut from the episode, but the comments poke further holes in it), not to mention other plot holes (e.g. in DS9, in "Tears of the Prophets" the Dominion has created a bunch of cheap and powerful orbital weapon platforms that should turn the tide of the war with the Federation; the main characters manage to plant a Federation warp signature on their power source and cause the automated weapon platforms to destroy it, after which the Federation destroys the platforms and retakes that one system; patching this vulnerability should be trivial and there is no reason the Dominion shouldn't start setting up orbital weapon platforms in all their other systems, but they don't, as if some dumb villain said "You have failed me!" and killed the underling and scrapped the project (and as if the Federation knows this happened, because we never see anyone say "Gosh, what'll we do if the Dominion makes more weapon platforms programmed to never shoot their power source no matter its warp signature?"), but we don't see that scene; but then for some reason you see a few more platforms in one system a year later when it's too late to matter), that I put "the writers didn't seriously think it through" near the top of my list of explanations whenever something doesn't make sense to me. So I wouldn't take the depiction of Betazoids to be evidence that Betazoids could work as depicted. To play devil's advocate with the Betazoids: telepathy might make tyranny much more workable, if you can use it to detect any signs of betrayal, and beat people into submission until you can tell that they are fully cowed. You might, then, expect a stagnant society dominated by a despot and his loyal henchmen. On the other hand, maybe they could take the strategy of feeling completely cowed, but then, when they happen to see the tyrant in a vulnerable position, suddenly feeling strong and vengeful; the propensity to react in that way isn't an emotion, so the tyrant might not be able to detect it. (I think some humans have that kind of reaction for similar reasons.) Who knows. (Or maybe they gave themselves telepathy via genetic engineering after they'd developed spacefaring and had a stable, non-tyrannical society.) We don't actually have proof yet that humans will reach the point of colonizing other planets, though it does seem plausible. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/star-trek-tng-and-the-limits-of-language-shaka-when-the-walls-fell/372107/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/st... [2] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/5798/why-didnt-geordi-and-ro-fall-through-the-floor-in-the-next-phase-episode-of-t https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/5798/why-didnt-geo...
rustcharm 8y ago
There are many things wrong with Facebook, but this is just the people who don't like Facebook clucking their tongues and puffing their chests while proclaiming that they're somehow morally and intellectually superior than the people who do like Facebook.
yosito 8y ago
My understanding is that humans have evolved to stake their self worth on social acceptance. Facebook just capitalizes on this need that we all have. It's the natural extension of capitalism and why pure capitalism without regulation is evil.
- amelius 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on the connection with capitalism?
  - yosito 8y ago
    Capitalism = capitalizing on resources to make a profit. Facebook capitalizes on our need for social acceptance to make a profit.
amelius 8y ago
How do free/open alternatives like Mastodon avoid this problem?
- detaro 8y ago
  Not entirely, in so far it's happening when you provide the means to compare filtered perspectives on others' lives to yours. They do by not having the business pressure to optimize for an engagement, which leads to artificially highlighting things, hiding negative personal posts, push-notifications and e-mails to pull people back in when they stay away for a day or two, ...
paulie_a 8y ago
I actually had a discussion today about someone considering whether they should say "Happy birthday" because that other person didn't do that previously. Finally my response was "who gives a shit, it's Facebook, it doesn't fucking matter. Just unfriend her instead of bitching about it." That didn't resonate very well and the person had a very sullen attitude. but I stand by my statement. Facebook isn't that important.
- bsheir74 8y ago
  They were probably more upset at your rude tone than your stance on facebook. A nicer way to say it: "It's just facebook so i wouldnt worry about it. Do whatever you think is right and if theyre your friend in sure they'll appreciate it"
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    The person just wouldn't drop the issue and I did approach it softer and even attempted to change the subject. After 5 minutes of complaining about something so trivial I had enough. This is not the first time this person has obsessed and complained about something on Facebook. And I totally agree at that point I was rude
themagician 8y ago
Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts disappeared I suspect people would use these things fundamentally differently. I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years
  - themagician 8y ago
    In the short term I agree with you. But it decreases the long term value and utility of the platform IMO. Take Instagram. It used to be a platform for posting pictures. It was a digital version of Polaroid—an “instant” camera. When you look on Instagram now it’s core functionality and differentiation is basically gone. When you look on the explore tab you are hard pressed to find any photos at all, let alone ones that were taken with the camera itself. Instagram now is no different than Facebook or any other generic network, it’s just the biggest. The content is nonsensical and people will eventually get bored of it. At some point I think it occurs to every user, “why am I even doing this” and they bounce, so it always requires new users coming in to grow the userbase. IG is now easy, from a technical standpoint, to replace as it has no real identity. Just let people post whatever for internet points. Socially it’s hard to topple, but that’s hard to defend long term and somewhat out of your control. I just don’t see how or why IG exists ten years from now. For what? At least in its original incarnation it had a purpose, however niche, which might have had some long term viability. I think the best example of this is probably looking at the Chinese social apps like YY, Inke and Meipai. A billion people who don’t give a shit about Kylie Jenner and are developing apps with far more interesting features than anything we have.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
I think one’s self worth is intrinsically linked to acceptance, with or without Facebook, especially in younger people. FB (and others like it) just exploited the weakness.
mike503 8y ago
Black Mirror... Social scoring.
beenBoutIT 8y ago
Someone needs to figure out a way to clone Facebook circa 2005 and just call the site something other than 'Facebook'. Back then it was an amazing resource for university students and only allowed people with .edu email addresses from more reputable schools to join. You could use Facebook to access your course schedule and see lists of everyone that was in each of your classes. Gradually they relaxed the rules and started allowing faculty to join, then junior college students, etc.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
In related news, work addiction linked to staking your self worth on your bank balance.
Arete31415 8y ago
Considering the number of GoFundMe's I see for basic medical care, staking one's self-worth on social acceptance is not some weird psychological delusion. In this economy and country, social acceptance is the difference between life and death.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Somewhat ironically, the higher up you get on the socioeconomic hierarchy, the less true that is. Both in the obvious way (rich people have these little tokens called "dollars" that will make a surprising number of people and organizations do your bidding, particularly institutions like hospitals, colleges, and politicians), and in a much less obvious way: the most effective approach to acquiring these dollars is to become the monopoly provider for a good that lots of people need, and if you don't have lots of capital to buy up real estate and such, the most effective way to do that is often to seek out psychological desires that people have but don't want to admit they have (for example, being liked by everyone) and provide that. Yes, this is part of what makes social mobility hard. To move up the socioeconomic strata, you often have to abandon values that were essential to survival or self-worth at lower levels.
delbel 8y ago
the real question is, is it intentional as a means of social control? I noticed that the messenger app intentionally delays messages at a rate that is linked to dopamine ups/down -- when another person sent me a message, and I went to another area of the website, and paused, there message would "appear" right when I lost interest, re-engaging me into facebook -- so there is some kind of thought put into creating a feedback loop to stay addicted to the platform. That, and the facebook scientists who were caught screwing with people's minds via social experiments years back and actually openly published their results, with zero ethical considerations, leads me to be concerned that this might also be some kind of sinister plot to control dehumanize subjects on their platform.
mng42 8y ago
Social media knows how to play the game. It knows how to keep the herds hungry, happy, and most importantly loyal to the system. It strikes where it matters most --into the heart and mind of users. Poking the ego of 'self-worth', counting likes of social acceptance, sharing ego driven personal stories or unmattered opinions to get more and more attention and standout above the rest of the flock. Everything is a contagious fabricated reality that could be a slow poison to a naive. The bigger picture is it doesn't matter that much because that's the purpose of the business and it is sure succeeding. But we all have our own choice, we can use it either to advantage or disadvantage. Still, somehow it is fortunate for us present generation that we are now living in a complex system that makes things simple, it will keep on progressing and we must keep up so we can enjoy the minimum substantial benefits. I think we just need to understand the rules and we'll be OK.
sreyaNotfilc 8y ago
Wow, this topic is so relevant to me. I felt that I've became obsessed with "likes" recently on Reddit. Well, they call it karma. But, same thing. Karma points are kinda hard to get. Mainly because there are 3 things that has to happen - 1. Write your comment early enough 2. Write something witty enough 3. The thread needs to become somewhat popular Sports threads, mainly Game threads, are a gold mine for karma. I found, recently that I wrote things there partly because I loved the team and atmosphere (Braves fan), but also because I love refreshing and seeing all 'dem karma points. I've became so obsessed that I realized I had a problem. Each time I go onto Reddit (the new version), my eyes immediately darts to the top right of the screen to see if I went up or down. It became distracting that I looked for ways to turn it off. Reddit's user settings, from what I saw, doesn't have anything that will hide those points. Luckily, I could revert back to the old Reddit layout. Funny thing is, I'm barely on the Game threads now that I cannot see those points.
- Ntrails 8y ago
  - Looks top right of HN - See karma has gone up - Micro fistpump - See which comment got upvoted - Revel in own wit - Go back to work
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Substitute "Reddit" for "Hacker News". Same difference.
  - sreyaNotfilc 8y ago
    LOL, I just noticed I did the same thing just now. Ugh, the points. I'm working on a site as well that has up votes. Mostly to eliminate spam. I'm going to have the points hidden by default.
jokoon 8y ago
I remember using Facebook in 2008, and creating a group for my class. I advertised so that people could join it. It went horribly and a couple of student started insulting me for stupid things in the Facebook class group. It scarred me psychologically and emotionally, and I stopped using Facebook altogether and removed my account. Until there is true and real accountability for things you say online, using real names should not be a standard. Facebook is a real example of murky online behavior. It's a haven for bullies and other tough playing egos. It's going to poison the internet for a long time.

317 points by brahmwg 8y ago

The most surprising thing to me about this report is that it was self reported. I have no doubt that there are an immense, and seemingly increasing, number of people that stake their self worth on social acceptance. What is surprising to me is that people do this while being consciously aware of it!

RealityVoid 8y ago
I think this is by no means a new phenomenon. We as humans have staked our self-worth on social acceptance for millenia, seeing how we are social animals and most of our successes were the consequence of our societal organization. What Facebook might have changed is whom our peers who we derive social acceptance are. That peer group seems to have changed from people close both as proximity and emotionally to people further away from us, who might not care as much about out emotional well being and feelings.
- Satam 8y ago
  That is a very interesting idea; I'd also say it makes things more scary. Social media might not necessarily creating something new but it is abusing circuits that had already been instilled by evolution - quite powerful and important circuits at that.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  This is a really interesting idea, but I have a fundamental disagreement about society. I completely agree that small groups (family and very small collections of families) would have relied on social acceptance as being important, but I would argue that the giant leap forward that actually created society was specifically working with people without concern for acceptance. Look at chimps for instance. They also form these very small groups that can number in the tens of chimps. But their little groups are based almost entirely on acceptance and domination, and it prevents them from developing further. They instead just go to war and kill other chimp groups that reach these comparable sizes. And it never ends. They cannot seem to get over 'in group good, out group die'. By contrast, it seems extremely likely that we all started extremely similarly but at some point realized that instead of each of our little in groups killing each other, if we worked together we would become even stronger and able to kill even more groups to our mutual benefit. Add in some basic rules we agree to abide by, and you have what would be the seed of what would become 'society.' So as paradoxical as it sounds, I would argue that directly seeking approval as a means of self affirmation could even be a regression away from what creates society. Because working with the 'enemy' is hardly socially acceptable, yet that is precisely what's required for societies to continue to function. You'll never be accepted by everybody so it drives people into ever smaller insular chambers, which then go to metaphorical war with all the other groups, that may over time become less metaphorical. Come to think of it, this does not really seem all that far off from the state of contemporary society. So I would hypothesize something relatively similar sounding, but fundamentally different. In that social media is perhaps driving some to form these 'chimp style' groups, yet the nature of the internet and worldwide communication has turned these warring insular groups drive largely by acceptance, from the tens of people into the millions of people.
eterm 8y ago
To clarify for anyone reading this comment, self-reported means data obtained by questionnaires rather than observation by trained assessors. The key take-away is this paragraph: """ In other words, people who agreed with statements such as “My self-esteem depends on the opinions others hold of me” tended to also agree with statements such as “I spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook”, “I am using Facebook in order to forget my personal problems”, and “I use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on my job or studies.” """ So they were self-reporting is their feelings toward facebook and their feelings about their self-esteem, they weren't self-reporting the connection. They may not be aware of the connection between the two.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  I'd like to see this replicated with a few tweaks for the « I am using $x » where $x could be porn, bets, games, books.. any means of escapism.
- motohagiography 8y ago
  Important comment. I was just trying to figure out how using a self-reported survey to assess whether respondents have an underlying need for personal attention from others is not the most basic example of sample bias ever conceived of. The general early childhood emphasis on "pro-social," behaviors and performative identity is almost certainly creating generations of incompetent narcissists, but the way to test that hypothesis is probably not by offering them validation in exchange for their opinion, unless you are measuring them against an isolated control group.

lolive 8y ago

Anything about Twitter addiction? [That would avoid me the cost of a psychotherapy]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

iamben 8y ago

Pop science, but this probably helps explain why Facebook/Snapchat/etc are so popular with the teen demographic. I'm kinda glad we didn't have any of that when I was that age. Remembering back to how insecure I felt personally, I can't really begin to imagine the pressure of being on a 'social' platform at that age.

cutety 8y ago
> I can't really begin to imagine the pressure of being on a 'social' platform at that age. Completely agree, and I’m not too far removed from the social media madness of today. My 7th-8th grade (12-14 y/o) years where during MySpace’s hay day. And, at least amongst my peers, a lot of our world revolved around it. I remember people bragging about how many “friends” they had, there were actual fights about so-and-so being in (or not) someone’s top 8, and all sorts of petty drama in bulletin’s and comments. But, it was still just kind of a fun thing, while there were arguments such people got over them and quickly forgot, nobody took it that seriously. There was still a pretty solid divide between your MySpace life and real life. Nobody was always online, you would just get on MySpace when you were bored and wanted to talk to people/post passive aggressive/super teenage angsty bulletins about your crush that doesn’t like you. Then when I got to High School, that’s when Facebook became popular. I actually was a hold out, as I didn’t like Facebook as it didn’t feel the same, it felt more connected to real life (if that makes sense). But I eventually succumbed as nobody was getting on MySpace anymore. Fortunately I graduated before Snapchat existed, and Instagram was just becoming popular. And I can’t even imagine what stupid bullshit all these new always online, highly intimate, and tightly connected to your real life/identity social media’s bring about. My little brother just graduated high school, and from what I could see, a lot of his and his friends interactions were through social media, with some friends trying desperately to become internet famous, and a lot of subtweeting. I’m just glad this crap wasn’t around when I was a teen, because unlike MySpace, the things they’re posting/doing online aren’t likely to go away anytime soon (and I don’t think a lot of them realize that). Nowadays, the only social media I actively check is instagram. I still have my Facebook, but it gets checked maybe once a week, Snapchat is installed, but I haven’t sent anything in months, really only there for when someone sends me something so they don’t ask me why I didn’t open it. But, I even feel a small pressure to engage with social media, and the dopamine hits from getting likes is still nice. I can’t imagine what teens, most of which depend greatly on peer acceptance to determine their self-worth, deal with. Though, I’m interested in seeing how these always online, social media teens, grow up, and how social media will evolve because of it.

rcar1046 8y ago

Follow up: Jumping in pool linked to being wet

spr1ted 8y ago

People should get rid of facebook.. not because of your privacy, but for your own state of mind. Teenagers should not be on such platforms as the social norm will change and grow.

00__00 8y ago

Facebook is a cesspit. How did people come to see it as somewhere acceptable - a walled garden, akin to AOL circa 1997. Awful, Besides, what if it's not addiction, but something worse! http://www.netopia.eu/not-tech-addiction-something-worse/ http://www.netopia.eu/not-tech-addiction-something-worse/

austincheney 8y ago

How horrible. If I had a dime for every time somebody on the internet took a civil disagreement of opinion to an emotional level I would be a trillionaire. If this is how I qualified my self-worth I would be in a very bad place. This is also the reason I deleted my Reddit account. God forbid you offer technical advise or attempt to explain a complex subject and the answer somehow becomes extremely political. The biggest example I remember is the folks at r/programming really REALLY want WASM to replace JavaScript. I, being a long time JavaScript programmer, explained how WASM isn't replacing JavaScript for technical reasons and the stated goals around that technology. Immediate emotional failure on an epic scale. I could have said something about harming children and would have been less reviled. This isn't even a political subject. I imagine an actual political subreddit being quite comical. People get emotional online for all kinds of reasons. PRO TIP: there are many people online that cannot follow a conversation, possibly their own conversation, or who have trouble with basic reading comprehension. ANOTHER PRO TIP: echo chambers and conformity are very real qualities that easily feel threatened for nonthreatening reasons.

lihaciudaniel 8y ago
You are right.. But what made you to still use HN, it is still like reddit but more technical. Edit 1: assuming that you deleted reddit and you don't even browse it.
s-shellfish 8y ago
> I could have said something about harming children and would have been less reviled. Yes, but that's literally because people see their technologies as being more human than most humans. It's something that goes down to an individuals core and is intrinsically defining of how they understand and express. Not saying it makes sense to average Joe. Just a different breed of person. For example, the soundness property of a language. Think about why that might be what creates the echo chamber, rather than thinking about how the echo chamber reacts when whatever contributes to verifying soundness is modified. The reaction might be a side effect, rather than an outright planned action.
- austincheney 8y ago

bdz 8y ago

Social media is the new smoking. Cancer destroys you physically but these sites destroy your mental health. Not just Facebook but Instagram too for example, it's even worse. And don't forget Twitter.

logicchains 8y ago
That's just absurd. Maybe people with underlying psychological issues are somehow damaged by Facebook, but in my experience the majority of users (at the very least the people I know who use it) just see it as a convenient way to keep up with what friends are up to and share interesting jokes/memes, it's certainly not destroying their mental health. If someone suffers when they see other people doing well, because their self-worth is based on comparing themselves to others, that's a character flaw. It's going to keep making their lives miserable until they learn to address it, without or without Facebook around. People blaming Facebook seems like a classic case of addressing the symptoms not the disease; some people are so unwilling to make any effort to grow and better themselves that they'll do whatever they can to find an external source of blame for the effects of their unhealthy thinking patterns. It's so much easier to think "Facebook is evil" than to think "It's not healthy for me to judge myself in comparisons to others, I should work to learn to be happy at their success".
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > but in my experience the majority of users (at the very least the people I know who use it) just see it as a convenient way to keep up with what friends are up to and share interesting jokes/memes, it's certainly not destroying their mental health. It's a distraction. And a lot of people are addicted by it, so much they feel they need to "share" what they are doing or what they are thinking at least once a day. This focus on the Self and the ubiquity of social networks makes for a phenomenon that did not exist before. As for whether it is positive or negative, well it's a net loss of time (and mental attention since social networks tend to disrupt you the whole time with notifications) that could be spent somewhere else, and it's difficult to argue with that. Are there emotional benefits? Sure. Are such benefits more rewarding than the ones you would get from real-life networking and real-life activities? That should be the proper benchmark to use to make a judgment. For people who have lived before social networks existed, such evaluation could take the form of a simple question "has Facebook made your life any better?".

DanielGee 8y ago

What about HN's addiction to news about facebook? I thought after a year of relentless facebook spam, we were past this. Now the top two posts are about facebook. We have to kick this habit.

hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
1) It's a phenomenally successful tech company. 2) It's not uncommon in HN to dislike and/or distrust Facebook.
bsheir74 8y ago
When facebook stops being an important facet in many peoples lives, we can stop talking about it. Until then, we cant.

zerealshadowban 8y ago

Since modern philosophy has been teaching that reality is a social construct, why wouldn't it follow that each individual self is too? Further, we have been taught that values are socially determined (market prices, fashion, popular arts, ...) and that for the individual the highest moral compass resides in the well-being of others (e.g. utilitarianism, charity drives, altruism, welfare programs, ...). Given this, wouldn't it be abnormal to eschew social networks and the daily, hourly, validation they provide? of course people used to seek social acceptance in person, but physical social intercourse has been shrinking, so the online world is now where we can most easily obtain it. And soon, virtual worlds will provide in even greater abundance.

lkrubner 8y ago
This doesn't follow at all. I am very committed to the well-being of others, and donate my time and money in various ways to help, but I'm not on social media because it is so clearly a game that takes people away from their best ideals. As an example, consider people who post photos of the party they went to last night, or the vacation they took last week. There is a competition to suggest that their life is amazing. I don't judge them, and they are free to live however they wish, but that focus takes people away from the ideals of helping others. You mention that notion that reality is a social construct. This makes me think of Jean Baudrillard[1] and his assertion that the Gulf War I did not occur, it was simply a television show that we all watched. Baudrillard would obviously assert that Facebook is part of the Simulacra. (I don't think anyone can doubt that, so I'm not qualifying the sentence.) If one is trying to get back to something real, the path does not lead through Facebook. If one is trying to find real connections with other human beings, the path does not lead through Facebook. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
cubano 8y ago
Social highly-if-not-totally weights appearance over almost all other forms of human interactions. In my experience, photos get about 10x the likes of text-based posts. We can argue the exact amount, but we all must notice that pictures get far most attention then everything else, correct? Given this, isn't that quite obviously the wrong type of validation people should be seeking? The superficiality of how one looks should certainly not be weighted 10x over all other aspects of one's personality, and brings to mind the worst aspects of high-school-based in/out-group mechanics. At it's best, it's simply welfare for the rich. People who look good already get the lion's share of "likes" and attention in the real world. It hardly seems like a good thing it should be so online as well.

hardwaresofton 8y ago

The way this is titled makes the relation seem directional, and in the wrong direction... Basing self worth on social acceptance definitely predates Facebook, and Facebook addiction is a pretty obvious consequence of the positive feedback loop that you'd get form using Facebook to feed that part of yourself. Not defending Facebook or any other social network here, I personally think Facebook is likely toxic -- but I think it's pretty hard for a social network to exist without having this flaw.

dekhn 8y ago
in any scientific article, if you reverse the causation in the title and it makes more sense, the author probably made an error. As a wise professor sitting in the audience said to the lecturer: "Normally we put the dependent variable on the Y axis".
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- emeraldbird 8y ago
  That is not correct. There are many processes which are self-augmenting. It is scientifically valid that heat causes fire. It is equally valid that fire causes heat. Other examples: A reduced reflection of sunlight on the Earth surface causes the surface to become warmer. In places where the surface is covered with ice, a warming surface reduces the reflection. Climate change is caused by an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate change is also very likely causing the amount of carbon dioxide to rise further, by releasing methane from methane hydrate on the seafloor, by releasing methane from the arctic tundra soils, and by causing wildfires. Another example: Poverty causes a lack of access to education. But a reduced access to education also causes poverty. All these are self-augmenting processes. This kind of feedback loop is also something typical for addiction.
anothergoogler 8y ago
I'm not so sure, a Skinner Box is designed to condition its occupants. Facebook cultivates a user's thirst for validation from other users. On a much, much smaller scale, Hacker News does it with the point system. That's not surprising, everybody is going for engagement. I disagree that every obsessed Facebook user is innately hooked on approval from others. Facebook pays the big bucks, has hundreds if not thousands of employees focused on this specific goal.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

calahad 8y ago

Seems right, but borders on being tautological.

1sttimeposter 8y ago

What about TV addiction, video game addiction, addiction to foods laden with high fructose corn syrup, or an other number of “addictions”? Point here is anything can have a good effect or negative effect. Everyone on HN has an addiction to talking negatively about things people have built or are building. Very rarely is anyone speaking about the good that results from what people are working on. People have and will always gravitate towards staking self worth on social-acceptance regardless of the communication channel. Whether it is their family, friends, classmates, colleagues and interaction happens over IM, email, in school cafeterias, locker rooms, people are looking for social acceptance and depending on how that goes there is a good or bad experience with it. Nothing new here nor does Facebook have anything to do with it. Facebook exposes you to more people and it doesn’t inherently do anything to you either negatively or positively. For every negative article there are hundreds of examples of good that comes from it. (My 2 cents)

matz1 8y ago
Probably due to HN demographics like myself, mostly introvert people who understandably despise social media.
sridca 8y ago
> People have and will always gravitate towards staking self worth on social-acceptance regardless of the communication channel. Indeed. Incidentally I always scroll further down to look for comments that acknowledge the problem at the profound level.

varshithr 8y ago

That's a bit much

oftenwrong 8y ago

Hacker News addiction linked to staking your self-worth on...

freehunter 8y ago
I came here to say this exactly. I'm only a hobbyist programmer even though I'm pretty darn good in my niche technical (non-programming) field. But almost every time I jump into the comments section my self-worth goes down a bit and I feel just a bit worse because really this is a community of programmers. And even though I'm not a programmer, I do write computer programs occasionally, and quite often I see people calling out my style of programming as the worst thing in the world. I have a side business, but I haven't created fifteen startups with successful exits, so I feel less important than a lot of people here. I don't have a Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition running Arch, so I'm not as pure as a lot of people here. I use Facebook and not Mastodon, so I'm a sheep contributing to the downfall of society. I live in the Midwest, where nothing happens and land is worthless and colleges are even worse and we don't even have the Internet here do we? If you think Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram are damaging to the self-worth of its consumers, try being someone who doesn't live in SV and 10x some Phoenix/Elixir at an AI-owned biomed non-profit stealth-mode VC-backed startup collective. I've never even wheeled a suitcase into Paul Graham's office! I'm basically worthless.

fallat 8y ago

HNers: Others studies relating to this?

snarfy 8y ago

What would hacker news addiction be?

naveen99 8y ago

Facebook, reddit, twitter, blind are like halfway betazoid telepathy on start trek. If you knew exactly how others judged you internally without them saying it, you would be devastated as a human. But the betazoids were fine. Maybe we just need time to develop coping mechanisms.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> But the betazoids were fine They’re also fictional. Privacy, i.e. the ability to hold thoughts and preferences to oneself, is intrinsically linked to agency. If everyone is looking for acceptance, we lose our places for madmen and geniuses.
waterhouse 8y ago
It's easy for writers to create a species that supposedly has a working society without figuring out the details of it, or even demonstrating that the details can be figured out. I furthermore suspect that several races are actually unworkable in the way they've been presented. Take the race from Darmok, whose entire method of communication is referencing scenes from history, and who don't seem to have any method of communicating mathematics or quantities; how could they develop civilization and technology to the point of building spaceships? Does every engineer have to learn the strength of every joint, the power requirements of every component, by reverse engineering, or what? It seems others have made this complaint before, and someone spends a whole article arguing that it's possible if we assume they're just extremely sophisticated[1]. (One also wonders how the Klingons managed to develop spacefaring technology while holding their scientists and engineers in contempt.) Star Trek has enough WTFs with biology (see e.g. "Genesis", where some virus that alters people's DNA causes extreme body modification including bone growth over a period of a few days, and changing their DNA back to normal also undoes all the body modification; everyone who's lost a limb wishes DNA worked that way) and physics (to give just one example: in "The Next Phase", Geordi is "phased out" and can walk through walls but doesn't fall through the floor; [2] claims the writers had an explanation that was cut from the episode, but the comments poke further holes in it), not to mention other plot holes (e.g. in DS9, in "Tears of the Prophets" the Dominion has created a bunch of cheap and powerful orbital weapon platforms that should turn the tide of the war with the Federation; the main characters manage to plant a Federation warp signature on their power source and cause the automated weapon platforms to destroy it, after which the Federation destroys the platforms and retakes that one system; patching this vulnerability should be trivial and there is no reason the Dominion shouldn't start setting up orbital weapon platforms in all their other systems, but they don't, as if some dumb villain said "You have failed me!" and killed the underling and scrapped the project (and as if the Federation knows this happened, because we never see anyone say "Gosh, what'll we do if the Dominion makes more weapon platforms programmed to never shoot their power source no matter its warp signature?"), but we don't see that scene; but then for some reason you see a few more platforms in one system a year later when it's too late to matter), that I put "the writers didn't seriously think it through" near the top of my list of explanations whenever something doesn't make sense to me. So I wouldn't take the depiction of Betazoids to be evidence that Betazoids could work as depicted. To play devil's advocate with the Betazoids: telepathy might make tyranny much more workable, if you can use it to detect any signs of betrayal, and beat people into submission until you can tell that they are fully cowed. You might, then, expect a stagnant society dominated by a despot and his loyal henchmen. On the other hand, maybe they could take the strategy of feeling completely cowed, but then, when they happen to see the tyrant in a vulnerable position, suddenly feeling strong and vengeful; the propensity to react in that way isn't an emotion, so the tyrant might not be able to detect it. (I think some humans have that kind of reaction for similar reasons.) Who knows. (Or maybe they gave themselves telepathy via genetic engineering after they'd developed spacefaring and had a stable, non-tyrannical society.) We don't actually have proof yet that humans will reach the point of colonizing other planets, though it does seem plausible. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/star-trek-tng-and-the-limits-of-language-shaka-when-the-walls-fell/372107/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/st... [2] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/5798/why-didnt-geordi-and-ro-fall-through-the-floor-in-the-next-phase-episode-of-t https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/5798/why-didnt-geo...

rustcharm 8y ago

There are many things wrong with Facebook, but this is just the people who don't like Facebook clucking their tongues and puffing their chests while proclaiming that they're somehow morally and intellectually superior than the people who do like Facebook.

yosito 8y ago

My understanding is that humans have evolved to stake their self worth on social acceptance. Facebook just capitalizes on this need that we all have. It's the natural extension of capitalism and why pure capitalism without regulation is evil.

amelius 8y ago
Could you elaborate on the connection with capitalism?
- yosito 8y ago
  Capitalism = capitalizing on resources to make a profit. Facebook capitalizes on our need for social acceptance to make a profit.

amelius 8y ago

How do free/open alternatives like Mastodon avoid this problem?

detaro 8y ago
Not entirely, in so far it's happening when you provide the means to compare filtered perspectives on others' lives to yours. They do by not having the business pressure to optimize for an engagement, which leads to artificially highlighting things, hiding negative personal posts, push-notifications and e-mails to pull people back in when they stay away for a day or two, ...

paulie_a 8y ago

I actually had a discussion today about someone considering whether they should say "Happy birthday" because that other person didn't do that previously. Finally my response was "who gives a shit, it's Facebook, it doesn't fucking matter. Just unfriend her instead of bitching about it." That didn't resonate very well and the person had a very sullen attitude. but I stand by my statement. Facebook isn't that important.

bsheir74 8y ago
They were probably more upset at your rude tone than your stance on facebook. A nicer way to say it: "It's just facebook so i wouldnt worry about it. Do whatever you think is right and if theyre your friend in sure they'll appreciate it"
- paulie_a 8y ago
  The person just wouldn't drop the issue and I did approach it softer and even attempted to change the subject. After 5 minutes of complaining about something so trivial I had enough. This is not the first time this person has obsessed and complained about something on Facebook. And I totally agree at that point I was rude

themagician 8y ago

Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts disappeared I suspect people would use these things fundamentally differently. I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years
- themagician 8y ago
  In the short term I agree with you. But it decreases the long term value and utility of the platform IMO. Take Instagram. It used to be a platform for posting pictures. It was a digital version of Polaroid—an “instant” camera. When you look on Instagram now it’s core functionality and differentiation is basically gone. When you look on the explore tab you are hard pressed to find any photos at all, let alone ones that were taken with the camera itself. Instagram now is no different than Facebook or any other generic network, it’s just the biggest. The content is nonsensical and people will eventually get bored of it. At some point I think it occurs to every user, “why am I even doing this” and they bounce, so it always requires new users coming in to grow the userbase. IG is now easy, from a technical standpoint, to replace as it has no real identity. Just let people post whatever for internet points. Socially it’s hard to topple, but that’s hard to defend long term and somewhat out of your control. I just don’t see how or why IG exists ten years from now. For what? At least in its original incarnation it had a purpose, however niche, which might have had some long term viability. I think the best example of this is probably looking at the Chinese social apps like YY, Inke and Meipai. A billion people who don’t give a shit about Kylie Jenner and are developing apps with far more interesting features than anything we have.

h4b4n3r0 8y ago

I think one’s self worth is intrinsically linked to acceptance, with or without Facebook, especially in younger people. FB (and others like it) just exploited the weakness.

mike503 8y ago

Black Mirror... Social scoring.

beenBoutIT 8y ago

Someone needs to figure out a way to clone Facebook circa 2005 and just call the site something other than 'Facebook'. Back then it was an amazing resource for university students and only allowed people with .edu email addresses from more reputable schools to join. You could use Facebook to access your course schedule and see lists of everyone that was in each of your classes. Gradually they relaxed the rules and started allowing faculty to join, then junior college students, etc.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

In related news, work addiction linked to staking your self worth on your bank balance.

Arete31415 8y ago

Considering the number of GoFundMe's I see for basic medical care, staking one's self-worth on social acceptance is not some weird psychological delusion. In this economy and country, social acceptance is the difference between life and death.

nostrademons 8y ago
Somewhat ironically, the higher up you get on the socioeconomic hierarchy, the less true that is. Both in the obvious way (rich people have these little tokens called "dollars" that will make a surprising number of people and organizations do your bidding, particularly institutions like hospitals, colleges, and politicians), and in a much less obvious way: the most effective approach to acquiring these dollars is to become the monopoly provider for a good that lots of people need, and if you don't have lots of capital to buy up real estate and such, the most effective way to do that is often to seek out psychological desires that people have but don't want to admit they have (for example, being liked by everyone) and provide that. Yes, this is part of what makes social mobility hard. To move up the socioeconomic strata, you often have to abandon values that were essential to survival or self-worth at lower levels.

delbel 8y ago

the real question is, is it intentional as a means of social control? I noticed that the messenger app intentionally delays messages at a rate that is linked to dopamine ups/down -- when another person sent me a message, and I went to another area of the website, and paused, there message would "appear" right when I lost interest, re-engaging me into facebook -- so there is some kind of thought put into creating a feedback loop to stay addicted to the platform. That, and the facebook scientists who were caught screwing with people's minds via social experiments years back and actually openly published their results, with zero ethical considerations, leads me to be concerned that this might also be some kind of sinister plot to control dehumanize subjects on their platform.

mng42 8y ago

Social media knows how to play the game. It knows how to keep the herds hungry, happy, and most importantly loyal to the system. It strikes where it matters most --into the heart and mind of users. Poking the ego of 'self-worth', counting likes of social acceptance, sharing ego driven personal stories or unmattered opinions to get more and more attention and standout above the rest of the flock. Everything is a contagious fabricated reality that could be a slow poison to a naive. The bigger picture is it doesn't matter that much because that's the purpose of the business and it is sure succeeding. But we all have our own choice, we can use it either to advantage or disadvantage. Still, somehow it is fortunate for us present generation that we are now living in a complex system that makes things simple, it will keep on progressing and we must keep up so we can enjoy the minimum substantial benefits. I think we just need to understand the rules and we'll be OK.

sreyaNotfilc 8y ago

Wow, this topic is so relevant to me. I felt that I've became obsessed with "likes" recently on Reddit. Well, they call it karma. But, same thing. Karma points are kinda hard to get. Mainly because there are 3 things that has to happen - 1. Write your comment early enough 2. Write something witty enough 3. The thread needs to become somewhat popular Sports threads, mainly Game threads, are a gold mine for karma. I found, recently that I wrote things there partly because I loved the team and atmosphere (Braves fan), but also because I love refreshing and seeing all 'dem karma points. I've became so obsessed that I realized I had a problem. Each time I go onto Reddit (the new version), my eyes immediately darts to the top right of the screen to see if I went up or down. It became distracting that I looked for ways to turn it off. Reddit's user settings, from what I saw, doesn't have anything that will hide those points. Luckily, I could revert back to the old Reddit layout. Funny thing is, I'm barely on the Game threads now that I cannot see those points.

Ntrails 8y ago
- Looks top right of HN - See karma has gone up - Micro fistpump - See which comment got upvoted - Revel in own wit - Go back to work
EADGBE 8y ago
Substitute "Reddit" for "Hacker News". Same difference.
- sreyaNotfilc 8y ago
  LOL, I just noticed I did the same thing just now. Ugh, the points. I'm working on a site as well that has up votes. Mostly to eliminate spam. I'm going to have the points hidden by default.

jokoon 8y ago

I remember using Facebook in 2008, and creating a group for my class. I advertised so that people could join it. It went horribly and a couple of student started insulting me for stupid things in the Facebook class group. It scarred me psychologically and emotionally, and I stopped using Facebook altogether and removed my account. Until there is true and real accountability for things you say online, using real names should not be a standard. Facebook is a real example of murky online behavior. It's a haven for bullies and other tough playing egos. It's going to poison the internet for a long time.