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Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

241 points by elliekelly 7y ago

dang 7y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863
ryannevius 7y ago
TL;DR from the abstract of the actual study: > In a randomized experiment, we find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election (i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use. Deactivation reduced post-experiment valuations of Facebook, suggesting that traditional metrics may overstate consumer surplus.
- wideasleep1 7y ago
  " (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; " I interpret that as 'reduced propaganda and it's resultant effects". Much like giving up television.
  - dcabrejas 7y ago
    Polarization has been the trend in the western world for the last decade, slowly but surely countries are being divided and polirized more and more. It doesn't paint a good picture of the future for sure, and social media is part of the problem unfortunately.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      Personally I consider polarization the ultimate in intellectual laziness as a scapegoat. The problem is that people disagree! Not that they any stances are particularly evil or insane, factionalism, zero sum thinking, nor any actual solution in mind. Asking if they have any ideas for a solution just gets a dirty look as you commit the faux pau of actually attempting to get people to think. Instead it is just one word which tries to sound smart but is utterly vapid repeated as nausuem as the source of modern ills. Polarization! Never mind that lack of it has historically lead to /way worse/ outcomes. Unity is not a good thing in itself.
optimaton 7y ago
When you stop using Facebook, it makes the quality of your life better.
Santosh83 7y ago
Facebook is moderately useful for keeping in touch with people you want to hear from and who just won't use email/Mastadon or whatever, and for interest-based groups and events. That is all. And as long as you strictly restrict yourself to using only the website through a browser and eschew their apps and carefully go over the privacy settings and tune them to your needs you should be okay. As for endlessly scrolling the newsfeed all day, well that is not so much Facebook's fault as that people who do that are probably having too much idle time and not knowing how to do some productive or more creative activity. If Facebook did not exist those people would trawl through Twitter or Youtube or something else.
- zenhack 7y ago
  > As for endlessly scrolling the newsfeed all day, well that is not so much Facebook's fault as that people who do that are probably having too much idle time and not knowing how to do some productive or more creative activity. If Facebook did not exist those people would trawl through Twitter or Youtube or something else. ehh... yes and no. On the one hand, there is something to the idea that folks should take responsibility for figuring out how to not waste their time like this (if they consider it a problem; if you want to spend all day on goofing around on the internet, have fun I guess). There's some internal motivation required to make that happen that's a skill worth learning. ...but on the other hand, companies spend a ton of money researching how to keep people "engaged." This includes hiring psychologists to help them fine-tune the crap out of their platforms to make them addictive. Given that level of manipulative behavior, I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the users. And yes, without Facebook they might just do the same on Twitter or YouTube, but those platforms are doing the same thing. It doesn't make it ok just because everyone else is doing it.
  - fenwick67 7y ago
    This is what pisses me off about using Facebook. I just want status updates and photos from my friends. If I could literally mute all shared content (memes, twitter dunk screenshots and "shares") it would be a much nicer platform to use, but from Facebook's perspective this would be awful because I would be on and off the site in a few minutes. It turns out I really just wanted MySpace with photo albums.
justlexi93 7y ago
You won't see bulls and live life outside the online world.
Calvin02 7y ago
HN's Facebook obsession is so unproductive. Let it go already. Focus on building your own thing. Yes, people use Facebook. No, you don't have to. Edit: yes, please downvote this comment. Let the HN naval gazing continue.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  People who use Facebook often ask you to use Facebook, too…
  - Calvin02 7y ago
    That’s a stupid argument. Plenty of people now state that they aren’t active on social networks. HN just has an unhealthy obsession with Facebook. Get over it already.
  - tyfon 7y ago
    Not only that, they put events for our kids activities on facebook. I have to ask to be emailed about these events and often I get a screenshot of their facebook post! You should not have to be on a platform to participate and luckily everyone that I explained this problem to understands it and do send me the email with events. But it creates enormous pressure to be on the platform.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism. HN is hardly alone on this, plenty of other sites including redit and a few others that I know of hate on facebook regularly.
  - sbmthakur 7y ago
    > FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism. I don't get how Facebook is detrimental to society. Probably I am missing something. The majority of people do have an option to delete their account or simply not to log in. Apart from Facebook's involvement in scandals like Cambridge Analytica, I don't see what's wrong with the site or company. It's true that it can be used for causing harm, but that's true for almost every other tech out there.
01100011 7y ago
Personally, giving up facebook saves about 10-15 minutes a day. I feel better, not because my friends' stories were making me feel inadequate, but because it is one less stream of mostly useless information that I need to filter and process. I miss seeing pictures of my friends. I do not miss people regurgitating political memes. I don't think quitting FB dramatically improved my life satisfaction or happiness.
whiddershins 7y ago
I can’t overstate how transformative a 2 year Facebook hiatus has been. Maybe I was an extreme case, but it had a horrible effect on me and I would never consider using it regularly again.
- sincerely 7y ago
  Instagram has so many low-quality ads that show up so frequently when scrolling through the feed/stories that it's like they don't even WANT me to get addicted
- JoeyJoJoJunior 7y ago
  In what way did it have a horrible effect for you?
malloreon 7y ago
Now study the effects of dropping instagram
mastazi 7y ago
For me the greatest improvement came from stopping using Twitter and Reddit rather than Facebook or Instagram (I quit using all four within the last year, Youtube is the only social media service that I'm still regularly consuming, I'd like to quit that too), of course this is based on my personal situation and the way I personally use all of those media. In my specific case I have the impression that Twitter and Reddit are somehow more addictive and they used to have the largest detrimental impact on my mental health. With Facebook, that impact is moderate and with Instagram I would say almost non existent.
- jsmonkey 7y ago
  Same here. At least in Facebook you mostly communicate with people you've chosen to accept as friends, and know who they really are. Reddit and Twitter on the other hand show all the bad sides of anonymity to the fullest. Way too much blind tribalism and conflict seeking, few adults actually capable of real discussion. So it's not only a waste of time, but one that gives you a bad mood as well.
  - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
    The echo chamber is real. I went cold turkey on Twitter after using it for 10 years and gaining about 6k followers. Twitter was the #1 source of left-wing extremist noise in my life. I'm sure there were/are right-wing extremists on that platform too, but one seemed to appear in my algorithmic feed more than the other. Or perhaps it was confirmation bias. Who knows! Good riddance.
    - numpad0 7y ago
      Both side's on it. In fact there's no sides. Just that Twitter is competent at removing constructive elements and distilling hatred/rage/anger for profit and it's working against you. There are few ways to strip out some of their 10-year "improvement" and oh how deserted it looks under there...
      - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
johnmarcus 7y ago
this is true of any poor online habit people develop though, i don't think it has too much in particular to do with Facebook. If you asked Reddit or Hacker News readers to do the same, I almost guarantee similar or the same results.
- dcabrejas 7y ago
  This is true for most of the finding. But not for politics, in my opinion. I think people are more likely to get polalized in Facebook than in ycombinator. In fact it is known that political campaigns invest heavily in facebook adds. And this is worse than most of the regular media, which although biased, at least provides some sort of fact checking or push back usually.
watwut 7y ago
My attempts to not use Facebook and social media typically ended with substantial social isolation. The range of media I consumed became significantly smaller, because apparently got variety from other peoples suggestions. Maybe these articles are about people who have great IRL communities they fit perfectly in, but some of us are mostly lonely unless we keep at least those weak ties via network. So ironically, I am not in period of starting to use Facebook again, so that I have more contact with people again.
- prox 7y ago
  Why not go do social hobbies? Photography or creative clubs, walking groups, dance classes, book reading clubs, volunteer work. There is lots to choose from.
  - watwut 7y ago
    I have job and kids. And I am already using my allocated "for me" time for sport. It gives some social contact, but not enough. Social hobbies require significant time spent hanging out, but are not child friendly so they are out. Besides that, walking groups or book reading clubs don't exist here. Photography or creative clubs exist only in form of structured classes, where you pay for two lessons a week. Adults/older people, they mostly come and hurry back home - which is what I would do too I guess anyway. They are not really social places where you come for idle chat and build relationships that survive end of semester. So it does not even matter that none of these activities appeals to me in any way - I could not belong to creative group, because I completely sux at art and find it frustrating.
    - prox 7y ago
      That makes sense, tbf you do have a family, for a moment there I thought you were alone, alone. Another suggestion (last one ;) if you have a family is board games. You have adult / kid games,lots of banter to be had and can be played with other families for a good time. Also everyone sux at art in the beginning :)
    - fenwick67 7y ago
mlang23 7y ago
I totally quit television about a year ago, and it had a very noticeable positive impact on me. I also mostly quit Facebook with the end of last year. I say mostly, because I still use its event calendar, and occasionally check my stream. But I significantly reduced the amount of comments I leave on that platform. I feel like, while the criticism of FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit and co is pretty much warranted, we managed to push aside the biggest time sink we already have since the 60s. TV, and Netflix, for that matter, is wasting our time since many many years.
- ygggvg 7y ago
  Wasting our time? Why would you think it is wasting time?
  - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    time spent in a way that made you feel good isn't wasted. maybe it had no economic output but that isn't a waste. But the long term benefit of TV/Video isn't a diet that's good for you. Consider all the things you could do (not "achieve") if you'd use it for reading books, travel, learning a language or art. What this medium robs you of is boredom, which maybe feels great in the short run, but is hugely damaging to your creativity, focus and (probably even) mental health. When I deleted facebook I noticed a huge improvement, but also I shifted my attention to other things which are equally addictive (HN, and my "personal information pipeline"). So like when I stopped smoking and moved to caffeine and sugar I substituted my FB addiction with other forms of unhealthy consumption. Getting rid of FB is therefore easy but getting rid of the underlying addiction is _really_ hard. Sitting alone in a room with your thoughts is almost impossible (for most). Try it for a couple of days! Do nothing - not even reading a book you'll feel like you're going insane! What works though is taking really long walks, or going out to nature for a few weeks (or months) and being on your own. You won't feel bored for long I'll promise! The most awesome memories I personally have are from things that made zero sense (and often in the most terrible circumstances).
    - Ntrails 7y ago
pmontra 7y ago
In my case I'm spending less time of FB (almost only for work) and more on HN and other sites. Definitely more on WhatsApp groups with people I meet in real life. Basically I'm losing contacts with people living hundreds or thousands of km away that I don't see even any other year. No impact on news, there are plenty of sources outside FB. FB never was my primary source.
test6554 7y ago
I’ve been off Facebook since 2009 or so. The only feature I miss is being notified about people’s birthdays.
- floppydiskette 7y ago
  I made the conscious decision to just make a list of everyone’s birthday I cared about before I deleted FB. I often hear people say, “I wish I could leave Facebook, but how would I know when anyone’s birthday is?” which I don’t see as an insurmountable task. Since in your case you didn’t save them before deleting it, I wonder if it would be an interesting opportunity to randomly message people you haven’t spoken with in a while, to put some birthdays in the calendar.
gitgud 7y ago
Too much of anything can be harmful to your mind, including hacker news...
codingmess 7y ago
"there are, obviously, many better ways to keep up with news than Facebook" Such as? Except for Twitter, I don't really know any? I'd love to have a trustworthy source for curated news, but I am not aware of one.
mellowdream 7y ago
I thought I was clever to disable YouTube viewing history, thus replacing all the interesting and addictive videos I normally get lost in with the most inane garbage from the typical "news" vendors, sports highlights, celebrity interviews, Star Wars/capeshit theorycrafting, crap from Business Insider and TED and the like, etc. which I of course planned to never watch... Now when I want to avoid working I just end up watching stupid clickbait instead of interesting clickbait...
- bandwitch 7y ago
  What I found really helpful in reducing Youtube viewing time, is to use a browser-extension that hides recommended video all together. This way, you only watch videos you explicitly searched for.
kristopolous 7y ago
Use a time tracker browser plugin for a week. Look back at the results, decide if it's how you want to spend your time.
- cairo_x 7y ago
  > time tracker browser plugin Any recommendations?
  - kristopolous 7y ago
    I use https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime-tracker/ppaojnbmmaigjmlpjaldnkgnklhicppk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime-tracker/pp... seems to be fine.
oli5679 7y ago
I wrote a Selenium bot to unsubscribe from notifications from all my friends. Now I just use Facebook for messaging and events.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
For me: Newspaper: late 70's-2002 Friendster: 2003-2005 TV: late 70's-2006 Myspace: 2004-2006 Orkut: 2005-2006 Facebook: 2003-2007 /.: 2004-2007 Flickr: 2004-2010 Radio: late 70's-2011 Twitter: 2008-2013 Quora: 2009-2013 Snap: 2012-2013 Meat agriculture & palm kernel oil (yeah, yeah no stupid comments): late 70's-2014 Reddit: 2017-2020 LinkedIn: 2004-2020 IRC: 1996- Craigslist: 2000- eBay: 2001- Amazon: 2001- AliExpress: 2016- Wish: 2019- Addicted to materialism, I guess.
- mymythisisthis 7y ago
  You could add RSS 2006-2018
GekkePrutser 7y ago
I wonder if people will ever quit Facebook.. I mean after all the stuff that's happened and they still haven't. We had a discussion about this recently in my Spanish class. Someone asked me for my facebook and when I said I closed it long ago they were all like "eeewww privacy freak". So I explained my reasons, the abuse of personal data, the manipulation of the masses (Cambridge Analytica) and the others immediately sprang to life saying how horrible it all is. And turned out to have good knowledge of the facts. But yeah, it's so easy to stay in touch with friends.. Well yes I know, as an expat it's not easy without it. Still, their initial "ewww" reaction really surprises me considering their apprehension at Facebook's practices.
- deepnet 7y ago
  It is awful that staying in contact with messages from friends and loved ones forces one to be exposed to Facebook's addictive advertising, propaganda and surveillance machine - especially as Facebook is a monopoly. Legislation enshrining adversarial interoperability would allow competition to improve user experience. But now Facebook is a kingmaker akin to the Murdoch press legislators are not incentivised to corral Facebook. Imagine a message client that interacts with facebookosphere and allows the use of a single detoxified client for messages and feeds from all protocols, services and ospheres.
- gjs278 7y ago
  tricking stupid people into voting for trump is not horrible. you’re a weirdo for not using facebook over that.
- mlang23 7y ago
  Facebook, like many other things in our society, is a Clan-thing. "My clan vs your clan" is a game that humans play very very well. Their initial reaction is just "oh, you are not one of us". If you talk about the details, they might agree with you, but they still fall for the "not one of my clan"-thing initially. Same happens with many things. Linux vs Windows vs Mac OS Android vs iOS Left vs Right Vegetarian vs meat-eater vaxxination vs anti-vaxx choose your poison.
  - 7y ago
karimmaassen 7y ago
I still use Reddit, Youtube and Twitter on a daily basis. I get to choose what to follow, how and for that, it's informative (and a time-passing activity for sure) and useful. Facebook, on the other hand, is an all or nothing app in my opinion. It's difficult to distinguish between who to friend and who not. Close friends and family members, I keep in touch with through WhatsApp, text and whatnot. As an entertainment (or informative) platform, Facebook is even worse. Sensationalism and misinformation is rampant, or you're bombarded with ads. And you're not really allowed to interact or disagree without getting into a de-railed discussion. On top of that, you're comparing your life with those of others (' highlights). It's a useless and depressing timesink (which Instagram is as well for those exact same reasons). I'm glad I quit Facebook (for 99%).
Hitton 7y ago
The benefits seem quite significant. I wonder if I could start using Facebook too so I can subsequently quit it and reap these benefits too.
WiPo 7y ago
The way I choose to use FB or Twitter is to check one's profile before the actual meeting happens so I could have some 'common knowledge' with him to talk about. As a researcher and programmer, it's crucial to realize that you couldn't do anything meaningful or fundamental without immersing yourself into thinking and being kinda isolated. I'm kinda pessimistic about this round of internet bubble as it seems to come out of the exploitation of people's spare time and attention by using superficial content and instant satisfaction. (FB, Netflix, Tik-Tok, etc) But productivity is indeed boosted. I couldn't imagine WFH being so widespread 20 years ago, but now with a smartphone, you can basically meet, chat, work on documents/ projects, taking lectures from elementary to graduate level. So in the long-term, I'm still optimistic that, maybe after the burst of the current bubble, people will realize how addicted they've been, and how they should adapt to new techs.
bilekas 7y ago
I stopped using Facebook a good few years ago (4+), and to be honest, I know it had a positive impact on me, but at the time I was a very frustrated with almost a feeling of being blocked off from some part of society/friends. Now I have absolutely no reservations saying : 'No sorry I dont have FB' and it's such a relief. I do still have other bad habits such as over consumption of youtube/news sites which I'm also working on, but I recommend the leap away from the plague of Faceobok. When I have kids, I genuinely will be very diligent about deamonizing all social media and education around modest useage. The social media enviornment has exploded so fast there has never been time to fully realise the impacts or the effects later. But all indications look towards it being incredibly damaging.
catoc 7y ago
I haven't had a television for the past 15 years - have not missed it one second. And what is this facebook thing?
PaulRobinson 7y ago
I would love to see similar studies done on other social media platforms. I quit Facebook a couple of years ago and went back to take a look recently. Whole bucket of "nope" right there. I am now concerned about other platforms I find quite sticky though, including Reddit, HN and particularly Twitter.
frereubu 7y ago
Related to reducing media exposure and the attendant increase in the sense of wellbeing, this is a lovely article by the Serbian / American poet Charles Simic, about discovering how his dad had attained "Olympian calm": "Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day. My own inordinate interest in what the lunatics are up to in every corner of our planet has to do with my childhood. When I was three years old in Belgrade, German bombs started falling on my head. By the time I was seven, I was accustomed to seeing dead people lying in the street, or hung from telephone poles, or thrown into ditches with their throats cut. Like any child growing up in an occupied city during wartime, I didn’t think much about it. I was as serene then as I will ever be, sitting among the ruins smoking my first cigarette, riding on a Russian tank with a friend, or watching our school janitor hang the portraits of Marx, Stalin and Marshal Tito in our classroom after the liberation." https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/
- pjc50 7y ago
  I'm not sure this distinguishes between wellbeing and post-traumatic stress disorder.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Detachment has its place in mental health but that is more when realizing "this is bullshit and doesn't matter". Like keeping up with the Joneses. If you don't actually enjoy any of that or find it useful just saying "fuck that and fuck you" to the social pressures is being anomalously sane. To be honest all of the 1950s Zeitgeist reeks of suppressed trauma addressed in an unhealthy way. The whole lawn obsession reached a zenith from homesickness in Europe and POW camps - and that is just one of the milder examples. Kids ended up taking this state as a deeply unhealthy norm.
philpem 7y ago
Does anyone know of a similar study regarding Twitter usage and its peculiar dark patterns? I'm curious if the findings are "social media in general" or "just Facebook"
OliverJones 7y ago
It's interesting that a bunch of economists found no evidence of any economic losses from quitting FB. Nobody reported loss of any economic opportunity, access to purchase something they wanted, or anything like that, due to foregoing use of that platform. Did the researchers fail to look for those things? Or did they just not come up?
heartbeats 7y ago
I did this. The only thing it gave me was social isolation. People look at you funny when you tell them you don't have a facebook account. If you have a well-developed circle of friends, sure. But this only holds for what, half of Americans? I don't know people well enough that I'd have a functioning social life without Facebook, unfortunately. I think this holds for many other people as well.
anovikov 7y ago
Biggest takeaway: a therapy is typically 2x$100 an hour sessions per week. Quitting Facebook provides 25-40% of the effect? Facebook is free? Not even close.
kriro 7y ago
Sometimes I feel like I have a "genetic advantage" to not be attracted by social media. I have a Twitter account that I rarely use (mostly for API-access for NLP research), I check into my Facebook account maybe once a month and have never used Instagram. I watch some things on Youtube (usually recorded lectures or tech talks or board game videos) but rarely ever "drift" towards recommended videos and the like. I used to be on IRC a lot back in the day but quit it completely, I used to frequent specialized forums, especially when I was an online poker player but also have quit those completely. Don't have a Reddit account and am not really following that. I guess my HN account is the most used social media right now. I also don't feel the urge to post and share pictures which I notice a lot in my friends. Sometimes it feels like a moment doesn't exist for them unless they can capture it in a picture (whereas for me it actually disturbs the enjoyment of the moment to stop and take a picture). I instant message but am notorious for "answering late" and keep getting complaints that I don't check everything immediately. I usually put my phone on the charger when I get back to work and only look at it every now and then, sometimes not at all until I go to bed. Interestingly, I am very interested in how social media works technologically and have also been an early adopter of many technologies. However I feel like I'm fairly "results oriented" when it comes to social media so I expect some sort of benefit from using them vs. the time spent. I've also noticed that I'd probably test well on my ability to delay gratification and I feel like this might be correlated with social media consumption in some way (maybe there's studies on this?).
- joelbluminator 7y ago
  Well u still take the time to write lengthy stories in HackerNews, so maybe you're not 100% immune to this?
- _lacroix 7y ago
  Do you find that you tend to get sucked into to ANYTHING in your life? Content, substances, activities? I find that I have a very addictive personality across the board - once something feels good it's very hard to stop even when I consciously want to or it's making me feel bad. This happens to me with social media, TV, alcohol, drugs, and occasionally even reading or a new hobby I'm really into. Rather than the ability to delay gratification, I'd imagine social media consumption is correlated to whatever it is about the brain's dopamine pathways that leads some people to get addicted to things more easily than others.
ja3k 7y ago
I wonder if selecting your population via people who respond to a Facebook ad about studying quitting social media introduces any bias. (I can't see the article so I don't know what their ad actually was) I worry that the correct takeaway is people who are interested in the idea of taking a break from social media probably should. Maybe the study was sufficiently well compensated that people who feel positively about social media still felt participation was worthwhile?
- hogFeast 7y ago
  It is amazing to me that yours appears to be the only question that asks this. But yes, there are problems with this study imo...none of which are really addressed in the paper. Giving someone $100 to quit is kind of an "economist" thing to do but is that really enough of an incentive to do something you wouldn't otherwise do? No. They do say that their ad didn't mention quitting Facebook. And they did some kind of survey first (which is how they got the $100 figure if I understood that correctly) but it still doesn't look great to me. In particular, they claim that they did an RCT because they randomly assigned the people who clicked on their ad...that isn't random. I also think compliance is far harder to observe than the author's believe. The subjects deactivate, and if they log back in it reactivates but is that foolproof? Not really. Tbf though, the number of subjects who fail to complete is low given upside of $100...so maybe. The key parts of the survey really rely on self-reporting (will people have a bias to report improved wellbeing given all the bad publicity about FB? probably). But yeah, this isn't really an RCT. It would be nice to see one but I think the issue is that most people who use Facebook a lot probably aren't interested in stopping.
rtkaratekid 7y ago
I used to use Instagram quite a bit. Got really frustrated with the vapidness and pointlessness of it. When I gave it up, I just felt like this weight had been lifted. No need to look at how cool others’ lives seem to be, just time to live my own and enjoy it for my own sake rather than sharing. These days I prefer to use social media as a form of dialogue, almost like forums, than anything else. The focus is on ideas and conversation.... which is why I actually really enjoy HN.
VLM 7y ago
Facebook is a good example of the damage that can be done by the self imposed jail of binary thinking. The proposed binary thinking option is users will be detrimentally manipulated and exploited as an advertising product where the manipulation is sometimes intense enough to exacerbate mental illnesses, whereas the binary alternative of deleting everything and going Unibomber will result in extreme social and job related ostracism because obviously "he's trying to hide something". There are analog middle options that are just as valid as the polarizing binary extremes. I have a perfectly good FB account with plenty of connections, but I only log in every couple months. A little awkward when someone wishes me happy birthday and I don't see it until four months later, but whatever. Most of the time stuff that was posted six months ago is irrelevant today, and likewise I feel pretty safe ignoring most of what was posted today. I find that on FB, as with any other online media, that there's at least 10 to 100 times as much lurking as posting, so there's really not that much to read anyway. For example my best old work friend is about as much of a lurker as I am, so there's really nothing to see. Or to summarize, the negative effects of deleting your account have nothing to do with the result of "stop using facebook", if you simply stop using it and do not delete your account.
jokoon 7y ago
I've stopped using it in 2009 because of a fallout with my classmates. Sometimes I wonder if I missed social occasions because of not using facebook. Generally I realized facebook didn't really allow to "make new friends" because it lacks "discovery" features. Now there are social networks who are focused on neighborhood and honestly I wish facebook would do something about discovery. I haven't heard from the facebook dating app either. Facebook, even if it's successful, feels like such a big waste of potential.
RedBeetDeadpool 7y ago
Facebook is what a social network would be if it was a capitalist engine for data mining and advertisement injections. Facebook is not a social network for connecting people with people they care about.

241 points by elliekelly 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076863

TL;DR from the abstract of the actual study: > In a randomized experiment, we find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election (i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use. Deactivation reduced post-experiment valuations of Facebook, suggesting that traditional metrics may overstate consumer surplus.

wideasleep1 7y ago
" (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; " I interpret that as 'reduced propaganda and it's resultant effects". Much like giving up television.
- dcabrejas 7y ago
  Polarization has been the trend in the western world for the last decade, slowly but surely countries are being divided and polirized more and more. It doesn't paint a good picture of the future for sure, and social media is part of the problem unfortunately.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Personally I consider polarization the ultimate in intellectual laziness as a scapegoat. The problem is that people disagree! Not that they any stances are particularly evil or insane, factionalism, zero sum thinking, nor any actual solution in mind. Asking if they have any ideas for a solution just gets a dirty look as you commit the faux pau of actually attempting to get people to think. Instead it is just one word which tries to sound smart but is utterly vapid repeated as nausuem as the source of modern ills. Polarization! Never mind that lack of it has historically lead to /way worse/ outcomes. Unity is not a good thing in itself.

optimaton 7y ago

When you stop using Facebook, it makes the quality of your life better.

Santosh83 7y ago

Facebook is moderately useful for keeping in touch with people you want to hear from and who just won't use email/Mastadon or whatever, and for interest-based groups and events. That is all. And as long as you strictly restrict yourself to using only the website through a browser and eschew their apps and carefully go over the privacy settings and tune them to your needs you should be okay. As for endlessly scrolling the newsfeed all day, well that is not so much Facebook's fault as that people who do that are probably having too much idle time and not knowing how to do some productive or more creative activity. If Facebook did not exist those people would trawl through Twitter or Youtube or something else.

zenhack 7y ago
> As for endlessly scrolling the newsfeed all day, well that is not so much Facebook's fault as that people who do that are probably having too much idle time and not knowing how to do some productive or more creative activity. If Facebook did not exist those people would trawl through Twitter or Youtube or something else. ehh... yes and no. On the one hand, there is something to the idea that folks should take responsibility for figuring out how to not waste their time like this (if they consider it a problem; if you want to spend all day on goofing around on the internet, have fun I guess). There's some internal motivation required to make that happen that's a skill worth learning. ...but on the other hand, companies spend a ton of money researching how to keep people "engaged." This includes hiring psychologists to help them fine-tune the crap out of their platforms to make them addictive. Given that level of manipulative behavior, I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the users. And yes, without Facebook they might just do the same on Twitter or YouTube, but those platforms are doing the same thing. It doesn't make it ok just because everyone else is doing it.
- fenwick67 7y ago
  This is what pisses me off about using Facebook. I just want status updates and photos from my friends. If I could literally mute all shared content (memes, twitter dunk screenshots and "shares") it would be a much nicer platform to use, but from Facebook's perspective this would be awful because I would be on and off the site in a few minutes. It turns out I really just wanted MySpace with photo albums.

justlexi93 7y ago

You won't see bulls and live life outside the online world.

Calvin02 7y ago

HN's Facebook obsession is so unproductive. Let it go already. Focus on building your own thing. Yes, people use Facebook. No, you don't have to. Edit: yes, please downvote this comment. Let the HN naval gazing continue.

saagarjha 7y ago
People who use Facebook often ask you to use Facebook, too…
- Calvin02 7y ago
  That’s a stupid argument. Plenty of people now state that they aren’t active on social networks. HN just has an unhealthy obsession with Facebook. Get over it already.
- tyfon 7y ago
  Not only that, they put events for our kids activities on facebook. I have to ask to be emailed about these events and often I get a screenshot of their facebook post! You should not have to be on a platform to participate and luckily everyone that I explained this problem to understands it and do send me the email with events. But it creates enormous pressure to be on the platform.
badrabbit 7y ago
FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism. HN is hardly alone on this, plenty of other sites including redit and a few others that I know of hate on facebook regularly.
- sbmthakur 7y ago
  > FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism. I don't get how Facebook is detrimental to society. Probably I am missing something. The majority of people do have an option to delete their account or simply not to log in. Apart from Facebook's involvement in scandals like Cambridge Analytica, I don't see what's wrong with the site or company. It's true that it can be used for causing harm, but that's true for almost every other tech out there.

01100011 7y ago

Personally, giving up facebook saves about 10-15 minutes a day. I feel better, not because my friends' stories were making me feel inadequate, but because it is one less stream of mostly useless information that I need to filter and process. I miss seeing pictures of my friends. I do not miss people regurgitating political memes. I don't think quitting FB dramatically improved my life satisfaction or happiness.

whiddershins 7y ago

I can’t overstate how transformative a 2 year Facebook hiatus has been. Maybe I was an extreme case, but it had a horrible effect on me and I would never consider using it regularly again.

sincerely 7y ago
Instagram has so many low-quality ads that show up so frequently when scrolling through the feed/stories that it's like they don't even WANT me to get addicted
JoeyJoJoJunior 7y ago
In what way did it have a horrible effect for you?

malloreon 7y ago

Now study the effects of dropping instagram

mastazi 7y ago

For me the greatest improvement came from stopping using Twitter and Reddit rather than Facebook or Instagram (I quit using all four within the last year, Youtube is the only social media service that I'm still regularly consuming, I'd like to quit that too), of course this is based on my personal situation and the way I personally use all of those media. In my specific case I have the impression that Twitter and Reddit are somehow more addictive and they used to have the largest detrimental impact on my mental health. With Facebook, that impact is moderate and with Instagram I would say almost non existent.

jsmonkey 7y ago
Same here. At least in Facebook you mostly communicate with people you've chosen to accept as friends, and know who they really are. Reddit and Twitter on the other hand show all the bad sides of anonymity to the fullest. Way too much blind tribalism and conflict seeking, few adults actually capable of real discussion. So it's not only a waste of time, but one that gives you a bad mood as well.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  The echo chamber is real. I went cold turkey on Twitter after using it for 10 years and gaining about 6k followers. Twitter was the #1 source of left-wing extremist noise in my life. I'm sure there were/are right-wing extremists on that platform too, but one seemed to appear in my algorithmic feed more than the other. Or perhaps it was confirmation bias. Who knows! Good riddance.
  - numpad0 7y ago
    Both side's on it. In fact there's no sides. Just that Twitter is competent at removing constructive elements and distilling hatred/rage/anger for profit and it's working against you. There are few ways to strip out some of their 10-year "improvement" and oh how deserted it looks under there...
    - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago

johnmarcus 7y ago

this is true of any poor online habit people develop though, i don't think it has too much in particular to do with Facebook. If you asked Reddit or Hacker News readers to do the same, I almost guarantee similar or the same results.

dcabrejas 7y ago
This is true for most of the finding. But not for politics, in my opinion. I think people are more likely to get polalized in Facebook than in ycombinator. In fact it is known that political campaigns invest heavily in facebook adds. And this is worse than most of the regular media, which although biased, at least provides some sort of fact checking or push back usually.

watwut 7y ago

My attempts to not use Facebook and social media typically ended with substantial social isolation. The range of media I consumed became significantly smaller, because apparently got variety from other peoples suggestions. Maybe these articles are about people who have great IRL communities they fit perfectly in, but some of us are mostly lonely unless we keep at least those weak ties via network. So ironically, I am not in period of starting to use Facebook again, so that I have more contact with people again.

prox 7y ago
Why not go do social hobbies? Photography or creative clubs, walking groups, dance classes, book reading clubs, volunteer work. There is lots to choose from.
- watwut 7y ago
  I have job and kids. And I am already using my allocated "for me" time for sport. It gives some social contact, but not enough. Social hobbies require significant time spent hanging out, but are not child friendly so they are out. Besides that, walking groups or book reading clubs don't exist here. Photography or creative clubs exist only in form of structured classes, where you pay for two lessons a week. Adults/older people, they mostly come and hurry back home - which is what I would do too I guess anyway. They are not really social places where you come for idle chat and build relationships that survive end of semester. So it does not even matter that none of these activities appeals to me in any way - I could not belong to creative group, because I completely sux at art and find it frustrating.
  - prox 7y ago
    That makes sense, tbf you do have a family, for a moment there I thought you were alone, alone. Another suggestion (last one ;) if you have a family is board games. You have adult / kid games,lots of banter to be had and can be played with other families for a good time. Also everyone sux at art in the beginning :)
  - fenwick67 7y ago

mlang23 7y ago

I totally quit television about a year ago, and it had a very noticeable positive impact on me. I also mostly quit Facebook with the end of last year. I say mostly, because I still use its event calendar, and occasionally check my stream. But I significantly reduced the amount of comments I leave on that platform. I feel like, while the criticism of FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit and co is pretty much warranted, we managed to push aside the biggest time sink we already have since the 60s. TV, and Netflix, for that matter, is wasting our time since many many years.

ygggvg 7y ago
Wasting our time? Why would you think it is wasting time?
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  time spent in a way that made you feel good isn't wasted. maybe it had no economic output but that isn't a waste. But the long term benefit of TV/Video isn't a diet that's good for you. Consider all the things you could do (not "achieve") if you'd use it for reading books, travel, learning a language or art. What this medium robs you of is boredom, which maybe feels great in the short run, but is hugely damaging to your creativity, focus and (probably even) mental health. When I deleted facebook I noticed a huge improvement, but also I shifted my attention to other things which are equally addictive (HN, and my "personal information pipeline"). So like when I stopped smoking and moved to caffeine and sugar I substituted my FB addiction with other forms of unhealthy consumption. Getting rid of FB is therefore easy but getting rid of the underlying addiction is _really_ hard. Sitting alone in a room with your thoughts is almost impossible (for most). Try it for a couple of days! Do nothing - not even reading a book you'll feel like you're going insane! What works though is taking really long walks, or going out to nature for a few weeks (or months) and being on your own. You won't feel bored for long I'll promise! The most awesome memories I personally have are from things that made zero sense (and often in the most terrible circumstances).
  - Ntrails 7y ago

pmontra 7y ago

In my case I'm spending less time of FB (almost only for work) and more on HN and other sites. Definitely more on WhatsApp groups with people I meet in real life. Basically I'm losing contacts with people living hundreds or thousands of km away that I don't see even any other year. No impact on news, there are plenty of sources outside FB. FB never was my primary source.

test6554 7y ago

I’ve been off Facebook since 2009 or so. The only feature I miss is being notified about people’s birthdays.

floppydiskette 7y ago
I made the conscious decision to just make a list of everyone’s birthday I cared about before I deleted FB. I often hear people say, “I wish I could leave Facebook, but how would I know when anyone’s birthday is?” which I don’t see as an insurmountable task. Since in your case you didn’t save them before deleting it, I wonder if it would be an interesting opportunity to randomly message people you haven’t spoken with in a while, to put some birthdays in the calendar.

gitgud 7y ago

Too much of anything can be harmful to your mind, including hacker news...

codingmess 7y ago

"there are, obviously, many better ways to keep up with news than Facebook" Such as? Except for Twitter, I don't really know any? I'd love to have a trustworthy source for curated news, but I am not aware of one.

mellowdream 7y ago

I thought I was clever to disable YouTube viewing history, thus replacing all the interesting and addictive videos I normally get lost in with the most inane garbage from the typical "news" vendors, sports highlights, celebrity interviews, Star Wars/capeshit theorycrafting, crap from Business Insider and TED and the like, etc. which I of course planned to never watch... Now when I want to avoid working I just end up watching stupid clickbait instead of interesting clickbait...

bandwitch 7y ago
What I found really helpful in reducing Youtube viewing time, is to use a browser-extension that hides recommended video all together. This way, you only watch videos you explicitly searched for.

kristopolous 7y ago

Use a time tracker browser plugin for a week. Look back at the results, decide if it's how you want to spend your time.

cairo_x 7y ago
> time tracker browser plugin Any recommendations?
- kristopolous 7y ago
  I use https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime-tracker/ppaojnbmmaigjmlpjaldnkgnklhicppk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime-tracker/pp... seems to be fine.

oli5679 7y ago

I wrote a Selenium bot to unsubscribe from notifications from all my friends. Now I just use Facebook for messaging and events.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

For me: Newspaper: late 70's-2002 Friendster: 2003-2005 TV: late 70's-2006 Myspace: 2004-2006 Orkut: 2005-2006 Facebook: 2003-2007 /.: 2004-2007 Flickr: 2004-2010 Radio: late 70's-2011 Twitter: 2008-2013 Quora: 2009-2013 Snap: 2012-2013 Meat agriculture & palm kernel oil (yeah, yeah no stupid comments): late 70's-2014 Reddit: 2017-2020 LinkedIn: 2004-2020 IRC: 1996- Craigslist: 2000- eBay: 2001- Amazon: 2001- AliExpress: 2016- Wish: 2019- Addicted to materialism, I guess.

mymythisisthis 7y ago
You could add RSS 2006-2018

GekkePrutser 7y ago

I wonder if people will ever quit Facebook.. I mean after all the stuff that's happened and they still haven't. We had a discussion about this recently in my Spanish class. Someone asked me for my facebook and when I said I closed it long ago they were all like "eeewww privacy freak". So I explained my reasons, the abuse of personal data, the manipulation of the masses (Cambridge Analytica) and the others immediately sprang to life saying how horrible it all is. And turned out to have good knowledge of the facts. But yeah, it's so easy to stay in touch with friends.. Well yes I know, as an expat it's not easy without it. Still, their initial "ewww" reaction really surprises me considering their apprehension at Facebook's practices.

deepnet 7y ago
It is awful that staying in contact with messages from friends and loved ones forces one to be exposed to Facebook's addictive advertising, propaganda and surveillance machine - especially as Facebook is a monopoly. Legislation enshrining adversarial interoperability would allow competition to improve user experience. But now Facebook is a kingmaker akin to the Murdoch press legislators are not incentivised to corral Facebook. Imagine a message client that interacts with facebookosphere and allows the use of a single detoxified client for messages and feeds from all protocols, services and ospheres.
gjs278 7y ago
tricking stupid people into voting for trump is not horrible. you’re a weirdo for not using facebook over that.
mlang23 7y ago
Facebook, like many other things in our society, is a Clan-thing. "My clan vs your clan" is a game that humans play very very well. Their initial reaction is just "oh, you are not one of us". If you talk about the details, they might agree with you, but they still fall for the "not one of my clan"-thing initially. Same happens with many things. Linux vs Windows vs Mac OS Android vs iOS Left vs Right Vegetarian vs meat-eater vaxxination vs anti-vaxx choose your poison.
- 7y ago

karimmaassen 7y ago

I still use Reddit, Youtube and Twitter on a daily basis. I get to choose what to follow, how and for that, it's informative (and a time-passing activity for sure) and useful. Facebook, on the other hand, is an all or nothing app in my opinion. It's difficult to distinguish between who to friend and who not. Close friends and family members, I keep in touch with through WhatsApp, text and whatnot. As an entertainment (or informative) platform, Facebook is even worse. Sensationalism and misinformation is rampant, or you're bombarded with ads. And you're not really allowed to interact or disagree without getting into a de-railed discussion. On top of that, you're comparing your life with those of others (' highlights). It's a useless and depressing timesink (which Instagram is as well for those exact same reasons). I'm glad I quit Facebook (for 99%).

Hitton 7y ago

The benefits seem quite significant. I wonder if I could start using Facebook too so I can subsequently quit it and reap these benefits too.

WiPo 7y ago

The way I choose to use FB or Twitter is to check one's profile before the actual meeting happens so I could have some 'common knowledge' with him to talk about. As a researcher and programmer, it's crucial to realize that you couldn't do anything meaningful or fundamental without immersing yourself into thinking and being kinda isolated. I'm kinda pessimistic about this round of internet bubble as it seems to come out of the exploitation of people's spare time and attention by using superficial content and instant satisfaction. (FB, Netflix, Tik-Tok, etc) But productivity is indeed boosted. I couldn't imagine WFH being so widespread 20 years ago, but now with a smartphone, you can basically meet, chat, work on documents/ projects, taking lectures from elementary to graduate level. So in the long-term, I'm still optimistic that, maybe after the burst of the current bubble, people will realize how addicted they've been, and how they should adapt to new techs.

bilekas 7y ago

I stopped using Facebook a good few years ago (4+), and to be honest, I know it had a positive impact on me, but at the time I was a very frustrated with almost a feeling of being blocked off from some part of society/friends. Now I have absolutely no reservations saying : 'No sorry I dont have FB' and it's such a relief. I do still have other bad habits such as over consumption of youtube/news sites which I'm also working on, but I recommend the leap away from the plague of Faceobok. When I have kids, I genuinely will be very diligent about deamonizing all social media and education around modest useage. The social media enviornment has exploded so fast there has never been time to fully realise the impacts or the effects later. But all indications look towards it being incredibly damaging.

catoc 7y ago

I haven't had a television for the past 15 years - have not missed it one second. And what is this facebook thing?

PaulRobinson 7y ago

I would love to see similar studies done on other social media platforms. I quit Facebook a couple of years ago and went back to take a look recently. Whole bucket of "nope" right there. I am now concerned about other platforms I find quite sticky though, including Reddit, HN and particularly Twitter.

frereubu 7y ago

Related to reducing media exposure and the attendant increase in the sense of wellbeing, this is a lovely article by the Serbian / American poet Charles Simic, about discovering how his dad had attained "Olympian calm": "Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day. My own inordinate interest in what the lunatics are up to in every corner of our planet has to do with my childhood. When I was three years old in Belgrade, German bombs started falling on my head. By the time I was seven, I was accustomed to seeing dead people lying in the street, or hung from telephone poles, or thrown into ditches with their throats cut. Like any child growing up in an occupied city during wartime, I didn’t think much about it. I was as serene then as I will ever be, sitting among the ruins smoking my first cigarette, riding on a Russian tank with a friend, or watching our school janitor hang the portraits of Marx, Stalin and Marshal Tito in our classroom after the liberation." https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/

pjc50 7y ago
I'm not sure this distinguishes between wellbeing and post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Detachment has its place in mental health but that is more when realizing "this is bullshit and doesn't matter". Like keeping up with the Joneses. If you don't actually enjoy any of that or find it useful just saying "fuck that and fuck you" to the social pressures is being anomalously sane. To be honest all of the 1950s Zeitgeist reeks of suppressed trauma addressed in an unhealthy way. The whole lawn obsession reached a zenith from homesickness in Europe and POW camps - and that is just one of the milder examples. Kids ended up taking this state as a deeply unhealthy norm.

philpem 7y ago

Does anyone know of a similar study regarding Twitter usage and its peculiar dark patterns? I'm curious if the findings are "social media in general" or "just Facebook"

OliverJones 7y ago

It's interesting that a bunch of economists found no evidence of any economic losses from quitting FB. Nobody reported loss of any economic opportunity, access to purchase something they wanted, or anything like that, due to foregoing use of that platform. Did the researchers fail to look for those things? Or did they just not come up?

heartbeats 7y ago

I did this. The only thing it gave me was social isolation. People look at you funny when you tell them you don't have a facebook account. If you have a well-developed circle of friends, sure. But this only holds for what, half of Americans? I don't know people well enough that I'd have a functioning social life without Facebook, unfortunately. I think this holds for many other people as well.

anovikov 7y ago

Biggest takeaway: a therapy is typically 2x$100 an hour sessions per week. Quitting Facebook provides 25-40% of the effect? Facebook is free? Not even close.

kriro 7y ago

Sometimes I feel like I have a "genetic advantage" to not be attracted by social media. I have a Twitter account that I rarely use (mostly for API-access for NLP research), I check into my Facebook account maybe once a month and have never used Instagram. I watch some things on Youtube (usually recorded lectures or tech talks or board game videos) but rarely ever "drift" towards recommended videos and the like. I used to be on IRC a lot back in the day but quit it completely, I used to frequent specialized forums, especially when I was an online poker player but also have quit those completely. Don't have a Reddit account and am not really following that. I guess my HN account is the most used social media right now. I also don't feel the urge to post and share pictures which I notice a lot in my friends. Sometimes it feels like a moment doesn't exist for them unless they can capture it in a picture (whereas for me it actually disturbs the enjoyment of the moment to stop and take a picture). I instant message but am notorious for "answering late" and keep getting complaints that I don't check everything immediately. I usually put my phone on the charger when I get back to work and only look at it every now and then, sometimes not at all until I go to bed. Interestingly, I am very interested in how social media works technologically and have also been an early adopter of many technologies. However I feel like I'm fairly "results oriented" when it comes to social media so I expect some sort of benefit from using them vs. the time spent. I've also noticed that I'd probably test well on my ability to delay gratification and I feel like this might be correlated with social media consumption in some way (maybe there's studies on this?).

joelbluminator 7y ago
Well u still take the time to write lengthy stories in HackerNews, so maybe you're not 100% immune to this?
_lacroix 7y ago
Do you find that you tend to get sucked into to ANYTHING in your life? Content, substances, activities? I find that I have a very addictive personality across the board - once something feels good it's very hard to stop even when I consciously want to or it's making me feel bad. This happens to me with social media, TV, alcohol, drugs, and occasionally even reading or a new hobby I'm really into. Rather than the ability to delay gratification, I'd imagine social media consumption is correlated to whatever it is about the brain's dopamine pathways that leads some people to get addicted to things more easily than others.

ja3k 7y ago

I wonder if selecting your population via people who respond to a Facebook ad about studying quitting social media introduces any bias. (I can't see the article so I don't know what their ad actually was) I worry that the correct takeaway is people who are interested in the idea of taking a break from social media probably should. Maybe the study was sufficiently well compensated that people who feel positively about social media still felt participation was worthwhile?

hogFeast 7y ago
It is amazing to me that yours appears to be the only question that asks this. But yes, there are problems with this study imo...none of which are really addressed in the paper. Giving someone $100 to quit is kind of an "economist" thing to do but is that really enough of an incentive to do something you wouldn't otherwise do? No. They do say that their ad didn't mention quitting Facebook. And they did some kind of survey first (which is how they got the $100 figure if I understood that correctly) but it still doesn't look great to me. In particular, they claim that they did an RCT because they randomly assigned the people who clicked on their ad...that isn't random. I also think compliance is far harder to observe than the author's believe. The subjects deactivate, and if they log back in it reactivates but is that foolproof? Not really. Tbf though, the number of subjects who fail to complete is low given upside of $100...so maybe. The key parts of the survey really rely on self-reporting (will people have a bias to report improved wellbeing given all the bad publicity about FB? probably). But yeah, this isn't really an RCT. It would be nice to see one but I think the issue is that most people who use Facebook a lot probably aren't interested in stopping.

rtkaratekid 7y ago

I used to use Instagram quite a bit. Got really frustrated with the vapidness and pointlessness of it. When I gave it up, I just felt like this weight had been lifted. No need to look at how cool others’ lives seem to be, just time to live my own and enjoy it for my own sake rather than sharing. These days I prefer to use social media as a form of dialogue, almost like forums, than anything else. The focus is on ideas and conversation.... which is why I actually really enjoy HN.

VLM 7y ago

Facebook is a good example of the damage that can be done by the self imposed jail of binary thinking. The proposed binary thinking option is users will be detrimentally manipulated and exploited as an advertising product where the manipulation is sometimes intense enough to exacerbate mental illnesses, whereas the binary alternative of deleting everything and going Unibomber will result in extreme social and job related ostracism because obviously "he's trying to hide something". There are analog middle options that are just as valid as the polarizing binary extremes. I have a perfectly good FB account with plenty of connections, but I only log in every couple months. A little awkward when someone wishes me happy birthday and I don't see it until four months later, but whatever. Most of the time stuff that was posted six months ago is irrelevant today, and likewise I feel pretty safe ignoring most of what was posted today. I find that on FB, as with any other online media, that there's at least 10 to 100 times as much lurking as posting, so there's really not that much to read anyway. For example my best old work friend is about as much of a lurker as I am, so there's really nothing to see. Or to summarize, the negative effects of deleting your account have nothing to do with the result of "stop using facebook", if you simply stop using it and do not delete your account.

jokoon 7y ago

I've stopped using it in 2009 because of a fallout with my classmates. Sometimes I wonder if I missed social occasions because of not using facebook. Generally I realized facebook didn't really allow to "make new friends" because it lacks "discovery" features. Now there are social networks who are focused on neighborhood and honestly I wish facebook would do something about discovery. I haven't heard from the facebook dating app either. Facebook, even if it's successful, feels like such a big waste of potential.

RedBeetDeadpool 7y ago

Facebook is what a social network would be if it was a capitalist engine for data mining and advertisement injections. Facebook is not a social network for connecting people with people they care about.