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Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
Facebook has proven to be the best way for me to keep in touch with people who I grew up with, or worked with. It has proven to have a positive impact on my mental health.
theropost 4y ago
After being off Facebook for a few years, I have started to clearly see how creepy people really are - it's like everyone has turned into low level stalkers, but somehow that is okay within the cult.
giuliomagnifico 4y ago
> They found a statistically significant worsening in mental health symptoms, especially depression and anxiety, after the arrival of Facebook: 7% increase in number of students who reported having suffering, at least once during the preceding year, depression so severe that it was difficult for them to function 20% increase in number of students who reported anxiety disorders 2% increase in number of students expected to experience moderate to severe depression 3% increase in number of students experienced impairment to their academic performance due to depression or anxiety
- rconti 4y ago
  I am suspicious of the methodology because of how quickly Facebook rolled out across most colleges/Universities. I want to say within a year. It feels unlikely that the data would be granular enough (and the survey given frequently enough at each University) to reach these sorts of conclusions.
  - tomjakubowski 4y ago
    Facebook was also an entirely different site in that time. > Quickly spreading to other colleges in and outside the US, the network was made available to the general public in the US and beyond in September 2006 Facebook didn't even have a news feed feature until September 2006. The students studied here were using a site that was nothing like it is today.
  - nequo 4y ago
    You are right, and Facebook's roll-out is discussed in Section 2.2 of the paper.[1] The data sources are discussed in Section 3.1. They use the National College Health Assessment which surveyed students each semester. [1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/1801812535.pdf#page=10 https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/1801812535....
dougweltman 4y ago
- mayowaxcvi 4y ago
  - brought to you by the academic fields that can reliably predict almost nothing.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    I'm happy that at least a decent portion the comments here are treating this with the same skepticism as other studies on HN. I was actually expecting people to accept it because of the hate towards Facebook.
    - kodah 4y ago
      Facebook has an earned reputation, not hate.
- thenightcrawler 4y ago
  yep
sna1l 4y ago
I don't understand why this is causation vs correlation?
taytus 4y ago
From all my digital addictions, FB is the one I have most under control. I have to do a lot of blocking but the reality is that I can now say I do enjoy Facebook. My timeline is filled with content I meticulously have curated:Woodworking, Baking, Canoeing, Startups, Beekeeping, Jeeps. But... it shouldn't take all this work to enjoy it.
- standardUser 4y ago
  I use FB in that same way. Nearly all of my "friends" are muted and most of the content is from pages and groups I have chosen. But it does feel like I'm fighting the platform to make it work in a way that works for me. God forbid they should empower the user instead of perpetually trying to squeeze more blood from the stone.
  - taytus 4y ago
    >But it does feel like I'm fighting the platform I couldn't agree more.
    - prox 4y ago
      Because we aren’t the user, advertisers are. We are the hypnotized consumers of the lights in the box.
ramesh31 4y ago
Facebook was just the beginning. It feels crude almost in comparison to the new generation of designer drugs (TikTok et. al).
- standardUser 4y ago
  Sometimes when I'm scrolling Instagram I'm reminded of the sad era of "channel flipping" where we would just watch "whatever's on" while endless ads were blasted at our faces. At least now we have some control over our poison, though few seem to bother exercising that control.
  - AlwaysRock 4y ago
    Um... I installed Instagram recently for the first time. Every 5th post or so is an ad. That you have no choice over... And there are a lot of suggested content posts which you have no control over. It's like the same as channel flipping and getting ads blasted at you but now the ads are smarter/more targeted.
    - standardUser 4y ago
      Yeah, the ads are actually relevant sometimes and they don't demand 30 seconds of my life, so massive improvements all around. I don't see much suggested content unless I scroll too long, at which point I probably do need some more content.
      - floren 4y ago
        Here's the thing about Instagram: aside from posts by your actual real-life friends, everything you see is an ad. It's either a literal ad, or it's a popular user trying to sell you their t-shirts/newsletter/onlyfans. My wife likes to look at Instagram videos of cute kids and dogs, and whenever she shows me one the text at the bottom says something like "Our merch shop is open again!!!"
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        I honestly don't see targeted ads as an improvement at all. I see them as the opposite.
changoplatanero 4y ago
I don’t get why Facebook is so often singled out in these types of studies. What about other activities like dating or school or going to church? I bet those can be shown to increase anxiety and be bad for mental health
- burlesona 4y ago
  Most in-person social activity is good for your mental health. Studies show this includes church: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776270553/hidden-brain-does-going-to-church-improve-your-mental-health https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776270553/hidden-brain-does-g... Facebook is singled out because they are the largest practitioner of surveillance capitalism. The entire idea of “optimizing for engagement,” where Facebook has been a pioneer and the largest player, is increasingly being shown to be a primary driver of political polarization, anxiety, bigotry, and hate crimes. Thus Facebook is the new Big Tobacco.
  - isodev 4y ago
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Have you actually been to a church? The options are wide and vast.
    - Taywee 4y ago
      Depends on the church in question. I know gay people who are accepted by their congregation, and churches that don't have issues with gay people at all. The biggest LGBT youth group in my city is organized by and hosted in a Christian church.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - txsoftwaredev 4y ago
      I've broken plenty of rules in the Bible but still always welcomed in a church with open arms.
sbf501 4y ago
I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths' self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in that the media is custom-made to drive engagement at all costs.
- oDot 4y ago
  You've reminded me of a very good Norm bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ktWtIDQQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ktWtIDQQQ
- mcrad 4y ago
  Engagement with broadcast TV vs with hyper-personalized apps is a specious comparison.
  - svachalek 4y ago
    The psychological manipulation is based on the same principles, it's just the application is less refined.
    - samatman 4y ago
      It is and it isn't, but mostly, it isn't. The relentless Skinner Boxing which Facebook and similar platforms engage in has no parallel in broadcast media, which can't be algorithmically tuned to harm the victim as much as possible.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    Do you care to elaborate? Why do you say it's specious?
    - mcrad 4y ago
      Well engagement implies a certain amount to decision making and real-time action. TV watching is pretty much passive, and I just have a hard time believing the brain is impacted similarly but such different types of activity.
sidcool 4y ago
Not just FB, LinkedIn has a similar effect, just on a different demographic.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Do you evidence of that?
  - sidcool 4y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5067824/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5067824/
    - themitigating 4y ago
      Thank you
bannedbybros 4y ago
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Anecdotally, Facebook seems relatively tame these days compared to the firehose of doom & gloom, violent videos, outrage porn, and outright misinformation that fills Reddit and Twitter. Browsing Reddit’s default feeds or popular posts is a wild experience these days.
- racheltanks 4y ago
  Twitter is poison
  - Bakary 4y ago
    What I find odd about Twitter is that the toxicity level is off the charts. It's not as bad as say, the wilder 4chan boards or Kiwifarms, but it's worse than almost anything else.
  - nightski 4y ago
    I have a love/hate relationship with it. I follow many statistics & data science professionals and it's a great way to discover new books, resources, and content. But you have to wade through a lot of crap, even with a heavily curated feed. It feels like it is getting worse to the point where it isn't worth it anymore.
- tmpz22 4y ago
  I'd ad Youtube to that list. I turned off personalized ads and oh boy a whole lot of sexualized Flow Ads and other weird stuff came up, including ads for Newsmaxx. Absolutely gross that those are the apparent defaults.
- viridian 4y ago
  It's to the point where I, as someone who has used reddit for over a decade now (somewhat regrettably), will never, for any reason, ever click the snoo/homepage link in the top left corner. The thought of doing so reminds me of the nuclear waste repository warning: This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
- 4y ago
DamnInteresting 4y ago
I do not care for this trend of omitting the publication date from news articles. Temporal context is very relevant in news articles, especially to assess whether the information has been superseded. (I know, one can often find the publication date in the HTML source, but that requires savvy, and should not be necessary.)
- dchftcs 4y ago
  Yeah, and sometimes that's the point. Some sites do this probably to improve viewership of older articles. I don't understand why a university would do this though.
- singlow 4y ago
  Its a Drupal 7 site so every content item has a publication date in the db since it is part of the root data schema for posts/pages and all sub-types. In their case they have at least two content types in their news page. All of the "News" type articles do display the date but the template for "Research" articles does not display it. It is possible this was deliberate but most likely it just was in the default news template and when they created a custom template for the research articles they based it on the default page template which doesn't include a date line.
matai_kolila 4y ago
IDK... I know Facebook feeds are different for each person but for me there are basically zero posts from people I know on Facebook anymore, it's just ads and videos of random TikTok style videos.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Did you know you can look at profiles, not just the feed?
  - tmpz22 4y ago
    So if we engage with facebook more, and invest more time, we can have slightly better content?
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      No, the context of this thread is a study on mentally harmful content. I’m not here to coach people on seeking quality Facebook content
    - pohl 4y ago
      Maybe think of it in terms of active vs passive engagement, rather than more or less engagement. In other words: using the tool, rather than letting the tool use you.
  - matai_kolila 4y ago
    True, I do use Facebook profiles to remember the names of the children of my friends/family. But I can't remember the last "wall" I saw that had anything from this year on it.
    - xapata 4y ago
      You're saying that your friends and family don't post to Facebook? In this light, your first comment was misleading. You implied that Facebook's post-display algorithm was suppressing your friends and family.
swayvil 4y ago
Consider your attention. You pay attention. Concentrate your attention. Occasionally have your attention jerked around by distractions. Consider what you do when you think, read, watch tv, consume facebook. Consider what you are doing with your attention. That shape. If you do it a lot then that shape intensifies. And that shape sticks. It becomes your normal. And the shape of your attention dictates your reality. It's important to take that into account.
inamberclad 4y ago
I wonder how people continue to work at Facebook. I know they tend to have the highest salaries from the FAANG groups, but still. We, as engineers and builders, have the responsibility to think critically about how the things we are working on will be used.
- shmde 4y ago
  They definitely know, keep silent till they are on meta's payroll. Once they resign their moral compass suddenly aligns correctly and they start speaking out about how fb is bad blah blah. Quite pathetic to be honest.
- stickfigure 4y ago
  I wonder how people can continue to post questions like this to HN, when there are billions of people who happily use Facebook. I would think it's our responsibility to look outside of our narrow information bubble.
  - hhmc 4y ago
    If the original claim is that 'facebook is damaging to (and beyond) its users', then the response 'but it has _many_ users' isn't much of a defense..
    - stickfigure 4y ago
      I think the original claim is that "facebook is damaging to some users". You could say the same about salt. People still work in salt mines.
      - ziddoap 4y ago
        I'm not really able to wrap my head around your argument. If it's damaging to some percentage of users, having more users means it damages more people. Is your argument that this is okay because some people also put their health at risk being salt miners?
wfbarks 4y ago
I took a long break (maybe 5 years or so) but I have recently started using both FB and Instagram and have been surprised at how positive my time has been on these platforms. On FB I have been finding interesting local groups and events (just moved to a new city) and on Instagram, I have been enjoying seeing updates from real friends. On the other hand I recently deleted Twitter from my phone. I love twitter for getting interesting infromation and staying up to date with news, but the whole culture there has just turned into cheap dunking on one another, and its just guaranteed to leave you feeling angry about something. Extremely disruptive to mental state. I spend some time on the TikTok-like products as well (youtube shorts / fb reels) and have found them to be just a really easy way to completely waste an hour for no reason whatsoever. Less disruptive to mental state than twitter though.
- TylerE 4y ago
  The key to happy Facebooking for me is to keep it to people I don't routinely have any other way of keeping in touch with - so it's mostly hobby groups, people I've met while traveling, a few former co-workers... In particular, I do not friend or follow any family, neighbors, current co-workers, etc.
- oneplane 4y ago
  The issue with the meta products is that no matter how much you try to personally curate who you see stuff from, they will insert sponsored content you have no choice in and that can be real ads but also random posts.
- maxbond 4y ago
  As an aside, I've heard these TikTok-likes called "swipeables", which I like.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > I took a long break (maybe 5 years or so) but I have recently started using both FB and Instagram and have been surprised at how positive my time has been on these platforms. On FB I have been finding interesting local groups and events (just moved to a new city) and on Instagram, I have been enjoying seeing updates from real friends. Agreed. I enjoy my time on Facebook. I think most of the complaints about Facebook (aside from privacy issues) are self-inflicted. Your feed is what you make it. You have an uncle that's a rabid Trump supporter that posts racist shit? Delete him. Or at least unfollow him so his bullshit doesn't show up in your feed. I recently discovered the term "hate-follow" and I'm just flabbergasted that anybody would ever follow someone on social media that they despise. I've also heard that some people are very prone to envy and seeing someone's vacation photos fills them with depression, but eh...not sure what can be done about that.
duxup 4y ago
For me I just felt uncomfortable not being able to just pick what I wanted to see...
bluecalm 4y ago
Idk about Facebook specifically but it seems the old wisdom of not discussing religion, politics and diet is more relevant than ever. We have added more topics to the list: controversial medical procedures, celebrity drama, conspiracy theories etc. I stopped using social media for many years, recently came back to have access to local cycling/running groups and my experience is largely positive. All I see is cool people doing cool things, fun events, some local cycling related trade etc. I managed to make some connections and keep them going thanks to social media it's just positive experience all around. I think Instagram can be like that if you filter out politics/celebrities and "I have money/am attractive" influencers. It takes some work for that to stop showing in your feed and to learn to ignore whatever is left though.
askafriend 4y ago
Now do a study for Hacker News
bastardoperator 4y ago
The ship has sailed. They could pay me to come back and that still wouldn't be a good enough excuse to waste my time there. All they had to do was keep facebook positive but between the shockingly bad products they advertise and right wing maniacs, it might as well be the cesspool of the internet. It would take an act of god to turn it around at this point.
bjt2n3904 4y ago
As critical as I am about Facebook and social media in general -- I doubt this has been "proven".
holoduke 4y ago
Today I disabled Facebook and Instagram. I also removed all shortlinks to various newssites. I want to avoid them as well. Including Reddit . The only thing I am allowed to read is hackernews. I find that one of the few good sources. Even for general news.
- colordrops 4y ago
  An RSS reader with a curated list of sources is good too. Google News has become a trash heap, full of gossip and propaganda, and changes constantly in relation to what I last searched. It's converging with the Facebook feed
- karaterobot 4y ago
  That's great! Sadly, a lot of the HN front page is just a direct link to Twitter. Reddit shows up occasionally. It would be nice if there was a way to filter out sources from the front page.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    I agree, I can't even get to any of the twitter 'posts' by clicking on them - all major social media is blocked (by me) in my hosts file - which rules out a lot of the low-effort reposts from twitter.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Do not forget even without an account or the apps they are tracking the crap out of you everywhere. Shadow profiles and whatnot. Any website with a little facebook button at the bottom is a tracker.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Is the research design capable of distinguishing from the opposite causation here; what if people who are more depressed are more likely to use facebook more? This occurred to me because I more and more think of social media use in terms of addiction. For more typical addictive behavior with drugs, we are more likely to think people who are depressed are more likely to develop addictive relationship to alcohol (or other drugs), than we are to think using alcohol (or other drugs) too much will makes you depressed. Although I suppose it can be somewhat circular and complex.
- pjscott 4y ago
  Yes, the study design is able to tell which way the causality points. Not all colleges got access to Facebook at the same time (back before it was open to the general public) so this is sort of a natural experiment: you can look at the colleges that had Facebook access and compare them to the ones that didn't, assuming that they're probably pretty similar in all other confounding variables, and that people don't choose their college based on whether or not it has Facebook access. For more information on this type of design, the phrase to google is "difference in differences". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences
ranger47 4y ago
Who needed a study? We've known this for years, and it was even speculated at the dawn of Friendster, MySpace, etc. Watching a society (the US, for example) slowly say "social media is bad" then continue to use it is like watching a stumbling drunk declare their ability to quit drinking anytime they want.
- BrainVirus 4y ago
  Who needed it? People who like to deny the obvious, even when the obvious is stated by Ph.Ds. in psychology like Jonathan Haidt.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Even intuitive things should be studied. It’s valuable to know the scope and context and magnitude of impact. “X is bad” followed by confabulation, which is how many of these discussions go, is not helpful.
99_00 4y ago
The study uses historical data, change in mental health before and after Facebook was introduced to a campus. Which is a very cool way to make use of a natural control. Nice study. Seems clear facebook had negative impact on mental health on campus. Facebook then was also likely very different from Facebook now. So not exactly sure what recommendations for today can be drawn from it. It's interesting to note that the data shows facebook was damaging mental health at the same time that many readers of this comment were most enthusiastic about Facebook.
andrewla 4y ago
As with all studies in the social sciences, one of two principles apply. First, if the conclusions are counterintuitive or unexpected, then when you look closer, you will find that the methodology is garbage and that it does not support the conclusions given. Second, if the conclusions reflect things that you believe are true, when you look closer, you will find that the methodology is garbage and that it does not support the conclusions given.
- xoxo1121 4y ago
- Tainnor 4y ago
  That's a low-effort, shallow dismissal that doesn't even address anything specific to the article. If you have specific criticism regarding the methodology of this study - which doesn't, prima facie, appear unsound - please let the rest of us participate.
  - random314 4y ago
    I will take a stab. Mind you, I have not even clicked on the article, much less read it or know what the methodology is. Here goes ---- "The have used a correlational model, not a causal model. There are several confounding variables the paper doesn't consider, hence it is not proven from the evidence that Facebook has a negative impact "
    - Tainnor 4y ago
      In most fields of study you can't really perform double-blind experiments. We know that smoking is linked to cancer through decades of correlational studies and careful analysis of confounding factors, for example. The article discusses how the study looked at different universities during the same time period, some of which had access to facebook and some of which didn't, and discovered that in the first case there was an increase in mental health issues over that period. There could still be confounders, sure, (or the sample size could be too small etc.), but at a first glance, that's not an unreasonable approach, as it tries to isolate the variable "facebook yes/no". That said, if you haven't read the article, I'm not sure why you even felt the need to comment? This is exactly the same kind of shallow dismissal I was calling out.
celdon25 4y ago
No date on the article?
- pjscott 4y ago
  19 September 2022, for the record.
dougmccune 4y ago
This was studying Facebook circa 2004-2006. That version of Facebook was laughably basic at that point. If I remember right it was a chronological list of posts on your wall. There was no algorithmic feed. Hell, the news feed at all was only launched in late 2006. There was no video. There were no ads. Nobody made content hoping to get rich and outrage didn’t sell. If only we could go back to such an innocent time.
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
As a manager of a large page (several million reach per day), I often feel uncomfortable. On the one hand, Facebook is the best platform to reach many people. On the other hand, I think it is unethical to encourage people to stay on the platform. I also think that if I were to close the page, the void would be filled by the next person. My ego tells me that since I'm aware of these problems, I can do my best to keep my page from turning into a doomscrolling experience. Yet, once again, the algorithm doesn't display my posts in their natural order, only the controversial ones, so the doomscrolling happens anyway. I often keep up at night to think about it and I feel like there is no good answer.
kzz102 4y ago
We shouldn't encourage this type of reporting of academic results. A better headline: "Evidence towards causal relations between mental health issues and Facebook use for some College students in 2004". If this doesn't look newsworthy, it's because it isn't. Single academic result is almost never newsworthy.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jon_richards 4y ago
Social media will be the smoking of our generation. In a century, they’ll wonder how we could possibly have kept engaging knowing the harm we were doing to ourselves.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Is the harm really on that level? What is the magnitude of harm?
  - jon_richards 4y ago
    Yeah, let’s just keep smoking cigarettes, using leaded gasoline, and spewing carbon into the air until we know for sure how bad it is.
    - therealdrag0 4y ago
      I’ll admit some things are cut n dry. Will you admit some things are not cut n dry? You’re forcing a direct comparison with one category, but how do I know that’s the correct comparison? I won’t claim to follow it closely but every one of these I’ve seen shows a small impact to a small subset of vulnerable users. That’s a far cry from other things that are universally damaging.
- rychco 4y ago
  Completely agree
jessenichols 4y ago
This just in, food is also misused and proven to cause ill health in the majority of people, stop eating food now.
juancn 4y ago
Does anyone still use facebook? I mean, I'm 45 and just my mom uses it. Are they sure the mental health impact is not just senility? /s
theboywho 4y ago
I'm starting to suspect HN to have the same effect, the more I read HN the more unmotivated I feel. Unfavorable comparisons with "successful" people/projects who make it to the front page could be behind the same effects.
- seizethecheese 4y ago
  You could test this by looking at “new” instead of “top”.
- flipcoder 4y ago
  I'm the opposite. When I see people doing things better than me I get a surge of energy and motivation. And if I'm around people that are lazier I'll start being lazier. Not sure why that is. If you learn what motivates you you can use it to your advantage.
fdewrewrewf 4y ago
Once it becomes more widely accepted just how bad the continual dopamine drip of (especially mobile) social media is for individuals and society, it would be very interesting to find some research into the gender differences. My wife has a theory that, for a variety of reasons, women are more drawn into the online social world than men.
jeff-davis 4y ago
I'm pleased to see the word "causation" reappear along with the word "science". But I'm disappointed to see the word "proven". It isn't proven, and there are a number of problems. One is that the hypothesis is never really tested, this is just more data analysis. I don't want to split hairs over the definition of "science" but if you don't have an experiment where you intervene in the real world and dispassionately record what happens, then it's probably not science. The scientific method is a causation-finding machine intended to avoid all of the errors that humans are likely to make. Perhaps that leads to too few exciting results, so now we have a bunch of "scientific studies" instead.
- oneplane 4y ago
  While it might not be a record of an experiment, it's a whole lot better in terms of data analysis than just someone's gut feeling. That last one was something I expected much more in the comments where people would just "well duh" this type of publication. At the very least this data analysis shows something with a trace, instead of just throwing an idea out there and hoping someone builds a complete thesis around it and starts experimenting while everyone else is still guessing and having feelings but not getting anywhere concrete.
Melatonic 4y ago
Breaking news: Water is wet. Facebook is fucked. In all seriousness though glad to see this is actually being seriously studied
boatsie 4y ago
Sure, and alcohol, soda, candy, processed foods negatively affect physical health. People “know” this but obviously think the satisfaction they get from it is worth the negative impacts.
algoatecorn 4y ago
This brings up a bigger question that spans all media, which is: Why are people willing to give away their attention so easily?
Lapsa 4y ago
ditched the Zuck long ago. failed service
steve_john 4y ago
I think it depend on the user's mind. If you like the right way to use it will be good thing if you are using it for the time pass then its not good thing. So, the thing is its depend on the user's mind set
2-718-281-828 4y ago
Off Facebook for more than five years ... and still not mentally healthy. I feel cheated.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Link to the working paper is here: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787 https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787
MattSayar 4y ago
I started checking Facebook only on the computer and only when it organically comes up in my daily browsing (like now!). As it happens, I check Facebook about 3-4 times a week now, and it's basically just to Mark as Read my notifications (which are largely useless).
whoooooo123 4y ago
Bears proven to shit in woods.
rychco 4y ago
... again?
GaveDrohl 4y ago
Cool, now do Twitter.
sonicgear1 4y ago
Water is wet
10g1k 4y ago
Common knowledge. I merely query the need some people have to see a hyperlink to some such study before they will admit to what they already know.
EGreg 4y ago
We have been collecting such articles since 2010: https://qbix.com/investors/articles https://qbix.com/investors/articles You can see a lot of information
cardosof 4y ago
Social networks should put up warning signs and only accept 18+ users, just like cigarettes.
poisonarena 4y ago
This is an Israeli study from Tel Aviv university. I live here and the entire country is hopelessly reliant on using Facebook for everything from community to renting apartments.. Makes me sick that I need to have an account to live here
Existenceblinks 4y ago
Haven't you all read something like this a dozen times since 2011 or 2012? I thought the consensus was already 10 years ago.
wizofaus 4y ago
The interesting question is whether FB/Meta have continued to expand/promote features while knowing the potential negative effects on mental health they can have. I'd also be curious to know if there's a subgroup of users whose mental health is improved by use of FB - certainly I'd suggest I had that experience personally, at a particularly low point in my life, having met somebody via FB that helped me through it (which was mutual btw, in fact they had more serious mental health issues than I did).
alesrosa 4y ago
mkd1964 4y ago
I have to seriously ask: Is this actually a surprise to anyone?

Facebook has proven to be the best way for me to keep in touch with people who I grew up with, or worked with. It has proven to have a positive impact on my mental health.

theropost 4y ago

After being off Facebook for a few years, I have started to clearly see how creepy people really are - it's like everyone has turned into low level stalkers, but somehow that is okay within the cult.

giuliomagnifico 4y ago

> They found a statistically significant worsening in mental health symptoms, especially depression and anxiety, after the arrival of Facebook: 7% increase in number of students who reported having suffering, at least once during the preceding year, depression so severe that it was difficult for them to function 20% increase in number of students who reported anxiety disorders 2% increase in number of students expected to experience moderate to severe depression 3% increase in number of students experienced impairment to their academic performance due to depression or anxiety

rconti 4y ago
I am suspicious of the methodology because of how quickly Facebook rolled out across most colleges/Universities. I want to say within a year. It feels unlikely that the data would be granular enough (and the survey given frequently enough at each University) to reach these sorts of conclusions.
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  Facebook was also an entirely different site in that time. > Quickly spreading to other colleges in and outside the US, the network was made available to the general public in the US and beyond in September 2006 Facebook didn't even have a news feed feature until September 2006. The students studied here were using a site that was nothing like it is today.
- nequo 4y ago
  You are right, and Facebook's roll-out is discussed in Section 2.2 of the paper.[1] The data sources are discussed in Section 3.1. They use the National College Health Assessment which surveyed students each semester. [1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/1801812535.pdf#page=10 https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/1801812535....

dougweltman 4y ago

mayowaxcvi 4y ago
- brought to you by the academic fields that can reliably predict almost nothing.
- themitigating 4y ago
  I'm happy that at least a decent portion the comments here are treating this with the same skepticism as other studies on HN. I was actually expecting people to accept it because of the hate towards Facebook.
  - kodah 4y ago
    Facebook has an earned reputation, not hate.
thenightcrawler 4y ago
yep

sna1l 4y ago

I don't understand why this is causation vs correlation?

taytus 4y ago

From all my digital addictions, FB is the one I have most under control. I have to do a lot of blocking but the reality is that I can now say I do enjoy Facebook. My timeline is filled with content I meticulously have curated:Woodworking, Baking, Canoeing, Startups, Beekeeping, Jeeps. But... it shouldn't take all this work to enjoy it.

standardUser 4y ago
I use FB in that same way. Nearly all of my "friends" are muted and most of the content is from pages and groups I have chosen. But it does feel like I'm fighting the platform to make it work in a way that works for me. God forbid they should empower the user instead of perpetually trying to squeeze more blood from the stone.
- taytus 4y ago
  >But it does feel like I'm fighting the platform I couldn't agree more.
  - prox 4y ago
    Because we aren’t the user, advertisers are. We are the hypnotized consumers of the lights in the box.

ramesh31 4y ago

Facebook was just the beginning. It feels crude almost in comparison to the new generation of designer drugs (TikTok et. al).

standardUser 4y ago
Sometimes when I'm scrolling Instagram I'm reminded of the sad era of "channel flipping" where we would just watch "whatever's on" while endless ads were blasted at our faces. At least now we have some control over our poison, though few seem to bother exercising that control.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Um... I installed Instagram recently for the first time. Every 5th post or so is an ad. That you have no choice over... And there are a lot of suggested content posts which you have no control over. It's like the same as channel flipping and getting ads blasted at you but now the ads are smarter/more targeted.
  - standardUser 4y ago
    Yeah, the ads are actually relevant sometimes and they don't demand 30 seconds of my life, so massive improvements all around. I don't see much suggested content unless I scroll too long, at which point I probably do need some more content.
    - floren 4y ago
      Here's the thing about Instagram: aside from posts by your actual real-life friends, everything you see is an ad. It's either a literal ad, or it's a popular user trying to sell you their t-shirts/newsletter/onlyfans. My wife likes to look at Instagram videos of cute kids and dogs, and whenever she shows me one the text at the bottom says something like "Our merch shop is open again!!!"
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I honestly don't see targeted ads as an improvement at all. I see them as the opposite.

changoplatanero 4y ago

I don’t get why Facebook is so often singled out in these types of studies. What about other activities like dating or school or going to church? I bet those can be shown to increase anxiety and be bad for mental health

burlesona 4y ago
Most in-person social activity is good for your mental health. Studies show this includes church: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776270553/hidden-brain-does-going-to-church-improve-your-mental-health https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776270553/hidden-brain-does-g... Facebook is singled out because they are the largest practitioner of surveillance capitalism. The entire idea of “optimizing for engagement,” where Facebook has been a pioneer and the largest player, is increasingly being shown to be a primary driver of political polarization, anxiety, bigotry, and hate crimes. Thus Facebook is the new Big Tobacco.
- isodev 4y ago
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Have you actually been to a church? The options are wide and vast.
  - Taywee 4y ago
    Depends on the church in question. I know gay people who are accepted by their congregation, and churches that don't have issues with gay people at all. The biggest LGBT youth group in my city is organized by and hosted in a Christian church.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - txsoftwaredev 4y ago
    I've broken plenty of rules in the Bible but still always welcomed in a church with open arms.

sbf501 4y ago

I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths' self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in that the media is custom-made to drive engagement at all costs.

oDot 4y ago
You've reminded me of a very good Norm bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ktWtIDQQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ktWtIDQQQ
mcrad 4y ago
Engagement with broadcast TV vs with hyper-personalized apps is a specious comparison.
- svachalek 4y ago
  The psychological manipulation is based on the same principles, it's just the application is less refined.
  - samatman 4y ago
    It is and it isn't, but mostly, it isn't. The relentless Skinner Boxing which Facebook and similar platforms engage in has no parallel in broadcast media, which can't be algorithmically tuned to harm the victim as much as possible.
- klodolph 4y ago
  Do you care to elaborate? Why do you say it's specious?
  - mcrad 4y ago
    Well engagement implies a certain amount to decision making and real-time action. TV watching is pretty much passive, and I just have a hard time believing the brain is impacted similarly but such different types of activity.

sidcool 4y ago

Not just FB, LinkedIn has a similar effect, just on a different demographic.

themitigating 4y ago
Do you evidence of that?
- sidcool 4y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5067824/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5067824/
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Thank you

bannedbybros 4y ago

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

Anecdotally, Facebook seems relatively tame these days compared to the firehose of doom & gloom, violent videos, outrage porn, and outright misinformation that fills Reddit and Twitter. Browsing Reddit’s default feeds or popular posts is a wild experience these days.

racheltanks 4y ago
Twitter is poison
- Bakary 4y ago
  What I find odd about Twitter is that the toxicity level is off the charts. It's not as bad as say, the wilder 4chan boards or Kiwifarms, but it's worse than almost anything else.
- nightski 4y ago
  I have a love/hate relationship with it. I follow many statistics & data science professionals and it's a great way to discover new books, resources, and content. But you have to wade through a lot of crap, even with a heavily curated feed. It feels like it is getting worse to the point where it isn't worth it anymore.
tmpz22 4y ago
I'd ad Youtube to that list. I turned off personalized ads and oh boy a whole lot of sexualized Flow Ads and other weird stuff came up, including ads for Newsmaxx. Absolutely gross that those are the apparent defaults.
viridian 4y ago
It's to the point where I, as someone who has used reddit for over a decade now (somewhat regrettably), will never, for any reason, ever click the snoo/homepage link in the top left corner. The thought of doing so reminds me of the nuclear waste repository warning: This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
4y ago

DamnInteresting 4y ago

I do not care for this trend of omitting the publication date from news articles. Temporal context is very relevant in news articles, especially to assess whether the information has been superseded. (I know, one can often find the publication date in the HTML source, but that requires savvy, and should not be necessary.)

dchftcs 4y ago
Yeah, and sometimes that's the point. Some sites do this probably to improve viewership of older articles. I don't understand why a university would do this though.
singlow 4y ago
Its a Drupal 7 site so every content item has a publication date in the db since it is part of the root data schema for posts/pages and all sub-types. In their case they have at least two content types in their news page. All of the "News" type articles do display the date but the template for "Research" articles does not display it. It is possible this was deliberate but most likely it just was in the default news template and when they created a custom template for the research articles they based it on the default page template which doesn't include a date line.

matai_kolila 4y ago

IDK... I know Facebook feeds are different for each person but for me there are basically zero posts from people I know on Facebook anymore, it's just ads and videos of random TikTok style videos.

wahnfrieden 4y ago
Did you know you can look at profiles, not just the feed?
- tmpz22 4y ago
  So if we engage with facebook more, and invest more time, we can have slightly better content?
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    No, the context of this thread is a study on mentally harmful content. I’m not here to coach people on seeking quality Facebook content
  - pohl 4y ago
    Maybe think of it in terms of active vs passive engagement, rather than more or less engagement. In other words: using the tool, rather than letting the tool use you.
- matai_kolila 4y ago
  True, I do use Facebook profiles to remember the names of the children of my friends/family. But I can't remember the last "wall" I saw that had anything from this year on it.
  - xapata 4y ago
    You're saying that your friends and family don't post to Facebook? In this light, your first comment was misleading. You implied that Facebook's post-display algorithm was suppressing your friends and family.

swayvil 4y ago

Consider your attention. You pay attention. Concentrate your attention. Occasionally have your attention jerked around by distractions. Consider what you do when you think, read, watch tv, consume facebook. Consider what you are doing with your attention. That shape. If you do it a lot then that shape intensifies. And that shape sticks. It becomes your normal. And the shape of your attention dictates your reality. It's important to take that into account.

inamberclad 4y ago

I wonder how people continue to work at Facebook. I know they tend to have the highest salaries from the FAANG groups, but still. We, as engineers and builders, have the responsibility to think critically about how the things we are working on will be used.

shmde 4y ago
They definitely know, keep silent till they are on meta's payroll. Once they resign their moral compass suddenly aligns correctly and they start speaking out about how fb is bad blah blah. Quite pathetic to be honest.
stickfigure 4y ago
I wonder how people can continue to post questions like this to HN, when there are billions of people who happily use Facebook. I would think it's our responsibility to look outside of our narrow information bubble.
- hhmc 4y ago
  If the original claim is that 'facebook is damaging to (and beyond) its users', then the response 'but it has _many_ users' isn't much of a defense..
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    I think the original claim is that "facebook is damaging to some users". You could say the same about salt. People still work in salt mines.
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      I'm not really able to wrap my head around your argument. If it's damaging to some percentage of users, having more users means it damages more people. Is your argument that this is okay because some people also put their health at risk being salt miners?

wfbarks 4y ago

I took a long break (maybe 5 years or so) but I have recently started using both FB and Instagram and have been surprised at how positive my time has been on these platforms. On FB I have been finding interesting local groups and events (just moved to a new city) and on Instagram, I have been enjoying seeing updates from real friends. On the other hand I recently deleted Twitter from my phone. I love twitter for getting interesting infromation and staying up to date with news, but the whole culture there has just turned into cheap dunking on one another, and its just guaranteed to leave you feeling angry about something. Extremely disruptive to mental state. I spend some time on the TikTok-like products as well (youtube shorts / fb reels) and have found them to be just a really easy way to completely waste an hour for no reason whatsoever. Less disruptive to mental state than twitter though.

TylerE 4y ago
The key to happy Facebooking for me is to keep it to people I don't routinely have any other way of keeping in touch with - so it's mostly hobby groups, people I've met while traveling, a few former co-workers... In particular, I do not friend or follow any family, neighbors, current co-workers, etc.
oneplane 4y ago
The issue with the meta products is that no matter how much you try to personally curate who you see stuff from, they will insert sponsored content you have no choice in and that can be real ads but also random posts.
maxbond 4y ago
As an aside, I've heard these TikTok-likes called "swipeables", which I like.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> I took a long break (maybe 5 years or so) but I have recently started using both FB and Instagram and have been surprised at how positive my time has been on these platforms. On FB I have been finding interesting local groups and events (just moved to a new city) and on Instagram, I have been enjoying seeing updates from real friends. Agreed. I enjoy my time on Facebook. I think most of the complaints about Facebook (aside from privacy issues) are self-inflicted. Your feed is what you make it. You have an uncle that's a rabid Trump supporter that posts racist shit? Delete him. Or at least unfollow him so his bullshit doesn't show up in your feed. I recently discovered the term "hate-follow" and I'm just flabbergasted that anybody would ever follow someone on social media that they despise. I've also heard that some people are very prone to envy and seeing someone's vacation photos fills them with depression, but eh...not sure what can be done about that.

duxup 4y ago

For me I just felt uncomfortable not being able to just pick what I wanted to see...

bluecalm 4y ago

Idk about Facebook specifically but it seems the old wisdom of not discussing religion, politics and diet is more relevant than ever. We have added more topics to the list: controversial medical procedures, celebrity drama, conspiracy theories etc. I stopped using social media for many years, recently came back to have access to local cycling/running groups and my experience is largely positive. All I see is cool people doing cool things, fun events, some local cycling related trade etc. I managed to make some connections and keep them going thanks to social media it's just positive experience all around. I think Instagram can be like that if you filter out politics/celebrities and "I have money/am attractive" influencers. It takes some work for that to stop showing in your feed and to learn to ignore whatever is left though.

askafriend 4y ago

Now do a study for Hacker News

bastardoperator 4y ago

The ship has sailed. They could pay me to come back and that still wouldn't be a good enough excuse to waste my time there. All they had to do was keep facebook positive but between the shockingly bad products they advertise and right wing maniacs, it might as well be the cesspool of the internet. It would take an act of god to turn it around at this point.

bjt2n3904 4y ago

As critical as I am about Facebook and social media in general -- I doubt this has been "proven".

holoduke 4y ago

Today I disabled Facebook and Instagram. I also removed all shortlinks to various newssites. I want to avoid them as well. Including Reddit . The only thing I am allowed to read is hackernews. I find that one of the few good sources. Even for general news.

colordrops 4y ago
An RSS reader with a curated list of sources is good too. Google News has become a trash heap, full of gossip and propaganda, and changes constantly in relation to what I last searched. It's converging with the Facebook feed
karaterobot 4y ago
That's great! Sadly, a lot of the HN front page is just a direct link to Twitter. Reddit shows up occasionally. It would be nice if there was a way to filter out sources from the front page.
- ejb999 4y ago
  I agree, I can't even get to any of the twitter 'posts' by clicking on them - all major social media is blocked (by me) in my hosts file - which rules out a lot of the low-effort reposts from twitter.
Melatonic 4y ago
Do not forget even without an account or the apps they are tracking the crap out of you everywhere. Shadow profiles and whatnot. Any website with a little facebook button at the bottom is a tracker.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Is the research design capable of distinguishing from the opposite causation here; what if people who are more depressed are more likely to use facebook more? This occurred to me because I more and more think of social media use in terms of addiction. For more typical addictive behavior with drugs, we are more likely to think people who are depressed are more likely to develop addictive relationship to alcohol (or other drugs), than we are to think using alcohol (or other drugs) too much will makes you depressed. Although I suppose it can be somewhat circular and complex.

pjscott 4y ago
Yes, the study design is able to tell which way the causality points. Not all colleges got access to Facebook at the same time (back before it was open to the general public) so this is sort of a natural experiment: you can look at the colleges that had Facebook access and compare them to the ones that didn't, assuming that they're probably pretty similar in all other confounding variables, and that people don't choose their college based on whether or not it has Facebook access. For more information on this type of design, the phrase to google is "difference in differences". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences

ranger47 4y ago

Who needed a study? We've known this for years, and it was even speculated at the dawn of Friendster, MySpace, etc. Watching a society (the US, for example) slowly say "social media is bad" then continue to use it is like watching a stumbling drunk declare their ability to quit drinking anytime they want.

BrainVirus 4y ago
Who needed it? People who like to deny the obvious, even when the obvious is stated by Ph.Ds. in psychology like Jonathan Haidt.
therealdrag0 4y ago
Even intuitive things should be studied. It’s valuable to know the scope and context and magnitude of impact. “X is bad” followed by confabulation, which is how many of these discussions go, is not helpful.

99_00 4y ago

The study uses historical data, change in mental health before and after Facebook was introduced to a campus. Which is a very cool way to make use of a natural control. Nice study. Seems clear facebook had negative impact on mental health on campus. Facebook then was also likely very different from Facebook now. So not exactly sure what recommendations for today can be drawn from it. It's interesting to note that the data shows facebook was damaging mental health at the same time that many readers of this comment were most enthusiastic about Facebook.

andrewla 4y ago

As with all studies in the social sciences, one of two principles apply. First, if the conclusions are counterintuitive or unexpected, then when you look closer, you will find that the methodology is garbage and that it does not support the conclusions given. Second, if the conclusions reflect things that you believe are true, when you look closer, you will find that the methodology is garbage and that it does not support the conclusions given.

xoxo1121 4y ago
Tainnor 4y ago
That's a low-effort, shallow dismissal that doesn't even address anything specific to the article. If you have specific criticism regarding the methodology of this study - which doesn't, prima facie, appear unsound - please let the rest of us participate.
- random314 4y ago
  I will take a stab. Mind you, I have not even clicked on the article, much less read it or know what the methodology is. Here goes ---- "The have used a correlational model, not a causal model. There are several confounding variables the paper doesn't consider, hence it is not proven from the evidence that Facebook has a negative impact "
  - Tainnor 4y ago
    In most fields of study you can't really perform double-blind experiments. We know that smoking is linked to cancer through decades of correlational studies and careful analysis of confounding factors, for example. The article discusses how the study looked at different universities during the same time period, some of which had access to facebook and some of which didn't, and discovered that in the first case there was an increase in mental health issues over that period. There could still be confounders, sure, (or the sample size could be too small etc.), but at a first glance, that's not an unreasonable approach, as it tries to isolate the variable "facebook yes/no". That said, if you haven't read the article, I'm not sure why you even felt the need to comment? This is exactly the same kind of shallow dismissal I was calling out.

celdon25 4y ago

No date on the article?

pjscott 4y ago
19 September 2022, for the record.

dougmccune 4y ago

This was studying Facebook circa 2004-2006. That version of Facebook was laughably basic at that point. If I remember right it was a chronological list of posts on your wall. There was no algorithmic feed. Hell, the news feed at all was only launched in late 2006. There was no video. There were no ads. Nobody made content hoping to get rich and outrage didn’t sell. If only we could go back to such an innocent time.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago

As a manager of a large page (several million reach per day), I often feel uncomfortable. On the one hand, Facebook is the best platform to reach many people. On the other hand, I think it is unethical to encourage people to stay on the platform. I also think that if I were to close the page, the void would be filled by the next person. My ego tells me that since I'm aware of these problems, I can do my best to keep my page from turning into a doomscrolling experience. Yet, once again, the algorithm doesn't display my posts in their natural order, only the controversial ones, so the doomscrolling happens anyway. I often keep up at night to think about it and I feel like there is no good answer.

kzz102 4y ago

We shouldn't encourage this type of reporting of academic results. A better headline: "Evidence towards causal relations between mental health issues and Facebook use for some College students in 2004". If this doesn't look newsworthy, it's because it isn't. Single academic result is almost never newsworthy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jon_richards 4y ago

Social media will be the smoking of our generation. In a century, they’ll wonder how we could possibly have kept engaging knowing the harm we were doing to ourselves.

therealdrag0 4y ago
Is the harm really on that level? What is the magnitude of harm?
- jon_richards 4y ago
  Yeah, let’s just keep smoking cigarettes, using leaded gasoline, and spewing carbon into the air until we know for sure how bad it is.
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    I’ll admit some things are cut n dry. Will you admit some things are not cut n dry? You’re forcing a direct comparison with one category, but how do I know that’s the correct comparison? I won’t claim to follow it closely but every one of these I’ve seen shows a small impact to a small subset of vulnerable users. That’s a far cry from other things that are universally damaging.
rychco 4y ago
Completely agree

jessenichols 4y ago

This just in, food is also misused and proven to cause ill health in the majority of people, stop eating food now.

juancn 4y ago

Does anyone still use facebook? I mean, I'm 45 and just my mom uses it. Are they sure the mental health impact is not just senility? /s

theboywho 4y ago

I'm starting to suspect HN to have the same effect, the more I read HN the more unmotivated I feel. Unfavorable comparisons with "successful" people/projects who make it to the front page could be behind the same effects.

seizethecheese 4y ago
You could test this by looking at “new” instead of “top”.
flipcoder 4y ago
I'm the opposite. When I see people doing things better than me I get a surge of energy and motivation. And if I'm around people that are lazier I'll start being lazier. Not sure why that is. If you learn what motivates you you can use it to your advantage.

fdewrewrewf 4y ago

Once it becomes more widely accepted just how bad the continual dopamine drip of (especially mobile) social media is for individuals and society, it would be very interesting to find some research into the gender differences. My wife has a theory that, for a variety of reasons, women are more drawn into the online social world than men.

jeff-davis 4y ago

I'm pleased to see the word "causation" reappear along with the word "science". But I'm disappointed to see the word "proven". It isn't proven, and there are a number of problems. One is that the hypothesis is never really tested, this is just more data analysis. I don't want to split hairs over the definition of "science" but if you don't have an experiment where you intervene in the real world and dispassionately record what happens, then it's probably not science. The scientific method is a causation-finding machine intended to avoid all of the errors that humans are likely to make. Perhaps that leads to too few exciting results, so now we have a bunch of "scientific studies" instead.

oneplane 4y ago
While it might not be a record of an experiment, it's a whole lot better in terms of data analysis than just someone's gut feeling. That last one was something I expected much more in the comments where people would just "well duh" this type of publication. At the very least this data analysis shows something with a trace, instead of just throwing an idea out there and hoping someone builds a complete thesis around it and starts experimenting while everyone else is still guessing and having feelings but not getting anywhere concrete.

Melatonic 4y ago

Breaking news: Water is wet. Facebook is fucked. In all seriousness though glad to see this is actually being seriously studied

boatsie 4y ago

Sure, and alcohol, soda, candy, processed foods negatively affect physical health. People “know” this but obviously think the satisfaction they get from it is worth the negative impacts.

algoatecorn 4y ago

This brings up a bigger question that spans all media, which is: Why are people willing to give away their attention so easily?

Lapsa 4y ago

ditched the Zuck long ago. failed service

steve_john 4y ago

I think it depend on the user's mind. If you like the right way to use it will be good thing if you are using it for the time pass then its not good thing. So, the thing is its depend on the user's mind set

2-718-281-828 4y ago

Off Facebook for more than five years ... and still not mentally healthy. I feel cheated.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

Link to the working paper is here: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787 https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787

MattSayar 4y ago

I started checking Facebook only on the computer and only when it organically comes up in my daily browsing (like now!). As it happens, I check Facebook about 3-4 times a week now, and it's basically just to Mark as Read my notifications (which are largely useless).

whoooooo123 4y ago

Bears proven to shit in woods.

rychco 4y ago

... again?

GaveDrohl 4y ago

Cool, now do Twitter.

sonicgear1 4y ago

Water is wet

10g1k 4y ago

Common knowledge. I merely query the need some people have to see a hyperlink to some such study before they will admit to what they already know.

EGreg 4y ago

We have been collecting such articles since 2010: https://qbix.com/investors/articles https://qbix.com/investors/articles You can see a lot of information

cardosof 4y ago

Social networks should put up warning signs and only accept 18+ users, just like cigarettes.

poisonarena 4y ago

This is an Israeli study from Tel Aviv university. I live here and the entire country is hopelessly reliant on using Facebook for everything from community to renting apartments.. Makes me sick that I need to have an account to live here

Existenceblinks 4y ago

Haven't you all read something like this a dozen times since 2011 or 2012? I thought the consensus was already 10 years ago.

wizofaus 4y ago

The interesting question is whether FB/Meta have continued to expand/promote features while knowing the potential negative effects on mental health they can have. I'd also be curious to know if there's a subgroup of users whose mental health is improved by use of FB - certainly I'd suggest I had that experience personally, at a particularly low point in my life, having met somebody via FB that helped me through it (which was mutual btw, in fact they had more serious mental health issues than I did).

alesrosa 4y ago

mkd1964 4y ago

I have to seriously ask: Is this actually a surprise to anyone?