[HN Gopher] Study: Inflammation drives social media use
___________________________________________________________________
Study: Inflammation drives social media use
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 175 points
Date : 2023-08-21 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.buffalo.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.buffalo.edu)
| golemotron wrote:
| > If inflammation does indeed increase social affiliative
| motivation, it should also lead people to turn to social media,
| under such circumstances, as a means to fulfill social needs.
|
| It would be interesting to see if introverts have lower
| inflammation in general. Sociality could be a disease condition.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Watch twitch for 20 minutes, any streamer in the top 20 is a
| master of either making drama or performing commentary on drama.
| explosion-s wrote:
| Wouldn't you use social media more if you were sick/hurt somehow
| because you're being less active/feeling worse?
| [deleted]
| b800h wrote:
| Depression is the probably the hidden variable here. Surprised it
| wasn't called out in this remarkable press release. The photo is
| an interesting choice.
|
| Role of inflammation in depression:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658985/
|
| Depression and social media:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364393/
| taude wrote:
| I was going to suggest, is it the person's workout that's
| causing inflammation? Or the need to go tell everyone about it
| on social media. I'm not sure this study accounted for this.
| soudiere wrote:
| The researcher looked at depression in their 2022 paper, it was
| not statistically significant, agreed it's odd they didn't
| mention.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8864418/
| swayvil wrote:
| Add "desire for anonymity" to that list of symptoms. A recent
| survey (1) found that "because I'm afraid of crazy people
| tracking me down" to be in the top 3 reasons for preferring
| anonymity on social media.
|
| Consider that. A whole population afraid of each other. That's
| some kind of epidemic.
|
| 1) https://lemm.ee/post/4655237
| Martinussen wrote:
| Seems like "a desire to be publicly accessible at all times"
| is the outlier as far as history goes, surely. Social media
| use isn't exactly a known _positive_ indicator :b.
| swayvil wrote:
| >"desire to be publicly accessible at all times"
|
| Is this a variety of FOMO?
|
| (Fear of missing out).
|
| I hear that's a big thing now.
|
| And of course there's the employee version of that too.
| Where boss can talk to you 24-7. I don't know what the name
| for that is.
|
| It's a kind of massive force for unsolitude.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh kinda. FOMO is more about things like 'I didn't get
| rich like everyone else did.'.
|
| The boss thing is as often about trying to avoid negative
| consequences/staying in control of an interaction.
|
| If you're always available to your boss, it's harder for
| them to blame you for something not working (because you
| weren't there to walk them through it at 2am).
|
| If you respond to a negative social media post before
| everyone else reads it, you have a better chance in
| getting ahead of a shitstorm, etc.
| m1sta_ wrote:
| expression without accountability
| swayvil wrote:
| A big manifestation of that is quoting. You see a lot of
| that in some scenes. Whole discussions where nobody
| issues a personal opinion. Only copy-pasting
| authoritative utterances.
|
| And if you ask for an interpretation of one of those
| quotes they get evasive.
| FedorinoGore wrote:
| I think it's not only depression but also general "discomfort"
| that comes often with increased inflammation. You feel bad -
| you turn to people around you for support/distraction. So it
| would be interesting to see "if people seek communication"
| online and offline. Offline would be harder to quantify though
|
| would also add this research direction:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24331897/
| gcr wrote:
| is there any research linking this with alcoholism / smoking
| / other shortsighted comforts?
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Mental stress releases CRP, so I suspect inflammation isn't
| causing anything here, just a marker.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Or is it a _proxy_?
|
| Suppose X causes inflammation and social media use.
|
| Suppose you want to reduce social media use.
|
| You look at this study and think I should reduce
| inflammation, so I can reduce social media use? How do I do
| that? By removing causes of inflammation.
|
| The thing to be careful about is to avoid jumping to some
| medication or surgery that directly removes inflammation,
| and be sure to _eliminate_ something that _causes_
| inflammation.
| InSteady wrote:
| >Mental stress releases CRP
|
| The body is full of these chicken-egg relationships. It
| really is a gigantic and bewildering system of positive and
| negative feedback loops (in terms of effect, not value
| judgements). Mental stress is one trigger, sure, but if you
| accept my interpretations below it is not much of a leap to
| see that CRP can also lead to significant increases in
| mental stress.
|
| I think it would be more accurate to say inflammation isn't
| the primary underlying cause but is rather an adaptive
| response gone awry. However, once triggered, inflammation
| (and it's downstream effects) can have a significant
| influence on one's subjective experience and behavior, by
| way of physiological alterations to brain chemistry and
| function.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658985/
|
| > _Increased inflammation is seen in the periphery in both
| depression and fatigue. This inflammation_ leads to
| increased permeability of the BBB,* _allowing for easier
| entry of inflammatory molecules or immune cells into the
| CNS._
|
| If you happen to have a disruption/disorder of your
| microbiome that includes loosening of the tight junctions
| of your epithelium (aka intestinal permeability aka "leaky
| gut"), that means that cytotoxic byproducts of bacterial
| metabolism and your body's immune responses to their
| presence (eg Mast cell release of histamine, heparin,
| cytokines, chemokines, etc) can enter your bloodstream and
| then cross your BBB to get into your brain.
|
| I believe that inflammation plays a role in each of these
| three steps: loosening of the tight junctions in
| epithelium, release of chemical mediators by mast cells (eg
| in response to detection of cytokines, rather than strictly
| in the presence of allergens and toxins), and increasing
| the permeability of the blood brain barrier.
|
| The chemokines are particularly concerning:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11786310/
|
| > _Chemokines in the brain have been recognised as
| essential elements in neurodegenerative diseases and
| related neuroinflammation._
|
| Fun times!
| b800h wrote:
| Inflammation can be rather subtle. Someone ostensibly
| unaffected could have a load of biomarkers of inflammation,
| and it's associated with all sorts of odd and bad stuff. This
| is a strange study, perhaps the press release is just dodgy
| and the paper is easier to understand.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Some personal anecdata: I have a genetic auto-immune condition,
| and my current treatment requires an injection every eight weeks.
| If untreated, the symptoms include inflammation of my body,
| especially sinuses, hands & fingers, feet & toes, elbows & knees.
| After taking my injection, the inflammation subsides.
|
| About a year after starting treatment, I noticed that during the
| final week of that eight-week cycle and continuing for a few days
| after treatment, my time on Twitter was much higher than during
| the other 6.5-ish weeks. I figured it was something
| psychological, and was able to get my doctor to increase the
| frequency of doses, which curbed my Twitter visits even more.
|
| Recently, I had a bout where due to insurance nonsense, I was
| delayed in getting my injection. I was heavily on Twitter, not as
| a result of conscious choice, but just because I felt like it. I
| took my shot a couple weeks ago, and have barely logged into
| Twitter over the last week and a half.
|
| Correlation does not imply causation, but using my own anecdata,
| I can't rule out this study and in fact have some personal
| evidence to confirm it. I find it interesting that someone
| attempted to test a hypothesis that I had informally stated a few
| years ago.
| harles wrote:
| > increased levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which the liver
| makes in response to inflammation in the body, can promote social
| media use among middle-aged adults and college students.
|
| Sounds like they found correlation and called it causation. I'm
| keeping an open mind, but I find this article dubious. No link to
| any of the studies, no alternative explanations (I would guess
| any negative health markers are associated with higher tech use),
| and the title is a little too strong "Inflammation linked to
| social media use" would be easier to swallow, or even
| "contributes to".
|
| I find press releases like this both not useful and overall bad
| for the scientific community. It's unfortunate because this may
| genuinely be an interesting line of research.
| iak8god wrote:
| > I find press releases like this both not useful and overall
| bad for the scientific community.
|
| University media offices seem to think it's their job to
| misinterpret and exaggerate scientific findings in whatever way
| will draw the most clicks to their press release.
|
| I've only had a chance to skim, but there's all kinds of
| weirdness here. In "Study 3" they measure 171 college students'
| social media use on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook,
| ignoring TikTok, which those subjects probably use more than
| all the others combined.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > University media offices
|
| Relevant comic:
| https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
| iak8god wrote:
| > Relevant comic:
| https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
|
| Yes, but in the ~15 years since this came out, University
| PR have closed the gap between their work and that of cable
| news :)
| [deleted]
| InSteady wrote:
| Is it possible that the process of getting access to
| trustworthy and complete datasets is more streamlined with
| these American companies than it is for TikTok? It's hard to
| imagine the researchers ignored TikTok purely as an
| oversight, although it's certainly possible.
| soudiere wrote:
| Two of the researchers datasets were from 2012-2016 and
| 2018-2019, I can't find the full text of the third study
| with 171 participants. Likely pre-tiktok.
|
| What's real interesting is their 2021 paper, showing the
| effect is mediated by high-self esteem (as measured by the
| 7 Item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale).
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8474231/
|
| Researcher goes along with this insane press release that
| does not mention self-esteem mediating it, why? Because
| they have an agenda.
|
| If you want to figure it out, follow the money. Who is
| funding their research? I would not be terribly surprised
| to find a pharma pipeline with a drug that reduces
| c-reactive protein. Social media addiction isn't in the
| DSM-5 yet, but once it is you know there's a market for a
| drug to address it.
| iak8god wrote:
| Most of this team looks like they're more interested in
| policy than pharmaceuticals.
|
| Baldwin Way's research focus may put him in more contact
| with pharma: https://psychology.osu.edu/people/way.37
|
| His R01 is looking at substance abuse:
| https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10304875
| iak8god wrote:
| "Study 3" was September 2021 - May 2022:
|
| > Our data came from a larger project investigating
| college students' lifestyle and well-being. In this
| project, one hundred and seventy-one college students
| (102 females; Mage = 19.24, SDage = 2.68) participated
| for partial course credit between September 2021 and May
| 2022. For our purpose, we focus on the longitudinal
| component of this study, which consisted of two parts: a
| baseline lab session (Phase 1, N = 171) and two follow-up
| weekly surveys (Phase 2, N = 160; Phase 3, N = 160).
| iak8god wrote:
| They had students use screen tracking software to log what
| apps they were using. The researchers ignored TikTok
| because it wasn't included in some pre-existing methodology
| they were following.
|
| Ignoring TikTok for any reason in 2021-2022 is a huge
| mistake. Once I saw that, I decided I'm not interested in
| their findings.
| InSteady wrote:
| That's fair. It sounds like they wanted to iterate on
| something that's been established on a preliminary basis,
| which makes the choice to stay within the parameters of
| of the original study likely the correct one. We have to
| be choosy about which variables we tweak when building
| upon previous works, otherwise people will correctly
| point out ambiguities if not outright flaws in reasoning
| when the authors analyze current results in the context
| of the previous study (the whole point of iterating).
|
| This approach does have it's drawbacks though, such as
| rapidly fading into irrelevance and obscurity given the
| ever-changing landscape of the study environment. It is
| of course your prerogative to disregard research as you
| see fit, but hopefully we can agree that this isn't bad
| science (at least not on that basis), even if you find
| the results uninteresting.
| iak8god wrote:
| I slightly misinterpreted the following from the article:
|
| > We decided to assess social media use across four
| platforms for three reasons. First, Snapchat, Instagram,
| Twitter, and Facebook were the most popular social media
| platforms among college students at the time of our study
| design (Perrin and Anderson, 2019).
|
| This is telling us that they designed the study at a time
| when a 2019 report on social media usage was the most up-
| to-date available. I misread initially, thinking that
| (Perrin and Anderson, 2019) was the study design they
| followed, but it is actually this: _Perrin, A., &
| Anderson, M. (2019). Share of US adults using social
| media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since
| 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...._
|
| I get that they probably didn't feel like revising their
| design in the fall of 2021, but this would have been the
| right thing to do, given trends in social media use in
| young people at the time. It is odd that this 2023 paper
| doesn't even mention TikTok. Its exclusion, justified or
| not, is a limitation worth noting.
| [deleted]
| tempsy wrote:
| Yeah I see chronic inflammation as a sign someone isn't
| particularly disciplined when it comes to diet or exercise.
|
| There's likely some correlation with being undisciplined with
| your physical health and being undisciplined when it comes to
| mindlessly consuming social media.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Chronic inflammation is the hallmark of dozens (if not
| hundreds) of autoimmune disorders. Discipline has nothing to
| do with it.
| tempsy wrote:
| What? Body inflammation in the modern world is of course
| impacted by diet and exercise.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Sure, diet and exercise absolutely have an impact (and so
| do stress, and your environment, and your genes), but you
| specifically claimed that "chronic inflammation [is] a
| sign someone isn't particularly disciplined when it comes
| to diet or exercise," but _more often_ chronic
| inflammation is a sign of an unchecked autoimmune
| condition.
|
| Also worth noting that some estimates claim that between
| 5 and 10% of Americans have at least one autoimmune
| disease, and on average it takes patients four years[1]
| to receive a diagnosis, let alone treatment.
|
| If I had a dollar for every person who suggested
| something was wrong with my (healthy, vegetarian) diet
| when it turns out my immune system is brute-force
| attacking my gut and spine...
|
| [1] https://www.staffcare.com/locum-tenens-
| blog/news/most-diffic...
| InSteady wrote:
| n=1 anecdotal reflection here. I've had have chronic low grade
| inflammation from two different disorders for a very long time,
| including a GI disorder that definitely triggers my liver to
| work overtime (experienced in the form of general soreness,
| occasional stabs of pain in liver area and indications of
| impaired bile production and/or bile acid malabsorption, or
| BAM, during my longer flare-ups). So CRP is probably on the
| menu for me on a frequent basis.
|
| The inflammatory aspect makes me feel like a complete zombie
| after several days of flaring up. I highly doubt this is a
| unique subjective experience. In fact, if you do some googling,
| you will find that chronic low-grade inflammation (as well as
| disruptions of the GI tract / microbiome) are quite strongly
| linked to treatment resistant depression, which is another
| thing I happen to have. I haven't personally read studies
| investigating it, but I suspect "brain fog" and
| attention/memory issues are also strongly correlated with
| chronic inflammation, even of the 'low grade' variety.
|
| When I get into these states, brought on by flare-ups, my mind
| wants nothing more than to zone out in such a way as to
| increase the perceived speed with which time passes. Because
| time is basically the only thing that can get me out of a bad
| flare-up (as long as I avoid a huge list of foods and
| activities and strictly follow certain protocols as well). If I
| could sleep through all of it that would be ideal (a common
| refrain among the chronically depressed). And at the same time,
| stress and complicated situations increase the chances that I
| do something wrong that is likely to extend the flare-up (which
| to me suggests an adaptive role of depression during chronic
| health problems).
|
| Even watching movies and TV feel too effortful at times: you
| have to focus on a storyline, remember what characters said and
| did, and maintain some emotional connection to the story in
| order to be engaged and thus have time pass quickly... all
| which takes effort. Social media truly is the high fructose
| corn syrup + hydrogenated palm oil of passive time-wasting
| activities. Getting into "the zone" in terms of mindlessly
| clicking as minutes and hours pass by in a flash takes almost
| zero effort once you are accustomed (read: addicted) to it. And
| everything is so bite-sized and condensed, it is perfectly
| tailored to someone who is having more trouble than normal
| focusing, staying engaged, and remembering stuff (even what was
| said/read 2 minutes ago).
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Hey, can I ask what GI disorder is giving you BAM? I have
| Crohn's and suspect that this latest flare is giving me bile
| issues on top of everything else (was literally digging into
| the literature about it this morning, so your comment was
| serendipitous, lol) but I'm not sure if it's more closely
| correlated with non-IBD disorders than it is with Crohn's and
| the like.
| InSteady wrote:
| I've got SIBO and dysbiosis in my large intestines as well.
| Also possible mast cell activation syndrome, pending one
| more test to complete the current diagnostic criteria.
| Note: use both bile acid malabsorption and bile acid
| diarrhea (BAM/BAD) as search terms. It gets referred to as
| either one depending on the source.
|
| BAM/BAD is definitely associated with Crohn's:
|
| >Bile acid malabsorption (BAM) is a common but an
| underestimated and often neglected sign of inflammatory
| bowel diseases (IBDs), especially those affecting the
| distal ileum. Clinically relevant BAM is most often present
| in patients with Crohn's ileitis and particularly in ileal-
| resected Crohn's disease patients. However, deterioration
| of bile acid (BA) metabolism occurs also in patients with
| IBD without ileal disease or in those in clinical
| remission, and the role of BAM in these patients is not
| well appreciated by clinicians.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25248001/
|
| Here's a nice paper that does a good job of summarizing the
| state Crohn's + BAM/BAD research (aka a systematic review)
| as of 6 years ago:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6191959/
|
| Anecdotally, I found myrrh + frankincense (about 100 -
| 300mg of each) chewed up 15 minutes prior to meals and
| phosphatidylcholine aka sunflower lecithin (5-10g) added to
| one meal per day seemed to help. I wouldn't use the myrrh
| and frankincense on a long-term basis, I stopped after a
| month. _But above all, consult your doctor or other
| certified and licensed healthcare professional before
| taking any medications and supplements, herbal or
| otherwise. Meds like this can fuck you up if you aren 't
| careful!_ Actually, be careful with phosphatidylcholine as
| well. Although it has been shown in limited research to
| benefit IBD and other GI disorders, apparently high levels
| of some of it's downstream metabolites are associated with
| more severe symptoms.
|
| Note: the dosages for frank and myrrh are for the whole
| resin, eg obtained from a trusted supplier of bulk herbs
| such as Herb Stomp. You can also use tinctures, although
| dosage may be different and they may be more or less potent
| and effective based on formulation.
|
| _Phosphatidylcholine and GI inflammatory disorders and
| IBD:_
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19594939/
|
| >Results: Studies suggested that PC displays a significant
| effect in the treatment of IBD by modulating gut barrier
| function, remodeling gut microbiota structure, regulating
| polarization of macrophages, and reducing the inflammatory
| response.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3103094/
|
| >Phosphatidylcholine has also been shown to have a
| cytoprotective role in the biliary epithelium and may
| reduce the cellular toxicity of bile acids
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S00219258
| 2 0587875
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1774598/
|
| _Myrrh and frankincense in regards to inflammation and
| IBD:_
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4950638/
|
| >In conclusion, the results of the present study suggested
| that myrrh has potent therapeutic value in the amelioration
| of experimental colitis in laboratory animals by
| downregulating the expression of proinflammatory mediators
| and improving endogenous antioxidative activities.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15597
|
| I also found glycine (30g+ / day), creatine (5-10g /day),
| and taurine (1.5g-3g / day) supplementation very helpful.
| Taurine and glycine are the primary amino acids used to
| conjugate bile, so they can in theory be helpful to a liver
| that's struggling to do it's job.
|
| Creatine is incredibly restorative to the epithelium of the
| GI tract. A rather large study is currently being designed
| to investigate creatine as adjuvant therapy for
| IBD/Crohn's, and I suspect we will see a lot more
| discussion and research into this angle in coming years.
| Bodybuilders take all of these substances because they
| improve upon even a nearly optimal metabolism, so it's
| quite logical that they are going to yield benefits to
| people with severely impaired metabolic processes at least
| in some cases, if not most of the time.
|
| Might be worth discussing pancreatic enzymes with your
| doctor. Lipase is critical to fat metabolism, so that's of
| course going to be relevant with BAM. The tricky part is
| that in cases of borderline/mild exocrine pancreatic
| insufficiency, the standard test they give (stool elastase)
| has only a 50% sensitivity (so false negatives half the
| time), and possibly even lower depending on the quality of
| the stool sample you provide. Depending on how chill your
| doctor is it might be one of those things to just try it
| out and see if it delivers significant benefit -- these
| aren't really risky meds since it's the exact enzymes your
| pancreas should be producing.
|
| The problem is they aren't cheap. Getting this kind of help
| from medical professionals can be very difficult, sadly.
| You may be able to find OTC enzymes containing lipase, but
| as always talk to physician first, and you don't want an
| product that has everything under the sun in it, plus some
| random herbs added for no apparent reason (there's a lot of
| complete junk in the category of 'natural products' since
| it's basically unregulated medicine at this point).
|
| B vitamins are also quite important to various processes in
| the liver, I believe including bile synthesis and/or
| reabsorption indirectly. It is a little more expensive, but
| _well_ worth it to get a _methylated_ b-vitamin (saves your
| body the metabolic cost of methylation after the fact).
| Important note, if you have intolerance to potatoes, which
| is not uncommon among GI patients, you may have to go out
| of your way to find one that isn 't derived from potato - I
| have found one thanks to my naturopath if you are
| interested.
|
| As an aside, potato intolerance is tricky to figure out.
| It's one of those ingredients that is used in tons of
| industrial food production processes and doesn't always
| show up on the label. For instance, the majority of foods
| 'fortified' by B-vitamins (bread, alcohol, nutritional
| yeast) and even most table salt (other than 'unrefined sea
| salt') have unlisted potato sufficient to trigger a
| reaction in a highly sensitive individual.
|
| Good luck in your search for health and vitality (or at
| least a slightly less fucked up GI tract)!
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| This is an amazing response, thank you so much! I
| appreciate the wealth of links here.
|
| Best of luck in your own GI journey!
| smm11 wrote:
| You described me, for the past 50 years following an
| incident.
| gdubs wrote:
| Right, came here to ask if anyone had read the paper and looked
| at the correlation / causation methodology.
|
| Because another obvious hypothesis is that social media causes
| some kind of fight-or-flight response in people that triggers
| inflammation.
| iak8god wrote:
| Here's what they say in the abstract:
|
| > Providing stronger evidence of the directionality of this
| effect, Study 3 (N = 171) showed that in college students CRP
| predicted increased social media use in the subsequent week
| even after controlling for current week's use.
|
| The basic methodology for this part is:
|
| * Blood sample (measured for CRP)
|
| * 1 week later: survey on social media use (participants
| using Screen Time app to objectively measure their activity)
|
| * 1 week after that: survey on social media use again
|
| Then they ran some regression analyses.
|
| I didn't see anything here that rules out the alternative
| possible explanation: _college students who use social media
| more are more stressed out as a result of their social media
| use_.
| jablongo wrote:
| I think it's a pretty basic/uninteresting relation; for a
| subset of users, being inflamed causes them to be
| uncomfortable which causes them to post about being
| uncomfortable, probably sometimes talking about inflammation
| itself (for a super meta example, see posts in this thread).
| lazide wrote:
| Or being uncomfortable causes them to want to seek comfort
| (social?), but lacking adaptive outlets they instead do
| maladaptive ones like social media.
|
| Like gambling to thrill seek because of stress from overdue
| bills.
| captainbland wrote:
| imo: inflammatory conditions often lead to fatigue and
| discomfort which makes physical activities less appealing
| and sedentary activities more appealing. Social media is
| already very accessible and highly 'rewarding' so the
| incentive to use it is very strong.
|
| (super meta: I am tired and uncomfortable and am spending
| stupid amounts of time reading reddit/HN)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| A more concerning relationship would be social media use
| induces inflammation / inflammatory responses. Perhaps the
| study controlled for the inverse causation, but maybe not.
|
| So if there is correlation, the opposite causation would imply
| a more pernicious outcome, combined with the fact that social
| media use is addictive.
|
| Some inflammatory event causing social media use like injury is
| a lot more limited than social media use by billions of people
| increasing stress. The short article didn't really assuage me
| of this.
|
| It shouldn't be debatable that social media use increases the
| sensation that you are being watched/looked at by more people
| than normal. It would be a given that this increases stress and
| tension.
| conductr wrote:
| I thought the same thing on correlation/causation. However, the
| most SM active person I know also has lupus so it checks out /s
|
| I tend to think being idle is what drives most SM usage.
| Inflammation just happens to drive idle time because of pain
| being the alternative.
| colordrops wrote:
| Not scientific, but funny enough I was just thinking of my
| social media use last night, and I came to the realization that
| I use it as a way to distract from unpleasant feelings and as a
| pain killer. If I'm hungover, or sick, or worried about work,
| my social media usage goes up significantly.
|
| Don't know if this is true for everyone but the study's
| findings match my personal experience.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It'd be nice if they included a link or even the title of the
| paper being referenced here to see the methods. It's hard for
| me to imagine how causation could even be investigated for
| this. You'd need to randomly induce inflammation on purpose to
| study participants, which seems like something you couldn't get
| through an IRB, nor would anybody consent to it if you could.
|
| Otherwise, sure, you're telling me all of the factors
| associated with inflammation, i.e. illness, disability, injury,
| sedentary life, are also associated with people spending more
| time on social media than they might otherwise, doesn't seem
| like a revelation.
| ceroxylon wrote:
| Found the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/articl
| e/abs/pii/S08891...
| iak8god wrote:
| Most people won't be able to access the paper via that
| link.
|
| I was able to get to it by going to Google Scholar and
| searching _" Brain, Behavior and Immunity" david lee_. The
| first result was a sciencedirect link that did allow me to
| read the whole thing.
| m1sta_ wrote:
| I personally use social media much more often when my CRP is
| high.
| polskibus wrote:
| How do you monitor it continuously?
| pkdpic wrote:
| Are we in agreement that social media is bad for us or not?
|
| I'm a little confused as to why anyone is still using it, why
| people are still defending it, why we're all still talking about
| it and why I'm getting more (not less) random texts from friends
| / colleagues pressuring me to get back on to big social
| platforms.
|
| What are the motivations for people to be daily activate users
| these days? Honestly just curious.
| gnz11 wrote:
| Same questions apply to this site then, no? I would think so.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| I am a DAU of the Fediverse because it's an easy way to see
| what my friends are up to and tell them what I'm up to. I also
| use it to follow "celebrities", such as they are, in the Rust
| world.
|
| By contrast, I have a Twitter account, but I only log in once
| every few weeks to check for messages.
|
| I think there is a meaningful distinction between corporate
| social media and volunteer-run platforms like the Fediverse.
| conductr wrote:
| For context, after decades of research and stuff a lot of
| people still are regularly sucking all kinds of burning
| materials containing who knows what directly into their lungs.
| People aren't always making great choices even when they're the
| victims of the consequences.
|
| Also, people just hate, HATE being bored. It has got to a point
| where boredom makes people anxious and upset.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Yet here we are
| jonplackett wrote:
| I believe It's called 'addiction'
| [deleted]
| ethanbond wrote:
| The "motivation" is just the symptom of losing a battle that a
| normal person can't be expected to win anyway.
|
| We've all been dropped into the most well-funded and
| technologically sophisticated casino of all time, built and
| maintained by armies of engineers and ML models that
| continuously optimize a ~infinite number of useless but highly
| varied casino games that are then made accessible to you 24/7
| via a device in your pocket.
|
| Also all your friends are in the casino and even the ones who
| hate it are actually having a pretty good time. They are more
| than happy to send you links/offer you a seat at their
| particular game of choice (such as these comments on HN).
|
| Normal people have way too many everyday concerns to be
| (successfully) engaging in a 24/7 battle-for-attention against
| the most advanced attention-grabbing systems ever created.
|
| It's so ludicrously asymmetric it seems unfair to even ascribe
| "motivation" to users, but the motivation for the casino
| designers is pretty obvious.
| CM30 wrote:
| Same reason people watch cable news. Because they want to be
| informed, and (likely incorrectly) believe seeing a non stop
| stream of information means they're more informed about what's
| going on in the world. Heck, the journalists themselves are
| absolutely hooked on social media, to the point they almost
| can't function without it.
| gravitate wrote:
| > What are the motivations for people to be daily activate
| users these days?
|
| The sincere belief that real town squares don't matter and that
| the real ones are only online now. This is brought on by
| propaganda in the media that Twitter, etc is where things
| 'happen' now and real life should be shunned at every instance.
|
| 'If it's not online, it doesn't exist' mentality.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Social media is a form of high speed communication. That, in
| and of itself, it's not "bad". What makes it have a negative
| impact on society are the algorithms that have been put in
| place to sculpt what users experience on the platform. It
| brings together users with similar (sometimes irrational)
| thought patterns. This creates echo chambers and the illusion
| that a person's illogical beliefs are held by a majority of
| people. That can lead to polarization and galvanization of
| extremist beliefs. That is a very bad thing indeed.
|
| On a more superficial level, it often creates a culture of
| comparison, where people judge themselves in relation to the
| lifestyles they see others apparently living. I use the word
| "apparently" because most of those lifestyles are complete
| fiction. None the less, that comparison can convince a person
| that they're "losing at life", which can lead to depression and
| all of the problems that come with it.
|
| Why are people using it? To satisfy the innate human need for
| social connection.
| akira2501 wrote:
| No.
|
| You're confused because you're attempting to take an entire
| technology and then view it through a binary lens of "good" or
| "bad." This is impractical and not at all useful.
|
| I'm sorry your use of social media is filled with such
| negativity. Other people are using to connect over their
| hobbies, to collaborate and to do work together, to do
| research, to put together broadcasts, to have this very
| conversation we're having right now.
|
| Social media is exactly like all other human activities. It's a
| reflection of the sum total of humanity. It has both good and
| bad aspects to it. It is a part of us because we built it.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Modern social media is designed to be addictive. Addiction
| means the habit far outlives its usefulness, to the point
| where it's detrimental. Most human activities aren't like
| this. You _can_ get addicted to just about anything, but a
| few things are way more common.
|
| Social media can also be used for good reasons like you
| described, and that's how I use it too. I still think it's a
| net negative on society, though. It's just too good at taking
| away human interaction and doesn't provide enough in return,
| the way most people are using it.
| RIMR wrote:
| It's because it's addictive, and we live in a capitalist free
| society. Bad things can be stimulating, fun, and addictive, and
| so people will still partake in those things to their own
| deficit. We can't just ban things because they have negative
| consequences, cigarettes literally kill people and they're
| still in every corner store, but this is especially an issue
| when it comes to mediums for free speech. The companies
| responsible have no incentive to prevent harm, because what
| they are doing is profitable. The more addictive their product
| is, the more money they make.
| boredemployee wrote:
| For me, the problem begins when your whole profession depends
| on it, then you get locked in. I just can't get gigs for my
| side project sending emails or asking people to join my "blog".
|
| But I completely agree, I'd prefer delete all my accounts.
| hot_gril wrote:
| > What are the motivations for people to be daily activate
| users these days? Honestly just curious.
|
| It's useful so you stay connected with friends who don't
| necessarily live next to you. That's the motivation for at
| least monthly active, maybe daily if you've got a lot going on.
|
| Also, when I was in college (2014-2018), Facebook was extra
| useful because it was the default way of inviting many people
| to an event, and there were also really active pages like "free
| and for sale." It was also a directory for
| classmates/housemates to contact you if they didn't already
| have your number, which was an occasional bacon-saver. Nowadays
| FB Messenger is still ubiquitous enough that at least you can
| invite ~20 people via a group chat without having to deal with
| SMS (cause one guy will always have Android).
|
| Of course, you could easily use it to kill time scrolling
| through random stuff from strangers and possibly go overboard
| to the point of it being mentally impactful, same how daily
| video game addiction is different from playing an hour per
| week. I'm also not going to ignore how social media is more
| addictive than a lot of other things.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > What are the motivations for people to be daily activate
| users these days? Honestly just curious.
|
| Why do you go on HN? That may be the beginning of a response
| since HN _is_ a social platform.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Is it the same? There are gamification tactics I'm not a fan
| of (voting system), but I find the level of discourse on HN
| to generally be a much higher quality than say, twitter,
| facebook, instagram (e.g. what we mean when we say _social
| network_ ).
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I would argue it is not a social media platform for a few
| very important reasons.
|
| - No infinite scroll
|
| - No algorithmic content recommendations (ex: if you like X,
| you'll like Y)
|
| - Highly targeted and moderated content
|
| - The user is not the product (this is maybe the most
| important and has far reaching consequences)
| michalf6 wrote:
| The user absolutely is the product here, HN is a marketing
| and recruitment funnel to YC and YC-backed companies.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I don't believe HN relies on
| selling user data like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
| does. That is what I meant by that. That dramatically
| changes the incentives and therefor the experience.
| supazek wrote:
| To me, having a profile with some kind of "like" system
| (karma) makes it social media. The main incentive is to
| gain upvotes which dramatically changes the way in which
| users write their thoughts. Even though there's nothing
| tying the "real me" to my profile, I still know it's me and
| am incentivized to make posts that will garner more votes.
| SO, Quora, forums etc all count. Only when people are truly
| anonymous, with no "score" being kept do I believe it
| doesn't count.
| jonplackett wrote:
| And most important of all - no push notifications trying to
| drag you back in all the time.
| hk__2 wrote:
| None of the item you listed have _anything_ to do with
| being a social media platform. Is it a website that enable
| users to create and share content or to participate in
| social networking? Yes, then it's a social media platform,
| period.
|
| This is a good example for this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37210298
|
| > People tend to view every other social media platform
| negatively except for the one they personally use, and
| they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter
| what.
|
| Besides, nowadays pretty much any random content website
| (including newspapers) have infinite scroll, algorithmic
| content recommendation (btw, content recommendation is
| algorithmic by definition), untargeted content and ads (=
| the user is the product) while not always being a social
| media platform.
| hgsgm wrote:
| It's like the old debates abput what "object oriented" or
| "functional" programming means. We need a list of the major
| attributes of social media, and then tag each system with
| its attributes from the list.
|
| Then we can discuss which attributes are good or bad and
| which attributes interact with some kind of synergy or
| opposition.
| taude wrote:
| It does have paging that you can click through to get more
| articles. I know it's "different" but for someone like a
| HACKER, pressing the link vs a swipe probably has little
| differences.
|
| It does use "popularity" and it's gamed - maybe not
| algorithmic content, but it's still promoting content.
|
| It uses Social media game to upvote/downvote comments, etc.
| which impacts people's behaviors and group think.
|
| There's such a wide variety of articles on here, and a
| pretty wide variety of people, too. I'm always suprised by
| how many non-programmer types are really around here.
|
| The user's not the product? We'll there is targeting of Job
| ads and such on here for Y-Combinator companies. Probably
| other things that you just don't know about.
|
| It's just a niche social media company that you happen to
| really align with. But so are certain Reddits for people,
| etc.
|
| The one thing it doesn't have here is the distractions with
| other links (I'm
| BoxFour wrote:
| An excellent query, as it neatly encapsulates the only
| response to the original post.
|
| People tend to view every other social media platform
| negatively except for the one they personally use, and
| they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter
| what.
| pkdpic wrote:
| I have honestly never met anyone who would defend hacker
| news or reddit as a good use of their time or pressure
| their peers to use the platforms more.
|
| Are we saying that all social media platforms are the same?
| Are there teams working on the hacker news platform trying
| to tweak the algorithms to drive addictive user engagement?
| Is the sorting algorithm not a matter of public record?
|
| Correction to my original comment, I am asking about
| Instagram / Facebook / Twitter.
|
| I know why I (maybe we) go on HN and its because Im bored
| and weak and Ive never felt manipulated by it or addicted
| to it or wanted to be on it for more than 15 minutes.
|
| I have chores I should be doing.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > I honestly haven't come across anyone who would
| advocate for Hacker News or Reddit as a productive use of
| their time.
|
| Really? I actually encounter such individuals quite
| frequently, even if it's more subtly expressed through
| statements like, "Hey, did you catch that discussion on
| HN about X? You should check it out!"
|
| > Are we implying that all social media platforms are
| indistinguishable?
|
| In the sense that they all harbor pseudonymous
| individuals often baiting one another and getting
| embroiled in futile online conflicts aimed solely at
| boosting egos (even our current exchange is not exempt
| from this and I am guilty of it)?
|
| Yes, I believe that's a valid assessment of virtually
| every social media platform.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Are we saying that all social media platforms are the
| same?
|
| Nobody is saying that.
|
| > Are there teams working on the hacker news platform
| trying to tweak the algorithms to drive addictive user
| engagement?
|
| Driving addictive user engagement has little to do with
| being a social media platform, see Netflix for example.
|
| > Is the sorting algorithm not a matter of public record?
|
| Again, that's irrelevant. Twitter is more open-source
| than HN.
| probablynish wrote:
| > I am asking about Instagram / Facebook / Twitter.
|
| I find Instagram pretty valuable, and I've tried to
| create a habit of going on it every day or two for 15-20
| minutes (I have to exert effort to do this). I have close
| friends now scattered around the world, and one of the
| best ways (per unit of time) for me to keep up with
| everyone is to check out their posts/stories, send some
| kind of DM commenting on their activities, and post a
| story of my own. Then when we do end up talking on the
| phone I feel like I know what they've been up to.
| michalf6 wrote:
| Me and my friend found our jobs through HN, and the HN
| common cultural context helped me in that job. It's
| definitely a value add for my life
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm a lot more fond of forums (like this) than media like
| twitter, facebook, instagram where it's more about
| "maintaining a persona". On a forum it would theoretically
| be about conversation and almost never about the person per
| se.
| codr7 wrote:
| Oh, I see that game being played quite a lot around here
| as well.
| Martinussen wrote:
| If you think HN is less fake than Facebook as far as
| personas goes that is probably more about your Facebook
| feed - HN is more homogeneous, certainly, but you don't
| become cultured because you've build a country club and
| everyone puts on a fancy accents inside.
|
| On a side note, HN is the place person matters more than
| anywhere I can think of except for YouTube. Is it
| possible you feel like that because it's closer to _your_
| person /ingroup?
| kzrdude wrote:
| Do you read comments differently depending on which
| username posts them? I usually don't. That's the kind of
| personal I mean.
| UhUhUhUh wrote:
| I tend to view all platforms negatively because I am afraid
| that all are a virtual substitute to actual encounters and
| debates. They soothe a real need and desire with a sort of
| hallucinatory satisfaction (human beings are very good at
| that). Which does tend to create a cycle of addiction or
| dependency. So by making life more bearable, they also
| validate and consolidate life as it is. So yeah...
| hk__2 wrote:
| > I tend to view all platforms negatively because I am
| afraid that all are a virtual substitute to actual
| encounters and debates.
|
| They are not virtual substitute, they are actual debates
| but through a medium different than voice. Of course, the
| experience is different, but that doesn't make it
| "virtual", just like going to the cinema is not a
| "virtual substitute" to live theater.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Numerous individuals grapple with contradictory
| sentiments regarding their engagement with social media,
| yet persist in using it.
|
| Hacker News isn't an exception in the realm of social
| media platforms subject to such considerations. It
| appears that a significant number within this community
| possess a certain blind spot, often exerting substantial
| effort to delineate why their favored social media stands
| apart in some manner from the rest.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| On the contrary, I'm always hating on Twitter, which is my
| primary social platform. I'm just addicted to it.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| one of the biggest reasons it persists, even after all of
| the chaos.
|
| a fair amount of the customers would have to go to rehab
| to successfully leave.
|
| that isn't judgement. just facts.
| taude wrote:
| It's going to depend how you us it.
|
| I waste far more time on Hacker News, which has a similar
| dubious added value...
|
| I like to keep up with my friends and see what they're up to,
| and we trade text messages through our Stories, etc. It's
| something I can do during a couple poop breaks in the day, so I
| don't really think of it as being "bad" for me. Maybe I'm the
| only one using it who isn't addicted?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I was at a live show last night. Great time, lots of energy.
|
| All the people in front of me, who were there with friends..
| kept pulling out their phones. Tiktok, instagram.
|
| Not to grab photos (which is at least interacting with the
| event sorta) but just.. scrolling.
|
| Not talking to their friends, not enjoying the show, just..
| social media.
|
| It seems to be that the social media usage is some sort of
| crutch. Like meth or alcohol abuse, it's a bad solution to a
| problem.
| greenhearth wrote:
| I was just at a show too and this is what I saw as well. I
| noticed that the people who did this were all younger kids.
| It boggled my mind.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Like meth or alcohol abuse, it's a bad solution to a
| problem.
|
| Which other solution do you think of for someone who's bored
| at an event, can't go out, and doesn't have anything more in
| their pocket than their phone? I don't know what was the
| exact situation, but I would be wary about writing
| conclusions based on something I saw and don't understand.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Given that they were all wearing shirts for the thing.. I
| don't think it was a case of being bored or not wanting to
| be there. Also they were literally in a big group of
| friends - talk to your friend.
|
| Obviously I didn't interview a stranger during a live show,
| but I suspect if I had asked them they would not have
| realized they had done it.
|
| I see this behavior at bars and such too. Maybe next time I
| will just be rude for a bit and ask someone about it
| (though I would be surprised to get much of a real answer).
| hgsgm wrote:
| Well you can't have a conversation at a loud live show,
| unless you use a sign language, but even that has visual
| challenges.
| gretch wrote:
| > I'm a little confused as to why anyone is still using it, why
| people are still defending it
|
| Coca Cola is also bad for you but most people will still drink
| one at a picnic.
|
| If you drink coke everyday, that's probably bad for you, but
| swearing off coke (or the govt banning coke) would be wtf on
| the other end of the spectrum.
|
| Treat social media like coca cola
| azangru wrote:
| Would you consider Hacker News a social medium?
|
| I keep using Hacker News, and follow several people on Mastodon
| or Twitter in read-only mode (don't have an account) to keep up
| on the news about web development.
| zzzeek wrote:
| we are programmers and need to occupy our brains while test
| suites run / compilers compile / waiting for coworkers to
| respond to your slack message
| [deleted]
| belltaco wrote:
| I thought being depressed when sick was a mechanism to keep
| humans or animals indoors so that they don't spread the disease.
| djangelic wrote:
| Isn't that where social media is consumed? It makes sense that
| this isolation drives us to connect, and in ways that are not
| as helpful as real meaningful connections.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Sure, elevated inflammatory cytokines are consistently shown in
| imaging studies to reduce brain activity in motivation areas, and
| drive it in anxiety related areas [1]. So it makes sense to me
| that we would seek the lower effort emotional rewards that social
| media platforms can provide. What I'm surprised by here is that
| they don't find it's then used for entertainment value, but
| rather for social engagement. Which would indicate it drives a
| need to seek particular levels of oxytocin and vasopressin
| specifically:
|
| > it's associated with social media to specifically interact with
| other users, like direct messaging and posting to people's pages.
| Interestingly, inflammation did not lead people to use social
| media for other purposes--for example, entertainment purposes
| like watching funny video
|
| [1] 2018, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5997866/
| hinkley wrote:
| There's definitely a straightforward enough evolutionary
| advantage to being more sedentary (demotivated) when recovering
| from an injury or an illness.
|
| The problem is we're getting inflammation without earning it
| the old fashioned way: misadventure.
| jeezfrk wrote:
| someone failed to mention this is from the onion.
|
| like... the research team and everyone.
| tosser0001 wrote:
| Could someone explain what is meant by "inflammation" in this
| context? What exactly is inflamed and is it manifested externally
| in some visible way? I feel like I constantly hear about
| inflammation but it's never clear to me what is physically
| happening.
| ww520 wrote:
| Inflammation is the chronic response from the body's immune
| system to invasive foreign agents like bacteria, viruses,
| toxin, etc. The immune system sends out inflammatory cells and
| others to fight the invading agents and to heal the injured
| area. The area can become painful and swelling.
| [deleted]
| thenerdhead wrote:
| It's in the first paragraph:
|
| > Across three studies involving more than 1,800 participants,
| the findings -- published in the journal Brain, Behavior and
| Immunity -- indicate that increased levels of C-reactive
| protein (CRP), which the liver makes in response to
| inflammation in the body, can promote social media use among
| middle-aged adults and college students.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-reactive_protein
| arroz wrote:
| I think it means getting people mad / to rage
| creamyhorror wrote:
| It's because they're not only talking about everyday visible
| inflammation. My understanding is that "inflammation" is a
| phenomenon in which cells release chemicals telling other cells
| that there's an injury, pathogens, or toxins nearby. These
| chemicals cause other cells to release further chemicals (a
| "signalling cascade"), leading to all sorts of effects ranging
| from the familiar swelling and redness and summoning of immune
| cells, all the way to allergic reactions, neural effects, long-
| term health outcomes, and (apparently) increased social media
| use. The effects no doubt differ based on the types and levels
| of inflammation-signalling compounds being released (of which
| there are many).
|
| The overall level of inflammation is commonly determined by
| measuring the level of C-reactive protein in blood (it rises as
| a result of inflammation). It's commonly measured in blood
| tests.
|
| There's a natural role for inflammation in the body, but it's
| also possible to have too much inflammation and experience
| negative outcomes as a result. A lot of recent research has
| been about the effects of inflammation signalling throughout
| the body, and much of the interest in antioxidants is because
| they may serve to reduce oxidative stress (which damages cells
| and also comes about as a result of inflammation).
|
| "Chronic low-grade inflammatory process, on the other hand,
| plays a central role in the pathogenesis of a number of chronic
| diseases." -
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736408/
| tomohawk wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be the other way around? I know people who
| reduced inflammation by staying off social media and away from
| news media. These things tend to induce stress, which can cause
| inflammation.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Social science, psych, biomed and pharma research should pass
| some kind repeatability threshold before it gets to make
| headlines; see Gino at Harvard for example.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Sadly, a lot of commenters seems to take the attached article
| as fact, as if the replicability crisis never happened
| kypro wrote:
| Hmmm... CRP correlates to all kinds of things like lower levels
| of Vit D, less exercise, illness, etc...
|
| If people are going out less, say because it's winter and they've
| been feeling unwell then we should expect CRP levels to be
| higher. We should probably also expect social media use while
| people are at home is probably going to be higher than when
| they're outside in the sun.
|
| The idea that an inflammatory marker would actually drive people
| to seek out social media seems highly suspect to me. Do people
| with cancer develop an insatiable urge to use social media?
| captainbland wrote:
| If it is true I think it would arise from a bit more of a
| transitive relationship but with more straightforward leaps in
| logic. Sick people are tired, tired people want to partake in
| sedentary activities more than they want to take part in highly
| physical activities relative to the rest of the population,
| social media is a highly popular sedentary activity among the
| studied cohort of students.
| greenhearth wrote:
| Inflammation may also come from physical isolation. There have
| been studies that lack of physical contact promotes a sort of
| "hunger" that has to be satisfied or else becomes destructive.
| Socio-physical contact rebalances some chemicals that satiate it.
| I wonder if this yearning causes an immune response. In case of
| social media, if this is what happens, the feedback loop is
| extremely obvious: the offer of some social contact while
| operating in actual complete physical isolation. This is a sort
| of a closed circuit, a thing that creates the need for itself.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| "Misery loves company." At least, if it is due to inflammation,
| it seems.
| kens wrote:
| I was pretty skeptical from the original article, since it
| totally seemed like correlation. But the study looked at
| directionality, that inflammation one week results in more social
| media the next week. The paper also describes other research that
| producing inflammation increases social interaction, so this
| study isn't just a random thing. My conclusion is that this study
| is legit. The one important thing that I didn't get from the
| summary is the size of the effect.
|
| Here's a link to the paper (partially paywalled):
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08891...
| cheald wrote:
| I'll bet that if you looked at calorie intake, you'd find a
| similar pattern. I'd be willing to bet that it's not because
| the person is eating more to heal their body (at least in the
| first world, where we have to work to avoid caloric surplus,
| and where much of our diet is inflammatory), but because the
| brain seeks dopamine when you're under stress or uncomfortable.
|
| To put it another way: it's not that inflammation causes social
| media use, but that stress causes pleasure cravings.
| theptip wrote:
| Simple hypothesis: I use my phone more when I am laid up on the
| sofa with an ankle sprain.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Elon Musk plus the terribleness of Facebook helped me cut my
| social media addiction. I wouldn't say I'm happier with or
| without it, but I don't think it was a positive other than the
| handful of friends I made there that I wouldn't have made
| otherwise.
| nkingsy wrote:
| And we found the mandatory "I'm not on social media" comment on
| the social media platform. There's at least one on every post
| on the subject.
|
| Literal definition:
|
| websites and applications that enable users to create and share
| content or to participate in social networking.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Your snarky reply is not appreciated. I specifically said
| "cut my social media addiction" not "cut out social media".
| While Hacker News is a great time sink full of wonderful
| people, I don't spend nearly as much time here as I do on
| other platforms (and often go long swaths of time without
| commenting).
| kzrdude wrote:
| Platforms like Twitter and Facebook put the network in the
| center - it's about relationships between accounts
| (Friend/Follower). HN doesn't do that, so HN is a forum which
| is a slightly different genre of medium, isn't it? At least a
| kind that I'm much more in favour of.
| nkingsy wrote:
| I get value from it, but it still gives me the social high
| from interacting, plus a big multiplier added with voting.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Platforms like Twitter and Facebook put the network in
| the center - it's about relationships between accounts
| (Friend/Follower)
|
| At the beginning yes, but nowadays that's less the case.
| Twitter's "For You" is the default view and it contains
| popular content that have little to do with who you're
| following. TikTok/Instagram behave in the same way, showing
| you a mix of stuff from people you follow (but not
| everything) and from other sources. I'm not been on
| Facebook recently, but I believe they do the same.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's like the people who spray bitterant on their fingernails
| in an effort to stop reflexively chewing on them. Hope it works
| out long term.
| mmastrac wrote:
| It's been quite effective. After a few months off Twitter, I
| only really go back for a peek at the schadenfreude every
| week or so, and only for a few minutes.
| nialv7 wrote:
| Why doesn't it link to the paper? Is this study even published?
| zzzeek wrote:
| am I wrong or is this a really huge leap from correlation to
| causation?
|
| why isn't it that people who spend all day on social media get
| less sunlight and exercise therefore have more inflammation?
|
| OK well they said this, sure:
|
| > "For some people the relationship between social media use and
| inflammation may be a positive feedback loop, a cycle where more
| social media use leads to more inflammation, and more
| inflammation then leads to more social media use," he says.
| hgsgm wrote:
| That quote is commentary, not science. You should ignore that
| from the paper/scientist, as it doesn't belong in research. It
| belong in the non scientific comment forums.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| There is an old english expression "to vent one's spleen" - to
| rant angrily on social media (or write letters to the editor of
| The Times, one's MP etc)
|
| Maybe an inflamed spleen is the problem after all :-)
| orthecreedence wrote:
| [flagged]
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| I have never seen more talk about "inflammation" in any other
| context, physical or virtual, than I have on HN.
|
| To me, talking about health problems from "inflammation" sounded
| at first like a buzzword used to sell snake oil(much like
| "toxins"), but there seem to be real studies by real scientists
| discussing it.
|
| Am I in a bubble, or why is it such a rarely mentioned topic
| elsewhere?
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I had to learn a ton about it in the last year for my health-
| related issues. It's possible that it's just new information
| that's still propagating (and for some reason happens to
| concentrate on HN).
|
| For reference, my recommendations came from my therapist when
| battling with depression (i.e. I wasn't really influenced by
| anything on HN).
| hgsgm wrote:
| It's like "stress". It's real, but extremely diffuse.
| ssddanbrown wrote:
| Inflammation is a key factor of many medical conditions, many
| which can be identified by a "-itis" suffix. Might just not be
| in your bubble if you haven't crossed paths with these kinds of
| conditions.
|
| Personally, I had not come across much inflammation talk until
| I had uveitis, which led to an identification of my ankylosing
| spondylitis (a form of spinal arthritis) which has also brings
| me enthesitis. All of these are inflammation based.
| lukas099 wrote:
| The immune system is pretty important and powerful.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Social Media creates the illusion of social connectivity. While I
| might tweet a reply to Garry Tan and he might like it. It doesn't
| mean we are best buddies.
| izzydata wrote:
| I've been mentioning how weird parasocial relationships like
| this are to people for at least 10 years now and everyone
| thinks I'm being ridiculous.
|
| I still don't think anybody should be caring about social
| interactions when it is on a scale of 1 to 1 million. Where it
| is 1 person interacting with a million people. If you can't
| respond to me as an individual on a 1 to 1 scale then I simply
| do not care about your personal life.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You are not ridiculous and yes, the problem is gravely
| concerning.
|
| I would recommend, instead of saying what people should do,
| is investigate why this parasocial relationship failure mode
| exists. Why do people not only end up in a losing
| proposition, but actively seek it out?
|
| (I am quite sure there is no nice well contained single
| answer)
| izzydata wrote:
| Who knows. Perhaps a lot of us are lacking a sense of
| community and instinctively seek it out in the wrong
| places.
|
| Still, I'm not going to care about who Taylor Swift's new
| boyfriend is unless she cares about the same for me. I'd
| rather be depressed and alone. Understandably not everyone
| is going to be so masochistic about it and will fill that
| gap however they can.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| This was even weirder when it was common to have no
| capability to interact with the parasocial target at all--in
| the pre-Internet world--through TV, music, or movies. Before
| then tabloids like Enquirer Magazine gave people the sordid
| details of celebrities personal lives, which I always found
| very strange to care about.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Social Media creates the illusion of social connectivity.
| While I might tweet a reply to Garry Tan and he might like it.
| It doesn't mean we are best buddies.
|
| Why would that be an illusion? If he did read your response
| that counts as a social interaction. People who smile at each
| others in random social situations are not best buddies and
| that's not a problem.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's not a problem at all. There are a few serious problems
| with social media, but none of them are this.
| RIMR wrote:
| The problem is that there is an observable pattern of people
| betting all of their social capital on social media, and
| forming pathological connections to the people that interact
| with their posts the most.
|
| A lot of people have allowed social media to replace a normal
| social life, and so if a celebrity, or someone with a lot of
| social media clout follows you and interacts with you, it can
| be tempting to incorporate that connection into your social
| identity, and overvalue it.
| jsemrau wrote:
| I see it as an illusion because of the interaction (smile,
| like), I feel like I have had a social interaction, but in
| reality I hadn't.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| But... you have. A small one, probably not one that'll have
| much of an impact on either of you, but it is a social
| interaction.
| worrycue wrote:
| I agree it's a social interaction. Just not an in-person
| one.
| remote_phone wrote:
| I'm 100% sure this is one of those "joke" papers that show how
| bad pest-reviewed papers and journals are these days.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| My initial response was: Duh
|
| Then I read this:
|
| ""It seems that inflammation not only increases social media use,
| but our results show preliminary evidence that it's also
| associated with using social media to specifically interact with
| other users, like direct messaging and posting to people's pages.
| Interestingly, inflammation did not lead people to use social
| media for other purposes--for example, entertainment purposes
| like watching funny videos,"
|
| This is a really bold claim. What are the odds this is never
| replicated? I'd love to have a science gambling website, heck, I
| wonder if those odds could be added to confidence of a study.
| OJFord wrote:
| My reaction's still 'duh' to be honest - you wouldn't
| necessarily want to do much more of things like watching videos
| than you were doing already, but the social interaction is
| replacing something.
|
| At least assuming it's serious enough that you're stuck at home
| recovering - I'm realising as I write that my reading of it was
| quite biased by the image. Otherwise I would not think on
| reading 'inflammation' that it was particularly serious.
|
| If they studied people with slightly swollen ankle or whatever,
| but walking about, at work, etc. and found a significant
| increase in their interest in socialising (social media just
| being the most easily measured form) that is pretty
| interesting.
| haswell wrote:
| I'm not sure that this is so bold or even surprising. I suspect
| the finding is because people are seeking actual social
| connection, not just diversion.
|
| The body knows what's going on even if we're not consciously
| aware of it, and a response like: "seek out other humans" when
| the body is inflamed makes sense from an evolutionary
| perspective in a social species.
|
| Obviously this needs further study, but it makes some kind of
| logical sense at least.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| that doesn't really tie in with my experience at least. Most
| people I know when hurting retreat into themselves. It's much
| more common to find someone sitting at home eating ice cream
| or whatever when under significant stress than at a bar
| akira2501 wrote:
| Most of the study participants were fellow students who
| participated in the study for additional credit. That really
| makes me wonder what amount of selection bias ended up encoded
| into the data.
| tqi wrote:
| > The current paper used an existing data set of middle-aged
| adults for the first study, who completed survey questionnaires
| and provided blood samples the researchers analyzed for CRP. The
| authors collected their own data for the second and third studies
| using similar methods for college students.
|
| Was the hypothesis pre-registered, or did they just check the
| survey results against a bunch of markers to see what popped?
| While the conclusion certainly seems plausible, it's hard to
| imagine that something as diffuse and hard to measure as social
| media use could be reliably correlated to a specific biomarker...
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