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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'

by 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?".
  - matz1 8y ago
    Like any other thing in live, facebook can made your life better for some people, can make your life worse for some other. It what you make of it.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      I was not suggesting a positive or negative answer. Merely a question to consider at the individual level.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - emeraldbird 8y ago
      If we are right now discussing whether something is actually causing more harm than good, this statement seems to avoid the core of the issue. Does it usually help people to be and stay happy? If it does not make them happy - why do they use it?
- emeraldbird 8y ago
  I do not agree. Some things are clearly addictive and it is much easier to stay away from them. Maybe it is a character flaw that I do not think I will avoid to become addicted if I start smoking, but the fact is that smoking is so addictive that most people become addicted in very short time. There are other things less addictive but more damaging when you become addicted. Drugs like Meth or crocodile do exist, and they cause horrible things. I do not think that Facebook addiction is as bad as these, but when I see parents with babies on their street which pay much more attention to their phone than to their baby, I cannot see how this is going to cause something good.
s-shellfish 8y ago
Totally agreed. It's just chaos, because the mind that constantly requires a reflection of itself to prove it is healthy is not a healthy mind to begin with. Behaving in that pattern in a conditioned sense opens oneself up for all sorts of manipulation, which long term, that's quite a bit of suffering (if there's no genuine connection between members of a social group, hence, the group is prone to rapid shifts in likes/dislikes'. It becomes hard to determine intent - which makes the social environment untrustworthy, which in my opinion, is the basis of what is required for sanity. Trust. You can have that as something established over a long time, or you can have instant connection, just really 'get' someone and where they are coming from. Facebook is an addiction. There's plenty of places on the internet that encourage healthy dialogue and it's obvious / quite plain to see what is effective and what is ultimately destructive. I like HN a lot. So many other places on the internet, it seems like a popularity contest. Here I can get 0 or 1 upvotes but not feel ignored, not feel worse off for it. Healing, in many regards.
- roflc0ptic 8y ago
  Yeah, as much as people complain about hacker news' negativity - and it certainly is around - there's still a high concentration of thoughtful people interested in having respectful conversations.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    Yea, it seems to occasionally bubble up, unfortunately I've noticed that happens in real life to people as well, I suppose that is what gets called passive aggressive - deep internalized, unresolved issues. Always makes my heart hurts to watch. At the end of the day, a lot of us here are developers, engineers, programmers, still. A knack for pedantry, precision, and clarity leads to coming to, and accepting an awareness. Otherwise, bugs, bugs, bugs. Bugs everywhere. Clear thinking. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and so on.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    Also you will get scolded in a meaningful way if you screw up or say really dumb things with no evidence here.
prolikewh0a 8y ago
The "withdrawal" of them is bad too. You're essentially forced to create a new friend base because a lot of people just won't participate in a real meaningful friendship outside of Facebook. It's like you're not a person if you're not on some form of social media. I still type reddit.com into my browser just from muscle memory now 6-ish months after quitting.
- emeraldbird 8y ago
  This is another one: An organization which when you become a member of it, has such a negative influence on your social life that you have to create your social life newly when you quit it. Isn't that almost exactly the description of a cult?
- sandov 8y ago
  I typed "fa"[enter] into the adress bar for a couple of weeks after quitting facebook, only to remember that I had quit. First I felt empty, like I needed to log in, " just to see". Now, I know it was an excellent decision, I feel better and more content.
superioritycplx 8y ago
Overall, how much good vs bad is produced by Silicon Valley? I'm not so sure anymore. It seems like all the companies care about is to disrupt our lives, milking our attention and privacy dry.
Nuzzerino 8y ago
And when one's mental health diminishes, it affects everyone around them, virally.

by 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?".
- matz1 8y ago
  Like any other thing in live, facebook can made your life better for some people, can make your life worse for some other. It what you make of it.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    I was not suggesting a positive or negative answer. Merely a question to consider at the individual level.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - emeraldbird 8y ago
    If we are right now discussing whether something is actually causing more harm than good, this statement seems to avoid the core of the issue. Does it usually help people to be and stay happy? If it does not make them happy - why do they use it?
emeraldbird 8y ago
I do not agree. Some things are clearly addictive and it is much easier to stay away from them. Maybe it is a character flaw that I do not think I will avoid to become addicted if I start smoking, but the fact is that smoking is so addictive that most people become addicted in very short time. There are other things less addictive but more damaging when you become addicted. Drugs like Meth or crocodile do exist, and they cause horrible things. I do not think that Facebook addiction is as bad as these, but when I see parents with babies on their street which pay much more attention to their phone than to their baby, I cannot see how this is going to cause something good.

s-shellfish 8y ago

Totally agreed. It's just chaos, because the mind that constantly requires a reflection of itself to prove it is healthy is not a healthy mind to begin with. Behaving in that pattern in a conditioned sense opens oneself up for all sorts of manipulation, which long term, that's quite a bit of suffering (if there's no genuine connection between members of a social group, hence, the group is prone to rapid shifts in likes/dislikes'. It becomes hard to determine intent - which makes the social environment untrustworthy, which in my opinion, is the basis of what is required for sanity. Trust. You can have that as something established over a long time, or you can have instant connection, just really 'get' someone and where they are coming from. Facebook is an addiction. There's plenty of places on the internet that encourage healthy dialogue and it's obvious / quite plain to see what is effective and what is ultimately destructive. I like HN a lot. So many other places on the internet, it seems like a popularity contest. Here I can get 0 or 1 upvotes but not feel ignored, not feel worse off for it. Healing, in many regards.

roflc0ptic 8y ago
Yeah, as much as people complain about hacker news' negativity - and it certainly is around - there's still a high concentration of thoughtful people interested in having respectful conversations.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Yea, it seems to occasionally bubble up, unfortunately I've noticed that happens in real life to people as well, I suppose that is what gets called passive aggressive - deep internalized, unresolved issues. Always makes my heart hurts to watch. At the end of the day, a lot of us here are developers, engineers, programmers, still. A knack for pedantry, precision, and clarity leads to coming to, and accepting an awareness. Otherwise, bugs, bugs, bugs. Bugs everywhere. Clear thinking. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and so on.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  Also you will get scolded in a meaningful way if you screw up or say really dumb things with no evidence here.

prolikewh0a 8y ago

The "withdrawal" of them is bad too. You're essentially forced to create a new friend base because a lot of people just won't participate in a real meaningful friendship outside of Facebook. It's like you're not a person if you're not on some form of social media. I still type reddit.com into my browser just from muscle memory now 6-ish months after quitting.

emeraldbird 8y ago
This is another one: An organization which when you become a member of it, has such a negative influence on your social life that you have to create your social life newly when you quit it. Isn't that almost exactly the description of a cult?
sandov 8y ago
I typed "fa"[enter] into the adress bar for a couple of weeks after quitting facebook, only to remember that I had quit. First I felt empty, like I needed to log in, " just to see". Now, I know it was an excellent decision, I feel better and more content.

superioritycplx 8y ago

Overall, how much good vs bad is produced by Silicon Valley? I'm not so sure anymore. It seems like all the companies care about is to disrupt our lives, milking our attention and privacy dry.

Nuzzerino 8y ago

And when one's mental health diminishes, it affects everyone around them, virally.