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Facebook addiction increases depression severity among already depressed people

322 points by hericium 4y ago

hericium 4y ago
study: Facebook depression with depressed users: The mediating effects of dependency and self-criticism on facebook addiction and depressiveness[1] [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222003697 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
amelius 4y ago
Makes sense. A depressed person, sitting inside, looking through the window at their friends playing outside, I guess would feel more depressed.
- buran77 4y ago
  It might even be "sitting inside, looking through the window at other people sitting inside but surely having a better time than you" . Social media is for presenting the highlights of your life. For a lot of depressed or even just gullible people it is easy to generalize from that. I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life".
  - deanmoriarty 4y ago
    > I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life". Is this in the typical sense of spending beyond their means, or do you have other anecdotes? I am a highly compensated tech worker at a FAANG who overcame US immigration and other challenges to get here, and many people would trade their spot with mine. Yet, I am so unhappy and burned out by work that I don’t think about anything else than quitting and moving back to my parents’ countryside house and enjoying a life of peace and quiet with the savings I have amassed, with no work pressure and rat race, just long hikes in nature, naps, reading and programming for fun. I changed roles and companies and the feeling never went away. I think in January I’ll finally start therapy, I’ve been unhappy for so long that I’m worried this might just be “my ride” for the rest of my life, if I don’t do something about it. Despite this unhappiness, I’ve never been able to quit because of that inner voice: “are you out of your stupid mind?! You’re just 35 and are making 7 figures, stop whining you privileged fool and make hay while it lasts, people would risk their physical safety in a mine for that salary”. I’m wondering if this voice is the voice of reason while my wants are just another instance of “blowing up my life” because I see how happy other people are.
    - neon_electro 4y ago
      From someone else who was well compensated in tech and burned out, wishing you the best.
      - aliqot 4y ago
        Want to talk about it?
        neon_electro 4y ago
        No thanks - I'm doing what I can with the support network I have. Appreciate the offer, wishing you the best as well.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      Happiness, joy, and contentment are perspectives. Learn the perspectives from people who can model it for you (online and in books). I would name names and such, but I’d be downvoted.
    - deebosong 4y ago
      Sounds like you're doing the wise thing by starting therapy. Maybe you already know this but it might take a bit of trying out a few therapists/ counselors before you land on one that seems a good fit. As to the voice in your head and the wants you're identifying, it sounds like you don't necessarily want to quit, or that you even want an idyllic rustic lifestyle. But more so that you wanna address where the feeling of being burnt-out and stuck is coming from. Like... I'm just a rando/ stranger from the internet, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and why a counselor will be way better to talk to than me and others here on this forum), but it seems like you want escape/ relief from your current life (in the form of just feeling peace that kinda looks like spending time outdoors), but there's a real pressure and possibly fear of feeling like if you seek this kinda peace, you are sabotaging yourself in the form of undoing all that you worked hard for, which translates to money, career, etc. Just to give some perspective, it's possible to have a career while having a deep, settled feeling of peace in the core of who you are. This isn't easy. And it won't look the same for everyone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or thing. But I get the sense it's going to be a longer journey – if not life-long in some sense – to find and maintain this sense of deep peace. It's not necessarily like a pill you pop or a light switch you turn on that changes everything in an instant, but a slow discovery that dawns upon you. I don't mean to sound so woo-woo, but just wanted to provide some perspective.
- mysterydip 4y ago
  Not only that, but imagine if every time they looked out the window their friends were having the best time playing outside. Never any downsides or setbacks, only the highlight reel.
- francisofascii 4y ago
  I wonder if TV commercials have a similar effect, which are filled with images of good looking people having a way better time than you are.
  - throwaheyy 4y ago
    Doubt it. TV commercials encourage you to relate to or see yourself as the person in the commercial. The advertisers want to invoke a positive feeling and identification in hopes you’ll buy the product. The message is “you can have this life too”. Social media is just pure individualistic ego-stroking by comparison. The message is “my life is better than yours”.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Parasocial friends at that. Which means the depressed person cant even send a message to the user to see if they want to hang out as they probably don't even know the depressed person exists.
- signaru 4y ago
  I had a bad boss who held my career back (he eventually lost his position due to fraud). Knowing I worked just as hard or maybe even harder than my friends and seeing them move far ahead in their careers just added to the misery and made me quit fb.
rockbruno 4y ago
I was surprised that the study doesn't mention that these apps are _intentionally_ designed to get you addicted to the point where something like this happen. This psychology-oriented design atrocity is leaking into other industries[0], and I can't see a future where this is not strongly regulated against like how gambling is today. It took me months of using screen time apps to revert the bad habits these apps try to implant on you. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16heGLKlTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16heGLKlTA
- rauljara 4y ago
  This was a scientific study with quantitative measures that have clear operating definitions as spelled out in their methodology section. I have trouble imagining the quantitative measurement for “Facebook designed their app to maximize addictiveness” would even look like. Have mercy on the poor scientists who chose to answer a narrow question empirically and well, and left the fuzzier question out of their scientific paper.
  - j4hdufd8 4y ago
    See the book "Hooked". This is not some batshit conspiracy, it's well documented
  - rockbruno 4y ago
    Not speaking about this particular study, just wanted to nitpick that the psychology tricks behind "Facebook designed their app to maximize addictiveness" have indeed been measured from the point of view of monetisation/engagement, hence why so many apps and games nowadays try to implement them. I agree the concept is not relevant for this particular study.
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  Yeah but they aren't designed for chaotic purposes like the Joker from Batman. They are designed to make these companies more money. I'm surprised you only took months. It's taken me years and I'm still battling it. I even wrote a book on this struggle last year given it was such a prominent addiction in my teens and early 20s. I'm 30 now.
dandanua 4y ago
And Zuck wants to push it on the next level, where people would not be able to escape the virtual reality of ultimate depression. All this for money and power of "investors".
sjellen 4y ago
All social media and news does this. Every person who says their hobby is 'news' are the most angry and depressed people you will ever meet.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I tell those folks that news isn't a hobby: doing something is.
- float4 4y ago
  Gosh what a nuanced take that is. I enjoy reading the news and then discussing it with friends that are also news readers. That's the hobby aspect for me (and aforementioned friends). Together we try to predict what will happen in the world (wars, inflation, energy transition, stock market, ...) and quite often at least one of us is completely right or spectacularly wrong, which makes it fun for us. I know it's not very useful but I enjoy it and it doesn't make me depressed or angry. Just let me have my fun.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    You just proved their point.
    - loufe 4y ago
      I'm failing to see how that's the case
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    It depends in my experience on what "news" we're talking about and the depth of the information. Almost all I'm seeing online is made to engage and engage people, some more and some less, and that definitely matches what parent is describing. Maybe you're talking about different kinds of content. I stopped consuming "news" i.e. CBC, CNN, Guardian, and the likes two months ago and I feel objectively happier and spend less time endlessly refreshing the page. I read the occasional in depth article because I feel like it doesn't have quite the same effect.
andix 4y ago
It would be really interesting how unique this problem is. If it applies similarly to Twitter or Instagram, or if there are some main differences. Or if it is not even connected to the social media aspect at all, and also applies to other addictive platforms like YouTube, that don't focus on the social media aspect a lot.
medellin 4y ago
Matches my experience although I don’t have any clinical diagnosis. When im already feeling bad social media normally instagram for me starts to make me feel worse as i have a hard time putting it down. When i feel fine it’s easy for me to walk away from
anonyme-honteux 4y ago
Also matches my experience with Twitter
thenerdhead 4y ago
I do wish more social media apps took into account the human factor of checking in every so often. TikTok is the only that I can think of that will try to bring attention to you constantly scrolling and suggest healthy things to do instead. I think Netflix did something similarly back in the day too and the memes about Netflix knowing you're depressed. I'm honestly surprised there isn't some kind of moderation from these apps or settings that help you combat addiction across all experiences(mobile/desktop/web/etc), especially when you're depressed. The first thing you might do when battling addiction is remove the apps and only access through a browser. Sadly, that's where all this functionality is built into: https://www.facebook.com/help/1737706169659354 https://www.facebook.com/help/1737706169659354 Instead you have to go nuclear and restrain yourself at the device or internet level instead.
- gamesbrainiac 4y ago
  I really don't think you can blame social media for designing something that boosts their revenue; they are incentivized to do that. It is better to educate people to stay away from most of the Social Media sites that are harmful or take up too much of their time. We have made smoking a bad habit, why can't we do that same for Instagram or Facebook?
  - thenerdhead 4y ago
    I've seen plenty of campaigns about smoking being a bad habit, but never social media or internet addiction. Only books or fringe documentaries that get discredited in the news/media due to their incentives.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Part of the Big Tobacco settlement with the gov't was to do those kinds of "negative" campaigns. Social Media hasn't had a DoJ suit against them like Big Tobacco did. So there's a big disconnect on these campaigns as punishment vs 3rd party documentaries and crazy tinfoil hat wearing techno nerds (aka HN readers).
gamesbrainiac 4y ago
One of the best decisions I've ever made is to not jump on the Facebook bandwagon. When I was in high school, all the "cool" kids were using Facebook at home and then talking about Facebook in school as well. I honestly felt a lot of pressure to join and be active. However, I never fully gave in, and it did me a lot of good, since most people who post on Facebook talk about the best highlights of their day or their life. When you see this, and you're having a bad day, it makes that day worse. People have good days and bad days, but when you look at Facebook it seems as though everyone is having a blast _all the time_.
- doktrin 4y ago
  I applaud your decision to stay off social media, and think you should continue to abstain. That said, if you actually want to understand why the platform is or was popular to begin with you have to go beyond just viewing it as a masochistic FOMO factory. That’s an angle that gets talked about a lot in the wider media but it really is only a part of the story, and IMO a lesser one in the grand scheme of things. There’s certainly an element of curated bragging to be sure, but in my experience what really keeps people engaged isn’t the unsubtle boasting but the outright fighting. FB users will quite literally treat their friend list as a stand-in for the broader world and vent their rage accordingly. For every “check my sunny vacay” post there are like 5 more along the lines of “YOU STUPID LIBS/CONS ARE RUINING THE UNIVERSE AND HERE IS WHY…” That animosity and the back and forth exchanges it fosters is the really dark secret sauce at the heart of the experiment. Hate will always generate attention with the quickness, and it easily trumps envy as an engagement driver.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Yeah, I can definitely tell that you don't use Facebook because that's not how people use it at all. Instagram is closer to what you describe.
oldsklgdfth 4y ago
I gave up facebook about 3 years ago at this point. The main result was that the noise was turned down. As a consequence I could listen to myself better. I feel the same way about following news and really all ad-enabled content. The point is to increase viewership of advertisements. Really the only reliable way to increase engagement is to create something eye-catching (tiktok) or controversy (news). The genius in FB is that for a long time it crowd sourced optimizing engagement to users. People just ended up posting things that would rile people up and get them to be on FB longer. In this sense people were the product to other people.
oldsklgdfth 4y ago
A cynical comment about regulation or curtailing this. Everyone agrees smoking causes health problems, is costly and doesn't offer anything. Smoking is regulated (taxes, labels, etc), but cigarettes are readily available everywhere - gas stations, convenience stores, etc. You would imagine that something so universally recognized as detrimental would cease to exist (either outlaws or society would just abandon it completely), but it's more accessible than say clean water, healthy food and such. My point is I don't think we will see this problem going away. As long as there is technology enabling this level of connectedness we will see the side-effect.
- JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
  > > doesn't offer anything How can you say that? Have you ever smoked one after sex? What about alcohol or binging Netflix shows or even sex itself? Life is all about tradeoffs. Tobacco has a place in the trillions of tradeoffs combinations that each human can generate with their own lives, and so does alcohol, Netflix and social media.
  - oldsklgdfth 4y ago
    I say this as someone that has failed a bunch of time to quit smoking. Every time I smoke, I rationally know it's doing nothing for me, but can't help myself. It's not that good IMO. Not as clear a trade-off as alcohol. I think it's mostly a romantic image I have in my head.
    - qroolen 4y ago
      i think we should not look at the end of the spectrum and conclude stuff for everyone... maybe there is a ton of people who will not get negatively effected by social media, as well people who will smoke a cigarette every 3 months in a party
      - oldsklgdfth 4y ago
        You make a good point here. As with everything there are winners and losers. Some built careers and companies by leveraging social media. That's in the pros column. When I drill down into it, I think the potency is what draws me in. I sometimes feel this way on HN. "Let me check the comments". But FB, reddit, et al. are high octane versions.
ethbr0 4y ago
Depressed people without a life outside Facebook are Facebook's whales, whether it admits it or not. Endlessly clicking through content, viewing ads, and bumping engagement numbers up. Ergo, any systemic effort to boost engagement will eventually encourage actions with the end result of "Make more people depressed, so they consume more Facebook." It's a crime that we don't regulate engagement methods at a government level. We should have started with anything targeted at children, but ultimately established some rules of the road for adults too.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Makes me wonder how much metrics are skewed. Views from people in this state are not views from someone a bit more balanced and happy. Yet society likes to throw bland numbers around.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I would love to see a frequency distribution for Facebook's engagement metrics...
    - curiousllama 4y ago
      I mean it’s probably just a power law distribution, right?
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        I'm sure it started that way, but they've been tweaking their drivers for 15+ years at this point. That's time enough for them to skew their userbase's behavior if they could. And given the amount of money they've thrown at staff, I wouldn't bet against them having shifted it in their favor.
geocrasher 4y ago
I started using FB again recently because a group of friends use it, and I regret it. It's so toxic. Even the reels/short videos posted there are absolutely toxic- full of pointless garbage mixed with outright fake stuff like "free energy". I'll keep it because of Groups, which are handy for what they are, but the moment those move elsewhere, I'm out.
- awillen 4y ago
  This is actually fairly easily fixed by watching non-garbage videos and giving negative feedback on the garbage ones (click the three dots and choose hide/see less like this - it's something like that). My reels are close to 100% videos of golden retrievers being adorable. That causes me to spend a little more time on FB than I otherwise would, which is exactly what FB wants, but I can live with myself frittering away a little time watching an adult golden meet a new golden puppy. Same thing works for Twitter - you can tune it pretty well by selecting "I'm not interested in this tweet" for all the crappy ones. After someone told me that, it took about a day before it stopped feeding me scam crypto trash.
carabiner 4y ago
Adtech and social media are like secondhand smoking, something we've accepted as annoying but harmless, but actually extremely deleterious to our mental health. In 50 years, we'll look back at our current social media addictions in the same way people today look at Mad Men characters smoking everywhere 24/7.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Second hand exposure to smoking is pretty well understood by cigarette consumers, yet the second hand exposure of social media consumption is very much not understood. All of the shadow profiles, tracking, fingerprinting etc so that people that are not consuming social media still have profiles about them being created without their knowledge or permission.
rvz 4y ago
"Users addicted to a digital drug called Facebook increases depression on already depressed people" This is fundamental and applies to ALL social networks regardless. The solution is obviously not to replace digital drug A (Facebook) with another digital drug B (TikTok). The solution is to delete all of your social media accounts.
steveBK123 4y ago
I think different social media can trigger depression in different ways. TikTok/Instagram is full of people posting a glossy, edited lifestyle that makes your life feel bad by comparison. Facebook/Twitter filled with more miserable people being miserable about one thing or another (politics/culture wars/news/etc) and allows you to spiral in misery.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be any characteristic of facebook itself which I think a lot of the comments here are missing. A depressed person addicted to anything will become more depressed. Having spent a lot of time in addiction recovery spaces, addiction and depression have astoundingly high comorbidity, to the point where much of the time it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, which came first in a given person. There probably are specifics of a social media addiction that are relevant to how it affects users in depression. But that's true of all addiction as well, they all have relevant specifics. Facebook is the longest-running of our major social networks and the first one where most people really understood that something had fundamentally changed about the world because of it, so it is the most studied. And studies take time, so we have a larger body of research on it specifically. I can almost guarantee that similar findings will obtain about other social media platforms, regardless of their individual dynamics or character.
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    I think IG for example creates enough FOMO in even non-depressed people as to induce some amount of depression adjacent symptoms. Ultimate "keeping up with the Joneses" kind of thing.
- nradov 4y ago
  Nah. I don't see many miserable people in my Facebook feed. It's all just a matter of who your friends are. If you're friends with miserable people and like their posts then those are going to fill your feed.
  - 4y ago
dopamean 4y ago
Does any addiction make already depressed people less depressed?
- piggybox 4y ago
  Addiction to comedy shows?
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago
  Many stories from people "addicted" to exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Chasing the high of feeling good and looking good can be a positive self-centered motivator which can help people lift themselves out of depression. Anecdotally I know a couple of people who have gone from severely overweight and depressed to running dozens of miles each week, and the way they talk about it definitely sounds like an addiction to me.
px43 4y ago
Remember in 2014 when it came out that Facebook tweaked their algorithm for a number of users to boost positive posts, and it turned out that it made them much happier people? https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/?sh=be61d7c197c5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... Remember that people completely lost their shit and made Facebook promise not to do that again? Well, instead they just optimized for "engagement" and here we are. It would be SOOO easy to make a social network that actually increases a global sense of joy, comfort, satisfaction, security, etc. Facebook already has all the users, so they'd be perfect to flip this switch if the general public would let them. Why is it that they get hounded for making people happy, but not when optimizing for addictive compulsive behavior? Are companies just expected to optimize for addiction due to profit margins, something something, yay capitalism? Why is every other optimization off limits? Facebook already has a massive amount of global social manipulation capabilities. There's no way around that, and no way they can just turn that off. They have the users, and the users expect some form of curation. Maybe at least give users the option to flip on the happy switch? It's still all real news from their network, just slightly boosted towards positive posts. I feel like for them to even be neutral, they should be at least boosting positive posts by 4x due to Negativity Bias inherent in how our brains filter data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
TacticalCoder 4y ago
At some point I thought it was still a thing because my wife was still kinda, sorta, using it. But years ago she quit. I hear about Meta and that they own WhatsApp and I see people using WhatsApp. But FaceBook: among my friends and family who used to post there, nobody ever posts anything. I don't doubt many are still logged in by default because they haven't updated their computer in years but they simply do not posts anything anymore, don't use if to message people (they use WhatsApp or Telegram instead) and don't check their feed. And most of all: people don't ever talk about FaceBook at parties anymore. Since a long time. It used be a thing: people would ask if you were on FB or tell you about this or that person that posted this or that thing on FB. People don't do that anymore. I don't understand where FB's MAU numbers do come from: in my (non tech) circle FB is simply already dead.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Everyone I know still uses Facebook so there's that. Messenger is also the dominant chat app in my circle.
- janeerie 4y ago
  Facebook Groups are what keep a lot of people on. In small cities, that’s where the social organizing/news sharing happens. I have edited my feed down to where it’s just my groups and a couple of friends who only post photos of their cute kids.
- trashface 4y ago
  Facebook is still popular in the older demographics, in particular Facebook Dating.
- escapedmoose 4y ago
  Bafflingly, most of my early-30s friends are still on Facebook. I was recently asked about my account at a party. Wild stuff.
rendall 4y ago
Any research on Hacker News addiction? Asking for a friend.
- piggybox 4y ago
  LOL, let me give it a try. HN addiction increases depression severity among already depressed developers because of all the fancy cool new stuffs others are playing around while they are stuck with outdated tech stack in day jobs just for money.
  - annyeonghada 4y ago
    >just for money And in certain slices of the globe there isn't even much of that! No risk of workaholism.
sokz 4y ago
This post made me finally uninstall Instagram from my phone. Though the network effects makes it difficult to completely chuck it from my life. The exodus of my peer group from fb made it possible for me to delete it completely from my life and don't need it anymore. I hope something like that happens for instagram too. It was not for the lack of trying. I tried hard to transfer my friends and family to Signal and was unsuccessful. So now I'm waiting for the forces of nature to take over and hope that something miraculous happens and something that doesn't weaponise human mind takes over instead.
- warning26 4y ago
  Realistically though, even if you had succeeded in getting your friends to use Signal, wouldn’t you have the same social media problem as before? They’ll still be posting stories and you’d still be addicted to checking it.
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    I think it's much less addictive than Instagram. It's most likely only people you know, no garbage ads, no garbage "influencers". Plus in my experience at least, people post stories much less often but obviously that varies.
jvm___ 4y ago
Facebook is a tool. I used Facebook to find a local running group and added Facebook friends from my city for the first time in 17 years of living here. So for me, Facebook was a way to get out of depression. I have a "slap you in the Facebook" rule. If you didn't get an opportunity to smack someone in the face in the last 365 days, you probably shouldn't follow them on Facebook.
rgbrenner 4y ago
I agree with the article that it's not facebook. You're depressed, dont feel like doing anything but know you should, so you procrastinate on facebook, and then maybe the whole day passes, and the waste of another day makes it feel like nothing is going to change, helping feed your depression. Facebook really has little to do with this... if it wasnt facebook, it would be youtube, instagram, watching tv, or sleeping all day. These people are depressed... they need help to improve their condition. Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Thats not how depression works.
- uncletammy 4y ago
  > Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Although I agree that Facebook isn't the problem here, taking it away might be a necessary first step.
  - baby 4y ago
    The problem is that you can’t take it away. If it’s not fb it’s tiktok, or youtube, or instagram, or reddit, or HN, or emails, or rss feeds, or food, or video games, or …
    - jezzamon 4y ago
      All of those bar one can be done by physically separating yourself from technology, which is quite feasible in short periods. Downgrading to a dumb phone works ok too (until you need to work with some service that requires an app)
    - tgv 4y ago
      > fb ... tiktok, or youtube, or instagram, or reddit, or HN, or emails, or rss feeds, or food, or video games Is the question: which of these is not like the rest? Furthermore, you deny two things: firstly, that the influence of facebook is real, and secondly, that other forms of (social) media can have a different effect. E.g., RSS is totally unlike facebook. And let's ignore you mentioned food.
SubiculumCode 4y ago
When you are depressed you often seek connection with people. For many though, life separates us from trusted friends in RL so you turn to Facebook et al, but the engagement is minor (e.g. a like) and leaves you even more lonely. What you want is to talk to somebody, but it is really hard/awkward to get friends to join a video/audio call. All this leaves you more alone, so you really have to switch off, go outside, and go say hi to the neighborhood
jbirer 4y ago
I decided to go monk mode for a year. No friends, no family, no social media, no distractions. I focused on learning cooking, yoga etc. Spent most of my time either in my studio apartment or solo travelling. The results were huge, I went from an anxious depressed mess to someone who enjoys waking up, which is a very basic thing, but when you are depressed you hate that you have to wake up and go through life. I recommend this to anyone to try.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I don't think isolating yourself from the world and getting rid of all your friends and family is a good suggestion for most people.
  - MikeLumos 4y ago
    Depends on what kind of family and friends you have.
- miketery 4y ago
  This sounds extreme, but none the less I agree people should try to change something. Most recommend to start exercising. Easiest way to do this is to simply say I'm the kind of person that runs / bikes / works out (don't give yourself the option to decide). Simply say on Saturday's I do a run (rain or shine), then say Tuesday's and Saturdays, etc. In no time you're doing it 3+ times a week. From one good habit others will follow, since you'll have learned how to stay consistent.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    For me, what worked was making a commitment to literally go to the gym everyday after work. Whether I actually exercised or not could falter on a day-to-day basis, but without fail I walk into the building. As predicted, it means I get a workout in at least 4 days a week, because if you're there, the barrier to "might as well run" or "guess I'll put in a quick weight set" is much lower.
  - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
jayant_kaushik 4y ago
First they help users connect with each other then they make them pay with their attention, attention spans, memory and mood. Then they show you therapy ads as well. Loop. A decade ago I used to think how difficult it would be to compete in this world when everyone around me was so smart at what they did. Fast forward, it has never been easier to progress as I see the matrix (sort of). My experience with de-addiction: I left Facebook long ago(~10yrs), Instagram 1 yr ago, Twitter 1 month ago. No addictions now apart from reading hacker news once a day, TL;DR newsletter and morning brew at EoD. I can not express in words how good life feels right now. There is just- no noise, absolute clarity and bliss - coupled with workout regime and balanced diet. I feel sad for my friends who can not get rid of those addictions and I know it’s difficult as I’ve experienced first hand. However, once you have left those apps and some time passes, there’s no going back. Instagram really is an addictive app but I have lost the urge to open it now in a year. In contrast, all I see wherever I go is people hooked to their phones and me staring at the utter cognitive chaos in the society today due to these petty apps that have actually disconnected the society the most ever. One should be mindful of what they put inside their body and into their brain as those are only things that stay with us till our last breath. People have forgotten to enjoy reading fiction on a sunny day. Play with friends and family often. Throw surprises to each other. Just last week I saw two diff posts on hacker news referencing these two beautiful articles which sum up what I feel: 1. Sam Altman: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades... 2. Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/vb.html http://paulgraham.com/vb.html Good day!
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  >morning brew at EoD What is this?
irthomasthomas 4y ago
In 2012, Facebook deliberately made people depressed as part of some evil experiment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846784
jl6 4y ago
Facebook addiction is just the tip of the iceberg of mediagenic illnesses that people are suffering in ever-increasing numbers. Articles like this will be used as evidence in future class-action lawsuits.
rr808 4y ago
I really miss the days before the internet. I can live without my phone but its hard to be a developer without internet on my laptop.
khana 4y ago
[dead]
escapedmoose 4y ago
It’s hard to tell chicken from egg when examining negative mental states alongside social media, but here’s why I’m convinced that social media is the culprit of negative mental states and not vice-versa: I decided to drop my socials about 4 years ago. There will be periods here or there when I think “I have a handle on things; I can start using social media again.” Every single time, without fail, it begins a spiral of addiction and subsequent guilt that I have to crawl out of, yet again. It doesn’t matter how positive or negative my mental state is before re-opening the socials; the result is the same each time. The only good thing about it is that I’ve learned to recognize my pattern of addiction, and I’m better at breaking it after some practice.

322 points by hericium 4y ago

study: Facebook depression with depressed users: The mediating effects of dependency and self-criticism on facebook addiction and depressiveness[1] [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222003697 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...

amelius 4y ago

Makes sense. A depressed person, sitting inside, looking through the window at their friends playing outside, I guess would feel more depressed.

buran77 4y ago
It might even be "sitting inside, looking through the window at other people sitting inside but surely having a better time than you" . Social media is for presenting the highlights of your life. For a lot of depressed or even just gullible people it is easy to generalize from that. I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life".
- deanmoriarty 4y ago
  > I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life". Is this in the typical sense of spending beyond their means, or do you have other anecdotes? I am a highly compensated tech worker at a FAANG who overcame US immigration and other challenges to get here, and many people would trade their spot with mine. Yet, I am so unhappy and burned out by work that I don’t think about anything else than quitting and moving back to my parents’ countryside house and enjoying a life of peace and quiet with the savings I have amassed, with no work pressure and rat race, just long hikes in nature, naps, reading and programming for fun. I changed roles and companies and the feeling never went away. I think in January I’ll finally start therapy, I’ve been unhappy for so long that I’m worried this might just be “my ride” for the rest of my life, if I don’t do something about it. Despite this unhappiness, I’ve never been able to quit because of that inner voice: “are you out of your stupid mind?! You’re just 35 and are making 7 figures, stop whining you privileged fool and make hay while it lasts, people would risk their physical safety in a mine for that salary”. I’m wondering if this voice is the voice of reason while my wants are just another instance of “blowing up my life” because I see how happy other people are.
  - neon_electro 4y ago
    From someone else who was well compensated in tech and burned out, wishing you the best.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      Want to talk about it?
      - neon_electro 4y ago
        No thanks - I'm doing what I can with the support network I have. Appreciate the offer, wishing you the best as well.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Happiness, joy, and contentment are perspectives. Learn the perspectives from people who can model it for you (online and in books). I would name names and such, but I’d be downvoted.
  - deebosong 4y ago
    Sounds like you're doing the wise thing by starting therapy. Maybe you already know this but it might take a bit of trying out a few therapists/ counselors before you land on one that seems a good fit. As to the voice in your head and the wants you're identifying, it sounds like you don't necessarily want to quit, or that you even want an idyllic rustic lifestyle. But more so that you wanna address where the feeling of being burnt-out and stuck is coming from. Like... I'm just a rando/ stranger from the internet, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and why a counselor will be way better to talk to than me and others here on this forum), but it seems like you want escape/ relief from your current life (in the form of just feeling peace that kinda looks like spending time outdoors), but there's a real pressure and possibly fear of feeling like if you seek this kinda peace, you are sabotaging yourself in the form of undoing all that you worked hard for, which translates to money, career, etc. Just to give some perspective, it's possible to have a career while having a deep, settled feeling of peace in the core of who you are. This isn't easy. And it won't look the same for everyone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or thing. But I get the sense it's going to be a longer journey – if not life-long in some sense – to find and maintain this sense of deep peace. It's not necessarily like a pill you pop or a light switch you turn on that changes everything in an instant, but a slow discovery that dawns upon you. I don't mean to sound so woo-woo, but just wanted to provide some perspective.
mysterydip 4y ago
Not only that, but imagine if every time they looked out the window their friends were having the best time playing outside. Never any downsides or setbacks, only the highlight reel.
francisofascii 4y ago
I wonder if TV commercials have a similar effect, which are filled with images of good looking people having a way better time than you are.
- throwaheyy 4y ago
  Doubt it. TV commercials encourage you to relate to or see yourself as the person in the commercial. The advertisers want to invoke a positive feeling and identification in hopes you’ll buy the product. The message is “you can have this life too”. Social media is just pure individualistic ego-stroking by comparison. The message is “my life is better than yours”.
nickthegreek 4y ago
Parasocial friends at that. Which means the depressed person cant even send a message to the user to see if they want to hang out as they probably don't even know the depressed person exists.
signaru 4y ago
I had a bad boss who held my career back (he eventually lost his position due to fraud). Knowing I worked just as hard or maybe even harder than my friends and seeing them move far ahead in their careers just added to the misery and made me quit fb.

rockbruno 4y ago

I was surprised that the study doesn't mention that these apps are _intentionally_ designed to get you addicted to the point where something like this happen. This psychology-oriented design atrocity is leaking into other industries[0], and I can't see a future where this is not strongly regulated against like how gambling is today. It took me months of using screen time apps to revert the bad habits these apps try to implant on you. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16heGLKlTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16heGLKlTA

rauljara 4y ago
This was a scientific study with quantitative measures that have clear operating definitions as spelled out in their methodology section. I have trouble imagining the quantitative measurement for “Facebook designed their app to maximize addictiveness” would even look like. Have mercy on the poor scientists who chose to answer a narrow question empirically and well, and left the fuzzier question out of their scientific paper.
- j4hdufd8 4y ago
  See the book "Hooked". This is not some batshit conspiracy, it's well documented
- rockbruno 4y ago
  Not speaking about this particular study, just wanted to nitpick that the psychology tricks behind "Facebook designed their app to maximize addictiveness" have indeed been measured from the point of view of monetisation/engagement, hence why so many apps and games nowadays try to implement them. I agree the concept is not relevant for this particular study.
thenerdhead 4y ago
Yeah but they aren't designed for chaotic purposes like the Joker from Batman. They are designed to make these companies more money. I'm surprised you only took months. It's taken me years and I'm still battling it. I even wrote a book on this struggle last year given it was such a prominent addiction in my teens and early 20s. I'm 30 now.

dandanua 4y ago

And Zuck wants to push it on the next level, where people would not be able to escape the virtual reality of ultimate depression. All this for money and power of "investors".

sjellen 4y ago

All social media and news does this. Every person who says their hobby is 'news' are the most angry and depressed people you will ever meet.

ethbr0 4y ago
I tell those folks that news isn't a hobby: doing something is.
float4 4y ago
Gosh what a nuanced take that is. I enjoy reading the news and then discussing it with friends that are also news readers. That's the hobby aspect for me (and aforementioned friends). Together we try to predict what will happen in the world (wars, inflation, energy transition, stock market, ...) and quite often at least one of us is completely right or spectacularly wrong, which makes it fun for us. I know it's not very useful but I enjoy it and it doesn't make me depressed or angry. Just let me have my fun.
- Kiro 4y ago
  You just proved their point.
  - loufe 4y ago
    I'm failing to see how that's the case
- barbazoo 4y ago
  It depends in my experience on what "news" we're talking about and the depth of the information. Almost all I'm seeing online is made to engage and engage people, some more and some less, and that definitely matches what parent is describing. Maybe you're talking about different kinds of content. I stopped consuming "news" i.e. CBC, CNN, Guardian, and the likes two months ago and I feel objectively happier and spend less time endlessly refreshing the page. I read the occasional in depth article because I feel like it doesn't have quite the same effect.

andix 4y ago

It would be really interesting how unique this problem is. If it applies similarly to Twitter or Instagram, or if there are some main differences. Or if it is not even connected to the social media aspect at all, and also applies to other addictive platforms like YouTube, that don't focus on the social media aspect a lot.

medellin 4y ago

Matches my experience although I don’t have any clinical diagnosis. When im already feeling bad social media normally instagram for me starts to make me feel worse as i have a hard time putting it down. When i feel fine it’s easy for me to walk away from

anonyme-honteux 4y ago

Also matches my experience with Twitter

thenerdhead 4y ago

I do wish more social media apps took into account the human factor of checking in every so often. TikTok is the only that I can think of that will try to bring attention to you constantly scrolling and suggest healthy things to do instead. I think Netflix did something similarly back in the day too and the memes about Netflix knowing you're depressed. I'm honestly surprised there isn't some kind of moderation from these apps or settings that help you combat addiction across all experiences(mobile/desktop/web/etc), especially when you're depressed. The first thing you might do when battling addiction is remove the apps and only access through a browser. Sadly, that's where all this functionality is built into: https://www.facebook.com/help/1737706169659354 https://www.facebook.com/help/1737706169659354 Instead you have to go nuclear and restrain yourself at the device or internet level instead.

gamesbrainiac 4y ago
I really don't think you can blame social media for designing something that boosts their revenue; they are incentivized to do that. It is better to educate people to stay away from most of the Social Media sites that are harmful or take up too much of their time. We have made smoking a bad habit, why can't we do that same for Instagram or Facebook?
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  I've seen plenty of campaigns about smoking being a bad habit, but never social media or internet addiction. Only books or fringe documentaries that get discredited in the news/media due to their incentives.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Part of the Big Tobacco settlement with the gov't was to do those kinds of "negative" campaigns. Social Media hasn't had a DoJ suit against them like Big Tobacco did. So there's a big disconnect on these campaigns as punishment vs 3rd party documentaries and crazy tinfoil hat wearing techno nerds (aka HN readers).

gamesbrainiac 4y ago

One of the best decisions I've ever made is to not jump on the Facebook bandwagon. When I was in high school, all the "cool" kids were using Facebook at home and then talking about Facebook in school as well. I honestly felt a lot of pressure to join and be active. However, I never fully gave in, and it did me a lot of good, since most people who post on Facebook talk about the best highlights of their day or their life. When you see this, and you're having a bad day, it makes that day worse. People have good days and bad days, but when you look at Facebook it seems as though everyone is having a blast _all the time_.

doktrin 4y ago
I applaud your decision to stay off social media, and think you should continue to abstain. That said, if you actually want to understand why the platform is or was popular to begin with you have to go beyond just viewing it as a masochistic FOMO factory. That’s an angle that gets talked about a lot in the wider media but it really is only a part of the story, and IMO a lesser one in the grand scheme of things. There’s certainly an element of curated bragging to be sure, but in my experience what really keeps people engaged isn’t the unsubtle boasting but the outright fighting. FB users will quite literally treat their friend list as a stand-in for the broader world and vent their rage accordingly. For every “check my sunny vacay” post there are like 5 more along the lines of “YOU STUPID LIBS/CONS ARE RUINING THE UNIVERSE AND HERE IS WHY…” That animosity and the back and forth exchanges it fosters is the really dark secret sauce at the heart of the experiment. Hate will always generate attention with the quickness, and it easily trumps envy as an engagement driver.
Kiro 4y ago
Yeah, I can definitely tell that you don't use Facebook because that's not how people use it at all. Instagram is closer to what you describe.

oldsklgdfth 4y ago

I gave up facebook about 3 years ago at this point. The main result was that the noise was turned down. As a consequence I could listen to myself better. I feel the same way about following news and really all ad-enabled content. The point is to increase viewership of advertisements. Really the only reliable way to increase engagement is to create something eye-catching (tiktok) or controversy (news). The genius in FB is that for a long time it crowd sourced optimizing engagement to users. People just ended up posting things that would rile people up and get them to be on FB longer. In this sense people were the product to other people.

oldsklgdfth 4y ago

A cynical comment about regulation or curtailing this. Everyone agrees smoking causes health problems, is costly and doesn't offer anything. Smoking is regulated (taxes, labels, etc), but cigarettes are readily available everywhere - gas stations, convenience stores, etc. You would imagine that something so universally recognized as detrimental would cease to exist (either outlaws or society would just abandon it completely), but it's more accessible than say clean water, healthy food and such. My point is I don't think we will see this problem going away. As long as there is technology enabling this level of connectedness we will see the side-effect.

JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
> > doesn't offer anything How can you say that? Have you ever smoked one after sex? What about alcohol or binging Netflix shows or even sex itself? Life is all about tradeoffs. Tobacco has a place in the trillions of tradeoffs combinations that each human can generate with their own lives, and so does alcohol, Netflix and social media.
- oldsklgdfth 4y ago
  I say this as someone that has failed a bunch of time to quit smoking. Every time I smoke, I rationally know it's doing nothing for me, but can't help myself. It's not that good IMO. Not as clear a trade-off as alcohol. I think it's mostly a romantic image I have in my head.
  - qroolen 4y ago
    i think we should not look at the end of the spectrum and conclude stuff for everyone... maybe there is a ton of people who will not get negatively effected by social media, as well people who will smoke a cigarette every 3 months in a party
    - oldsklgdfth 4y ago
      You make a good point here. As with everything there are winners and losers. Some built careers and companies by leveraging social media. That's in the pros column. When I drill down into it, I think the potency is what draws me in. I sometimes feel this way on HN. "Let me check the comments". But FB, reddit, et al. are high octane versions.

ethbr0 4y ago

Depressed people without a life outside Facebook are Facebook's whales, whether it admits it or not. Endlessly clicking through content, viewing ads, and bumping engagement numbers up. Ergo, any systemic effort to boost engagement will eventually encourage actions with the end result of "Make more people depressed, so they consume more Facebook." It's a crime that we don't regulate engagement methods at a government level. We should have started with anything targeted at children, but ultimately established some rules of the road for adults too.

agumonkey 4y ago
Makes me wonder how much metrics are skewed. Views from people in this state are not views from someone a bit more balanced and happy. Yet society likes to throw bland numbers around.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I would love to see a frequency distribution for Facebook's engagement metrics...
  - curiousllama 4y ago
    I mean it’s probably just a power law distribution, right?
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      I'm sure it started that way, but they've been tweaking their drivers for 15+ years at this point. That's time enough for them to skew their userbase's behavior if they could. And given the amount of money they've thrown at staff, I wouldn't bet against them having shifted it in their favor.

geocrasher 4y ago

I started using FB again recently because a group of friends use it, and I regret it. It's so toxic. Even the reels/short videos posted there are absolutely toxic- full of pointless garbage mixed with outright fake stuff like "free energy". I'll keep it because of Groups, which are handy for what they are, but the moment those move elsewhere, I'm out.

awillen 4y ago
This is actually fairly easily fixed by watching non-garbage videos and giving negative feedback on the garbage ones (click the three dots and choose hide/see less like this - it's something like that). My reels are close to 100% videos of golden retrievers being adorable. That causes me to spend a little more time on FB than I otherwise would, which is exactly what FB wants, but I can live with myself frittering away a little time watching an adult golden meet a new golden puppy. Same thing works for Twitter - you can tune it pretty well by selecting "I'm not interested in this tweet" for all the crappy ones. After someone told me that, it took about a day before it stopped feeding me scam crypto trash.

carabiner 4y ago

Adtech and social media are like secondhand smoking, something we've accepted as annoying but harmless, but actually extremely deleterious to our mental health. In 50 years, we'll look back at our current social media addictions in the same way people today look at Mad Men characters smoking everywhere 24/7.

dylan604 4y ago
Second hand exposure to smoking is pretty well understood by cigarette consumers, yet the second hand exposure of social media consumption is very much not understood. All of the shadow profiles, tracking, fingerprinting etc so that people that are not consuming social media still have profiles about them being created without their knowledge or permission.

rvz 4y ago

"Users addicted to a digital drug called Facebook increases depression on already depressed people" This is fundamental and applies to ALL social networks regardless. The solution is obviously not to replace digital drug A (Facebook) with another digital drug B (TikTok). The solution is to delete all of your social media accounts.

steveBK123 4y ago

I think different social media can trigger depression in different ways. TikTok/Instagram is full of people posting a glossy, edited lifestyle that makes your life feel bad by comparison. Facebook/Twitter filled with more miserable people being miserable about one thing or another (politics/culture wars/news/etc) and allows you to spiral in misery.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
It doesn't have to be any characteristic of facebook itself which I think a lot of the comments here are missing. A depressed person addicted to anything will become more depressed. Having spent a lot of time in addiction recovery spaces, addiction and depression have astoundingly high comorbidity, to the point where much of the time it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, which came first in a given person. There probably are specifics of a social media addiction that are relevant to how it affects users in depression. But that's true of all addiction as well, they all have relevant specifics. Facebook is the longest-running of our major social networks and the first one where most people really understood that something had fundamentally changed about the world because of it, so it is the most studied. And studies take time, so we have a larger body of research on it specifically. I can almost guarantee that similar findings will obtain about other social media platforms, regardless of their individual dynamics or character.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  I think IG for example creates enough FOMO in even non-depressed people as to induce some amount of depression adjacent symptoms. Ultimate "keeping up with the Joneses" kind of thing.
nradov 4y ago
Nah. I don't see many miserable people in my Facebook feed. It's all just a matter of who your friends are. If you're friends with miserable people and like their posts then those are going to fill your feed.
- 4y ago

dopamean 4y ago

Does any addiction make already depressed people less depressed?

piggybox 4y ago
Addiction to comedy shows?
inkcapmushroom 4y ago
Many stories from people "addicted" to exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Chasing the high of feeling good and looking good can be a positive self-centered motivator which can help people lift themselves out of depression. Anecdotally I know a couple of people who have gone from severely overweight and depressed to running dozens of miles each week, and the way they talk about it definitely sounds like an addiction to me.

px43 4y ago

Remember in 2014 when it came out that Facebook tweaked their algorithm for a number of users to boost positive posts, and it turned out that it made them much happier people? https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/?sh=be61d7c197c5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... Remember that people completely lost their shit and made Facebook promise not to do that again? Well, instead they just optimized for "engagement" and here we are. It would be SOOO easy to make a social network that actually increases a global sense of joy, comfort, satisfaction, security, etc. Facebook already has all the users, so they'd be perfect to flip this switch if the general public would let them. Why is it that they get hounded for making people happy, but not when optimizing for addictive compulsive behavior? Are companies just expected to optimize for addiction due to profit margins, something something, yay capitalism? Why is every other optimization off limits? Facebook already has a massive amount of global social manipulation capabilities. There's no way around that, and no way they can just turn that off. They have the users, and the users expect some form of curation. Maybe at least give users the option to flip on the happy switch? It's still all real news from their network, just slightly boosted towards positive posts. I feel like for them to even be neutral, they should be at least boosting positive posts by 4x due to Negativity Bias inherent in how our brains filter data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

TacticalCoder 4y ago

At some point I thought it was still a thing because my wife was still kinda, sorta, using it. But years ago she quit. I hear about Meta and that they own WhatsApp and I see people using WhatsApp. But FaceBook: among my friends and family who used to post there, nobody ever posts anything. I don't doubt many are still logged in by default because they haven't updated their computer in years but they simply do not posts anything anymore, don't use if to message people (they use WhatsApp or Telegram instead) and don't check their feed. And most of all: people don't ever talk about FaceBook at parties anymore. Since a long time. It used be a thing: people would ask if you were on FB or tell you about this or that person that posted this or that thing on FB. People don't do that anymore. I don't understand where FB's MAU numbers do come from: in my (non tech) circle FB is simply already dead.

Kiro 4y ago
Everyone I know still uses Facebook so there's that. Messenger is also the dominant chat app in my circle.
janeerie 4y ago
Facebook Groups are what keep a lot of people on. In small cities, that’s where the social organizing/news sharing happens. I have edited my feed down to where it’s just my groups and a couple of friends who only post photos of their cute kids.
trashface 4y ago
Facebook is still popular in the older demographics, in particular Facebook Dating.
escapedmoose 4y ago
Bafflingly, most of my early-30s friends are still on Facebook. I was recently asked about my account at a party. Wild stuff.

rendall 4y ago

Any research on Hacker News addiction? Asking for a friend.

piggybox 4y ago
LOL, let me give it a try. HN addiction increases depression severity among already depressed developers because of all the fancy cool new stuffs others are playing around while they are stuck with outdated tech stack in day jobs just for money.
- annyeonghada 4y ago
  >just for money And in certain slices of the globe there isn't even much of that! No risk of workaholism.

sokz 4y ago

This post made me finally uninstall Instagram from my phone. Though the network effects makes it difficult to completely chuck it from my life. The exodus of my peer group from fb made it possible for me to delete it completely from my life and don't need it anymore. I hope something like that happens for instagram too. It was not for the lack of trying. I tried hard to transfer my friends and family to Signal and was unsuccessful. So now I'm waiting for the forces of nature to take over and hope that something miraculous happens and something that doesn't weaponise human mind takes over instead.

warning26 4y ago
Realistically though, even if you had succeeded in getting your friends to use Signal, wouldn’t you have the same social media problem as before? They’ll still be posting stories and you’d still be addicted to checking it.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  I think it's much less addictive than Instagram. It's most likely only people you know, no garbage ads, no garbage "influencers". Plus in my experience at least, people post stories much less often but obviously that varies.

jvm___ 4y ago

Facebook is a tool. I used Facebook to find a local running group and added Facebook friends from my city for the first time in 17 years of living here. So for me, Facebook was a way to get out of depression. I have a "slap you in the Facebook" rule. If you didn't get an opportunity to smack someone in the face in the last 365 days, you probably shouldn't follow them on Facebook.

rgbrenner 4y ago

I agree with the article that it's not facebook. You're depressed, dont feel like doing anything but know you should, so you procrastinate on facebook, and then maybe the whole day passes, and the waste of another day makes it feel like nothing is going to change, helping feed your depression. Facebook really has little to do with this... if it wasnt facebook, it would be youtube, instagram, watching tv, or sleeping all day. These people are depressed... they need help to improve their condition. Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Thats not how depression works.

uncletammy 4y ago
> Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Although I agree that Facebook isn't the problem here, taking it away might be a necessary first step.
- baby 4y ago
  The problem is that you can’t take it away. If it’s not fb it’s tiktok, or youtube, or instagram, or reddit, or HN, or emails, or rss feeds, or food, or video games, or …
  - jezzamon 4y ago
    All of those bar one can be done by physically separating yourself from technology, which is quite feasible in short periods. Downgrading to a dumb phone works ok too (until you need to work with some service that requires an app)
  - tgv 4y ago
    > fb ... tiktok, or youtube, or instagram, or reddit, or HN, or emails, or rss feeds, or food, or video games Is the question: which of these is not like the rest? Furthermore, you deny two things: firstly, that the influence of facebook is real, and secondly, that other forms of (social) media can have a different effect. E.g., RSS is totally unlike facebook. And let's ignore you mentioned food.

SubiculumCode 4y ago

When you are depressed you often seek connection with people. For many though, life separates us from trusted friends in RL so you turn to Facebook et al, but the engagement is minor (e.g. a like) and leaves you even more lonely. What you want is to talk to somebody, but it is really hard/awkward to get friends to join a video/audio call. All this leaves you more alone, so you really have to switch off, go outside, and go say hi to the neighborhood

jbirer 4y ago

I decided to go monk mode for a year. No friends, no family, no social media, no distractions. I focused on learning cooking, yoga etc. Spent most of my time either in my studio apartment or solo travelling. The results were huge, I went from an anxious depressed mess to someone who enjoys waking up, which is a very basic thing, but when you are depressed you hate that you have to wake up and go through life. I recommend this to anyone to try.

kayodelycaon 4y ago
I don't think isolating yourself from the world and getting rid of all your friends and family is a good suggestion for most people.
- MikeLumos 4y ago
  Depends on what kind of family and friends you have.
miketery 4y ago
This sounds extreme, but none the less I agree people should try to change something. Most recommend to start exercising. Easiest way to do this is to simply say I'm the kind of person that runs / bikes / works out (don't give yourself the option to decide). Simply say on Saturday's I do a run (rain or shine), then say Tuesday's and Saturdays, etc. In no time you're doing it 3+ times a week. From one good habit others will follow, since you'll have learned how to stay consistent.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  For me, what worked was making a commitment to literally go to the gym everyday after work. Whether I actually exercised or not could falter on a day-to-day basis, but without fail I walk into the building. As predicted, it means I get a workout in at least 4 days a week, because if you're there, the barrier to "might as well run" or "guess I'll put in a quick weight set" is much lower.
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago

jayant_kaushik 4y ago

First they help users connect with each other then they make them pay with their attention, attention spans, memory and mood. Then they show you therapy ads as well. Loop. A decade ago I used to think how difficult it would be to compete in this world when everyone around me was so smart at what they did. Fast forward, it has never been easier to progress as I see the matrix (sort of). My experience with de-addiction: I left Facebook long ago(~10yrs), Instagram 1 yr ago, Twitter 1 month ago. No addictions now apart from reading hacker news once a day, TL;DR newsletter and morning brew at EoD. I can not express in words how good life feels right now. There is just- no noise, absolute clarity and bliss - coupled with workout regime and balanced diet. I feel sad for my friends who can not get rid of those addictions and I know it’s difficult as I’ve experienced first hand. However, once you have left those apps and some time passes, there’s no going back. Instagram really is an addictive app but I have lost the urge to open it now in a year. In contrast, all I see wherever I go is people hooked to their phones and me staring at the utter cognitive chaos in the society today due to these petty apps that have actually disconnected the society the most ever. One should be mindful of what they put inside their body and into their brain as those are only things that stay with us till our last breath. People have forgotten to enjoy reading fiction on a sunny day. Play with friends and family often. Throw surprises to each other. Just last week I saw two diff posts on hacker news referencing these two beautiful articles which sum up what I feel: 1. Sam Altman: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades... 2. Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/vb.html http://paulgraham.com/vb.html Good day!

TurkishPoptart 4y ago
>morning brew at EoD What is this?

irthomasthomas 4y ago

In 2012, Facebook deliberately made people depressed as part of some evil experiment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846784

jl6 4y ago

Facebook addiction is just the tip of the iceberg of mediagenic illnesses that people are suffering in ever-increasing numbers. Articles like this will be used as evidence in future class-action lawsuits.

rr808 4y ago

I really miss the days before the internet. I can live without my phone but its hard to be a developer without internet on my laptop.

khana 4y ago

[dead]

escapedmoose 4y ago

It’s hard to tell chicken from egg when examining negative mental states alongside social media, but here’s why I’m convinced that social media is the culprit of negative mental states and not vice-versa: I decided to drop my socials about 4 years ago. There will be periods here or there when I think “I have a handle on things; I can start using social media again.” Every single time, without fail, it begins a spiral of addiction and subsequent guilt that I have to crawl out of, yet again. It doesn’t matter how positive or negative my mental state is before re-opening the socials; the result is the same each time. The only good thing about it is that I’ve learned to recognize my pattern of addiction, and I’m better at breaking it after some practice.