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The title is misleading. Spending time on social networks doesn't cause unhapiness, in fact it's the opposite. It gives you a jolt of brief happiness. This can
by xux 12y ago
The title is misleading. Spending time on social networks doesn't cause unhapiness, in fact it's the opposite. It gives you a jolt of brief happiness.
This can explain the correlation. It's not hard to see why people who are unhappy with their lives would spend more time on Facebook.
Facebook is an alternative place where you can get a brief sense of "social" feeling. If you're perpetually unhappy and lonely, you crave it more. And the more you time you spend on it, the worse you feel about your life, causing you to crave it even more. Vicious cycle.
- goldfeld 12y agoA jolt of brief happiness, not unlike that produced by a sugar spike, may not be all healthy. It's addictive and conditions you to procure instant rewards more, at the expense of delaying gratification which is essential for having some control over your life over the long haul (habits, hobbies, relationships, projects all take concerted effort with non-imediate payoffs.) In other words, the easy availability of these jolts of brief happiness (and ones not associated with getting fat or spending money) may well set the user up for long-term unhappiness. I'm disheartened to see many of my friends who were never gamers (hence mostly women) now fall prey to addictive social games like Candy Crush and that Kim Kardashian shit, which are things tightly coupled with Facebook usage. I happily find myself immune to their draw--my teens were spent getting on and off addiction to all sorts of games, including even dating sims, though most having far more depth and intellectual stimulation.
- wutbrodo 12y ago> Spending time on social networks doesn't cause unhapiness > And the more you time you spend on it, the worse you feel about your life These two statements directly contradict each other. If something gives you a brief jolt of happiness and "the more time you spend on it, the worse you feel about your life", it's only superficially true that it gives you happiness, and it's much much more correct to say that it causes unhappiness. I'm literally only using the propositions from your own comment here.
- marcosdumay 12y agoThey don't contradict each other. It's "correlation does not imply causation" framed differently.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoActually, it's the "it's the feedback loop that increases unhappiness" phrased differently.
- wutbrodo 12y agoI think you're misreading his comment. His latter proposition pretty clearly implies causation: "The more time you spend on it, the worse you feel [if you're already unhappy]". It certainly limits the domain, but that's about as clear about causation as one can be when speaking colloquially.
- xux 12y agoBecause you're taking it out of context
- wutbrodo 12y agoOr perhaps you're just misunderstanding my complaint. The comment taken as a whole ("in context", if you prefer) proposes that social networks provide a brief jolt of happiness in the short-term, but its net result is making unhappy people feel more unhappy in the long-term. Under those assumptions[1], only the most committed pedant would claim that it's incorrect to say that "social networks don't cause unhappiness" is true. [1] This is the reason I clarified that I was limiting myself to your comment, because the question of whether your assumptions are true is another one entirely.