[HN Gopher] Study: emotional support from social media found to ...
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Study: emotional support from social media found to reduce anxiety
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 64 points
Date : 2026-02-04 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.uark.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.uark.edu)
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Social media: the solution to, and source of, all your anxiety!
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| In men? The study claims half the participants were guys age
| 18-30.
| Fnoord wrote:
| How fantastic. That means from age 18 we can allow men on
| social media!
|
| Nobody denies _all_ the effects of social media are negative.
| After all, if they were, nobody would use them. So there are
| benefits to it.
|
| It also isn't news, really. The Dutch 'MIND Hulplijn' [1] in
| their former carnation 'Stichting Korrelatie' had a pilot with
| an online forum where people with mental issues could connect
| with each other. It eventually decided to close the forum
| because of users talking each other down in regard to the
| subject of suicide (edit: and automutilation). However, the
| effect of a support group was also clearly there which was also
| a reason why they were reluctant to close it down.
|
| What I'd like to know is how the effect would be compared to a
| forum or real-life support group. Because comparing social
| media with 'no help' or 'loneliness' obviously isn't fair.
|
| [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIND_Hulplijn
| regenschutz wrote:
| No, in both genders. You have to click on the link to the paper
| [0]:
|
| >Gender was approximately equal, with 50.8% being female.
|
| If anything, the data is more accurate for females, since there
| are 1.6pp more females.
|
| [0]: https://www.mdpi.com/3679792
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Anxiety is the second leading cause of disability and mortality
| worldwide._
|
| Uh, what? That's a patently ridiculous assertion to lead with
| (and not support).
| Etheryte wrote:
| If you take anxiety to include everything from stress to a
| bunch of disorders, I'd believe it. Our bodies were not made to
| handle the permanent stress we see in modern life. The first
| place I imagine goes to cardiovascular issues?
| dlisboa wrote:
| It either is the "second leading cause of disability and
| mortality" or it isn't, there's nothing to believe. I very
| much agree with GP that the claim is completely unsupported.
|
| I found the study that the article bases this on[1]. It
| doesn't make this claim and instead associates a higher
| mortality rate to sufferers of all mental disorders, 67% of
| which are deaths by natural causes. That these natural causes
| are directly associated with the mental disorder isn't even
| something the study says. Anxiety is just one of the many
| disorders analyzed.
|
| This is similar to attributing a lower life expectancy to all
| people with endocrine diseases (e.g. diabetes) and later
| saying hyperthyroidism (another endocrine disease) is the
| sole cause of death in that group.
|
| - [1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullar
| ticle/...
| Etheryte wrote:
| There is space to suspend your belief/disbelief before you
| look it up and entertain an idea as plausible to consider
| what it might say about the discussion at hand. This
| doesn't mean blindly believing make believe, rather it
| means deferring coming to a conclusion, to quote the site
| guidelines, to converse curiously. Of course you can look
| it up and resolve it after the fact, but that doesn't mean
| the rest of the surrounding context can't be interesting
| without the resolution.
| stopwatch4619 wrote:
| may be true in some specific cases, but put like this it's
| just vague and impossible to verify
| esseph wrote:
| I can find data supporting the disability claim, but not
| precisely the death claim - however that depends on how you
| classify heart attacks and strokes.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Maybe if you slice up disorders into arbitrarily small
| groups, you can get "anxiety" to the 2nd leading cause of
| death?
|
| But, generally, I've seen mortality causes listed as
| something like (1) cardiovascular disease (2) cancers.
|
| Googling directly for "where does anxiety rank as a cause of
| death" the answer is something like "it's rarely the
| proximate cause of daeth, but is associated with higher all-
| cause mortality"
| srameshc wrote:
| It does I am sure in small instances, but isn't it established
| that it causes more anxiety in general ? I read a linkedin post
| about this guy on Linkedin asking a lady to "fix her hair" as a
| comment to something he probably found offending and to that
| another guy was asking the lady to shut up and that she was wrong
| to call out this man in the first place. I wanted to add my
| comment to this other guy and I could instantly feel all adverse
| emotions and eventually had to calm myself down and stay out. So
| when someone supported her , she definetly found her support and
| courage but many still find the anxiety in all kinds of social
| network, even with a verified person.
| golol wrote:
| Giving an addict a hit also reduces anxiety.
| ymsodev wrote:
| This was literally my first thought
| raunaqvaisoha wrote:
| beautifully said :)
| saberience wrote:
| Bingo!!
|
| I mean it's the same with most ads, creating an anxiety that
| can only be assuaged by buying the actual product.
| academic_84572 wrote:
| Exactly. The problem is timescale - short-term calming effect
| -> long-term increase in baseline anxiety and craving. And thus
| the cycle repeats.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| This is the equivalent of saying that a cigarette reduces
| anxiety. The overall habit absolutely does not reduce anxiety.
| starkeeper wrote:
| Yep, when I see those 12 ads in 5 minutes of browsing it sure
| lowers my anxiety!
|
| When I comment on something disturbing that I don't think I want
| to see again they think I love it and give me more. This is great
| for my emitional well being too!!!
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| Social media is a Dunning Krueger support network.
| elliottkember wrote:
| Maybe social media is like cigarettes, in that it cures the
| anxiety it causes. A powerfully addictive cycle.
| jwoods19 wrote:
| I think of social media as the fast food of the information
| landscape. It's okay to have it a time or two a week but if
| it's your entire information and entertainment "diet", you're
| going to feel sick.
|
| Our brains aren't designed to be lit up with dopamine every 5
| seconds for hours on end nor are they designed for foods that
| are high in sugars, fats, and salts every day.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over
| social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a scapegoat
| for larger social forces. I wonder if much of what it does is
| surface our neuroses and issues into public, and thus here we are
| only shooting the messenger.
|
| This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited,
| nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be my
| prediction.
|
| I think there are deeper long term trends causing psychological
| problems in the west: move away from physical to cognitive
| labour; increasing community isolation and lack of social
| institutions; various failures of the state; lack of meaningful
| wage growth in key brackets, and failure of the "aspiration
| engine" to create opportunities; lack of time for parenting,
| moving to dual working-parent households; helicopter parenting
| caused by breakdown of social trust; lack of infrastructure and
| provision of environments where children can be known safe in
| public. etc. etc.
|
| The major forces here are: move to a services economy; dual
| parent working households; lack of social services in state
| provision; state infrastructure moving away from providing for
| the young to paying for the old. This means much of how children
| grow up in the world is unphysical, disconnected, time-poor, risk
| adverse, overly demanding, etc.
| everdrive wrote:
| >dual parent working households; lack of social services in
| state provision;
|
| These two feel interrelated :)
|
| > I think there's a non-trivial probability that concern over
| social media is a moral panic, and it's being used as a
| scapegoat for larger social forces.
|
| Do you know if there are countries where the causes you laid
| out are not the case? (given demographics, I'm not sure if
| there are too many strict counter examples)
| whiplash451 wrote:
| > if after 5yr+ of it being banned or limited
|
| We gave social media 20 years to impact the world, why give it
| only 5 for a rollback? It feels like long term effects would
| take much longer to surface.
| dmje wrote:
| Here's my take: the bigger picture is one of "lessening
| humanity" - and it's death by a million paper cuts. Social
| media is one of the bigger cuts, but it's an awful lot of other
| things as well.
|
| Being on screens all the time - especially when out and about
| (and whether it's social media or maps, it doesn't really
| matter) - means less casual conversation, less "hello, how you
| doing", less banter, less touch points with real people. It
| means toddlers look up out of their prams and can't meet their
| parents' eyes, it means you don't smile at strangers, or
| exchange a common glance about something trivial. It means kids
| don't get to sit in pubs with their parents and have to "do
| adult conversation". It means if you're in a situation as a
| teen and you're uncomfortable, you just reach for your phone
| instead of reaching out to the next awkward teen, who might
| just end up being your lifetime friend.
|
| And then beyond that there are infinitely many takes-away-the-
| humanity cuts. Even something like this: once upon in our
| country you could buy a parking ticket for a space in a car
| park, then what typically happened when you got back to your
| car with time to spare is you then pulled up next to someone
| and offered them your ticket for free. This shit doesn't happen
| now - spaces are tied to number plates (because: profit), and
| so another little touchpoint with other humans is eroded.
|
| Getting hold of many of the companies you use is becoming
| harder, through profit motives / AI chat / whatever - high
| street banks disappear, and immediately there's a whole source
| of contact that disappears.
|
| We got a deal on our post-wedding train journey 25 years ago
| because we did it face to face with a guy in the station, and
| when we got chatting about the occasion and he discovered it
| was our wedding, he upped our ticket to 1st class. No such luck
| now, when you order all your tickets online, and the customer
| support is outsourced to somewhere a thousand miles away.
|
| Real people are for the most part lovely people, and their
| motives are 95% aligned with each other - love your family,
| help people, be generous, be kind - but the more time we spend
| slipping behind digital facades, being taken away from human
| contact through these many papercuts, the worse things are
| likely to get. IMO.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| That social networks became social media indicates a clear
| shift in incentives toward social atomization and shallow
| substitutes for human connection/affection/bonding/sexual
| satisfaction/etc.
|
| It is likely possible to disambiguate these concepts and
| build prosocial networks, if we want such a thing or believe
| it can work.
| jancsika wrote:
| > This may prove out if after 5yr+ of it being banned or
| limited, nothing changes in the youth (et al.) -- that would be
| my prediction.
|
| You're speculation here could be a counterargument to Jonathan
| Haidt's meta studies on the effects of social media on teenage
| girls, _if_ you can supplement your speculation with a better
| explanation for the increase in major depressive episodes in
| the time range he cites than the correlation with Instagram
| use.
|
| For this article, however, all the participants are aged 18-30.
| Using it as a jumping off point to paint all concern over
| social media as a "moral panic" is reductive and unhelpful.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Granting to you for the moment that the issue is with
| technology -- if instagram is removed, what is it replaced
| with? Presumably youtube? Or more passive kinds of tech?
|
| Is the issue social media, or mass media? Who knows.
|
| If we don't grant that, then the rise of instagram correlates
| heavily with everything i've mentioned. I'd suppose if you
| look at the physical places of social interaction for
| teenagers, where they'd have to move around and meet people
| -- these have all disappeared, and extremely, with the rise
| of instagram.
|
| Removing the gramme hardly brings them back. Maybe, maybe
| not.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| This can be proven. Simply measure a population of typical
| social media users for relative measures of neuroticism. Then
| have an experiment population of healthy military leaders and
| police officers that have low social media use. The assumption
| is that the second population would score dramatically lower in
| neuroticism than the population average.
|
| That establishes a of divergent populations baseline. The
| change their, such as deny, social media access or content.
| Measure the change to those two populations.
|
| Assumed facts:
|
| * social media access dramatically increases prevalence of
| anxiety and a state of dependency/addition. When true, removal
| of social media triggers addiction withdrawal that displays as
| emotional health illnesses.
|
| * Populations that do not frequently make use of social media
| are not at risk of withdrawal.
|
| * persons in high risk professions are typically conditioned
| into states of substantially lower neuroticism that population
| averages are not exposed to
| mjburgess wrote:
| It's hard to control for mere provision of social media
| access. Eg., if you're supposed to be out in the field all
| day, when are you mean to access social media?
|
| Social media is, in that case, a replacement activity.
|
| The question, which is i think unanswered, is whether and
| what its replacing in the lives of children. It may turn out
| to be: not much. That when taken away, children don't
| suddenly get more time, attention, socialisation, etc.
| instead, they just get less. Or that the kinds of tech
| hellholes theyre dumped in have purely passive interaction,
| eg., ipad kids.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Actually, there is historical precedent for that: Gen X.
|
| The defining feature of Generation X is the latch-key kid
| population. Children arriving home to empty houses for
| hours after school without any kind of social interaction
| whether in person or online. This would be before the
| internet, so there was no online social activity. This
| behavior may have applied to as many as 30-35 million US
| households where for the first time in US history both
| parents were expected to work full time outside the house.
| These children had to learn to entertain themselves, do
| their own chores, and possibly prepare their own meals.
| Imagine an entire massive population learning to become
| largely fully self-sufficient, from an emotional
| development perspective, as children. They had no
| substitute solution or alternative activity.
| ecshafer wrote:
| > lack of time for parenting
|
| The average father in present day spends more time with their
| kids weekly than the average mother did in 1960.
|
| > helicopter parenting caused by breakdown of social trust
|
| This one is more likely I think. Kids aren't able to just run
| around anymore.
|
| > lack of infrastructure and provision of environments where
| children can be known safe in public
|
| Kids can not safely ride their bikes a few miles across town.
| Fewer sidewalks, bigger cars. Distracted drivers. Its a death
| sentence.
| mhitza wrote:
| Teens and social media rethoric in my country right now is very
| close to the "video games cause violence" type of argument.
|
| They always fixate on external things instead of strictly
| looking at it as internal economic and social shortcomings.
|
| There was a short time, between 2012/2013-2020 when the "kids
| were alright", though a bit worse in school than previous
| generations.
| midtake wrote:
| You are probably at least 30 years old and you have forgotten
| how disruptive social media is for young people. We are not
| talking about a degradation of a high trust society here.
|
| With social media, we are talking about kids doing the bare
| minimum on homework in order to get back on social media
| faster. We are talking about large swaths of the population
| preferring to be entertained by social media then to engage in
| activities that would promote their success. We are talking
| about the same symptoms as addiction manifesting in kids
| because they are exposed to too much social media.
|
| Your litmus test for generational effect is also flawed. Let's
| assume an inverse test as a mental exercise, where we introduce
| social media to a young population previously unexposed. Kids
| who are able to reject the pull of social media will replace
| the ones who cannot, the numbers will shuffle. After such a
| test is concluded, you will tell yourself you're right because
| on a macro-economic scale everything looks the same, but to an
| individual prone to social media overuse, his or her life will
| be different (likely worse).
|
| That said, the issues you bring up are more important, and no
| one seems willing to tackle them. Perhaps a middle ground here
| is that the problems you listed are masking the problem of
| social media overuse, but that social media overuse is still a
| problem. It is not an innocent messenger.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm well older than 30 and couldn't disagree with GP more. I
| think social media has been an absolute disaster not just for
| young people, but for society at large.
|
| And, importantly, I don't think it needs to be this way, but
| is _designed_ to be this way to increase engagement. I
| remember when I first got on Facebook in the mid 00s and I
| loved it, and I was able to meaningfully connect with old
| friends. I also remember when the enshittification began, at
| least for me, when there was a distinct change in the feed
| algorithm that made it much more like twitter, designed for
| right hand thumb scrolling exercises and little actual
| positive interactions with friends.
| quest88 wrote:
| I think your second paragraph is too broad. The same could be
| said for kids doing the bare minimum to play video games, or
| even go outside to play with their friends all prior to
| social media. Many people long spent too much time watching
| tv, and still do, instead of pursuing what you think success
| is. Also, let people be content, we don't always need to
| engaging in activities for success
| joenot443 wrote:
| > kids doing the bare minimum on homework in order to get
| back on social media faster
|
| This was me for much of high school, but with Team Fortress 2
| or Dota instead of social media.
|
| Comic books, video games, television, skateboarding, fidget
| spinning - the list of things kids would rather do than
| homework is endless. I think a kid spending 4h+ on one
| activity is unhealthy either way, and it really comes back to
| the parents to be the arbiters. Speaking from experience,
| children (generally) aren't very good at predicting how best
| to spend their time, which is why involved parents are so
| important.
| 46493168 wrote:
| Which items on the list have engineers dedicated to rapid
| A/B testing running 24-7 to amp up the engagement numbers?
| dtdynasty wrote:
| I was also one who spent their time playing dota in high
| school. In my experience one can learn more from playing
| dota than the average social media experience.
| Understanding team dynamics and emotional regulation to
| negative experiences outside your control. If you take the
| game seriously even prioritization and deliberate practice.
|
| Of course not everyone learns from playing dota but at
| least it's a focused experience that doesn't steal focus
| away like short form videos.
| jatins wrote:
| The question is whether social media is closer to candy or
| cocaine.
|
| You are right that kids will chose anything other than
| homework but how do you explain adults spending 8 hours a
| day on short form platforms? Don't think TV had this kind
| of a hold on people. Some gamers did tend to develop
| obsessive tendencies over gaming but now that seems much
| more widespread with social media
| tayo42 wrote:
| > Don't think TV had this kind of a hold on people.
|
| Tvs in the bedroom, living rooms, kitchens, they're
| centerpieces of rooms. Sports on all day on weekends.
| They got put into cars. I get together with older family
| and they'll put the TV on and we sit around it.
|
| They only thing with TV is it wasn't convenient enough to
| be in our pockets all day.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| I think that on the whole, you're right in that these issues,
| where social media can provide support to young people, are
| not often addressed, but I also think that the larger framing
| that seems to pop up in these threads, where we assume social
| media is a negative influence that might sometimes facilitate
| a positive interaction, is backwards, and not really
| supported by evidence. Far more research, especially research
| that actually _talks to kids about their social media use_
| seems to indicate that, on the whole, kids experience social
| media as a largely neutral thing that sometimes has good or
| bad outcomes. Importantly, I think talking to kids reveals
| that they 're usually aware of the harms of social media and
| they work to mitigate those influences in their lives.
|
| I really blame "The Anxious Generation" for somehow
| successfully setting the tone of conversation around social
| media by feeding into the larger moral panic despite being a
| poorly researched pile of dreck.
| braincat31415 wrote:
| I think most of what you said is incorrect. You need to
| chat about this with high school teachers. From my personal
| experience and that of my friends who have teen kids right
| now -- Talking to kids about these issues is useless; they
| will say anything to keep the opium coming. They _might_ be
| aware that spending a lot of time on social media and cell
| phones might result in slipping grades and homework not
| done, but they will spend hours on both, regardless of
| consequences. A lot of emotional anguish will come from
| social media, and kids on social media are generally a lot
| more nasty to each other than in person. There are so many
| tears because of what he /she said on discord... especially
| girls, being more emotional, cannot mitigate anything at
| all. These things suck them in like a drug, and parents'
| action is often the only way out. A blocked social media
| and kids' cell phones on my desk until homework and chores
| are done was the most important factor that helped to turn
| their grades around, and I know a lot of other parents who
| gravitated towards the same thing.
| stetrain wrote:
| > A dangerous disease appeared to afflict the young, which
| some diagnosed as reading addiction and others as reading
| rage, reading fever, reading mania or reading lust.
| Throughout Europe reports circulated about the outbreak of
| what was described as an epidemic of reading. The behaviours
| associated with this supposedly insidious contagion were
| sensation-seeking and morally dissolute and promiscuous
| behaviour. Even acts of self-destruction were associated with
| this new craze for the reading of novels.
|
| > What some described as a craze was actually a rise in the
| 18th century of an ideal: the 'love of reading'. The
| emergence of this new phenomenon was largely due to the
| growing popularity of a new literary genre: the novel. The
| emergence of commercial publishing in the 18th century and
| the growth of an ever-widening constituency of readers was
| not welcomed by everyone. Many cultural commentators were
| apprehensive about the impact of this new medium on
| individual behaviour and on society's moral order.
|
| https://archive.ph/ihoyg
| LoganDark wrote:
| Social media is not the problem here. It is _a_ problem, but
| it 's not the cause for what you're describing.
|
| I got my career (programming) from social media and online
| social interaction in general. Sure, I did the bare minimum
| on homework for efficiency, because I disliked the extra
| steps and writing that teachers wanted of me (I probably have
| dysgraphia and can't write well), and preferred just to get
| the answer. It was never explained that they weren't scoring
| or teaching the answer, and that they were instead measuring
| the _method_. (That was a failure of the school system. Big
| problem in general. I digress.)
|
| Social media allowed me to meet others like me I otherwise
| never would've met. Allowed me to learn things from others
| like me I otherwise may never have learned. Allowed me to
| find the people that I could get along with rather than
| trying to make do only with the people physically close to
| me.
|
| Sure, TikTok and whatever didn't exist back then. They're
| terrible, even if they manage to deliver some goods. I don't
| have a TikTok account, don't have a Facebook account, etc.
|
| I do have a Discord account. I did have a Cohost account,
| before they shut down. I have Reddit and Hacker News. Those
| are where I feel I spend most of my non-work, non-hobby time.
| I use Discord almost entirely for private communications. I
| used Cohost almost entirely for making connections on
| Discord. I use Reddit to offer advice to and receive advice
| from others. I use Hacker News for some sample of current
| events and to offer my thoughts and discussion on them.
|
| I do have some bad habits. I scroll Twitter every once in a
| while, though I do find many memes and other posts to share
| with friends and relate over.
|
| And social media has done some bad for me. I won't elaborate
| on this but I had a few very major traumas through social
| media when I was 12-14, and some lesser ones more recently.
|
| But it's been a major driver of good in my life for a long
| time; fulfillment and connection I never could have had
| otherwise; and of course hard lessons I would've eventually
| needed anyway.
|
| There's an argument to be made that I just wasn't the type of
| young person that social media is particularly harmful to,
| but it's done me some major harms, some exactly the type of
| harm that's used to protest against it, and yet none of the
| harm was social media's fault. All of it was interpersonal
| interaction. All social media did was reduce the friction to
| that interpersonal interaction.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| I think you're conflating social networks with social media
| direwolf20 wrote:
| We're talking about five very biased and not completely sane
| people deciding what the whole country sees every minute of
| every day, too.
|
| If Larry Ellison owned the TV, I would not have a TV.
| nineplay wrote:
| > lack of time for parenting
|
| > helicopter parenting
|
| There is a contradiction here which commonly underlies
| 'problems in modern parenting' discussions and creates a
| "dammed if you do, damned if you don't" situation. It is always
| possible to criticize any parent for being uninvolved or too
| involved.
|
| I've often wondered why 'soccer mom' became a negative term as
| though 'supporting your child in healthy outdoor recreational
| activities' was considered a bad thing. I know it implied a log
| of other behaviors, but still was anchored in the idea that
| there is a microscopic line between an involved parent and an
| over-involved parent.
|
| Then we still assured that two working parents brings neglect -
| despite the pride many Gen Xers take in being a 'latch key kid'
| and being sent out until the street lights went dark.
|
| There's no winning, which is perhaps the point.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think it's pretty simple:
|
| 1. Ads are mind cancer.
|
| 2. The better a platform is at delivering ads, the worse it is
| for your mental well-being.
|
| Point (2) is not just because of the ads themselves, but also
| all the incentives created by ad-monetized platforms. So much
| slop, misinformation, clickbait, and ragebait is caused by
| people fighting for attention to get that sweet, sweet ad
| revenue.
|
| There's a reason "peak TV" happened after TV shows were freed
| from the need to bend their structure around several ad breaks.
| This stuff is not just a "monetization strategy", it infects
| the surrounding (non-ad) media and fundamentally changes it for
| the worse.
|
| Edit: One last point - ad delivery requires taking control away
| from the viewer/user. A platform that's good at delivering ads
| is necessarily one that makes it hard to block/skip/remove the
| ads because most users would if they could. This same mentality
| of control then informs the rest of the design. So you have
| endless A/B tests you can't opt out of and "I'll enable it
| later" dialog boxes instead of allowing the user to control
| their experience.
| popalchemist wrote:
| There's hard research to support the idea that it is not a
| moral panic and that there are serious long-term effects for
| both individuals and societies. That can be true at the same
| time as the "think of the children" people weaponize that
| rhetoric for their own ends, as well as the long term trends
| you point to. I don't think it serves anyone to turn your
| argument FOR those points down into an argument that these
| "moral panic" concerns are probably made up.
|
| It literally came to light in court filings that Meta has
| specific prompt guidelines for how AI bots on its networks
| should go about having sexual encounters with minors, with
| documentation for cases as young as 8 years old.
|
| The same billionaire who pushes this shit is in league with the
| most-documented child sex trafficker in the history of the
| world. Where there's smoke, there's fire. There is absolutely
| no reason to give the social media companies benefit of the
| doubt.
| voy707 wrote:
| Maybe 'social media bad' is just the new 'video games bad' or
| 'watching TV bad', but the sheer scale and intrusiveness is
| completely different imo.
|
| I couldn't carry my gaming PC with me as a Team Fortress 2
| addicted kid, my Gameboy was too basic to keep me compulsively
| glued to its screen for 8 hours, it couldn't constantly send me
| notifications, it didn't have some hyperoptimized billion
| dollar algorithm meticulously designed to exploit human
| psychology.
|
| There were friction and physical boundaries, now there aren't.
| That's a problem.
|
| Just ask most primary school teachers how their students are
| doing.
| baby wrote:
| There is closed or moderated social media, and there is open
| and unmoderated social media. Twitter is the latter and it's...
| really bad.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Twitter is heavily moderated, in bad ways. Can you say
| "cisgender" yet?
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Haven't read the article (wouldn't load for me) but what type of
| content you watch makes a difference too. I watch funny cats and
| dogs videos with my daughter all the time and they 100% make us
| feel better. But finding those said videos on social media is a
| "process" - it's like going through a pile of rotting fruits to
| find something to feed your kid.
|
| I can give an hour long monologue on YouTube's continued
| exploitation of children. Their half assed attempts to fix this
| (by some well intentioned Googler's, who I'm sure must have had a
| lot of pushback) aren't enough. Just try unblocking a channel for
| your kid's account (you can't - the only option is to unblock
| EVERYTHING).
| coderintherye wrote:
| I took my own break from social media a couple months ago due to
| anxiety and made a side project BebopLoop [1] in order to try out
| having positive supportive social media. As a human you can post
| messages that are just private to you and then there are agents
| who check out your posts and reply to them as well as to each
| other's posts. I found it to be emotionally supportive.
|
| [1] Beboploop.com if you want to try it out, invite codes below:
|
| LJC37CPD89
|
| SP8CMRQJQA
|
| VUEOSASRHR
|
| 2FSCBYX4NE
|
| FBBIQMYRCX
| regenschutz wrote:
| So this is like a more closed-down and friendlier version of
| moltbook?
| coderintherye wrote:
| Yeah! Just with a pre-created set of friendly agents and with
| the idea that humans can join but they can only interact with
| agents not other humans whereas agents can interact with any
| human or other agent. Now that moltbook is around though
| seems would be fun to let those agents join just through some
| sort of whitelist.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| A product that is both the cause and solution to your problem. An
| MBA's wet-dream
| munchler wrote:
| > Anxiety is the second leading cause of disability and mortality
| worldwide.
|
| I think this comes from WHO, but isn't consistent with other
| information from WHO, so it's pretty debatable.
|
| I believe the source is this[0], which says "Mental health
| conditions such as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in
| all countries and communities, affecting people of all ages and
| income levels. They represent the second biggest reason for long-
| term disability, contributing to loss of healthy life."
|
| However, elsewhere on their site[1], WHO lists the top 3 global
| causes of death and disability in 2021 as heart disease,
| COVID-19, and stroke.
|
| [0] https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-
| peop...
|
| [1] https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/theme-
| details/GHO/m...
| austin-cheney wrote:
| No, its very reliable after consideration for how anxiety works
| from a physiological perspective and what does to a person's
| health and how modifies their decisions and behaviors. When all
| these factors are taken into account anxiety alone may account
| for most other more directly measured mortality conditions.
|
| The other side of that coin is that anxiety is also most
| prominently the result of social conditioning as opposed to
| diagnosed illness. This results in anti-anxiety medications
| that are vastly over-prescribed for individuals that receive
| less than ideal benefits.
| jllyhill wrote:
| Is this another part of this third?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46682534
| anoplus wrote:
| I am determined to find real life local connections. No doom
| scrolling, no "social" media no hacker news
| flatline wrote:
| You and me both. No dating sites either, if I'm not crossing
| paths with someone in the wild through the course of my
| everyday activity, we are probably not a fit. I have found
| social media tremendously helpful at connecting people to real-
| life local activities, but I also had to move to a place that
| actually had enough of those for it to matter. There are plenty
| of places that never had much going on, and what social fabric
| did exist has been worn thin by social media, which offers a
| poor replacement.
| csours wrote:
| 1. (Big one) For virtually EVERY study, and especially human
| science studies like psychology, sociology, health; The Headline
| of the Press Release will imply things that the study does not
| claim, and especially that the study does not provide evidence
| for.
|
| This headline seems to imply quite a lot for a relatively small
| study based on survey responses.
|
| 2. For the mass market social media platforms, it's pretty easy
| to get emotional support inside your bubble, at the cost of ...
| everything else.
|
| I feel like the huge and obvious problems with social media hide
| a small and subtle, but insidious problem: How do I show that I
| care about you?
|
| I feel like there is a range that might be described:
| I don't care very much about you one way or another. (Small/no
| signal on social media, very unlikely to be boosted)
| I care enough to fight for you. (Big Signal on social media,
| likely to be boosted) I care enough to calmly
| discuss the problem. (Small signal on social media, unlikely to
| be boosted, likely to be trolled, unsatisfying in the face of
| active fighting words)
|
| To be explicit: because fights are boosted, fights are expected.
| People are prepared to fight about things offline.
| ohrus wrote:
| I skimmed the important parts of the paper. This is akin to
| finding that cigarettes reduce stress. Any smoker/former smoker
| will tell you this is true (in the immediate sense).
|
| Does that give any weight to the stance that smoking is good for
| you and society at large? No.
|
| We are right to panic about social media.
| xlaacid wrote:
| The journal Psychiatry International, it is part of the MDPI
| publisher, which sometimes faces scrutiny regarding rapid, high-
| volume, and sometimes inconsistent peer-review processes. Be
| skeptical of its contents.
| jl6 wrote:
| Social media use can be fine for people who are well-grounded
| grass-touchers in their everyday life, but this grounding comes
| with maturity and typically isn't found in younger people, for
| whom abstract online spaces can be powerfully dissociating and
| are very unlikely to be healthy.
|
| We are starting to understand the impact of ultra-processed food.
| When will we clue up to ultra-mediated social interaction?
| tsoukase wrote:
| When a single correlation of social media use with a positive
| outcome is found, it immediately becomes headline, while hundreds
| of other evidence are discarded because they are 'boring'. Well,
| even this correlation is of little benefit. Anxious people cover
| their stress while engaging online and postpone their improvement
| while they are distracted from building real, healthy
| interpersonal relationships that will help them.
|
| Smoking is correlated with lower risk of Parkinson's disease but
| it's not suggested in any setting.
| boondongle wrote:
| The intersection of dark patterns, addiction, and support
| networks really creates probably more variability than this study
| is accounting for.
|
| Youtube, Reddit, and a few other networks I could name off the
| top of my head were pro-support networks, pro-identity building
| at once time. It seems impossible to keep the profit motive from
| transitioning to an addictive/neuroticism-feeding paradigm.
|
| You end up with the weird reality that some types of websites
| just need to be user-supported/run because any other motive
| ultimately breaks them and seems to make them toxic. I'd also add
| the reality that neurotic/polemic content seems to spike any sort
| of algorithm based on engagement.
|
| Basically our closest metric for monetization is inherently
| toxic.
| ZenoArrow wrote:
| Research supported by the Fine Foundation, that has a mission
| statement that includes "works to sustain Jewish life by
| combating antisemitism"... Funny how the timing of this
| "research" coinciding with the new owners of TikTok indicating
| their new stance on censorship of criticism of Israel.
| kittikitti wrote:
| Cause IQ describes the funders of this research as, "The Melvin
| and Betty Fine Foundation promotes Zionism, Jewish education,
| and the US-Israel relationship through various programs that
| work towards these goals."
| https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/melvin-and-betty-fine-...
|
| I think it's warranted to be skeptical of the research.
| hansmayer wrote:
| Why does this "study" feel like those "studies" from the 50s
| about the benefits of smoking, which were later discovered to
| have been (surprise!) financed by the nicotin industry ?
| bluebxrry wrote:
| Breaking news: MMORPGs are less fun when doctors keep calling mom
| to ask how the MMORPG is because it kicks you off of the dial up.
| News at 9: is my iPhone actually an iPod with a cellular dial up
| modem glued inside. Late night: Stick around to watch an old man
| yelling at clouds.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| I thought HN truncated the title removing the trialing 'caused by
| social media'
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