I agree with the article that it's not facebook. You're depressed, dont feel like doing anything but know you should, so you procrastinate on facebook, and then maybe the whole day passes, and the waste of another day makes it feel like nothing is going to change, helping feed your depression.
Facebook really has little to do with this... if it wasnt facebook, it would be youtube, instagram, watching tv, or sleeping all day.
These people are depressed... they need help to improve their condition. Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Thats not how depression works.
This is me with HN and Reddit. I have spent literal entire workdays just telling myself "5 more minutes" "one more post" it never ends well. I hate myself for it but we are doing better, i have a time blocker and if things get bad I can use my /etc/hosts file to block it. But I agree I think these may be symptoms that worsen something already there.
What’s really grounded me is using a habit tracker and forcing myself to keep a string of positive habits alive - working out, meditation, writing, etc. Good habits keep me grounded when I’m feeling lost.
Something I do to block Reddit addiction is delete the app, log in through a private window (so I have to retype my password). Sometimes I also use a time limit.
Something I've done that worked for me was set my Reddit password to a long string of characters that I couldn't easily memorize, so I couldn't log in on my phone if I wanted. I also force myself to nuke my accounts from time to time, so I don't get attached to them too much.
Maybe I'm overthinking this but this seems kind of an odd takeaway, and bringing it front and center is a bit of slight of hand. You're refuting a claim that's not in the headline but I guess what you think a reader's next logical step would be?:
Finding: Facebook makes already depressed people more depressed -> Claim: Facebook makes undepressed people depressed. The 2nd is not claimed, the first is the result and I think facebook has a lot of do with this.
Like a table full of cookies over the holidays. Of course you are going to visit that table a hundred times a day. Even though it isn't really very healthy. And then when the holidays are over your diet will improve.
We are not Nietzschean creatures of pure will. The temptation-landscape significates.
> Facebook really has little to do with this... if it wasnt facebook, it would be youtube, instagram, watching tv, or sleeping all day.
…or you could end up doing something to improve your situation, like taking a walk outside or going to the gym. It’s kinda like saying vapes aren’t a problem because you would just get a cigarette.
In this case, if the individual is diagnosed with depression, taking away an escape from reality like Facebook doesn't solve the depression. Like they said, a depressed person will find something else to substitute Facebook. Depression needs actual treatment in most cases. The analogy to vaping and smoking doesn't exactly work.
The article literally says facebook aggravates depression. It's in the title. In this context, you can't just argue that taking away facebook doesn't help without reasons not to trust the article.
It's like a headline saying Budweiser fosters alcoholism. Yes, alcoholics will be worse off if they drink Budweiser and yes, Budweiser does in some way foster alcoholism by producing and selling alcohol, but it's a very narrow picture to paint Budweiser as the sole perpetrator, which is heavily implied by the headline.
I hate Facebook as much as the next guy, but in this case, singling it out like this is neither fair nor helpful. Just like shutting down Budweiser would do nothing to reduce alcoholism.
Similarly that's also how addiction as a disease works.
Clinical addictions generally imply more use than originally intended, some type of inability to quit, and some type of "significant impact" on school/work/relationships/goals.
These are known risk factors for developing depression, and of course worsening it. More studies are good, but from a news perspective, "addiction increases depression severity" is hardly surprising regardless of what the addiction is.
All of these comments that are trying to pin it back to facebook is quite interesting. Whatever hole the depression creates will be filled by any other content consumption, may it be TikTok, Youtube, Reddit, etc but there is a big pattern, time and time again, to single out Facebook.
Why is that? Youtube spreads misinformation too, most recently about election if I recall correctly. I mean hell, there are subreddits that full on organize crime / hate speech, all of them are just as bad, however facebook, every single time, always gets the active hate. I guess this is why PR is an industry, yes I just now realize this as I type the whole thing haha.
The problem is that you can’t take it away. If it’s not fb it’s tiktok, or youtube, or instagram, or reddit, or HN, or emails, or rss feeds, or food, or video games, or …
> fb ... tiktok, or youtube, or instagram, or reddit, or HN, or emails, or rss feeds, or food, or video games
Is the question: which of these is not like the rest?
Furthermore, you deny two things: firstly, that the influence of facebook is real, and secondly, that other forms of (social) media can have a different effect. E.g., RSS is totally unlike facebook. And let's ignore you mentioned food.
Food is definitely an obsession during my depressive episodes, especially if there is a suicidal component. I think constantly about food, I'm always hungry but at the same time everything disgusts me, I would like to not have to eat anymore: this ends up in a bulimic episode where I gorge everything in side, searching for something that fills that void and that taste just good, then I fast for 20-30 hours completely disgusted about what I've done.
The unfortunate thing is: we can't live without food. We can't switch it off. It doesn't disappear when we throw our mobile phone in the garbage can.
> completely disgusted about what I've done
Sorry to hear that. I sometimes eat out of boredom/anxiety too; it's almost unavoidable. Don't feel too bad. It helps me to simply not buy the things I like. You do have to do your shopping every day, though.
But remember: this internet stranger isn't disgusted by you.
I want to read the first-person essay about someone in the 2020s dealing with depression and developing a problematic avoidant-escapist relationship with emails. Does this person even exist? Maybe; if so, I am fascinated.
I’m not sure I understand how you differentiate these in terms of how they can be addictive and negative for your life in unreasonable amounts. For example, RSS used to be the worst for me personally. I was severely addicted to my feed.
All of those bar one can be done by physically separating yourself from technology, which is quite feasible in short periods. Downgrading to a dumb phone works ok too (until you need to work with some service that requires an app)
No we’re not taking it away from you, we’re just … marshaling your daily tasks to make rooms for vital additions solely for your recovery. Now get up, get clothed, and stand over that X marked in your backyard. Good. I’ll count from 1800, 1799, 1798…
"Facebook addiction increases depression" - so yes it does. However, I think we need more companies like FourHere, Humane, etc. that want to fix the harm that social media causes.
I gave up facebook about 3 years ago at this point.
The main result was that the noise was turned down. As a consequence I could listen to myself better.
I feel the same way about following news and really all ad-enabled content. The point is to increase viewership of advertisements. Really the only reliable way to increase engagement is to create something eye-catching (tiktok) or controversy (news).
The genius in FB is that for a long time it crowd sourced optimizing engagement to users. People just ended up posting things that would rile people up and get them to be on FB longer. In this sense people were the product to other people.
Depressed people without a life outside Facebook are Facebook's whales, whether it admits it or not.
Endlessly clicking through content, viewing ads, and bumping engagement numbers up.
Ergo, any systemic effort to boost engagement will eventually encourage actions with the end result of "Make more people depressed, so they consume more Facebook."
It's a crime that we don't regulate engagement methods at a government level. We should have started with anything targeted at children, but ultimately established some rules of the road for adults too.
Makes me wonder how much metrics are skewed. Views from people in this state are not views from someone a bit more balanced and happy. Yet society likes to throw bland numbers around.
I'm sure it started that way, but they've been tweaking their drivers for 15+ years at this point.
That's time enough for them to skew their userbase's behavior if they could. And given the amount of money they've thrown at staff, I wouldn't bet against them having shifted it in their favor.
I decided to go monk mode for a year. No friends, no family, no social media, no distractions. I focused on learning cooking, yoga etc. Spent most of my time either in my studio apartment or solo travelling. The results were huge, I went from an anxious depressed mess to someone who enjoys waking up, which is a very basic thing, but when you are depressed you hate that you have to wake up and go through life. I recommend this to anyone to try.
OP is more on the extreme side but doesn't sound too crazy depending on where someone is at in their life. Obviously if you have a kid you can't do this so it's irrelevant.
There's not going to be a panacea. This advice could very well work for those without children or similar obligations. Other advice might work for you, but that's not a reason to get upset.
This sounds extreme, but none the less I agree people should try to change something.
Most recommend to start exercising. Easiest way to do this is to simply say I'm the kind of person that runs / bikes / works out (don't give yourself the option to decide). Simply say on Saturday's I do a run (rain or shine), then say Tuesday's and Saturdays, etc. In no time you're doing it 3+ times a week.
From one good habit others will follow, since you'll have learned how to stay consistent.
For me, what worked was making a commitment to literally go to the gym everyday after work. Whether I actually exercised or not could falter on a day-to-day basis, but without fail I walk into the building. As predicted, it means I get a workout in at least 4 days a week, because if you're there, the barrier to "might as well run" or "guess I'll put in a quick weight set" is much lower.
it's good advice to tell yourself that "I'm the kind of person who does X." We can shift/expand our identities about ourselves to build better habits. It's like, to quit smoking, we must remind ourselves that "I'm not a smoker/ a person who smokes anymore."
Have you written more about this anywhere? What was your daily routine like? And how exactly did you avoid distractions? Didn't all that take a lot of self-discipline?
I enjoy reading the news and then discussing it with friends that are also news readers. That's the hobby aspect for me (and aforementioned friends). Together we try to predict what will happen in the world (wars, inflation, energy transition, stock market, ...) and quite often at least one of us is completely right or spectacularly wrong, which makes it fun for us.
I know it's not very useful but I enjoy it and it doesn't make me depressed or angry. Just let me have my fun.
It depends in my experience on what "news" we're talking about and the depth of the information. Almost all I'm seeing online is made to engage and engage people, some more and some less, and that definitely matches what parent is describing. Maybe you're talking about different kinds of content.
I stopped consuming "news" i.e. CBC, CNN, Guardian, and the likes two months ago and I feel objectively happier and spend less time endlessly refreshing the page. I read the occasional in depth article because I feel like it doesn't have quite the same effect.
It might even be "sitting inside, looking through the window at other people sitting inside but surely having a better time than you" .
Social media is for presenting the highlights of your life. For a lot of depressed or even just gullible people it is easy to generalize from that. I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life".
> I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life".
Is this in the typical sense of spending beyond their means, or do you have other anecdotes?
I am a highly compensated tech worker at a FAANG who overcame US immigration and other challenges to get here, and many people would trade their spot with mine.
Yet, I am so unhappy and burned out by work that I don’t think about anything else than quitting and moving back to my parents’ countryside house and enjoying a life of peace and quiet with the savings I have amassed, with no work pressure and rat race, just long hikes in nature, naps, reading and programming for fun.
I changed roles and companies and the feeling never went away. I think in January I’ll finally start therapy, I’ve been unhappy for so long that I’m worried this might just be “my ride” for the rest of my life, if I don’t do something about it.
Despite this unhappiness, I’ve never been able to quit because of that inner voice: “are you out of your stupid mind?! You’re just 35 and are making 7 figures, stop whining you privileged fool and make hay while it lasts, people would risk their physical safety in a mine for that salary”.
I’m wondering if this voice is the voice of reason while my wants are just another instance of “blowing up my life” because I see how happy other people are.
Sounds like you're doing the wise thing by starting therapy. Maybe you already know this but it might take a bit of trying out a few therapists/ counselors before you land on one that seems a good fit.
As to the voice in your head and the wants you're identifying, it sounds like you don't necessarily want to quit, or that you even want an idyllic rustic lifestyle. But more so that you wanna address where the feeling of being burnt-out and stuck is coming from. Like... I'm just a rando/ stranger from the internet, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and why a counselor will be way better to talk to than me and others here on this forum), but it seems like you want escape/ relief from your current life (in the form of just feeling peace that kinda looks like spending time outdoors), but there's a real pressure and possibly fear of feeling like if you seek this kinda peace, you are sabotaging yourself in the form of undoing all that you worked hard for, which translates to money, career, etc.
Just to give some perspective, it's possible to have a career while having a deep, settled feeling of peace in the core of who you are. This isn't easy. And it won't look the same for everyone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or thing.
But I get the sense it's going to be a longer journey – if not life-long in some sense – to find and maintain this sense of deep peace. It's not necessarily like a pill you pop or a light switch you turn on that changes everything in an instant, but a slow discovery that dawns upon you. I don't mean to sound so woo-woo, but just wanted to provide some perspective.
Thanks. All you say is accurate and the tension between doing the right thing vs sabotaging is real.
I’ve been basically living all my adult life like a frugal college student so that I could amass millions of dollars to get out of the rat race. However, it seems like the burnout is getting so bad that I might not be able to continue with this accumulation strategy.
At the core of it is (1) my inability to effectively deal with work pressure (2) a strong sense of impostor syndrome, which FAANG makes it even worse (3) my extremely introvert personality, being in a senior technical position at work I have to constantly interact with other people and I hate every minute of it, despite still doing it.
My ideal life is one where I have enough passive income to keep me afloat in perpetuity (working on it), and spend my time trying to build low-pressure solo online businesses that allow me to cultivate programming at my own pace without having to talk to other people except my family. Even just writing it out sounds idyllic.
If you have accumulated multiple (even low single digit multiples) millions of dollars and have that reasonably invested you should be easily able to retire to a low cost of living area and work on solo online business ideas. It's definitely FU level money for most people, more than most will ever earn in a lifetime.
On the other hand, perhaps living such a frugal lifestyle is contributing to your burnout. Not suggesting you need to throw all caution to the wind but taking some vacations/travels, or working with an interior designer to have a really nice welcoming place to come home to could make a difference.
No, nothing like that. Actually they abandoned their partners and family because the life they were living didn't look like the ones in the dream pictures others posted. Having hundreds or thousands of Facebook "friends" meant seeing an endless stream of exotic vacation photos, fancy restaurant photos, grand gestures, and so on. Put together it somehow looked like that was how everyone else's day to day looked like, while the day to day of the people I'm talking about was just the regular-well-off life. Only a few vacations per year instead of every day, only a couple of restaurants per week, grand gestures only on special occasions instead of every few days.
After a few years of "drifting", failing to find anything close to what they had before, I lost contact with those people so not sure where they ended up. I sometimes stumble on the blog of one of them and it looks like they're still searching, years and years later.
So in some sense this was worse than spending too much. Money is fungible and you can make it up eventually, particularly if you have good people around you. Good people are not fungible and getting them back is a lot harder, sometimes next to impossible.
Do you know that social media was the actual cause of their unhappiness?
Plenty of people are in long term relationships they can't stand for way too long, or careers, etc. I'm sure social media often plays a role but some relationships / jobs are just bad regardless of whether or not the grass is Instagram Green or not.
Yes, those people made it exhaustingly explicit, first to their families, then as justification for friends and acquaintances, that they are disappointed in how their lives are by literally pointing out to imagined lives they saw on Facebook. Then we got to see them chasing that fantasy, failing, and feeling even more disappointed because now their support structures were left behind. Last I saw of some of those people they were really drifting through life carrying depression and disappointment for what they lost, and for what they couldn't find.
I'm sure social media can create, maintain, or accentuate a lot of different types of "pathologies" because it was designed to do so.
Happiness, joy, and contentment are perspectives. Learn the perspectives from people who can model it for you (online and in books). I would name names and such, but I’d be downvoted.
Not only that, but imagine if every time they looked out the window their friends were having the best time playing outside. Never any downsides or setbacks, only the highlight reel.
Parasocial friends at that. Which means the depressed person cant even send a message to the user to see if they want to hang out as they probably don't even know the depressed person exists.
Doubt it. TV commercials encourage you to relate to or see yourself as the person in the commercial. The advertisers want to invoke a positive feeling and identification in hopes you’ll buy the product. The message is “you can have this life too”.
Social media is just pure individualistic ego-stroking by comparison. The message is “my life is better than yours”.
I had a bad boss who held my career back (he eventually lost his position due to fraud). Knowing I worked just as hard or maybe even harder than my friends and seeing them move far ahead in their careers just added to the misery and made me quit fb.
This post made me finally uninstall Instagram from my phone. Though the network effects makes it difficult to completely chuck it from my life. The exodus of my peer group from fb made it possible for me to delete it completely from my life and don't need it anymore. I hope something like that happens for instagram too. It was not for the lack of trying. I tried hard to transfer my friends and family to Signal and was unsuccessful. So now I'm waiting for the forces of nature to take over and hope that something miraculous happens and something that doesn't weaponise human mind takes over instead.
Realistically though, even if you had succeeded in getting your friends to use Signal, wouldn’t you have the same social media problem as before? They’ll still be posting stories and you’d still be addicted to checking it.
I think it's much less addictive than Instagram. It's most likely only people you know, no garbage ads, no garbage "influencers".
Plus in my experience at least, people post stories much less often but obviously that varies.
At some point I thought it was still a thing because my wife was still kinda, sorta, using it.
But years ago she quit.
I hear about Meta and that they own WhatsApp and I see people using WhatsApp.
But FaceBook: among my friends and family who used to post there, nobody ever posts anything. I don't doubt many are still logged in by default because they haven't updated their computer in years but they simply do not posts anything anymore, don't use if to message people (they use WhatsApp or Telegram instead) and don't check their feed.
And most of all: people don't ever talk about FaceBook at parties anymore. Since a long time. It used be a thing: people would ask if you were on FB or tell you about this or that person that posted this or that thing on FB. People don't do that anymore.
I don't understand where FB's MAU numbers do come from: in my (non tech) circle FB is simply already dead.
Facebook Groups are what keep a lot of people on. In small cities, that’s where the social organizing/news sharing happens. I have edited my feed down to where it’s just my groups and a couple of friends who only post photos of their cute kids.
Adtech and social media are like secondhand smoking, something we've accepted as annoying but harmless, but actually extremely deleterious to our mental health. In 50 years, we'll look back at our current social media addictions in the same way people today look at Mad Men characters smoking everywhere 24/7.
Second hand exposure to smoking is pretty well understood by cigarette consumers, yet the second hand exposure of social media consumption is very much not understood. All of the shadow profiles, tracking, fingerprinting etc so that people that are not consuming social media still have profiles about them being created without their knowledge or permission.
Many stories from people "addicted" to exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Chasing the high of feeling good and looking good can be a positive self-centered motivator which can help people lift themselves out of depression. Anecdotally I know a couple of people who have gone from severely overweight and depressed to running dozens of miles each week, and the way they talk about it definitely sounds like an addiction to me.
I do wish more social media apps took into account the human factor of checking in every so often.
TikTok is the only that I can think of that will try to bring attention to you constantly scrolling and suggest healthy things to do instead.
I think Netflix did something similarly back in the day too and the memes about Netflix knowing you're depressed.
I'm honestly surprised there isn't some kind of moderation from these apps or settings that help you combat addiction across all experiences(mobile/desktop/web/etc), especially when you're depressed. The first thing you might do when battling addiction is remove the apps and only access through a browser. Sadly, that's where all this functionality is built into:
I really don't think you can blame social media for designing something that boosts their revenue; they are incentivized to do that. It is better to educate people to stay away from most of the Social Media sites that are harmful or take up too much of their time. We have made smoking a bad habit, why can't we do that same for Instagram or Facebook?
I've seen plenty of campaigns about smoking being a bad habit, but never social media or internet addiction. Only books or fringe documentaries that get discredited in the news/media due to their incentives.
Part of the Big Tobacco settlement with the gov't was to do those kinds of "negative" campaigns. Social Media hasn't had a DoJ suit against them like Big Tobacco did. So there's a big disconnect on these campaigns as punishment vs 3rd party documentaries and crazy tinfoil hat wearing techno nerds (aka HN readers).
HN addiction increases depression severity among already depressed developers because of all the fancy cool new stuffs others are playing around while they are stuck with outdated tech stack in day jobs just for money.
Matches my experience although I don’t have any clinical diagnosis. When im already feeling bad social media normally instagram for me starts to make me feel worse as i have a hard time putting it down.
When i feel fine it’s easy for me to walk away from
One of the best decisions I've ever made is to not jump on the Facebook bandwagon. When I was in high school, all the "cool" kids were using Facebook at home and then talking about Facebook in school as well.
I honestly felt a lot of pressure to join and be active. However, I never fully gave in, and it did me a lot of good, since most people who post on Facebook talk about the best highlights of their day or their life. When you see this, and you're having a bad day, it makes that day worse.
People have good days and bad days, but when you look at Facebook it seems as though everyone is having a blast _all the time_.
I applaud your decision to stay off social media, and think you should continue to abstain.
That said, if you actually want to understand why the platform is or was popular to begin with you have to go beyond just viewing it as a masochistic FOMO factory. That’s an angle that gets talked about a lot in the wider media but it really is only a part of the story, and IMO a lesser one in the grand scheme of things.
There’s certainly an element of curated bragging to be sure, but in my experience what really keeps people engaged isn’t the unsubtle boasting but the outright fighting. FB users will quite literally treat their friend list as a stand-in for the broader world and vent their rage accordingly. For every “check my sunny vacay” post there are like 5 more along the lines of “YOU STUPID LIBS/CONS ARE RUINING THE UNIVERSE AND HERE IS WHY…”
That animosity and the back and forth exchanges it fosters is the really dark secret sauce at the heart of the experiment. Hate will always generate attention with the quickness, and it easily trumps envy as an engagement driver.
And Zuck wants to push it on the next level, where people would not be able to escape the virtual reality of ultimate depression. All this for money and power of "investors".
I started using FB again recently because a group of friends use it, and I regret it. It's so toxic. Even the reels/short videos posted there are absolutely toxic- full of pointless garbage mixed with outright fake stuff like "free energy". I'll keep it because of Groups, which are handy for what they are, but the moment those move elsewhere, I'm out.
This is actually fairly easily fixed by watching non-garbage videos and giving negative feedback on the garbage ones (click the three dots and choose hide/see less like this - it's something like that). My reels are close to 100% videos of golden retrievers being adorable. That causes me to spend a little more time on FB than I otherwise would, which is exactly what FB wants, but I can live with myself frittering away a little time watching an adult golden meet a new golden puppy.
Same thing works for Twitter - you can tune it pretty well by selecting "I'm not interested in this tweet" for all the crappy ones. After someone told me that, it took about a day before it stopped feeding me scam crypto trash.
It’s hard to tell chicken from egg when examining negative mental states alongside social media, but here’s why I’m convinced that social media is the culprit of negative mental states and not vice-versa:
I decided to drop my socials about 4 years ago. There will be periods here or there when I think “I have a handle on things; I can start using social media again.” Every single time, without fail, it begins a spiral of addiction and subsequent guilt that I have to crawl out of, yet again. It doesn’t matter how positive or negative my mental state is before re-opening the socials; the result is the same each time. The only good thing about it is that I’ve learned to recognize my pattern of addiction, and I’m better at breaking it after some practice.
I was surprised that the study doesn't mention that these apps are _intentionally_ designed to get you addicted to the point where something like this happen.
This psychology-oriented design atrocity is leaking into other industries[0], and I can't see a future where this is not strongly regulated against like how gambling is today. It took me months of using screen time apps to revert the bad habits these apps try to implant on you.
Except the kids born in the 2010's got their whole reward system fried by this, imagine a 4 year old being stimulated as much as a gambler because his parents gave him a tablet.
The issue is that those companies know how much their products affect people in a negative way yet still make them, we would be shocked if it was some chemical company making medication but psychological health is as important as physical health adn they should be treated the same in my opinion.
>Multiple sources and whistleblowers about how social media companies design their apps to be addictive
>An idiot can download any game right now from the app store and see how similar the design is to slot machines, plus they give you limited gems/coins/etc. tu use on crateboxes each day, if you want more you have to pay
>gambling is addictive and bad for adults => gambling is probably also addictive and bad for kids
I mean I know you know what I'm talking about and you know I know you know, so why play the clueless shill on every thread and post? Has being the most obedient (in the sense one protects any authority with deception and faking stupidity) person in the room become something to strive towards now?
Social media companies don’t make lootbox games. Aren’t you just picking two unrelated things and calling them “this”?
Also, the most successful gambling games I know all come with several other totally unrelated business lines, eg Fate/Grand Order contains the world’s best and longest ongoing fantasy novel and a series of theatrical movies. The pure gambling stuff is like B-grade apps for retirees.
This was a scientific study with quantitative measures that have clear operating definitions as spelled out in their methodology section. I have trouble imagining the quantitative measurement for “Facebook designed their app to maximize addictiveness” would even look like. Have mercy on the poor scientists who chose to answer a narrow question empirically and well, and left the fuzzier question out of their scientific paper.
Not speaking about this particular study, just wanted to nitpick that the psychology tricks behind "Facebook designed their app to maximize addictiveness" have indeed been measured from the point of view of monetisation/engagement, hence why so many apps and games nowadays try to implement them. I agree the concept is not relevant for this particular study.
Yeah but they aren't designed for chaotic purposes like the Joker from Batman. They are designed to make these companies more money.
I'm surprised you only took months. It's taken me years and I'm still battling it. I even wrote a book on this struggle last year given it was such a prominent addiction in my teens and early 20s. I'm 30 now.
Facebook addiction is just the tip of the iceberg of mediagenic illnesses that people are suffering in ever-increasing numbers. Articles like this will be used as evidence in future class-action lawsuits.
When you are depressed you often seek connection with people. For many though, life separates us from trusted friends in RL so you turn to Facebook et al, but the engagement is minor (e.g. a like) and leaves you even more lonely. What you want is to talk to somebody, but it is really hard/awkward to get friends to join a video/audio call. All this leaves you more alone, so you really have to switch off, go outside, and go say hi to the neighborhood
I think different social media can trigger depression in different ways.
TikTok/Instagram is full of people posting a glossy, edited lifestyle that makes your life feel bad by comparison.
Facebook/Twitter filled with more miserable people being miserable about one thing or another (politics/culture wars/news/etc) and allows you to spiral in misery.
It doesn't have to be any characteristic of facebook itself which I think a lot of the comments here are missing. A depressed person addicted to anything will become more depressed.
Having spent a lot of time in addiction recovery spaces, addiction and depression have astoundingly high comorbidity, to the point where much of the time it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, which came first in a given person.
There probably are specifics of a social media addiction that are relevant to how it affects users in depression. But that's true of all addiction as well, they all have relevant specifics.
Facebook is the longest-running of our major social networks and the first one where most people really understood that something had fundamentally changed about the world because of it, so it is the most studied. And studies take time, so we have a larger body of research on it specifically. I can almost guarantee that similar findings will obtain about other social media platforms, regardless of their individual dynamics or character.
I think IG for example creates enough FOMO in even non-depressed people as to induce some amount of depression adjacent symptoms. Ultimate "keeping up with the Joneses" kind of thing.
Nah. I don't see many miserable people in my Facebook feed. It's all just a matter of who your friends are. If you're friends with miserable people and like their posts then those are going to fill your feed.
"Users addicted to a digital drug called Facebook increases depression on already depressed people" This is fundamental and applies to ALL social networks regardless.
The solution is obviously not to replace digital drug A (Facebook) with another digital drug B (TikTok). The solution is to delete all of your social media accounts.
It would be really interesting how unique this problem is. If it applies similarly to Twitter or Instagram, or if there are some main differences.
Or if it is not even connected to the social media aspect at all, and also applies to other addictive platforms like YouTube, that don't focus on the social media aspect a lot.
Remember in 2014 when it came out that Facebook tweaked their algorithm for a number of users to boost positive posts, and it turned out that it made them much happier people?
Remember that people completely lost their shit and made Facebook promise not to do that again? Well, instead they just optimized for "engagement" and here we are.
It would be SOOO easy to make a social network that actually increases a global sense of joy, comfort, satisfaction, security, etc. Facebook already has all the users, so they'd be perfect to flip this switch if the general public would let them. Why is it that they get hounded for making people happy, but not when optimizing for addictive compulsive behavior? Are companies just expected to optimize for addiction due to profit margins, something something, yay capitalism? Why is every other optimization off limits?
Facebook already has a massive amount of global social manipulation capabilities. There's no way around that, and no way they can just turn that off. They have the users, and the users expect some form of curation. Maybe at least give users the option to flip on the happy switch? It's still all real news from their network, just slightly boosted towards positive posts. I feel like for them to even be neutral, they should be at least boosting positive posts by 4x due to Negativity Bias inherent in how our brains filter data.
First they help users connect with each other then they make them pay with their attention, attention spans, memory and mood. Then they show you therapy ads as well. Loop.
A decade ago I used to think how difficult it would be to compete in this world when everyone around me was so smart at what they did. Fast forward, it has never been easier to progress as I see the matrix (sort of).
My experience with de-addiction: I left Facebook long ago(~10yrs), Instagram 1 yr ago, Twitter 1 month ago. No addictions now apart from reading hacker news once a day, TL;DR newsletter and morning brew at EoD.
I can not express in words how good life feels right now. There is just- no noise, absolute clarity and bliss - coupled with workout regime and balanced diet. I feel sad for my friends who can not get rid of those addictions and I know it’s difficult as I’ve experienced first hand. However, once you have left those apps and some time passes, there’s no going back. Instagram really is an addictive app but I have lost the urge to open it now in a year. In contrast, all I see wherever I go is people hooked to their phones and me staring at the utter cognitive chaos in the society today due to these petty apps that have actually disconnected the society the most ever. One should be mindful of what they put inside their body and into their brain as those are only things that stay with us till our last breath.
People have forgotten to enjoy reading fiction on a sunny day. Play with friends and family often. Throw surprises to each other.
Just last week I saw two diff posts on hacker news referencing these two beautiful articles which sum up what I feel:
A cynical comment about regulation or curtailing this.
Everyone agrees smoking causes health problems, is costly and doesn't offer anything. Smoking is regulated (taxes, labels, etc), but cigarettes are readily available everywhere - gas stations, convenience stores, etc. You would imagine that something so universally recognized as detrimental would cease to exist (either outlaws or society would just abandon it completely), but it's more accessible than say clean water, healthy food and such.
My point is I don't think we will see this problem going away. As long as there is technology enabling this level of connectedness we will see the side-effect.
Cigarettes are really cheap in places that don't heavily tax them
> doesn't offer anything
Human brains like nicotine. It is mildly effective as a mood stabilizer. I think we both agree that the bad health effects are not worth it, but it's not accurate to say there's nothing on the other side of that equation.
I've heard of nicotine as nootropic and I've been meaning to get the gum. Also, I believe it's about the only thing in cigarettes that is not carcinogenic.
While there appear to be some sources claiming nicotine does not cause cancer, it is not a closed case as far as I can tell and there appears to be evidence that it can be an aggravating factor at least.[0]
I can’t find the study from a cursory search, but my understanding that nicotine addiction per se could not be replicated without combustion - non-smokers using nicotine patches did not exhibit dependence, but smokers did get dependence relief from them.
To that end, non-combustible methods of nicotine might give the benefits without the addiction negatives (but still risks of e.g. pancreatic cancer)
But not in effort to benefit ratio, excluding the downsides of nicotine. Chewing nicotine is cheap and easy, cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise, and meditation, all take significant amounts of time at the very least.
Not arguing for the use of nicotine, but there are reasons people like taking pills (or chewing gum, as the case may be).
Warning: This product is known by the state of California to be associated with an increased incidence of depression, anxiety, anti-social behavior, suicide, poor spending decisions, and political extremism.
I think you are mostly right. Still, I would like for my kid to be raised in an environment, where screen stimulation is not constant. While I do have control over that in my house ( and currently she is too young to be properly addicted by feedback loops yet ), in its current state, I am at a loss for what to do when goes to school and this problem is not solved yet.
I want there to be a choice ( just like with cigarettes ) and I just hope it will somehow become less popular for one reason or another. Right now.. the only thing that changes is the app name. Anecdotally, my wife's cousin proudly proclaimed she does not use FB, but only Insta and TikTok. I was happily buzzed at that point and I did not want to start an argument so I just took another shot.
I agree. To be more nuanced, I think I want it to be a deliberate choice. Something someone stopped, thought about and said "yes, I want to do this". Because, they have made the tradeoff for themselves.
The issue for me is that it's ubiquitous. When something is ubiquitous it becomes the default. I am privileged enough to function outside of social media. But for most, I think it's basically a requisite to function in society.
On the other hand smoking in the US has declined significantly in the last couple decades. I would hazard both regulation and more public awareness of the negative effects played a big part. We are still in the midst of the smoking moment for social media and excessive smart phone usage, the ill effects are still not widely known, studied or even agreed upon let alone regulated. Once they are we will see a drop but it will never truly go away. IMO there is an advantage here over smoking for regulators, targeted advertising provides the incentive structure that leads to most of this addiction and that can be regulated.
Everyone's piling on FB and TikTok (and yes, they are designed for engagement/addiction).
I think there's something more fundamental to it, though. I'm pretty sure the same mechanisms hold here on HN and on web forums and that its inherent in asynchronous online social fora.
Other commenters so far seem to be overlooking this. I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without completely destroying the good aspects of the web and the internet.
Fundamentally we as individuals need to learn how to engage in a healthy way and be self-aware.
Overall, yes to your post, but it does not touch several related aspects that is driving the piling on ( and you do not expand on the fact that they are designed for addiction, which translated means that they are made to tailor made for any individual to be addicted to it ).
<< Other commenters so far seem to be overlooking this.
I honestly question that assertion. I would venture to say that most people here are well aware of how social media operates and how general population responds to it.
<< I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without completely destroying the good aspects of the web and the internet.
This is admittedly the hard part, but I can absolutely imagine appropriate regulation should social media get to the point it is actually destructive to the fabric of society. I am willing to sacrifice some of the internet for it too given how much of a cesspool it has become.
It may not be the time yet, but I suppose the weird geopolitical constellation now may actually provide a conduit for just such change. I am not celebrating, because as always, it will likely be the worst of both worlds.
<< Fundamentally we as individuals need to learn how to engage in a healthy way and be self-aware.
Yes, but ideally without making an attempt to go viral in the process. I would argue this is not a healthy way to do this.
> This is admittedly the hard part, but I can absolutely imagine appropriate regulation should social media get to the point it is actually destructive to the fabric of society. I am willing to sacrifice some of the internet for it too given how much of a cesspool it has become.
Reading this, I'd even rephrase it stronger:
I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without violating fundamental human rights of private correspondence and access to general computation.
There is certainly room for potentially appropriate regulation of the cesspools of today and the adtech-surveillance-engagement machinery can go die but let's not open up for scenarios where it becomes legally unfeasible to run a phpBB instance for a community (yes, you can have addiction of those exacerbating depression as well).
> Yes, but ideally without making an attempt to go viral in the process. I would argue this is not a healthy way to do this.
<< I can't imagine any regulation that would address the root cause of the problem without violating fundamental human rights of private correspondence and access to general computation.
It is a fascinating question and I am officially now just engaging in a hypothetical. I want to keep it US-centric for now. Flying and driving in US was deemed a privilege and not a right despite very clearly making citizen's life either very difficult ( with not being able to fly ) or downright impossible in some locales ( based on how US is driver centric ).
What makes internet so different from driving that would likely result in a different legal categorization?
The main difference would probably be that being on the internet absentmindedly or poorly doesn't generally cause deaths and damage to third parties to the same extent as driving.
It's always a trade-off between the values of a society and the degree to which something like cigarettes causes harm. Even the most authoritarian government isn't able to ban everything that it wants to ban. There are also hidden costs and economic incentives created by doing a complete ban that need to be considered, which might make a ban less effective and less appealing than other solutions.
I don't think it's surprising that an all out ban is not in place.
The absurd part to me is know strong the industry is STILL. I think CVS is the only pharmacy that does not sell cigarettes, out of principle. Every other incentive tells merchants to sell cigarettes.
I kinda feel the same way about gambling. But I can do that with a poker game in my house. Tobacco needs an entire supply chain for someone to smoke. The fast that infrastructure is still profitable is kinda wild.
I don't really have a solution. I'm just making an observation.
But as long as there is tech that connects people, you will see these effects. Regulation, moderation, etc are just nerfing the tech itself.
A perspective shift I try to apply to myself is to view these things are tools, rather than a part of my identity that I am strongly tied to. I've got a power drill, but I don't check it everyday.
I do not want others to dismiss this line of thinking. Part of the issue is that we started the internet as 'free' ( as in, someone else picked up the tab as admins had to cover the cost of running websites somehow ; and there is an argument to be made that there would be no/less spam if email had some harder USD cost attached to it ).
I would not say ban, but maybe there is a middle ground that would allow less 'attention seeking' content to actually gain solid ground ( I know actually useful stuff is there if you are willing to pay ; it just does not always seem people are aware of it ).
On the other hand, opiates are generally not readily available everywhere (and the current opioid epidemic in the US is an example of regulations and healthcare providers failing to work as intended, with Purdue Pharma pleading guilty to 3 Federal criminal charges a while ago as a result) which was not always the case. See also:
How can you say that? Have you ever smoked one after sex?
What about alcohol or binging Netflix shows or even sex itself? Life is all about tradeoffs. Tobacco has a place in the trillions of tradeoffs combinations that each human can generate with their own lives, and so does alcohol, Netflix and social media.
I say this as someone that has failed a bunch of time to quit smoking. Every time I smoke, I rationally know it's doing nothing for me, but can't help myself. It's not that good IMO. Not as clear a trade-off as alcohol. I think it's mostly a romantic image I have in my head.
i think we should not look at the end of the spectrum and conclude stuff for everyone...
maybe there is a ton of people who will not get negatively effected by social media, as well people who will smoke a cigarette every 3 months in a party
As with everything there are winners and losers. Some built careers and companies by leveraging social media. That's in the pros column.
When I drill down into it, I think the potency is what draws me in. I sometimes feel this way on HN. "Let me check the comments". But FB, reddit, et al. are high octane versions.
I used Facebook to find a local running group and added Facebook friends from my city for the first time in 17 years of living here.
So for me, Facebook was a way to get out of depression.
I have a "slap you in the Facebook" rule. If you didn't get an opportunity to smack someone in the face in the last 365 days, you probably shouldn't follow them on Facebook.
Facebook really has little to do with this... if it wasnt facebook, it would be youtube, instagram, watching tv, or sleeping all day.
These people are depressed... they need help to improve their condition. Taking away facebook will not make them un-depressed. Thats not how depression works.