Two major problems with a review in Nature
For centuries, adults have worried about whatever “kids these days” are doing. From novels in the 18th century to the bicycle in the 19th and through comic books, rock and roll, marijuana, and violent video games in the 20th century, there are always those who ring alarms, and there are always those who are skeptics of those alarms. So far, the skeptics have been right more often than not, and when they are right, they earn the right to call the alarm ringers “alarmists” who have fomented a groundless moral panic, usually through sensational but rare (or non-existent) horror stories trumpeted by irresponsible media.
But the skeptics are not always right. I think it is a very good thing that alarms were rung about teen smoking, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and the exposure of children to sex and violence on TV. The lesson of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that after two false alarms we should disconnect the alarm system. In that story, the wolf does eventually come.
The question before us now, on the topic of teens and social media, is this: Are the skeptics correct that we are going through just one more groundless moral panic over teens and tech in which adults are freaking out while, in fact, the harms are so minimal that they shouldn’t be a cause for worry? Or did the wolf really arrive around 2012, and has been mauling young people ever since via their smartphones and social media accounts? (Of course, there are researchers who reside in the space between these two perspectives.)
Psychologist Candice Odgers has taken the skeptical side for many years now (along with researchers including Amy Orben, Andrew Przybylski, Jeff Hancock, Chris Ferguson, and Aaron Brown), while Jean Twenge and I have been writing as alarm ringers. It has been a normal and productive academic debate. Engagement with each other’s arguments is how science makes progress. Even if we never convince each other, the broader scientific and policy communities tune in to the debate, and eventually, they’ll move one way or the other.
Odgers recently stated the skeptics' case in an essay in Nature titled The Great Rewiring: Is Social Media Really Behind an Epidemic of Teenage Mental Illness? The essay offered a critique of my recent book, The Anxious Generation. Odgers’ primary criticism is that I have mistaken correlation for causation and that “there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness.” She also warns that my ringing of a false alarm “might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people,” which, she suggests, are social ills such as racism, economic hardship, and the lingering impact of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and its disparate impact on children in low SES families.
In this response essay, I’ll present the two main problems I see with the skeptics' approach, as exemplified in Odgers’ review:
Odgers is wrong to say that I have no evidence of causation
Odgers’ alternative explanation does not fit the available facts.
Odgers’ central claim is that I have mistaken correlation for causation and that I have “no evidence” that social media is a cause, rather than a mere correlate, of the current epidemic of adolescent mental illness. Odgers says that I am just “making up stories by simply looking at trend lines.”
In 2018, when I entered this debate as a co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, it was true that the great majority of published studies on “digital media” and mental health were correlational, and every social scientist knows that correlational studies often suggest to our intuitive minds a causal pathway that vanishes when experiments using random assignment are published. (Think of the changing guidance on the health effects of fat, carbs, and red wine). But even in 2018 there were a few experimental studies on social media and mental health. For example, college students who were asked to reduce their social media use for three weeks generally experienced mental health benefits compared to the control group. Zach Rausch, Jean Twenge, and I began to collect all the studies we could find in 2019, and we organized them by type: correlational, longitudinal, and experimental. We put all of our work online in Google Docs that are open to other researchers for comment and critique. You can find all of our “collaborative review” documents at AnxiousGeneration.com/reviews
The main document that collects studies on social media is here:
Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review
In that document, we list dozens of correlational and longitudinal studies. These large datasets provide us with correlation coefficients that tell us how variables in the dataset are related to each other, and they tell us when and for whom those relationships are stronger. Those studies reveal a fairly consistent relationship in which heavy users of social media are at much higher risk of mental illness or poor mental health than everyone else. A widely cited 2018 study of 14-year-olds found that girls who spend five hours or more on social media per day are three times as likely to be depressed as girls who use social media only a little or not at all. For boys, the ratio is lower, closer to two-to-one. A meta-analysis of 26 such studies found that the risk of depression increased by 13% for each hour increase on social media for adolescents (and that increase was even higher for girls).
In that document, we also list 22 experimental studies, 16 of which found significant evidence of harm (or of benefits from getting off of social media for long enough to get past withdrawal symptoms). To give just a few examples:
Alcott and colleagues (2020) randomly assigned 2743 adults to either deactivate their Facebook accounts for one month or not. This study also found that deactivation significantly improved subjective well-being and that “80% of the treatment group agreed that deactivation was good for them.” The treatment group was also more likely to report using Facebook less and having uninstalled the app from their phones post-experiment.
Brailovskaia and colleagues (2022) have done one of the only studies I have seen that incorporate both social media reduction and physical activity increases. They randomly assigned 642 participants to (1) reduce social media use to 30 minutes a day for two weeks, (2) increase physical activity by 30 minutes a day for two weeks, (3) follow both instructions, or (4) do nothing. The researchers found the strongest effects within the combined condition (#3). This group reported the largest decreases in depressive symptoms and increases in life satisfaction and subjective happiness compared to other groups.
There are also a number of experiments that have looked at Instagram's unique negative impacts on women, including the finding that it is more harmful to women than is Facebook.
In that document, we also list nine quasi-experiments or natural experiments (as when high-speed internet arrives in different parts of a country at different times), eight of which found evidence of harm to mental health, especially for girls and women. (Odgers cited only the 9th one, which relies on a dataset that is made up of unreliable estimates that do not detect known rises in mental illness, as Zach showed here.) To give just one example: Arenas-Arroyo and colleagues (2022) looked at the links between the staggered rollout of broadband internet in Spain between 2007-2019 and hospital discharge diagnoses of behavioral and mental health cases of adolescents. They found a significant effect of the arrival of high-speed internet, but only among adolescent girls.
There are also a number of studies showing mental health improvements, increases in physical activity, and reductions in bullying when schools go phone-free—one of the few natural experiments that specifically targets both adolescents and group-level effects. (These group-level effects are illustrated brilliantly here).
I am not saying that academic debates are settled by counting up the number of studies on each side, but bringing so many studies together in one place gives us an overview of the available evidence, and that overview supports three points about problems with the skeptics’ arguments.
First, if the skeptics were right and the null hypothesis were true (i.e., social media does not cause harm to teen mental health), then the published studies would just reflect random noise and Type I errors (believing something that is false). In that case, we’d see experimental studies producing a wide range of findings, including many that showed benefits to mental health from using social media (or that showed harm to those who go off of social media for a few weeks). Yet there are hardly any such experimental findings. Most experiments find evidence of negative effects; some find no evidence of such effects, and very few show benefits. Also, if the null hypothesis were true, then we’d find some studies where the effects were larger for boys and some that found larger effects for girls. Yet that’s not what we find. When a sex difference is reported, it almost always shows more harm to girls and women. There is a clear and consistent signal running through the experimental studies (as well as the correlational studies), a signal that is not consistent with the null hypothesis.
Second, and most germane to Odgers’ review: She and the other skeptics are free to critique the hundreds of studies Zach and I cite in our essays at After Babel and in chapters 1, 5, 6, and 7 of The Anxious Generation. They can certainly say that they are not persuaded and that they will not be persuaded until the perfect experiment is done. But they cannot say that I am drawing only on correlational studies, or that I have “no evidence” of causation, or that I do not understand the difference between correlation and causation. I laid out the evidence for causality (not just correlation) between social media use and mental health outcomes for girls and walked the reader through the Google Doc and multiple kinds of evidence in this post in early 2023:
Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence.
I presented several conceptual problems with the skeptics’ claims about causality and evidence in this essay: Why Some Researchers Think I’m Wrong About Social Media and Mental Illness. For example, I noted that the skeptics focus on testing one narrow model of causality that treats social media consumption as if it were an individual act, like consuming sugar, and then looks for the size of the dose-response relationship in individuals. But much of my book is about the collective action traps that entire communities of adolescents fall into when they move their social lives onto these platforms, such that it becomes costly to abstain. It is at that point that collective mental health declines most sharply, and the individuals who try to quit find that they are socially isolated. The skeptics do not consider the ways that these network or group-level effects may obscure individual-level effects, and may be much larger than the individual-level effects.
Third, even beyond the published experiments, there is ample evidence of causation that should be relevant to parents, lawyers, and legislators: eyewitness testimony. When you ask members of Gen Z what they think is causing their high rates of mental illness, they often point to social media and particularly Instagram as a major cause. (See section 4 of our main collaborative review doc.) I have been searching for essays by members of Gen Z that defend social media and the phone-based childhood as being good for mental health. I can’t find them, but I find plenty of members of Gen Z who say that social media damaged them or their generation. Also relevant: many members of Gen Z are starting organizations to fight back.
Meta collected some eyewitness testimony accidentally. In that famous internal study brought out by whistleblower Frances Haugen, the researchers found that Instagram is particularly bad for girls. They wrote: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. . . . This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” Quantitative researchers such as Odgers are free to place less weight on qualitative studies, but they are a kind of evidence in social science research. They are relevant when we try to sort out multiple theories about causation, especially when the platforms will not share data with scientists so the experts with the deepest insights into what social media is doing to teens are the teens themselves. They see it happening. Do they count as “no evidence” since their claims are not peer-reviewed?
The second major problem with Odgers’ review is that she proposes an alternative to my “great rewiring” theory that does not fit the known facts. Odgers claims that the “real causes” of the crisis, from which my book “might distract us from effectively responding,” are longstanding social ills such as “structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation.” She proposes that the specific timing of the epidemic, beginning around 2012, might be linked to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which had lasting effects on “families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution,” who were “also growing up at the time of an opioid crisis, school shootings, and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence.”
I agree that those things are all bad for human development, but Odgers’ theory cannot explain why rates of anxiety and depression were generally flat in the 2000s and then suddenly shot upward roughly four years after the start of the Global Financial Crisis. Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama’s second term, as the economy was steadily improving?
Her theory also cannot explain why adolescent mental health collapsed in similar ways around the same time in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, as Zach and I showed in this post:
The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic is International, Part 1: The Anglosphere
Figure 1. Since 2010, rates of self-harm episodes have increased for adolescents in the Anglosphere countries, especially for girls. For data on all sources and larger versions of the graphs, see Rausch and Haidt (2023). (Data for Canada is limited to Ontario province, which contains nearly 40% of the population of Canada.)
Nor can she explain why it also happened at roughly the same time in the Nordic countries, which lack most of the social pathologies on Odgers’ list, as Zach and I showed in this post:
The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic is International, Part 2: The Nordic Nations
Figure 2. Percent of Nordic Teens with High Psychological Distress. Data from the Health Behavior in School-Age Children Survey (2002-2018). Graphs and data were organized, analyzed, and created by Thomas Potrebny and Zach Rausch. See 1.1.1 of Nordic Adolescent Mood Disorders since 2010.
Nor can she explain why it also happened in much, though not all, of Western Europe:
The Youth Mental Health Crisis is International Part 4: Europe
Figure 3. Changes in psychological distress by high vs. low individualism of each country, split by sex. Source: Health Behavior in School-Age Children Survey, 2002-2018 (See Zach’s spreadsheet for data points) and Hofstede Insights.
Nor can she explain why suicide rates for Gen Z girls (but not always boys) are at record levels across the Anglosphere, as we showed in this post:
Suicide Rates Are Up for Gen Z Across the Anglosphere, Especially for Girls
Figure 4. All datasets and figures can be found in the post.
If Odgers was correct that the “real causes” of the epidemic are America’s social ills, then we would not find these patterns in so many countries. I just can’t see a causal path by which America’s school shootings, lockdown drills, poverty, or racism caused girls in Australia to suddenly start self-harming or dying by suicide at the same time as so many American girls.
An equally large problem for Odgers’ explanation is that it commits her to the prediction that the increases in mental illness were largest for teens in low SES families. After all, her explanation for why there was a four-year delay between the onset of the GFC and the onset of the mental health crisis was because the effects lasted longer for those “in the bottom 20% of the income distribution,” who “continue to experience harm.”
Jean Twenge tested Odgers’ explanation by looking to see whether rates of major depressive episodes increased faster for teens in families below the poverty line (shown in red in Figure 5 below) versus those whose families’ incomes were at least double the poverty line (shown in blue). As you can see, there was no difference between the two groups up through 2012 (which is contrary to Odgers’ thesis about the differential impacts of the GFC on mental health), and then a difference opened up after 2012, but in the opposite direction of Odgers’ prediction.
Figure 5. Percent of U.S. 12- to 17-year-olds experiencing major depressive episodes in the last 12 months, by family income level. Source: Data from the nationally representative National Survey of Drug Use and Health; analysis by Jean M. Twenge for the Generation Tech Substack.
Twenge has also addressed 13 other possible explanations for the mental health crisis and shows why they don’t fit the data.
In short: Odgers has pointed to an alternative causal explanation that A) does not fit the timing in the U.S., B) does not fit the social class data in the U.S., and C) does not fit the international scope of the crisis.
Parents, teachers, and legislators cannot wait any longer; they want to do something about the ever-rising levels of anxiety, distraction, and suffering. Whose policy prescriptions should they follow, given the current state of the evidence and the relative risks and costs associated with each path?
If leaders and change-makers were to embrace Odgers’ causal theory about the “real causes” rather than being “distracted” by mine, then the way forward is to first solve society’s biggest social problems, most of which we have been working on for decades. Perhaps this time we’ll make more progress, and in ten or twenty years, rates of teen mental illness will begin to decline.
And if Odger’s causal theory turns out to be wrong? We’ll have spent another decade or two locked in the usual culture war battles over spending on social programs that may or may not be effective, and we will have lost another generation to mental illness.
In contrast, if leaders and change makers were to embrace my account of the “great rewiring of childhood,” in which the phone-based childhood replaced the play-based childhood, what policy implications follow? That we should roll back the phone-based childhood, especially in elementary school and middle school because of the vital importance of protecting kids during early puberty. More specifically, we’d try to implement these four norms as widely as possible:
No smartphones before high school (as a norm, not a law; parents can just give younger kids flip phones, basic phones, or phone watches).
No social media before 16 (as a norm, but one that would be much more effective if supported by laws such as the proposed update to COPPA, the Kids Online Safety Act, state-level age-appropriate design codes, and new social media bills like the bipartisan Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, or like the state level bills passed in Utah last year and in Florida last month).
Phone-free schools (use phone lockers or Yondr pouches for the whole school day, so that students can pay attention to their teachers and to each other)
More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world.
Note that these four reforms, taken together, cost almost nothing, have strong bipartisan support, and can be implemented all right now, this year, if we agree to act collectively.
And what if it turns out that I am wrong? What if, in reality, the multinational collapse of adolescent mental health in the early 2010s was not caused by the arrival of phone-based childhood; it was just a big coincidence. Will kids be damaged by these four norms? I don’t think so. What irreversible harm will be done to children who spend more time listening to their teachers during class, more time playing and exploring together outdoors, and less time sitting alone hunched over a device?
We are now 12 years into a public health emergency that began around 2012. In The Anxious Generation, I offer a detailed explanation of what caused it (drawing on many academic fields) and a detailed path by which we can reverse it. I know of no plausible alternative explanation, nor have I found anyone offering a realistic alternative pathway out.
We certainly need skeptics to challenge alarm-ringers, who sometimes do ring false alarms. God bless the skeptics. But at a certain point, we need to take action based on the most plausible theory, even if we can’t be 100% certain that we have the correct causal theory. I think that point is now.
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Comments
I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre.
She does this and all the while never leaves the house, other than to go to work. She doesn't share her actual thoughts and gets angry when asked about it. You might be reading this and thinking that there's more to it, but sadly there isn't. It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either.
But it's crazy that a person can get this lost in life and become completely devoid of purpose and meaning. It's one thing to have an issue and work through it slowly, but it's something else to isolate yourself and live your life through others - while those "others" prosper from your own ignorance.
I'm sure her past experiences are playing a role in this behavior, but the whole cosmetics things - I know for a fact there are a lot of influencers who peddle this crap, and if you lack self-awareness then I can see how easy it is to get stuck in this cycle. I just wish there was an easy way out of it.
By randomdata 2024-04-1011:0522 reply > She doesn't share her actual thoughts
That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you.
> It's bizarre.
Is it, though? Once you've felt said social scorn enough you no longer see words as a way to make friends, so turning to beauty is the natural progression. People like to be around beautiful people – or at least so it appears to those looking from the outside in, right? If that doesn't work, then you can easily fall into a cycle of thinking "maybe this next surgery is the one that will make me beautiful enough!"
> The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility
I think the actual biggest problem with "Redditization" is not hostility, but instead the fact that there is really no dialogue. There's no back and forth discussion, at least not with the same actual individual. You post a comment and (maybe but usually not) get a reply, then if you reply to that reply, the next reply in thread will be from someone else. Very very rarely do you go back and forth with one person. And regardless, you'll never ever interact with that person again (except maybe if you're on a tiny sub).
It's such a odd and distorted version of conversation. I'm not talking to any specific "you" -- I'm submitting thoughts to a "mass-you" and hoping with fingers crossed that the mass-you will reply or at least nod in approval with a single upvote.
Reddit is not hostile as long as you only parrot back ideas that the hive mind agrees on. And the reward system is mis-aligned. I'd call it a Twitterification, because the karma points are awarded to succinct, snarky/funny conversation-ending quips. Nobody has time or attention span to debate an issue, and even if you did you risk being shut out of the group for wrongthink.
By potsandpans 2024-04-1022:331 reply I would say the same thing is true for hackernews, and any other public square platform.
For hn, it's even more interesting because the "wrongthink shutout" is packaged in intellectualism. But you see it more pronounced on the edges. Good examples are posts that discuss climate breakdown.
By gosub100 2024-04-1116:19 I see a lot more civil and rational disagreement here. The liberal politics are more popular, but there's a healthy conservative voice too. I don't see anything wrong with using intellectual methods to be persuasive, I mean, what are the alternatives?
That's right, there's no debate, except on the rarest of occasions. It's actually an odd feeling whenever some discussion with divergent opinions ends amicably.
In my experience, genuine "clashing of views" with amicable discussions happens pretty frequently on Mastodon. It's pretty astonishing to see sometimes, because it's so unusual for the past X years in online social spaces. Like, potentially-multi-day-threads of max-character-count messages discussing topics that people fundamentally disagree on but are trying to hash out each others' perspectives and "get somewhere" with it. Very interesting, and great to read. Sometimes it goes the other way and the people talk past each other, but that's pretty standard lol
Eternal September problem.
Those on Mastondon are a self-selected group who have opted out of Xitter and Reddit.
Any new social media platform is always better than the previous by self-selection. And then it gets popular and becomes just as bad as the previoius. Lather, rinse, repeat.
By int_19h 2024-04-122:55 Many servers on Mastodon are also rather aggressive at blocking other "disagreeable" servers. Some even apply this by association, i.e. blocking any server that doesn't block those that they consider inappropriate.
By brewtide 2024-04-1023:45 Guess what happened to the entire notion of the internet? Sigh
By disqard 2024-04-1019:23 You and GP are both correct. I've observed how many posts are set up with the "hive mind does (or does not) agree on" outcomes. Here are concrete examples:
* Does Anyone Else foo?
* Pretty sure I'm gonna get downvoted for this, but foo.
* Unpopular Opinion: foo.
...and many more such patterns.
By thuruv 2024-04-1115:34 For me, this seems to be the best possible explanation on the effects of `Redditization`. Here you're actually losing the step-by-step conversation with the timestamp coded texts, replies are usually like just broadcasting their thought process (instead of an having an actual coherent reply format) or just spitting something so that the gratification of having something written there.
By amplex1337 2024-04-1013:5910 reply You certainly can just throw things out there, but if you are obsessed with making every single person satisfied with your thoughts, you are going to have a bad time. The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion. I still change my mind sometimes based on others thoughts and opinions, so you can't say I am fostering avoidance too much, just very selective, as my time is valuable.
The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion.
This is something it's taken me a while to come to terms with. I used to want to fully engage with everybody and everything. It was anathema to me to just "broadcast something into the void" and ignore replies. But over time I came to realize that a. I don't scale to engaging with every single person who replies to something I say online, and b. I don't owe those people a response or any of my time/attention; especially the trolls and bots and other lamers that are so prevalent these days.
So now I'm more comfortable (albeit maybe not 100% comfortable) with treating things in more of a "fire and forget" fashion. I say what I want to say, and people can do with it what they will. I just can't be arsed to engage with the trolls and other randos. But... if somebody has a mature, reasonable, professional response then I am willing, on a selective basis, to dig in deeper and have a longer discussion.
I no longer say things online except some rare occasions. Mass social media online discourse will slowly vanish in the next 15 yrs
Is this one of those rare occasions? :)
I don't think HN is immune from the "redditization" of the internet, though it's certainly a better community than most.
By randomdata 2024-04-1018:01 > "redditization" of the internet
'Redditation' of the world. If it were only taking place on the internet it wouldn't be all that concerning.
By bondarchuk 2024-04-1017:28 I always feel kinda bad about starting/continuing a 1 on 1 conversation on here because of the "don't cross-examine" thing in the guidelines.
By ianmcgowan 2024-04-1020:30 Hard agree with this - sometimes find myself typing out a well-intentioned response, but then cancelling because of the potential downside years in the future for some anodyne opinion held today. Not to mention Roko's Basilisk (all hail the benevolent AI! :)
By Lacerda69 2024-04-1021:29 Not sure but I think it will be more focused on offline life instead. AI and enshittification will make the internet and the core error in its monetization based on ads so bad that it will be replaced by a much smaller and more private version.
By randomdata 2024-04-1218:15 But do they say anything?
By nuancebydefault 2024-04-1021:093 reply I'm curious. You say what to say. What's the incentive to do this? Educate people or...?
By randomdata 2024-04-1117:531 reply > What's the incentive to do this?
That is no doubt one of life's mysteries, ultimately, but people writing down their thoughts seems to be a common practice amongst humans. One theory is that it helps the brain process information, but who knows? No matter the exact mechanism, though, the incentive is the same as why anyone writes something they are thinking about down.
> Educate people
Forum-going is a solitary activity. There are no people other than you. Just you and your thoughts, along with some software to prompt you with some ideas to think about (which is the value-add over a traditional journal).
And that is the problem with the 'Redditization' of the world being discussed. That solitary activity, which is fine when done in solitude – whatever floats your boat, is leaking out into the real world where other people are there to feel it and that has consequences. An increasing number of people are failing to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, thereby treating people in the real world as if they are software. But people are not software, so you find these social issues emerging.
By nuancebydefault 2024-04-1119:221 reply How nice of you to give a rather elaborate answer to a question asked towards somebody else.
It's a funny take, a forum is just you vs software. If I understand things correctly, me, the software is prompting you back! Or maybe it's the other way around? These days, one never can be sure.
By randomdata 2024-04-122:45 > How nice of you to give a rather elaborate answer to a question asked towards somebody else.
And how wonderful it is that you, dear software, provided another prompt after my last journal entry. I wasn't sure of what to write next, so this prompting has proven quite helpful.
> If I understand things correctly, me, the software is prompting you back!
Prompting is two way street, indeed. Input into the software from the person may produce a result from the software, and the output from the software back to the person may produce a result that is fed back into the software. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again, this is the value that said software offers over a classic journal.
But, regardless, if that is how someone wants to spend their time in solitude, more power to them! But we do see a problem emerging where a growing number of people are not able to differentiate between people and software and are taking that solitary journaling with prompts out into the real world and are treating people as if they are software. But people aren't software, and this leads to social problems. Which isn't terribly surprising. If people treated other people as if they were dogs, you would find an emergence of social problems too. It turns out, for the best outcome of people, people need to be treated like people.
I don't really put that much thought into it, TBH. I mean, yes, there are times when "educate people" is explicitly the answer, but not always. Sometimes it's just a reflection of some vague sense of desire to share and communicate with no particular purpose. That seems to be a sort of part of human nature for most of us, to some degree.
By nuancebydefault 2024-04-1119:241 reply Probably you won't read this anymore but maybe some other people, or maybe nobody. But anyways I appreciate the answer(ing) you did!
Just to be clear, I don't mean to say that I don't reply to anybody, ever. Far from it. I enjoy a good conversation - *so long as it's some combination of productive, interesting, polite, professional, etc.*. I was trying to say that I'm more willing now to not reply when it's a response that is clearly just trying to start an argument for the sake of starting an argument, or somebody who is rude / disrespectful / etc.
I reply to people all the time, especially on HN where the S/N ratio tends to be a bit higher.
By nuancebydefault 2024-04-1120:07 Indeed. When the conversation goes for example in the direction of: 'i am right, you are wrong', it is best to categorize as noise not begging a reaction.
By nuancebydefault 2024-04-1119:15 Mindcrime did in fact
Saying things that were obvious scientific facts 5 years ago are now controversial and can now get you fired from your job -- and people are more gung-ho than ever to seek out anyone who says something "wrong" and try to ruin their life over it.
That's why I don't speak my opinions to anyone other than people I'm close with.
By janetmissed 2024-04-1019:092 reply What are these obvious scientific facts? Being honest I've only ever heard people complain about not being able to say "obvious scientific facts" in reference to specific beliefs about transgender or gay people.
By tim333 2024-04-1019:25 Popular things for getting into trouble over seem to be there being two sexes of which you are probably born one, heritability of IQ and until recently the origin of covid though I think maybe folk have chilled out a bit there. Also I got some grief for saying natural immunity was likely as good or better as vaccine acquired.
By Slava_Propanei 2024-04-1115:25 [dead]
Can you provide some examples? There have always been companies where certain opinions were deemed "controversial" and could get someone fired. I think it's more common now though, and with more opinions being considered controversial, but I can't think of any that would be considered scientific facts. I wouldn't want to work for a company that considers science controversial anyway.
By pessimizer 2024-04-1017:091 reply > There have always been companies where certain opinions were deemed "controversial" and could get someone fired.
Can you provide some examples?
Sure
1. Being colored 2. Doing recreational marijuana 3. Being a specific faith (like wearing Hijab for women) 4. Heck, just being a woman
Society seems to always have reasons to fire people or deny people a job that seem silly in retrospect, but enough people seem to think it's reasonable enough to do en masse.
Edit: I'm not saying any of those reasons, or being fired for holding "controversial" opinions are good, I'm just pointing out it's nothing new.
By randomdata 2024-04-1018:071 reply > 1. Being colored 2. Doing recreational marijuana 3. Being a specific faith (like wearing Hijab for women) 4. Heck, just being a woman
In what way are these opinions, controversial or otherwise?
Are you suggesting that people of colour, for example, were fired only if they were of the opinion that they were a person of colour? If they were visibly a person of colour, but adamant that they were caucasian, a promotion was in order instead? They just had to believe?
That's why I was asking OP for examples of facts that were controversial. The one "controversial fact" that came to my mind is the issue of LGBTQ+. Both sides of that coin believe that scientific facts support their side. And it's not unimaginable to me that someone would be fired for making pro/anti-trans comments. Another one is Israel vs Palestine, which of course is a sensitive topic and both sides will cite history to prove that their stance is the "right" one. It's not unimaginable to me that a pro Israel boss would fire an employee with Palestinian flag at their desk, or vice versa.
My point isn't that opinions get people fired (though religious beliefs certainly are opinions), it's that people have always been denied work for a myriad of reasons. People have always had to hide certain aspects of their identity for fear of being fired. Opinions, controversial or not, just seem to be the newest way people get fired. Once cancel culture goes away, bad management will find a new way to fire people they don't like.
It used to be that people would never dare talk about smoking Marijuana at work for fear of retaliation. Now in some US states employers can't retaliate against recreational drug usage, and employees will talk about it casually with no fear.
All in all, I think it's up to us (as a society) to just be accepting of differing opinions. Everything is polarizing now and anyone outside the collective groupthink is ostracized and called names like bigot or monster or supporting genocide or supporting terrorism, etc, etc. I think the current problem stems from members of that groupthink being put into a position of power (IE becoming employers or managers, or even politicians).
There is no simple solution because society is hard to change, but individually we can't judge people because of one "shitty opinion" they may have. That's personally why I like going to large events like concerts; everyone is there for one reason: to have fun listening to music they like. Instead of hating each other because of a shitty opinion, we're united because of a common hobby. That's what we should be looking for in each other imo.
By shiroiushi 2024-04-115:212 reply >All in all, I think it's up to us (as a society) to just be accepting of differing opinions. Everything is polarizing now and anyone outside the collective groupthink is ostracized
When has a society ever been accepting of different opinions, past a certain threshold? I can't think of any examples to be honest.
In the pre-internet past, it wasn't that much of a problem, because there wasn't much diversity, and highly differing opinions were isolated from each other because of geography. People only talked with other local people, who usually didn't travel much, and wider dissemination of ideas came from the press, which was controlled by a relatively small group of people and didn't just publish every person's opinion willy-nilly.
Now we're exposed to opinions from people all around the globe. We've never had to deal with this before.
By int_19h 2024-04-122:58 The other big difference is that opinions were isolated not just by geography, but also by social spheres. These days, a casual remark on social media can blow up very quickly, resulting in your employer getting flooded with demands to fire you from an angry mob.
By Slava_Propanei 2024-04-1115:29 [dead]
By Xeyz0r 2024-04-1019:53 Actually it's better to do that way nowadays
> You certainly can just throw things out there
On 4chan sure, on Reddit absolutely hecking no. On the main subs in French wrongthink comments get deleted super fast, and on one English-speaking about a hobby it's an immediate ban.
Indiscriminate banning/blocking is the thing that turned me off most social media.
I don’t post anywhere but HN so my profiles are always bare. Starting something like 5 years ago I’d follow someone and within a day, flip a coin, on tails I was banned or blocked.
I eventually deleted the last of my social accounts. They turned into places where strangers were just there to torment each other or receive unconditional praise.
By flagmenow000 2024-04-1023:50 [flagged]
By hahamodbanme 2024-04-1018:591 reply [flagged]
I gave 4chan a shot again after reading your comment. Seriously the first post that I found was: https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/464559056
How do you filter out the stuff that's clearly coming from insecure teenage brains?
I don't mean literally filtering it as in censoring it, I mean how do you read/navigate this forum in a way where you don't constantly have to read over childish shite?
By typicafyxampl 2024-04-1022:401 reply [flagged]
By racked 2024-04-115:54 Appreciate you taking the time to show me around. There's some interesting (very politically incorrect) views on there. :-)
True, I also feel that HN overmoderates genuine critical debate, and the high barrier for allowing downvoting has always confounded me. There are some very smart people around here though. I understand the need for rules to avoid the kind of silly trolling you get on 4chan.
By hahamodbanme 2024-04-1021:45 [flagged]
Part of this is ok if the sub has specific purpose and bringing all sorts of identity politics (from any perspective) is a distraction from the topic at hand. Similar to how blocking spam is not a free speech issue. The problem is when there are no avenues for controversial discussion left, which would be the case if the tech megacorps controlled every platform (as they nearly do)
By damsalor 2024-04-116:32 Nah. Corps just want money. It’s the politically connected prudes that ruin it for everyone
By int_19h 2024-04-122:59 Out of curiosity, which hobby is it?
By canadianfella 2024-04-1015:28 [dead]
How many people in their early/mid 20s, let alone teenagers, understand this?
I'm just a few years from 40 and I can still vividly remember a time not too long ago where this was not at all how I thought.
By nmz 2024-04-1019:02 I doubt anybody is so naive, we all understand that we can't change everyones minds, however, we are social creatures, and to be accepted in the community is a goal to strive for, Of course, if the platform has a literal form of "dislike" and "like" then popularity and acceptability by the community is the goal. Both of these are not goals to strive for, and yet are of importance in your own survival. BUT, as it turns out, game-ifying social conventions does not lead to lasting friendships or anything of value. Just witty put downs and outrage culture.
Another game that is like this is our very own economic system, at least when it comes to aesthetics, money is yet another "upvote"/"like" game. The impact and similarities more clear and apparent.
By randomdata 2024-04-1014:33 > The world is full of people who disagree with you
One should hope. Disagreement is how you learn. It is why we talk to each other.
But that's not what we're talking about here. With 'Reddit' behaviour transcending beyond Internet forums, we're losing the disagreement. Now we see ostracization. There is no: "You are wrong because X." or "That is an interesting thought, but have you considered Y?" it has become "There is something wrong with you." and in the extreme "Say goodbye to your job/friends/family."
By Anotheroneagain 2024-04-1014:572 reply The world is full of people who disagree with you,
Don't you think it's worrisome that we can't agree on anything? And that includes things that are supposed to have objective answers. Why can't we find the truth? We now have instant global communication available almost 24/7, shouldn't it bring the period of unprecedented unity?
By zarathustreal 2024-04-1015:556 reply The notion of truth is an illusion, this has been a philosophical debate since the beginning of time. The fact is, every person occupies unique physical space and thus has unique life experiences and a unique perspective of each “event”. It’s the standard multi-sided coin phenomenon. Ask two people standing on opposite sides what is on the face and they’ll give you two different answers and both be right and both be wrong. It’s not a solvable problem because there is no observable objective reality that we can all agree on. Granted, I’m fairly certain there is an objective physical reality, it’s just not one that we can all observe the same and agree upon
By RiverCrochet 2024-04-1017:02 Inaccurate.
> The fact is, every person occupies unique physical space and thus has unique life experiences and a unique perspective of each “event”.
#000000 and #000001 are unique, but most would simply call both colors "black", and not lose any advantage whatsoever. The fact we can communicate using common words and obtain desired effects most of the time disproves that uniqueness created by differing perspectives makes truth an "illusion" or meaningless.
This appears to be true in a vacuum, but practically it's not for many "truths." For example, we can all agree that the holocaust was an atrocity that should have never happened. Certainly there are folks who don't believe that, or who don't even believe that it ever occurred, but the vast majority of reasonable people would consider those folks irrational (to put it mildly).
Now, I notice that I use "we all agree" and "vast majority," which is no way to explain an objective fact, but what we all agree on as a community or society _is_ reality. A society or community that has a different reality(s) than us is probably not a society or community that we would associate ourselves with.
This operates on several levels and dimensions; the common realities I share with my local Islamic community are different realities than I share with my tech community, or Toastmasters community, or even family.
Going back to the original point, yes, there are no realities that the entire global community can agree on, not even something as seemingly incontroversial as medicine (Christian Science for example https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/mi... ), but no individual is part of the global community. We choose our communities based on the realities that we accept to be true.
By Anotheroneagain 2024-04-1318:09 >Now, I notice that I use "we all agree" and "vast majority," which is no way to explain an objective fact, but what we all agree on as a community or society _is_ reality. A society or community that has a different reality(s) than us is probably not a society or community that we would associate ourselves with.
This is literally schizophrenia, when two such communities meet, a massacre inevitably occurs.
By EnigmaFlare 2024-04-1017:48 > or who don't even believe that it ever occurred, but the vast majority of reasonable people would consider those folks irrational
You're confusing rationally concluding something with feeling morally righteous for believing it. It's not irrational to disbelieve something that people only believe because they'll feel like a bad person or be punished for doubting. See religion, for example.
The only reason most people believe the holocaust happened is because they heard about it from general society. Same way they believe God created the world. Almost no layman has actually studied it. It's just a kind of common faith where being a believer is what's important rather than the content of the belief.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that the vast majority of believers aren't believing out of rationality but out of indoctrination.
Same is true of all sorts of beliefs in things that don't directly affect us. We believe them because everyone assures us they're true, not because we sat down and worked out the conclusion for ourselves.
By Anotheroneagain 2024-04-113:10 I know that you are posing as a teacher, who is sharing knowledge beyond what we would be capable of coming up with ourselves, but this is actually a very primitive thought to us. It's still a very simple thought to understand that the other side of the coin is still there when we're not seeing it, and that the other person is also right. Beyond your comprehension, we can even piece together the objective reality to a profound degree. At least those of us who could avoid the harm that you're doing to us.
Call a more advanced species to take a look, as our intelligence is clearly beyond your comprehension, and you are essentially torturing us here.
By draebek 2024-04-1017:01 I share this viewpoint (is that ironic?), but it's almost entirely unhelpful when it comes time to make decisions, particularly decisions as a society or within a government, right? One powerful person's subjective reality that "all people who look like X should be executed" can most likely become the "subjective reality" of those X people real quick.
By lazide 2024-04-1016:10 That’s a cop out that allows obvious delusion to spread.
If what someone is saying is 90% reality based and verifiable, and 10% subjective experiences/unverifiable, that doesn’t make what they say equivalent to someone who says something that is 90% falsified by verifiable reality and 10% subjective experiences/unverifiable.
The second person is just delusional or lying, full stop. Any other approach is just cowardice.
By gnramires 2024-04-1016:37 I find equally valid (and perhaps more useful) to say that the notion of truth is the basis of all that exists, and this debate is far from simple. If we don't allow anything to be true at all, then even this discussion, any discussion, or anything at all seems rather pointless. If we're just exchanging gobbledygook, what's the point of even talking? I think there's a general presumption in talking that we're approaching something. That something is essentially truth (i.e. some accurate and/or useful model of some part of reality) or some kind of improvement or even enjoyment, which are both connected to ethics.
Sure, truth is in some senses unknowable (in particular in the 'The Map is not the Territory' sense), but we can have increasingly accurate and useful enough models that improve our lives. It's also the case that most human matters need specific answers, potentially extremely specific to their situation (and hard or impossible to know things, like what's going on in their minds), as well as some ethical and aesthetic frameworks that allows one thing to be good while other thing is bad. It's not obvious at first that ethics could be based on truth and science (and hence have somewhat-universal rights and wrongs), but I've come to believe that's the case indeed. Ethics really derives from fundamental truths about existence, like the reality and nature of suffering (and the nature of the workings of our minds), the nature of existence (for example, work is ethical insofar as it supports us existing at all), and so on.
If you think about it, the notion that anything goes, is really absurd: surely there are things you wouldn't accept essentially no matter what. It's much more absurd than the counterpart that there are true things, even about the nature of existence, that we can approach. The human mind (and minds in general!) can be studied using similar methods to the study of nature (with some necessary generalizations), and I believe that's what the 21st century is going to be all about :)
Edit: That's not to say 'vibes' are not important as well! From Goethe[1]:
"Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation. The boy stands astonished, his impressions guide him: he learns sportfully, seriousness comes on him by surprise. Imitation is born with us: what should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excellent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height charms us, the steps to it do not: with the summit in our eye, we love to walk along the plain. It is but a part of art that can be taught: the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much, and is always wrong: who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom or late. The former have no secrets and no force : the instruction they can give is like baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to be ground. Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the highest matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright, but of what is wrong we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols only is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, and they like to be together. Their babbling detains the scholar: their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. The instruction which the true artist gives us opens the mind; for, where words fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more and more to being a master."
[1] Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship) Book VII Chapter IX
By skywhopper 2024-04-1015:16 On the contrary, if everyone can see your opinion, then all the people who disagree have the opportunity to say so. There's always someone in the world who disagrees. Add to that the folks who say things they don't believe for fun, and the ones who are paid by businesses and governments to spread propaganda, and you have a real mess.
By Xeyz0r 2024-04-1019:50 The lesson I learned quite recently was that I'm not able to satisfy everyone and it's OK
By dclowd9901 2024-04-1023:05 > You certainly can just throw things out there, but if you are obsessed with making every single person satisfied with your thoughts, you are going to have a bad time
I think you nailed it on the head here, though. At a young age, we often don't carry the self confidence or self awareness to stand by our thoughts or opinions (and really, for good reason -- it's a good time to learn!). We have no sense of self or conviction at that age, despite the very unfair way popular media portrays teens (e.g. as mature adults with fully formed sense of self).
But the net result of what GP was mentioning is this lack of self confidence + an overly hostile online conversation definitely makes the resultant introversion/misplaced self worth make a lot of sense.
I regularly throw my opinions in discussions online, and often (not most the time, but often), get "downvoted" into oblivion. Part of that is that I like to play devil's advocate or I engage folks who don't agree with me, but part of it is also being a 41 year old person who honestly doesn't give a shit if they have a "popular" opinion, just a well-reasoned one. I chock that up to being roughed up by the world for a bit.
Aren't most of the replies critic or posted by people disagreeing with you though? Especially on HN, where most users would promote discussion with a reply rather than «Agreed» or «lmao»
By shrimp_emoji 2024-04-1015:46 Agreed lmao
I have a good rule. I NEVER reply to someone who comments on my comment w/ hostile intent. For example: I made an innocent comment on a YouTube video, and someone completely misread the comment and posted a hostile reply. I wanted to explain to him that he misread my comment but I just let it go. You never need to defend yourself. If you want to post a comment, post it. If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them.
> If someone misunderstands or mocks you, let them.
Very easy to say when you aren't going viral and 100,000+ people aren't trying to get you fired or hurling insults at you ranging from calling you an idiot to telling you to die. I'm not saying you're wrong but it's much easier said than done.
This is why I run multiple online identities. I learned back in the '90s when I got death threats because of my MUD character (a text based multiplayer rpg). I knew people who had their power pulled in real life by rival guilds so they could kill them when they disconnected.
By cutemonster 2024-04-1110:452 reply > had their power pulled in real life
You can't mean someone physically disconnected their power cables?
How is that possible (aren't players in different cities, even countries, don't know each other's IRL identities?)
By bcrosby95 2024-04-1116:20 They physically flipped the main breaker in their box.
Real life details leak. And especially back then, players generally lived in certain population centers. Each guild had about 50 people. I lived in the same city as at least one person of a rival guild.
I think you brush across a couple of the important things to note about social media:
1) The disconnect between people that allows for such othering. Anecdotally, I can't imagine but a small handful of people I've met who would be willing to walk up to someone and verbally wish for the other person's death. I know we can point to many times in history where that attitude has resulted in the death of many people, but I view those as exceptions to everyday life. Not saying my view is correct, but only explaining my approach with this statement.
2) Scale. Imagine a group of 100,000 people showing up in the real world to yell, scream, and chant death threats at one person. That would be a massive event. Even gathering 1,000 people against a single person would be noteworthy in many locations.
So the The Internet, which is mostly comprised of Social Media at this point, has moved to be able to allow people to disconnect others from humanity and gather in vitriol spewing hordes, and a single individual would be hard pressed to deal with such force against them while still trying to engage with their reason for being there.
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2024-04-1017:38 You, and I, and everyone else talking about this... we evolved to live in small bands of humans, never more than maybe 200 total. That we would have sane responses or reactions to a gather of 1,000 people haranguing us is impossible. A caveman who had 1,000 people mocking and insulting and screeching at him would shut down mentally. And you and I are still that caveman. 100,000? Brain explodes.
And that's what's happening right now, today. It's short circuiting any possible counter-reaction we could have to abuse. This is why everyone's sort of worried about cancellation, but we're also a little reluctant to talk about it too. I see no evidence that the problem is about to correct itself and end up being no big deal. I see alot of evidence that it's only just stumbling around and will become an even bigger problem... the people participating in this stuff, they're learning new tricks, learning to self-organize better. We'll have shit like anonymous tutorials about how to look someone up and ruin their lives perfectly efficiently ("Then, call and ask for the HR department between the hours of 10am and 11:20am local, because that's when they're most receptive. Please use this verbiage, in a slow and calm voice."). Even my example's bad, I can't keep up with the state-of-the-art.
By amplex1337 2024-04-1014:011 reply It is definitely easier to ignore when there are 100,000 comments than 100, this is correct. You really need to be in control of what you want to spend your time on these days, and replying to cancerous YouTube comments is not one of them generally. Let it be.
By BadHumans 2024-04-1014:12 I think you are missing my point and maybe you are assuming anonymity but there is point where it isn't as simple as ignoring hateful comments because these people try to push into your life. There are countless examples of people being doxxed and being harassed at work because of something they said online.
By Karunamon 2024-04-1015:39 Trying to get people fired crosses a line into harassment, as far as I'm concerned. But if we are talking about mere words on the screen, nothing else, then you do have the ability to turn the device off and walk away.
By randomdata 2024-04-1016:19 That's fine for the internet which is understood to be just for fun anyway, but with 'Redditization' taking over the world, you see that behaviour escape out into places where things actually matter and where walking away can be truly impactful to one's life in a negative way. That's the problem.
Especially for people who run in youthful circles. Older people at least have the benefit of generally being around people who learned human compassion before the social internet became prevalent.
By shufflerofrocks 2024-04-1023:25 I find myself doing this more often recently. I enjoy posting/discussing/debating, but it's hostile right now on social media - it's exhausting.
You can't have a discussion with someone who wants to "gotcha" you for clout
By 0ckpuppet 2024-04-1015:15 This. "Don't feed the trolls." :)
I ALWAYS respond with the most infuriating response a troll could ever imagine getting. I just write the two letters: ok
The fact that they cannot discern if I'm giving them agreement or the side eye is delicious.
By randomdata 2024-04-1019:541 reply Why would a troll care if you agree or are giving the side eye? Their whole existence is simply to see if they can goad you into replying.
(And yes, you succeeded!)
"ok" is a dismissal of their existence. I'm explicitly saying that I dismiss them. They are trying to goad me into replying violently, as this is what confirms that they have an effect on the world. "ok" denies them any effect.
By randomdata 2024-04-1114:141 reply ok
By Sammi 2024-04-1115:46 lol
By jandrese 2024-04-1020:44 Some people expand this to "ok boomer" to really rile them up.
By worldsayshi 2024-04-1011:2117 reply This is touching on something very important but I feel there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of mystery around this for me. Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?
By kombookcha 2024-04-1011:371 reply I think there's two major drivers here - scarcity of attention (1) and social distance (2).
1) Your attention on social media is monetized by others, which means there is always something tugging on it like so many street peddlers, in addition to all the 'organic' content made by other users. When there's a shortness of attention, you're always going to be more snippy and inclined to the short pithy retort, instead of long conversational openings and explorations of topics. Those require a lot of social trust-building and responding to feedback when you do them IRL, which is difficult on social media because...
2) Other people on social media just feel less real than those you encounter in real life, because you can't feel that bad feeling in your gut as strongly when you upset them, or the good feeling when you make them laugh. That same social distancing means you have a much easier time either idealizing them in that parasocial influencer-guru follower style, or feeling comfortable with being very harsh and combative with them. AKA the toxic gamer lobby phenomena, where people say the most heinous things you've ever heard to eachother, all the while being mostly fairly ordinary kids and adults IRL.
Both of these are kind of inherently tied up in the way we are ordering more and more of our (para)social life, so it seems very difficult to escape.
To paraphrase a point somebody made about content generated by machines purely to tug on your attention - everything feels increasingly meaningless because you have a finite amount of attention, and more and more of the 'social' interactions that your brain deals with in a day ARE meaningless and intended solely to mine your attention and keep you scrolling on ads.
I don't know how to fix that.
By worldsayshi 2024-04-1012:554 reply I think you're on to very good points.
One kind of obvious suggestion on how to fix it: We have to grow a culture of more deliberate attention. Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media. But this is not an easy solution. Every social media space is saturated with good content as well as bad. It might become easier if we grow such culture around us though.
By kombookcha 2024-04-1013:101 reply I do think this is one pathway, and it has kind of been happening - we're seeing people increasingly stop participating 'open' social medias and retreating into more sequestered communities with fewer, but enduring participants that you get to know, and who are united around care for some topic but also talk about other stuff. Discord servers are probably the most prominent of these just now. They have more in common with oldschool forums in the sense that you get to know the regulars, but are notoriously impenetrable if you're new and trying to search for information on some topic that's been covered in the past. But it's a start!
Now that Discord is apparently opening up to ads, it remains to be seen whether that cultural shift will be able to hold or if people are going to be driven into even deeper hidey holes, like the freed humans in The Matrix who have to hide out deep in the earth from all the robots ;)
By worldsayshi 2024-04-1015:51 I think another important aspect, another side of the same coin, of this is lack of boredom. If you're not bored you don't take as much initiative towards alternatives. It would be a simple problem if it was just about your own boredom but you have to convince your friends and those that would otherwise start stuff irl to be bored at the same time as well. And you can't coordinate properly because all coordination happens through the attention-stealing-machine.
By darby_eight 2024-04-1016:22 > Just like how we chose to consume healthy food and avoid consuming too much alcohol we must be more deliberate in our choice of media.
You can't leave everything up to individual decision making or the results are collectively irrational. Notably, dieting and alcoholism are major problems we haven't had much success in addressing on a cultural level. Smoking is probably a better guide given how much rates have dropped in the last century.
By throwup238 2024-04-1014:58 It’s probably too late for most of us. Kind of like how anti-smoking education has pretty much killed smoking among the younger generations (until vaping came along) but it’s much more prevalent among the older cohort. Only a small fraction conclusively quit for the rest of their life, they mostly just die off.
We can lay down the foundation for such a culture for the future but it might be too late for most of us to right the ship.
By swed420 2024-04-1020:19 > One kind of obvious suggestion on how to fix it: We have to grow a culture of more deliberate attention.
What if we removed the profit driven attention seeking behavior by not charging for any digital content, and not consuming profit driven content?
Everything would be free under some kind of UBI scenario, similar to FLOSS but with other things too, like all media.
By lumb63 2024-04-1011:28 I think it’s a way of farming status/clout. People who make fun of people who pose fringe ideas are rewarded with likes. People who shut down people on “the other side” are rewarded with likes. People can get likes by pushing the prominent ideology and kowtowing to that majority. It’s for their personal benefit, and being online removes the real-life downside of bullying or disagreeing with someone where you have to actually defend your ideas or deal with someone who is visibly upset by your actions. In conclusion, the upside of nitpicking is amplified by our tribal instincts, and the downside is muted by the nature of being online.
Social media is designed to make money, whether that be from selling data or conglomerating it and advertising to you. They want the user to be purely a consumer. They are designed to make people reactive and have a short attention span, they are easier to sell to.the users mental reward system is essentially brainwashed to be an easier target to sell to.
I think that's part of it but not all of it. Even here on HN, with no ads, you can find hostility in the comments.
By Ginguin 2024-04-1014:47 Even in a place like HN, you can't escape the behaviors and attitudes that people pick up in other social spaces online. If someone gets used to reading ill intent into a comment, they don't suddenly stop doing that because they are in a place where ill intent is less likely. Those social norms get carried with them from space to space. The toxicity is a contagion, even if this space isn't an incubator for it.
By HughParry 2024-04-1014:06 people are a bit happier here to have an argument and then get on with their lives though
By klondike_klive 2024-04-1015:311 reply Up yours!
(Sorry)
By quest88 2024-04-1023:38 FU, buddy!
By red-iron-pine 2024-04-1013:26 you left out brand-shaping and consensus-building, which is arguably just very advanced advertising. almost universal overlap with agit-prop as well
By ryandv 2024-04-1013:18 Advertising is one of the main reasons modern social media is experiencing continued enshittification in this era. Noam Chomsky in his "Manufacturing Consent" wrote of three "filters" that determined which content would be presented to viewers, and while he wrote on the mass media in 1988, I believe this framework applies equally to social media in 2024: access to capital; the "advertising license to do business;" and a symbiotic relationship with government, who provides access to authoritative sources of news.
Take X, for example: its access to capital allows it to eclipse most other social media and build network effects that are difficult for other startups to disrupt; after the Musk acquisition, advertisers began withdrawing from the platform; and as the Twitter files have claimed, its collusion with the U.S. government in the promotion/demotion of certain viewpoints.
If you want to see genuine viewpoints, you'd best seek out media that are largely independent of these three "filters" over what messages are permissible on the medium.
By HumblyTossed 2024-04-1013:24 Being angry and negative is very much easier for most people than being happy and positive. I'm serious. It's easier to complain about the driver that cut you off as being an asshole driver than to ponder if they truly made a mistake and are feeling like shit right now. "Social" media capitalizes on this and multiplies it for the sake of engagement.
By raxxorraxor 2024-04-1011:44 I believe the affinity of social media users to cast judgement is a huge factor as well, worse on those that actually do reflect a lot. Although it is perceived vastly more strongly that it is often meant since individual voices overlap. Still it furthers the assumption that many are very judgmental.
With that a strongly regulated social media place can be just as hostile as the most vulgar forum you can find. By experience, it can often be even worse.
Nit picking is a form of communication as well, perhaps often chosen because users want to share something difficult to do on the medium. That said, nit picking often doesn't carry hostility. Especially on tech platforms it is just meant as a contribution. Maybe there are carry over effects and miscommunication.
There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory. Threads aren't conducive to conversations that build psychological safety and trust. A natural conversation of curiosity/questions, in 1:1 or small group settings, doesn't exist. This leads to talking *at* each other instead of with each other. The reduction in empathy follows.
Thanks for asking the question and spawning the conversation threads!
> There are lots of replies; I'll add my theory.
Part of the problem lies here, and I'm doing it right now too.
In online public spaces we never have a conversation with another person, and rarely even then within a small group like enthusiast forums of yesteryear, we comment to the lynch mob. We reply to someone's statement with our own thoughts but it is not judged by the original poster if it was a good or insightful reply to what was originally said, it's judged by the mob with upvotes and downvotes and being flagged, misconstrued and nitpicked in fifty different ways. It happens here, Reddit, Facebook, YT, and any popular venue where comments are allowed. Even Github issues and pull requests.
I think it's why Discord is a popular alternative choice for many people. If you're not actively present, you can't chime in with your two cents and derail the conversation into some energy draining defense against someone's insane straw man attack. Comments needing to be in real time and the conversation being locked away and lost are a virtue for some folks.
By avensec 2024-04-1018:09 One differentiation I find is that, I typically respond to questions or ask a question. In that way, I don't believe it was part of the problem, but demonstrated a pattern of improvement, I'd love to see (I responded to a direct question). More questions and dialog! :)
By circlefavshape 2024-04-1016:44 Indeed. What happens on social media isn't conversation, it's a performance for an audience
By colloydi 2024-04-1015:09 I think it's because when we get to know other people IRL what they say is of secondary importance to how we perceive their intentions and motives. These determine how we feel about a person. They're subjective and hard to ascertain on the basis of written text alone.
So as a matter of caution we tend to impute bad motives to people we can't 'feel' clearly which means any textual claims made are subject to unnaturally high levels of scrutiny and demands for evidence/documentation.
Also the internet is forever whilst IRL conversation is throwaway.
By nervousvarun 2024-04-1011:311 reply JMO, but an enormous part of it is this is the fundamental way teens now learn how to interact with the world. This disconnected, digital interface with other people that is rewarded at tremendous scale (popularity is now for some a worldwide deal...not just your high school).
Older folks like myself (GenX) learned the "classic" way...face to face. There were checks and balances. If you said something that skewed hostile you found out it could have immediate direct negative consequences. It could literally leave a mark.
Similarly if you went too far some other way...you found out immediately and directly how that could work out (we were just as cringy...we just didn't have it preserved digitally for prosperity).
Kids today (even writing that makes me wince) have less accountability for what they write than what we had to have for what we said. Also due to scale the effects are amplified. And also you are in a digital bubble that allows you to ignore anything that isn't positive. If you piss someone off by what you said so what? You'll never interact with them directly and there will be 1000s who agree w/ and encourage you.
Also old man shouts at clouds.
By numpad0 2024-04-1013:41 > Kids today (even writing that makes me wince) have less accountability for what they write than what we had to have for what we said.
I think that's slightly different to what was said in GP:
> That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you.
IOW, `kids these days` are required full corporate PR level accountability whenever and whatever they express, (and zero when cancelling others following social codes). There absolutely won't be thousands at your side unless you're in a straight up proper conspiracy theory circle full of actually schizophrenic people until the entire circle is going to be cancelled dead.
You can't label your opponent as belonging in a category and encourage making harmful gases in a toilet and get 127 upvotes. At least not anymore. Your comment will be deleted, and one below yours that explains why you're automatically doubly stupid will. You can't even say, literally orally voice, the word "die" in some parts of YouTube without algorithmic penalties. Saying "died of injury" can be a soft violation.
That is what GP is explaining by "you have [to] carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say", ironically the phenomenon I'm ending up being a contributing factor by typing this very comment, and part of what's making teens sick. I think it has to do with being correct being a cost and having huge unfortunate abuse potentials.
By walthamstow 2024-04-1012:03 Lots of good answers to your question already but I'd add one - anonymity. It's a lot easier to be a dick on the internet than it is in real life.
By yungporko 2024-04-1014:43 i don't think social media is inspiring people to act like this, i think the vast majority of people are just pricks in general and the internet lets them act like this without any negative consequences.
if there was some way to just start arguments about nothing in real life and then pause them at will to go and cherrypick stuff that supports your argument, then come back and act smug about it (or not come back at all if you don't find anything), people would incessantly do it in person too.
By hackinthebochs 2024-04-1015:17 Social media created a perpetual church gossip culture where every action and statement is endlessly evaluated by the peanut gallery, while also creating a land rush for finding new moral angles to exploit for social status.
Why specifically social media? It's a function of communication efficiency. It's why church is associated with this sort of cattiness, everyone knows everyone and is brought together regularly to provide a venue to trade gossip. It also supplies the moral standard by which everyone is evaluated and one's social status is tied to how well one appears to meet this standard. The cattiness is just status games playing out given these constraints.
By Moru 2024-04-1011:26 It's sadly not just one thing that goes wrong. But at the base of it, it's the human faults at play. It's just being amplified by social media and the easy communication on Internet.
By AtlasBarfed 2024-04-1012:18 Because it is INTRUSIVE.
The advertising industry is fundamentally about intruding into your lives, and by that measure, the % of attention it can command.
The advertising industry (which is social media is that isn't colossally obvious) has relentlessly pursued increasing this percentage, and the smartphone was the physical means to achieve it, and newfound social addiction feedback loops the nitro turbo boost.
Even modern/new humans can't adapt to this. Older minds are crumbling into echo chambers, or withdrawing entirely. Paranoia takes hold.
Or is it paranoia? Or are your every move, thought, and action collected and categorized into a profile which is currently used simply for "advertising optimization", while in China it produces a worse-than-1984 dystopian system, and likely there are population profiling projects in US three letter agencies?
My internet profile is set in stone from my 20 years. Nothing I can do about it now. I'm purgeworthy whenever the totalitarianism grips the USA. Elections are becoming existential now, and that likely isn't paranoia.
While I've given a rational probability to all this, most people do not, they respond emotionally, especially to relentless stress and burden of processing unending perpetual advertising.
And as we all know, here comes the AI.
>Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?
So I'd like to point out something I've not seen mentioned yet. That is what I call 'small down behavior', that is nit picking on those that don't fall into some small group that is acceptable.
It seems that social media has not caused any new behaviors, but instead given a new and expansive venue for the behavior to spread.
I’d say a lot of that is genetic and or cultural. At the very least there are many of us who do not possess that instinct. We have much lower karma scores but we don’t care.
By pixl97 2024-04-1019:45 >but we don’t care.
Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean it doesn't affect you.
For example with many websites, high karma posts/users show up at the top of the feed. This means those addicts messages are the ones you're getting subjected too every day.
By ayewo 2024-04-1014:21 > Like why is social media inspiring us to such hostile nit picking on behaviour and ideals?
Social media is a highlight reel of people’s lives. It’s the best part hand-picked out of our mostly mundane lives.
Until these teenagers understand this, they’ll never feel “good enough” to share their own situation. Instead, they’ll remain on the hamster wheel trying to live up to the ideals peddled by influencers.
By squigglydonut 2024-04-1016:05 I think the reddit upvote downvote design is just one example of BAD UI that doesn't take into account the human element of the interface. Imagine if when you spoke with someone in real life, you added an upvote/downvote every sentence they said. This is why product designers need to be way more concerned with ethics than they are and companies need to give more respect to the product design role it is not just drawing pretty pictures you are shaping someones psyche.
By natural219 2024-04-1015:33 Funny. I just tried to post my yearly attempt to communicate with people on Reddit, which got taken down immediately by the auto-moderator.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1c0nuy6/it_is_impos...
It's infinitely sad that there's no place to just connect with people on the internet anymore. My post got 6 comments and a DM within the first minute, before the post got taken down. These people could have been new friends.
I've been through this cycle so many times I have long given up on trying to post on the internet. Logging on to find people and share thoughts only to be met with this massive wall of context and janitorial standards. I gave up like five years ago.
This is to say that the whole debate between "social media causes anxiety" and our landscape of social media causes anxiety makes this debate way too coarse. Getting on the internet between 2005-2012 felt happy, free, and was just a wellspring of community and connection. Post-2013 it's been a nightmarish hellscape on every platform.
People are broken. Perhaps they always were. Perhaps this latest, is the cost of prioritising work over family - it is now common to have both parents working, with child care outsourced to professionals, that may do everything right, but will not love the child. Love is underrated, intangible. I suspect there are very few whole individuals out there at all.
Once the child grows, why would it look to family to help? It has already been institutionalised - it believes that government agencies, psychiatrists etc will help - the 'brokenness' is normal. The grown child won't look to those that would normally step in (family) - they have their own issues. In all honesty, its hard to say whether looking to institutions for help that is a bad decision anyway - how much harm do families cause?
> People are broken. Perhaps they always were.
There’s an unspoken burden of past Child Traumatic Stress that, consciously and subconsciously, tints individuals’ resilience and the way the now-adults view the world.
I’ve been fortunate to have a happy, normal childhood. However, based on the number of people that I’ve spoken to, I’m starting to think I am in the minority. Friends have casually talked about facing suicide, complex family dynamics, neglect, and crazy religious experiences in early life like it was nothing, when it was/is a big deal.
It’s devastating to hear, and realize that the “silent majority” are likely maladapted individuals who are not even close to unpacking their traumatic past (i.e. things like “the friendly uncle” and “the cool youth group pastor”) that got swept under the rug or repressed.
By verisimi 2024-04-1012:25 Yep. This is exactly how is see it. I don't think people realise the level of love required to grow a human. Whatever is received is that person's normal - what else could it be? But, I don't think all childhoods are equal, despite appearances.
By cynicalpeace 2024-04-1014:09 This is the conservative movement I think many would get behind. A refocusing back on the family, not tech, work, or business.
By marcosdumay 2024-04-1016:34 > is the cost of prioritising work over family
It's worse than that. At the same time families were broken, the children also stopped having freedom to roam around and make friends on their own on the real world.
By fireflash38 2024-04-1013:291 reply Why do you think that childcare is incompatible with familial love and care?
Well, do you think a teacher can love a class of 20 or 30 kids, like a parent can? I think they might do a professional job, but it would be impossible to give individual attention. And, around here (UK), teachers have a lot of non class time obligations with the result being that they are away and a lot of care is passed to teaching assistants.
By randomdata 2024-04-1016:131 reply A teacher with 20-30 kids under watch cannot give the same level of attention to each child as a parent with 1-3 kids under watch, all else equal, but are attention and love the same thing?
By randomdata 2024-04-112:46 Are they really that different at any age?
By mikrl 2024-04-1114:43 >The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility
Thankfully there are corners of cyberculture with a distinct anti-Reddit bent where hostility is almost a norm that you get desensitized to and you can see all manner of profound and stupid ideas and react with hostility in kind.
After spending time there, returning to Reddit feels like staring at pablum, and you start seeing gross inaccuracies get updooted, and the inconvenient truths get buried.
(you should imagine this was written by gigachad, and anyone who disagrees is a badly drawn wojak in some state of emotional distress)
By darby_eight 2024-04-1016:212 reply > That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you.
I understand this fear when posting on reddit (or other social media) itself, but I am absolutely confused where this idea that this applies to reality comes from.
By randomdata 2024-04-1018:23 Nobody fears posting on Reddit. That's silly. What would there be to worry about? It's just software. It doesn't even recognize that you exist.
The problem is that the real world is increasingly not understanding that the internet and the world are not the same place, and they are treating software and people the same way. It turns out that people are not software. This leads to problems. Those who confuse you with software don't apply the compassion that people would otherwise normally receive, and, as a result, will be quite happy to put you in a bad place.
You know, the 'Redditaization' of the world. Its funny that even here we see the internet and the world being seen as the same thing; emblematic of the exact same confusion that the comment is about.
By czscout 2024-04-1016:30 I think the point is that this person has spent so much time experiencing this phenomenon on the internet, that the effects are bleeding into reality.
By lawlessone 2024-04-1019:051 reply >The 'Redditization'
I'm more worried about the Linkednization. Where people share terrible views and nobody criticizes it because they don't want to be seen as someone that criticizes things.
By randomdata 2024-04-1023:06 The ‘Hacknewsization’ is most worrisome.
- “The climate is changing and the outcome of that is bad.”
- “The climate doesn’t have enums. Have you tried Rust?”
> No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid.
Back in real world, I could never do it. If you could, that just means you lived in a bubble of like minded people.
By randomdata 2024-04-1012:511 reply There have always been some dimwits who do not see that good ideas come from iteration on dumb ideas, but what is different now is that the societal norm, adopted from forums like Reddit, is an expectation for you to prove that you are a dimwit, incapable of any original thought, only able to repeat ("source", as the kids like to say) what others have said in the past.
This is certainly not the only anti-intellectualism, anti-education movement we've ever experienced as humans, but we had progressed forward. This regression leaves a lot of people in bad places.
By 2devnull 2024-04-1014:32 Arguably that’s the meta force behind social media. The platforms are designed to make people think in collectivist terms, which coincidentally (or not) makes things easier for more tyrannical forms of government. Indeed Facebook and old twitter are arguably quasi-federal entities.
By tim333 2024-04-1012:42 In the online world there are a lot of places where you can throw out stupid thoughts and be applauded, although for applause they have to be in line with the particular bubble. "dumbcoin to the moon!" "other party is evil" etc.
By mcronce 2024-04-1017:13 > No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid
Obviously this is not the context you're talking about, but I find this issue with brainstorming type sessions these days as well these days. Not just work sessions either, as another example, I'm on the advisory board for a local club, and the first meeting was really barren for quite a while.
It's gotten to the point that I always make sure to voice my philosophy early on - "not all ideas are good, but many good ideas start out as bad ideas and become good through conversation" - and proceed to throw a few incredibly stupid ideas to the group to break the ice. It seems to help.
By datavirtue 2024-04-1023:57 "These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you."
You just described HN perfectly. I can shrug it off because I remain anon here and don't care about my rating, but I see other people being traumatized by this dynamic in other social media platforms.
I'm not sure what switched but I remember being on Slashdot and having people go off on me or others, and it was just hilarious. These days it seems like people are genuinely being traumatized regularly by the engagements.
By Xeyz0r 2024-04-1019:48 > The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility.
Actually for me it's quite difficult sometimes to write thoughts on topics here. I'm just being afraid not to be understanded
> These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you.
I would expect this to some extent when conversing with strangers IRL too. If it was a chat between friends, a rant here or there is OK because your friends know the real you and understand where you're coming from. Strangers won't be as charitable.
By AlexandrB 2024-04-1013:32 On the contrary, I think people know better than to be needlessly confrontational in real life. If someone says something crazy to me IRL I'm much more willing to let them finish and ask them a few question in the interest of making small talk than I am to ask for sources.
By qzx_pierri 2024-04-1013:061 reply But you can't 'downvote' someone in real life. In real life, you can say what you want, and people have to hear. However, on reddit (and many sites copying its pernicious site design), if your comment goes against the hivemind and gets hit with -5 immediately, your comment gets collapsed (and basically unseen).
Imagine being out in public at a party and you say something slightly 'spicy' and someone walks up to you and puts duct tape across your mouth. You can move to another party (or comment thread in this example), but you already were basically told "your input is useless, now leave".
I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life.
Bonus: Moderators locking threads with a condescending comment like "Locking this comment thread since some of you refuse to behave".
Reddit is the new Twitter, only the censorship isn't thinly veiled. It's not veiled at all.
> I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life
People have lost jobs, college admissions, and more based on their posts online. I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life.
By qzx_pierri 2024-04-1014:101 reply >I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life
Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. Remove your real life attachments from the internet and you're untouchable.
Just because people willingly 'dox' themselves doesn't make the internet anything more than a collection of webpages sitting on a blade server somewhere.
By randomdata 2024-04-1014:271 reply > Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online.
That's all well and good if you never leave your mother's basement, but for everyone else going outside from time to time, hiding your identity is much more difficult.
Herein lies the problem: We used to be 'hard' on online accounts because they were anonymous – everyone understood the account did not represent a real person and that was just for fun. That's fine. We maintained compassion for real people with real identities with a desire to treat them as being human. But over time we stopped recognizing a difference between a real person and an internet account, now treating the people out in the real world like they are anonymous internet accounts.
By qzx_pierri 2024-04-1014:451 reply >That's all well and good if you never leave your mother's basement
This is uncalled for. People like me live an extremely healthy and social life without any traces of our identity online (excluding voter registration databases, people search websites, etc).
>But over time we stopped recognizing a difference between a real person and an internet account, now treating the people out in the real world like they are anonymous internet accounts.
I see where you're going with this, but I'll have to disagree. Most of the people being behaving like animals online are some of the most soft spoken and shy people in real life.
The article which sparked this discussion stands adjacent to my claim, as well. I've noticed a lot of people who are online a lot and using it as an escape are pretty socially awkward and neurotic in real life. Those people I just mentioned often use the internet as an escape, but don't realize it.
If there were no separation between the internet and real life, then those people would behave the same way online (shy, timid, avoiding confrontation). These people just don't realize the separation thanks to the "Please enter your first and last name" trend started by Zuck in the late 2000s.
By randomdata 2024-04-1014:572 reply > People like me live an extremely healthy and social life without any traces of our identity online
With respect, I think you've failed to grasp what is being discussed here. 'Attacking' people who post ill-conceived content anonymously on the internet has most definitely grown tired (case in point), but is not really a problem. It's not a person, it's just an internet account. It doesn't matter.
The problem is that the same behaviour has started moving out into real life, where you find real people with real identities. There is no hiding from it beyond an anonymous username. Your face is out there for all to see when you step outside. Certainly you may run in circles of older people who established that compassion for real people while the lines were still clearly divided, thus not feeling it as much, but there is a generation coming up – you know, the one the article is about – that do not know the world before Reddit. They fail to grasp that there is a difference, treating real people like they are Reddit accounts.
By circlefavshape 2024-04-1016:521 reply > 'Attacking' people who post ill-conceived content anonymously on the internet has most definitely grown tired (case in point), but is not really a problem. It's not a person, it's just an internet account. It doesn't matter.
If your internet account is a fictional identity it doesn't matter, but you're posting as you but just behind a pseudonym and someone attacks you it can be very upsetting.
By randomdata 2024-04-1017:101 reply Your so-called internet account, pseudonym or otherwise, is always a fictional identity – which is to say not an identity that is related to any real person. While our understanding of the technology no doubt assumes there is a real person pulling knobs and levers behind the scenes, that's just an implementation detail. If the software was updated so that the human lever pulling was replaced with a suitably advanced generative AI, nobody would notice. Nothing about the experience would change. It is not about people. In that kind of venue, it is all about the software. There is no attack on you, a person. For all intents and purposes, you don't exist.
Therein lies the challenge, though. Some people, especially people who didn't grow up before the likes of Reddit, fail to understand that people and software are not the same thing. The things that fly online don't fly the same way in person, but there is a prevailing shift, particularly with the younger generation, towards treating the in-person experience the same as the online experience; to see them as the same thing. That's where we see problems emerge.
By circlefavshape 2024-04-1113:101 reply > If the software was updated so that the human lever pulling was replaced with a suitably advanced generative AI, nobody would notice. Nothing about the experience would change.
The experience would change for the person pulling the lever. My "so-called internet account" absolutely is related to a real person, and that person is me. Attacks on the account are experienced by me as attacks on me
By randomdata 2024-04-1115:12 > Attacks on the account are experienced by me as attacks on me
Right. This is the 'Redditization' of the world spoken of earlier, where an increasing number of people are unable to distinguish the difference between software and people, thereby treating them as if they are one and the same. Which, as it relates to the broader topic, is problematic as they are not the same and that introduces all kinds of social issues out in the real world.
Logically, you know that the LLM behind the arbitrary forum account that attacked you is little more than a fancy random number generator, which is no more significant than a squirrel giving you the side-eye, but as you have anthropomorphized it as being human then you start to see it differently and experience it as if it were a person.
But to anthropomorphize it is flawed. Like seeing Google Maps as being the world[1].
By ryandv 2024-04-1017:03 > They fail to grasp that there is a difference, treating real people like they are Reddit accounts.
That's exactly correct, and now we are one step closer to understanding the precession of simulacra of identity.
The crude maps of the 16th century cartographer were of such low fidelity and accuracy that it became impossible to confuse them with the territory, with all its contours and nuances elided from the scribbles of ink on parchment. Contrast with Google Maps, that has captured the earth in such exquisite detail, down to the meter, that we now regard it as a more or less one-to-one representation of the Earth in itself; a simulacrum of the "first order," which "is the reflection of a profound reality" (Baudrillard 1981).
But the representation does not stop there; now with things like listings of local businesses, we have progressed to a simulacrum of the "second order," which "masks and denatures a profound reality" - does your business even exist, if I can't find it on Google Maps? If your road has signage calling it one thing, while Google Maps calls it another [0], which name is correct? How will your GPS navigate such a world when the map and the territory have diverged this far from one another?
The end game of the precession is the creation of entire virtual worlds and maps (think, de_dust2) that represent no territories at all, but are a territory in their own virtual right - a simulacrum of the "fourth order," or "the hyperreal:" "it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum."
Alan Watts spoke of a similar phenomenon in one of his lectures on meditation [1]:
We are now at a stage where the newer generations have confused these symbols of ourselves - Reddit, Facebook, Instagram accounts - with the actual people in themselves. It has become possible to capture, record, misrepresent, mask, and denature our lives and the people within them to such a high degree of fidelity, that, just as it has become possible to confuse Google Maps with the territory of the Earth itself, it becomes possible to confuse the Reddit account for the real person. The social media account, having "precessed" far past the point of "denaturing a profound [person]" through Photoshop and Instagram filters, has now achieved "hyperreality," where the Reddit account now _becomes_ a person in its own right. The real person _is_ the Reddit account, and the Reddit account _is_ the person.The principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, with ourselves.If it happened with God in the quarrels between the iconoclasts and the idol worshipping iconolaters, it can happen with mere mortals, too:
[0] https://support.google.com/maps/thread/154775503/google-won-...This is precisely what was feared by Iconoclasts, whose millennial quarrel is still with us today. [...] that deep down God never existed, that only the simulacrum ever existed, even that God himself was never anything but his own simulacrum-from this came their urge to destroy the images. - Baudrillard, 1981.
By JumpCrisscross 2024-04-1015:511 reply > You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility
I’ll add that people addicted to social media become insufferable to share novel (often silly) thoughts around because the focus becomes dropping a zinger versus meaningfully engaging with what was said.
Providing rationales for your beliefs is hard work, but it's worth it. I'm not saying you deserve to be bullied, but I have no trouble saying what I think online, and supporting my positions with evidence—admittedly, behind a pseudonym, but that is necessary when one targets violent men for critique, which is 90% of why I bother going online in the first place.
By randomdata 2024-04-1214:12 > I have no trouble saying what I think online
Well, sure, you're just dealing with software. What trouble could there be?
The problem with the 'Redditization' of the world is that people fail to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, and start treating people as if they are software. That leads to social issues, just as treating people as if they were dogs leads to social issues.
And here we have proof positive of this happening: You weren't even able to recognize that the world and the internet are not the same place.
Conversation is muted because the vast majority of the things I want to add to the conversation are in the top 5 upvoted comments.
By randomdata 2024-04-1118:21 Which is funny as the top five comments all fell into the exact trap that the original comment was about – confusing people with software.
Which, to be fair, isn't surprising. If so many people weren't confusing people with software the original comment would have not been posted in the first place. We are here because that confusion has become so commonplace.
By yungporko 2024-04-1014:34 this definitely describes nearly 100% of interactions on the internet but i almost never encounter this in real life, i assume because the other person can't sit there googling and adjusting their argument any more than you can that there's no way to "win" anyway.
By gnramires 2024-04-1016:12 Edit: Now before commenting, I see there's an overarching theme of: sure, there is a bunch of unhealthy stuff about social media, but meanwhile there are some things you can do to make your interaction with it better.
> That's where social media has been most damaging. You can't share your thoughts anymore. The 'Redditization' of the world means that sharing thoughts is met with hostility. No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid. These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you.
I think that's an important point, that I think is partly due to culture of the spaces. For example, I almost never downvote anyone, and in particular not for them being wrong, unless it's something particularly harmful whose visibility would be damaging, or just a troll (quite rare usually). The downvote button seems important for those rare situations (maybe just a mod button would be enough?), but in general it should rarely be used.
Not only I've come to believe asking questions is important for beginners to learn, but also it's an important medium for everyone else (and in particular experts or more advanced learners) to exercise their knowledge by teaching stuff and learning to fill gaps in their knowledge.
I actually think reddit is pretty good in this regard, specially w.r.t. what we had before and other media like StackExchange. In SE, you're expected to search the site and often questions are met with arrogance. In oldschool forums, which I do like, there was (in almost every case I remember) an even greater air of elitism; although, on the other hand, it created a healthy eagerness to learn the norms and participate in a careful way. I tend to prefer the lower-stakes communication of HN-style boards though.
I think as with everything massification is a significant problem. I encourage everyone to participate in communities whose size feels 'just right'. Also, at least some of your interactions should be highly participative, and not just mindless consumption.
I think a final problem is that any activity of too narrow scope can be dangerous. If people are confined into extremely narrow interests and spend all their time on that, as opposed to learning everything about life, that can (and probably will in most cases) paint a distorted picture of reality and be very unhealthy. Broaden your curiosity :)
By ryandv 2024-04-1012:51 > These days you have carry an entire encyclopedia with you in order to back up every last thing you say and if you utter anything that isn't deemed 100% perfect by those listening, the social scorn will fall upon you.
This is an immense impediment to writing for the academically-inclined, or merely one who still has some shred of epistemic integrity left, and a huge boon to the dogmatic mob of believers eager to strike down anyone who dares question their orthodoxy. For one, it takes time and substantial research to compose a thought that is both "true" and unique, buttressed by citations to other works or accepted facts; for the other, it is much easier to reply with a five-second thought in 280 characters with thought-terminating cliches branding the "other" as a deplorable undesirable whose ideas aren't worthy of an audience or a platform. That is, if you even get that far - these days it's more likely you will simply be downvoted into oblivion, your thoughts swiftly evicted into the memory hole, never to be seen again.
> Once you've felt said social scorn enough you no longer see words as a way to make friends, so turning to beauty is the natural progression.
Issues of "Redditization" and scorn aside, we are progressing into a post-literate society where the written word and other literary media are being eclipsed by audiovisual media such as YouTube or Instagram. While much of the western world is "literate," in that they understand how to read and write (basic) words and phrases, much of our life - especially online - takes place in a highly visual world of filtered photos and staged videos. It becomes increasingly difficult for one to represent themselves in a written, literary form, when the culture demands "pictures, or it didn't happen."
McLuhan in "Understanding Media" has written on how the preference of one sense over another (e.g. sight over sound) in differing societies has profound cultural impacts over the ways we think, act, and what we find permissible:
The printed form has quite different im- plications in Moscow from what it has in Washington. So with the telephone. The Russians' love of this instrument, so congenial to their oral traditions, is owing to the rich nonvisual involvement it affords. The Russian uses the telephone for the sort of effects we associate with the eager conversation of the lapel-gripper whose face is twelve inches away. Both telephone and teleprinter as amplifications of the un- conscious cultural bias of Moscow, on one hand, and of Washing- ton, on the other, are invitations to monstrous misunderstandings. The Russian bugs rooms and spies by ear, finding this quite natural. He is outraged by our visual spying, however, finding this quite unnatural.
By pelagicAustral 2024-04-1011:169 reply My brother is essentially the male version of this, just swap the cosmetics for video game DLCs. He's early 20's, no job, no interest in work, no interest in getting out of the house, no interest on anything... talking to him is the most frustrating experience ever, nothing comes out of him, no emotion...
I talked so many times, tried to get an idea of what might drive him: travelling, learning, walking around in the mountain, making money, wasting money, drinking, smoking, drawing dicks on wall, anything! honestly, like "give me something to work with"...
He's been seeing a psychiatrist for a few years now... far as I can tell that is doing nothing...
He's a broken individual. I honestly do not know if there is a way back to reality for him (and so many others, these days)
This described my brother too. He killed himself four years ago, after about thirty years of just that kind of depression. And I was my little brother's keeper damn it, so it's my failure. Ever since I keep reliving it and wondering what I could have done. All I come up with are fantasy scenarios in which I somehow make us both wildly successful. But even that's a stretch given his outlook. I fantasize about some kind of extreme intervention, but that would probably have just alienated him from me along with everyone else.
Not that you shouldn't try. I hope you find a way.
By JackMorgan 2024-04-1012:151 reply You are not responsible for another's illness. Nor their choices.
Don't get stuck ruminating on the past , possibly infecting yourself with the same disease. Instead maybe pour that love and attention on those still around you. Care for those still with you. You are not at fault, you can't change the past, but you can change the future.
By swader999 2024-04-1012:25 This is the only way even if some of the guilt is deserved. Grow the love around you, give your time and attention to others.
By anotherman 2024-04-1015:04 I went through the same thing, but my brother didn’t succeed in taking his life. He had a similar profile as described above, and socials played an outsized role in his alienation.
At the time, I quit everything I had on my hands and reorganized my life to be much more present. Living around for a while, trying to engage and be a part of his life as much as I could: sometimes in innocuous forms (“hey, wanna do that thing you love this week?”), sometimes straight up suggesting therapy.
You know what? No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. I wasn’t able to connect more with him at the time, nor to change his viewpoints. The simple act of getting in touch with him became extremely hard, to an extent none of my friends, or relatives that weren’t part of the nuclear family, were able to comprehend. Ultimately, I just think he had decided things wouldn’t just stop there, or something inside him held him back among us mortals, and that’s about it.
All I’m trying to say is don’t blame yourself for this.
We’re all doing our best and it sounds like you were already being a great brotherly figure. Blaise Pascal once said: “The heart has its reasons which reasons knows nothing of”: the inner workings of one’s mind (God’s, in Pascal’s case) are too difficult to penetrate for our logical reasoning. We’re just out there on this planet trying to figure out how to help our loved ones, and sometimes it’s not up to us.
You’re not at fault, and I hope you’ll soon find peace.
By taikahessu 2024-04-1014:07 I found solace knowing (reading about) that blaming yourself is a part of the process. Thanks for sharing. Now, time for me to go outside. It's spring.
By nullderef 2024-04-1012:05 Hey, I went through something similar. Even though it's inevitable to fault yourself, you need to avoid it. I also do it sometimes but it never helps; I need to actively remind myself that it's not something worth thinking about. Hope you're doing a bit better now.
By elmer007 2024-04-1014:33 I'm sorry to hear about your brother. Thank you for sharing- your words are helping me think through some related things.
By rexpop 2024-04-1016:36 It's shocking to me that you think yourself even remotely powerful enough to have prevented his suicide.
It "takes a village" to fulfill a human's social needs. No one's brother can, on their own, fulfill all another's needs. His deep thoughts, his poop jokes, his pillow talk, his watercooler chat? We need whole communities for which no individual can substitute. You might do well to recognize your own social poverty.
I'm sorry that you blame yourself. I tell my siblings not to blame themselves for my depression, isolation, and alienation. The fact is that these are statistical trends evidencing large, multidimensional social structures. They're unassailable by individuals. There was nothing "you" could have done.
By gregorymichael 2024-04-1012:41 Your brother was killed by a mental illness. You are no more responsible for his death than if he had died from cancer.
By Llamamoe 2024-04-118:56 It's not like life has any worth in its own right. It's sad that he was driven that far, but what could you really have done? No use blaming yourself.
By toasterlovin 2024-04-1017:39 Something I saw in my own family (I have a family member who is a recovering addict) and in literally every single episode of Intervention is that THE prerequisite to recovery is to stop enabling the addict. Many (most?) addictions are only possible because an enabler prevents the outside world from acting as a forcing function on the addict. So typically this would be a parent who provides food, shelter, money, etc. Once an addict has to provide those things for themselves, it starts a cycle that results in sobriety. Of course, this doesn't always work and the people who it doesn't work for are often the people you see living on the street. But this has been the process for every recovering addict I know and my addict-in-recovery family member says the same about every recovering addict they know (a lot).
It doesn't sound like your brother is exactly an addict (although maybe...), but this snippet sure sounds like he has an enabler in his life (emphasis mine):
> no job, no interest in work, no interest in getting out of the house
By silverquiet 2024-04-1011:483 reply Was the psychiatrist his idea or the parents'? I assume the parents, but if it was his then that's something.
I heard something interesting on a podcast recently - Kara Swisher was interviewing her son who said that if you're Gen A, it's sort of hard not to be a nihilist. For me personally, I sort of look at how fast the world is heating up and do some basic math about life expectancy, and I'm sort of expecting to see some shit, but I can't imagine tacking on a decade or three to that.
Psychologically, what you're describing is anhedonia, but as someone with these tendencies myself, I sometimes wonder if I just lack whatever sorts of denial mechanisms most people have to get through the day.
The oldest Gen A person is 14yo, I was plenty nihilistic then too, and that was in the golden age of the 90s.
By AnimalMuppet 2024-04-1012:541 reply But there's a key difference: If you're a nihilist 14 year old today, you're surrounded by both people and media that are reinforcing your nihilism instead of countering it. So your "nihilism phase" (if you have one) is much more likely to snowball.
In the 90s the pharmaceutical situation was vastly different than today, too.
To be nihilistic today is not cultural, but a manifestation of the 50 different pills one is taking, which are literally killing the spirit, killing ones health, and trapping one in despair, with no escape. Shame. Shame. Shame.
By corytheboyd 2024-04-1015:14 It is indeed, I know I was guilty of it.
The amplification of the idea through modern social media is a scary new vector. There is so much content about “they ruined the world, you’ll never own a house, why even try” that does not help. Like all half-truths, it’s… well, half true, but giving up can’t be the answer. Can’t change the bad things in the world, so the only viable option is to work around them.
I do feel for gen Z and A. It’s a hard world to exist in out there, and the online behemoth you’re pressured to be a part of is both a blessing and a curse. I’m just young-old man yelling at cloud to you, I know because that’s how I looked at other late 30 year olds at your age too.
Just don’t give up. Remember that online is all fake and the points don’t matter. The real people around you care about you, they truly do, even if you’re struggling to see it yourself.
By silverquiet 2024-04-1013:16 I was as well, but I was under the impression that I was a weirdo. I can't say I ever really grew out of it either. I think the interviewee was a bit older though.
By red-iron-pine 2024-04-1014:431 reply it's not a phase, dad
By rudasn 2024-04-1018:13 .. It's called facebook!
By pelagicAustral 2024-04-1015:092 reply It was my mother's idea...
Very clearly I have no idea about what goes on in his head, anyone's head for what matters... But when I compare my upbringing with his, I cannot understand how is it that this happen. I had so little, and struggle so much compared to him, and it's him the one giving up on life before even trying? This is thought that hunts me the most.
Feels like giving someone way too much of anything just cripples the process of understanding the struggle as a beautiful part of the process to be something, overcome something, feel something...
All his life has been in front of screens, talking to strangers, bites of information he digests after the digital rendition of a human voice has been transferred from across the internet. There is no beauty in this way of life. No wonder kinds have no feeling for what the world has to offer, unless it's coming from an Instagram influencer.
By hackinthebochs 2024-04-1015:38 I suspect the mind is like the immune system, it needs hardship to develop into the best version of itself. Without external assaults that induce the formation of strengthening mitigations, you're left with a system that is dysfunctional, even self-destructive. In the case of minds, we discover meaning through battling and overcoming hardship. A life devoid of hardship is devoid of the impetus to discover personal meaning, which leads to these kinds of empty existences we're seeing much more of.
The last 20 years has seen an intense effort to rid childhood of any hardship whatsoever, while providing a controlled environment where one's formative experiences are managed to a degree as to remove the possibility of any negative circumstances or emotions. But this just optimizes for the wrong thing. A development without challenges, conflicts, hardship, is a stunted development. This society-wide crisis of meaning is only going to grow as we continue down this path towards a hyper-connected world.
By silverquiet 2024-04-1016:03 What do you feel he got too much of that he didn't have to struggle? I don't think it's wrong that pressure is sometimes formative, but also too much pressure will cause systems to fail; humans included. I had plenty of adversity as a child (an illness that has caused a lifetime of chronic pain), and what I learned is that there is no limit to the amount of pain life can provide you, and it doesn't mean anything, and no one really cares about it. I suspect a lot of us just realize early on that the nihilists are correct, and so trading video game skins is as meaningful as anything else, and at least it makes sense unlike most of life. Maybe the psychiatrists can find a drug that gives meaning though; they'll keep trying for awhile usually.
I assume you've asked him about what goes on in his head at least - what does he tell you?
By batch12 2024-04-1012:05 I see it as my purpose as a parent to ensure my kids are able to take care of themselves since I will not always be here. To that end, a job is a requirement and school is a requirement. I had to push them to even get their driver's license, but they got one. My stance is, if you want to spend your free time lost in social media land, fine. Do what needs to be done first and then play. Interestingly, their social media usage in their limited free time seems to have declined in favor of interacting with friends and family.
By Faark 2024-04-1018:19 Having wasted more than a decade doing pretty much nothing than playing pc...
a) The drive to change has to come from inside. I've seen quite a few people being sent to the online/gaming addiction group. Usually, they only come once.
b) Changing one self is hard generally. But here we got quite a bit of... idk, lets call it "damage". So many missing skills, confidence. So many bad, deeply ingrained habits. So many thoughts to avoid & distract from. And still no idea what will make me content.
c) I'm wondering quite often if not starting that journey would have been the better choice. If i could have found a way to stay happy. One motivator for me was the disdain for what i'd become, so no way back now. Now it'd be great to only disdain that past me ...
By ransom1538 2024-04-1015:211 reply Can you be a human being and cut him off? Who is this sick person enabling this? Who is passing out the money? This is no different than buying heroin for someone. Say hey, "No money, get job, bye". Let them begin the human experience. The video games will go away fast. Show humanity, cut them off.
By SirMaster 2024-04-1017:54 You just described one of his interests though. Video games and their DLC content.
Why is interest in video games not a valid interest, or somehow a worse interest than a few that you listed like wasting money, drinking, smoking, drawing dicks on wall?
Is there no chance of interest in video game modding or content creation?
By asdf6969 2024-04-1017:29 Does he have any reason to believe that things will get better? If he already feels like giving up on life then telling him that he needs to work even harder will make him retreat and give up. If his life gets any worse he might kill himself. I know I would.
By joshxyz 2024-04-1210:00 your bro is an npc
>It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either.
In my culture this is exactly what family should do.
"Soft doctors make stinking wounds".
By worthless-trash 2024-04-109:482 reply > and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either.
If you loved your sister, you should do something, if direct confrontation isnt working, take another route.
> In my culture this is exactly what family should do.
I assume you mean "family should intervene here", because if you don't who would ?
Sure, you may try (I did and don't regret it, sounds like OP also tried), if only for you to feel better about it yourself. But my experience with addiction in the family is that they can and will drag you down with them. To love is to let go, at some point.
My experience (with alcohol addiction) is: Tried to help once, got into problems (set family up with house of a friend), almost got into financial problems myself (almost lend them money but was stopped by wife, would have lost it all). But at least I could tell myself I tried. But how far would you go? An addict will take you away from your family and kids if you let them.
So what to do? Hope they take the first step themselves. Be clear that you will help them take steps, but only steps you agree with (I once got alcohol for said family, the begging and bad state got to me, at some point an alcoholic will improve on alcohol), but I still feel bad about that today.
By worldsayshi 2024-04-1010:26 > So what to do? Hope they take the first step themselves. Be clear that you will help them take steps, but only steps you agree with (I once got alcohol for said family, the begging and bad state got to me, at some point an alcoholic will improve on alcohol), but I still feel bad about that today.
As someone who had to give up on a close friend and addict, you have to set razor sharp boundaries for yourself. And if that doesn't work you have to leave. I think very few people have the capacity to make the right decisions when a loved one is slowly slipping into a hole of misery of their own making while begging you to keep them company on the way down.
By slothtrop 2024-04-1013:11 Interventions can work, they're just no silver bullet. I think it's something you do in good faith, but after that for the sake of your sanity you have to let go as you said.
By apexalpha 2024-04-1016:00 >I assume you mean "family should intervene here", because if you don't who would ?
yes
By switch007 2024-04-1011:54 Not really in my culture but still necessary sometimes
I had to step in when my sister's post-natal drinking became too much. Everyone else turned a blind eye, but I couldn't stop thinking about my nephew and an emergency situation.
In a mini intervention, we snapped her out of it by saying you can't drive your baby to hospital in an emergency after 2-4 big glasses of wine (she was often on her own in the evenings); and if you did, child protective services would come down on you like hellfire. Plus a bit of "well prove us wrong that you don't need it to relax" etc.
It worked, quickly, luckily
I think it's a bit reductionist to say it's devoid of purpose and meaning. Have you asked her what she feels her purpose/meaning is? You can disagree with it (I would as well), but I wouldn't assume she doesn't find any purpose/meaning in it.
If she gets angry about it, then probably there is something deeper going on. Or, you're just asking the wrong way (if you come in assuming there's no meaning/purpose to her life, that could easily happen).
If there's something deeper going on, then social media just amplifies things. Specifically about cosmetics and the beauty industry - people have complained about the effects of supermodels on TV, movies, billboards, magazine ads etc. for more than 30 years, social media has just taken it to the next level.
I don't disagree with anything you said, but I do think it's important to add depth to the argument if we actually want to change the world for a better place.
When someone is obsessed or drugged to the point that you can't have a rational conversation and they're too angry or volatile to approach with any criticism, then it's not really your fault for coming at them the wrong way.
Sometimes caring about someone means showing them that what they think they want is garbage that's hurting them. That will probably hurt their feelings, and they might lash out at you for it, but the alternative is doing nothing or enabling them and watching them drown.
> obsessed
I don't know. What one person calls an obsession can easily be called a hobby by someone else.
Personally, I like my little obsessions. I like them a lot better than judgemental people in my life. If someone were to start a "rational conversation" with me where they made me feel like I had to justify my "garbage obsession", well, I wouldn't want to talk to them anymore.
I'm not saying such conversations are pleasant or make you like someone, when it's your own life or addictions or obsessions that are being criticized. But I've been on the receiving end of it and I'm willing to listen and consider someone else's perspective and whether it's true and whether I might need to look at reforming my behavior if people are telling me these things. I can deal with harshness if I believe they are the kind of person who isn't doing it to puff themselves up or make themselves feel better, but is simply giving me a cold analysis.
I feel like when your reaction is to detach from that and rely on emotional arguments to say it's emotionally impossible for you to handle the person criticizing you, that's when you've crossed a Rubicon after which nothing anyone says will change your self destructive behavior.
I'm saying this as someone whose two sisters both died from drug abuse in their 20s. Some people tried to reach them with empathy and others with criticism, but it's the point where someone says "I can't listen to this and I won't be subjected to this" that they become a victim in their own head of other people's harshness rather than being able to look objectively at their own state in a way that might let them change course.
In other words, content is more important than style. If you turn off because of style, that's an excuse to avoid thinking about the content. The people I know who survived are the ones who didn't use the style or delivery of the criticism directed at them as an excuse to avoid thinking about and self-reflecting on the content of what was being said.
By lucumo 2024-04-119:15 I'm sorry that your sisters died from drug abuse. I feel for your loss, but please realise that substance abuse is not the same as losing yourself in an interest or hobby.
You make the assumption that you are absolutely right about a "garbage obsessed" person. That's reasonable when it comes to substance abuse, but it's unlikely to be reasonable when it comes to an obsession. If you are not willing to consider you're wrong about the obsession, you shouldn't have the conversation.
Even if you're right, a truly obsessed person is not going to listen someone who's full of their own righteousness. But chances are you're just wrong, and then the conversation is just useless.
> If you turn off because of style, that's an excuse to avoid thinking about the content.
It's not an excuse, it's a reason. I like my obsessions. If someone is open and willing to understand, I am willing to explain or tell. But I do not care whether or not anyone thinks it's a garbage obsession. If that's all they're willing to talk about, I see no value in having the conversation.
By raziel2p 2024-04-1012:12 I agree with everything you wrote, but also think that if you actually care about the other person getting better, you have to be pragmatic. Set and respect your own boundaries, but tough love does not work on everyone.
>I think it's a bit reductionist to say it's devoid of purpose and meaning
Probably he is old-fashioned and means the coventional old-style purpose and meaning, that old-timey thing that we'd call "actual purpose" nowadays.
Some backward people don't understand that "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" or "getting tons of destructive cosmetic surgeries" or "Amway" can also be a torally fine purpose in life.
> Some backward people don't understand that "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" or "getting tons of destructive cosmetic surgeries" or "Amway" can also be a torally fine purpose in life.
I really can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment or not, so just to be clear none of these examples are examples of purpose. How one spends their time isn't purpose, it's just a description of their day.
By ergonaught 2024-04-1011:525 reply I think the main point is that it isn’t anyone else’s business how an individual chooses to spend their time.
Absence some other criteria for concern, “I don’t like that they do this therefore they must stop doing it” is a line of thinking that desperately needs to be eradicated from human culture.
By s1artibartfast 2024-04-1014:02 I think the criteria for concern is clear, and it never was about if they personally like of the activity.
The concern is because they care about the person and "being isolated and doom scrolling all day" is objectively destructive and self-sabotaging.
It's not a relativistic “different strokes for different folks“ and don't judge situation.
Being nonjudgemental might make sense if someone you care about is at least happy, not miserable and throwing their life away.
By _heimdall 2024-04-1012:12 Sure, though I do also think its reasonable for those who love for someone to be concerned if someone seems depressed or similar.
I didn't actually read the OP as a concern focused on what their sister does, but a concern of why she may be spending her time that way.
Regardless, my point was just that doom scrolling, as an example, isn't purpose. If we're collectively losing the what the concept of purpose even is we really are in trouble.
By coldtea 2024-04-1016:03 >I think the main point is that it isn’t anyone else’s business how an individual chooses to spend their time.
Nah, it was sarcasm
>Absence some other criteria for concern, “I don’t like that they do this therefore they must stop doing it” is a line of thinking that desperately needs to be eradicated from human culture.
There are other criteria for concern, both empathy and concern for the invididual (other people recognizingt that living that way is destructive) but also concern for the general consequences in a society where people do those things.
By Karunamon 2024-04-1015:46 There is always a other criteria for concern. Basically nobody understands their own desire to police the behavior of other people as merely doing something that they don't like.
>How one spends their time isn't purpose, it's just a description of their day.
My examples were sarcastic, based on those being bad ways to spend your time.
That said, I don't agree that "none of these examples are examples of purpose". Or at least I don't think purpose has to be something big, like "do great good", "cure cancer", "get rich".
Those could very well be descriptions of someone's purpose, they would just be unhealthy purposes.
Cool, I thought you were sarcastic there but just didn't want to assume.
My point was only that purpose isn't what you do, its why you do it. I'd actually argue that curing cancer isn't a purpose either, its what someone is trying to do while the purpose could be a desire to help others or fame or fortune.
I think "purpose" can refer both to the "why" and to the "what", as long as the "what" is a major "end in itself/goal" for someone.
E.g. "he found his life's purpose in playing the guitar" - this doesn't answer "why" he plays guitar, but it's a common way of putting it, no?
Here's another example from wordreference.com: "His purpose in life is to give a home to street cats" (again, no why, but a what.
Out of context I obviously can't say for sure either way, but I'd assume in either example there's a deeper why behind both.
Maybe he found meaning in playing the guitar because it allowed him to share a message, or improve others' lives through song. I'd be really surprised if the actual purpose behind it really did come down to the actual act of playing the guitar.
I'm probably getting too nitpicky or semantic here, sorry if I am. I do think the distinction is an important one though, a lot of problems can show up if the "what" is treated as the purpose or meaning in one's life and we forget the "why" behind it.
>a lot of problems can show up if the "what" is treated as the purpose or meaning in one's life and we forget the "why" behind it.
Maybe not necessarily. I mean, as long as the person is content and it's a healthy thing for them, then does it matter if they don't have a "why" for the thing that they consider their purpose to follow? I mean, if they don't have any "why" beyond "because I like it/it makes me happy"?
By _heimdall 2024-04-1023:43 Well I'm definitely getting semantic here, hopefully it is to make a good point and not just annoying.
I think the purpose behind that would be to live a happy life for oneself. How one does that would be different for everyone, but I'd see that as the why behind doing something just because you enjoy it.
Said differently, two people with the same purpose can have wildly different ways of achieving it. What's more interesting, and more helpful as things change and one has to adjust, is knowing the why and how my purpose differs from others.
For example, in the curing cancer example if your purpose behind that goal is to save lives or reduce suffering, curing cancer is just the result of balancing what you think is possible and the impact it could have. If you learn that curing cancer is more difficult, you may pivot to a different goal but for the same purpose.
It also says something of the ways in which you may accidentally go wrong. If your goal is to save lives, you may miss the mark on saving lives but almost certainly wouldn't knowingly do something that will harm people in the long wrong. If your goal is to cure cancer to get rich, you may very well accept long term damage to people if it gets you rich now and you cover your ass for later (aka most of the pharmaceutical industry).
By heresie-dabord 2024-04-1010:342 reply I understand your frustration and -- perhaps -- a feeling of having no agency in the situation. But at the same time I find this sentence fascinating and scary:
> It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either.
Inverting the order of your explanations (to examine the weighting), we have:
If you were a parent talking about your child, people would certainly admonish you. Yet because she is a young adult and you are merely siblings, many more people might agree with your complete detachment.estimated low return for investment/effort avoidance of drama (the other's emotional upheaval) relinquishment of participatory role in guiding the other relinquishment of influence/interest in the other's lifeCan a person who obviously needs guidance/intervention not be worth the time ? Even though the person is in one's family ?
The narcissocial media actively create an illusion that gratifies loneliness and isolation. Modern urban life had already become a reality of denaturing, competition, isolation, and indifference. The antipatterns run deep.
But then you add...
> But it's crazy that a person can get this lost in life and become completely devoid of purpose and meaning.
Your family member seems to be in need of help. It takes a family/village, as they say. We too often omit to remind ourselves that a person becomes a person through other people. [1]
I understand what you're saying, but that's not how life works. If a person has no anchor and they deliberately avoid establishing that anchor in their lives, then how do you expect them to stay stable when going gets tough? I have to respect her as a person first and foremost, and I cannot enforce my own thoughts/ideas because I think that is what's best for her.
She needs to find it for herself, and then establish that as her anchor. If it is cosmetics, then so be it. I have no gripe with that. What I do have a gripe with is reluctancy to be a functional human being and engaging with your family and friends.
As I said in another comment, I offered to help her to do stuff online on multiple occasions. But she can't even accept that, or come to terms with it. Hypothetically, that might also mean she knows that perhaps it's not what she truly wants for herself, as far as building a life (anchor) around it.
I'm not detached, and neither is anyone in my family.
By worldsayshi 2024-04-1011:261 reply I sympathize with this because as far as I'm aware there is no solution to helping an adult person that really doesn't want help. I would love to know if somebody has actually managed to help such a person.
By captaincaveman 2024-04-1011:33 Little by little is my advice, be at hand but not a crutch, show them what they are missing out on but don't push them to engage, they have to decide they want a better life and to do something about it.
By Moru 2024-04-1011:38 There are so many psycological problems that we don't know anything about yet. Not everyone are normal. Or better, we don't really know normality yet. Some people have very big problems physically meeting people and after a full day of work, this might be an impossible task. Internet might seem like a shield that allows building up strength for the next day. The old thing about "Just get out there and meet people" isn't the solution for everyone, just don't give up on them. There is a way to coexist with us all, just have to find your way of doing it.
By intended 2024-04-1017:21 The situation you describe sounds familiar, but having dealt with these situations there are many potential root scenarios the facts can support.
Here are a few things that stick out. There is some motive force that animates your sister.
She travels to and from work regularly. Is able to go out and get surgery and cosmetics.
She has reduced interaction with immediate family - more precisely, she has reduced her interactions over several years.
You describe interactions as situations where “ ..doesn't share her actual thoughts and gets angry when asked about it”, / Emotional Upheaval.
There are many skills that are at play here. Decision making, planning, goal setting, even basic skills like getting out of the house. It will be tempting to “judge” and comment how those skills are being used - ignore that urge.
Secondly, you describe your efforts to provide assistance - suggesting Building sites, or expanding on her interests, which result in a “I dont know.” Of the methods attempted, loosely classified, they focus on action, doing things.
Assuming that you are helping in the manner you would expect to be helped - it may not be the manner in which she understands help or needs to be helped.
In the off chance that this extrapolation based on limited data is correct, then your sister may simply connect or need help in different ways.
From experience - some people dont need a plan or help, they need to understand themselves, this is sufficient information for them to make their own plans and act on their own. Others prefer concrete, actionable plans and dont really need this kind of help.
When two such individuals attempt to help each other, the usual outcome is either “You want me to do more, after I am already struggling?” Or “Why are you wasting my time when I need concrete solutions”.
If it helps - ‘thinking’ something through, is also a project. You are building yourself. Often people forget who they are, what their strengths are, become too tired, expect themselves to perform even though they are dead tired - they make errors in their projects.
In such cases some objective reassurance of their capabilities, a genuine analysis of their situation, helps. Often the best person to do this is a professional, because the emotional state interferes with the objective evaluation (“I will fail” vs “No shit - I cant be creative if I am this stressed”)
I dont have a solution, but I hope some of these thoughts aligned with the circumstances you find yourself within.
If it helps - I use something like this to work situations like this out.
Over engineered: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-KD6jm0l4c-thought-council
Base version: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Cdq3drl87-two-guides
Non ChatGPT + version: https://chat.openai.com/share/d37ce786-20a4-482e-b348-87cd03...
By citizenpaul 2024-04-1011:52 Ive always assumed Ubuntu was another nonsense made up tech company name.
>>But it's crazy that a person can get this lost in life and become completely devoid of purpose and meaning.
The thing is, I'm sure for her it doesn't feel that way. She probably feels a lot of purpose and meaning in following all these people online and participating in social activities around them. That's part of the addiction too - it can feel meaningful for a long time.
By fisf 2024-04-1011:11 > That's part of the addiction too - it can feel meaningful for a long time. That's obviously true of meth,etc. as well. The first step is always to realize you have a problem that's negatively impacting your life.
To me this reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed and something about the way you're asking her is off.
I saw a couple of years of similar reactions from my sisters after they went through some difficult times without any of us knowing (since they were studying abroad and this was before easy internet calling). They'd get mad when asked seemingly innocuous questions, which turned out to be because the way the questions were phrased came off as insulting or dismissive of their problems in some way. We didn't even know about these problems since they never told us, but that didn't really matter for them.
It took years of slowly rebuilding trust for them to open up again.
> To me thos reads less like a social media issue and more like she's depressed
With social media, it’s hard to gauge what’s the chicken and what’s the egg in this issue. Is she on social media because she is depressed and the brain is looking for quick dopamine? Or is being in social media making her more depressed?
By quest88 2024-04-1014:48 I don't think social media helps. It probably exacerbates the underlying issue? Otherwise we'd all be like this.
By emmelaich 2024-04-109:33 As her brother you might be the only one capable of rescuing her from a shitlife.
No (wo)man is an island, entire unto itself.
By anavette 2024-04-1016:48 Your sister sounds like my brother (minus the cosmetics— his focus is on other things). I can deeply relate to your experience.
I'd highly recommend the book "Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End" by Saito Tamaki, translated by Jeffrey Angles. First published in 1998 it describes the "hikikomori" social/psychological phenomenon, and ways treatment has been approached. Ultimately, Saito observes that nobody can "fix" the individual hikikomori directly— therapy must be multi-faceted, continuous, and ongoing, focused on reducing stigma and shame. And for all that, may ultimately not be effective.
By paul7986 2024-04-1013:13 She might have really bad social anxiety, ocd and or some other social disorder that's pretty common in your early to mid to even late 20s. I had it and withdrew too until I started talking about it with others my age only to find out they were all crazy / normal too. Thinking your the only one dealing with such and never talking about and or hearing others ur age or close in age deal with it too is the worst thing ...she needs to talk about it and know she is completely normal and many many others her age deal with the same too
I’m like this too except a man. It’s because I need to work on myself before I date or make new friends. I think it used to be easier to be happy as a loser before phones made us too self aware. It’s hard to be confident when I’m so aware of how much better things could be, and there’s really no excuse for failure when I can get a step by step guide on anything I want.
By seabrookmx 2024-04-1017:54 > happy as a loser
"Loser" is however you want to define it. If you legitimately want certain things (fitness, skills, whatever), then by all means go out and get them.
But don't forget some people are living in a hippie commune, or in a van, by choice. There's lots of these types that are completely broke and "losers" by some definition but they're fulfilled because they can spend more time hiking, painting, or whatever it is they want in life.
This is my long way of saying, don't let social media define what "success" is in your eyes :)
> I need to work on myself before I date or make new friends
Real friends/partners will see you at your worst and stick around. IMO if you think you need to do XYZ first you'll never take the leap to make these connections. The fact that you're working on yourself is what they'll see.. "it's the journey not the destination"
By talldrinkofwhat 2024-04-1019:09 There are no step-by-step guides for living your life. If there were, the only person who could write them would be you 20 years in the future. If you were to follow them, the person who wrote them would not exist, because the wisdom of knowing what to do and what not to do is borne from error embodied. Work on yourself, but do not wait for some magical moment where you say "ah, so this is what it's like to be complete". The moment does not exist. Find people who will accept you as you are, and they will help you become the person you strive to be.
I don't pretend to know your sister's situation but one thing I've become convinced of through seeing the effects of the pandemic is we have an epidemic of undiagnosed mental health issues, particularly ADHD and ASD.
I bring this up for several reasons. First, such conditions are especially underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed in girls and women. Second, even now ADHD is still heavily misunderstood with people focusing on the "hyperactivitiy" part, which is really only one variant. Third, the combination of isolation and focusing on something that doesn't seem to fit that (ie cosmetics and cosmetic surgery) screams coping mechanism and nervous system dysregulation to me.
30+ years ago such people would be forced out into the world. Some would be helped by this. Others would merely cope (ie masking). Some would be further traumatized by this and no one (including them) would recognize it. I've heard from many teachers who deal with ADHD/ASD students that it becomes pretty obvious that their parents are undiagnosed for these very same conditions.
Your sister might be described as a NEET in Western parlance but this isn't new or exclusive to the West. Japan has had hikikimoris from at least the 1990s.
It's worth adding that young people aren't stupid. Many of them recognize the hopelessness of their situation, economically speaking. Rents are crippling, home ownership looks increasingly impossibly to ever reach, student debt is potentially crippling and job prospects aren't great. We're crazy if we think young people don't recognize this so we have a hopelessness crisis on top of all of this.
So is social media allowing people to isolate and cope or is it the cause? Is ADHD/ASD more prevelant now? If so, why? Or was it just underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed until now? I don't know. To me it seems like it might exacerbate existing issues and it's only one facet of many of how our society is increasingly broken and failing young people.
By P_I_Staker 2024-04-1015:47 It's heavily underdiagnosed, even now
By disambiguation 2024-04-1020:48 she just needs to learn2code
By maxrecursion 2024-04-1014:01 This shows the real problem is more getting sucked into online social groups rather than having constant communication with real life friends.
The toxic part of social media is the online personas and interactions with strangers, who are perceived as friends.
There is a balance of letting kids have messenger and play games online with friends, than letting them have social media accounts, and burrow into cesspools of online activities that a lot of these social sites are.
By tossandthrow 2024-04-109:31 Out of curiosity: What do you think she should do?
Is it that she does not go out with friends?
I think her situation is not at all bizarre – I actually think it is overly normal.
Going out with friends: Fair enough, you sit at the same bar talk about the same things, etc.
I think we are in a crisis of communities. Even if your sister wanted to engage there are no good places to do it.
By m463 2024-04-123:42 I remember Larry Niven's science fiction talked about wireheads, who lived with "drouds" wired into their brains' pleasure centers.
But after deleting addicting games/apps for my own good I now realize that reality is not only very complex, but also just as simple as niven's idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
also: https://news.ycombinator.com :)
By shrimp_emoji 2024-04-1015:47 I went through that phase but with World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. And I'm now still in that phase but with programming. So I'm essentially your sister but smarter and cooler in every way. My condolences.
By serial_dev 2024-04-1014:58 If I felt this way, I'd try to get my sister to realize what's happening to her, get to the bottom of the issue together, and help her get out of it.
And be persistent to a degree, show her that you care and you are there for her (and actually be there for her, do something with her). Be understanding, some amount of video entertainment is okay. Be there for her, be patient, and know when to take a break about trying to change her bad habits.
I assume you also need to be prepared for the unfortunate possibility that she just won't budge and decides to spend her life in the matrix.
By v7oTC0cYel81C 2024-04-1021:32 people are endlessly fascinating. I know nothing about your sister, or you, or anyone else on HN, yet here is a hive of tech oriented individuals trying to crack the nut of human nature. I guess it's something that resonates with many here, either by first hand experience or second like yourself.
What can be done? Does anything need to be done? Is she doing harm to herself and others, or is that just your perception? Maybe she doesn't share your values. Maybe she senses your judgement. Do you really have her best interest in mind, or are you projecting an idea of what a good sister should be? As in you can't be proud of who she is. But why not? And why do you want to be? To what extent are you responsible? Should you feel guilty if you fail to change her? Should you feel dread if she is unable to change? Does she owe it to you to change herself? But who knows what the next thing will be that you find disappointing about her. Must she walk the tight-rope of your approval? What is your true opinion anyway? Is it truly good, and should anyone truly care?
Everyone has an idea of how life is and how it should be. Oh the problem is so very clear. If only everything was exactly the way I imagine it, oh if only, then there would be peace, happiness, and harmony for all! right? And yet we're endlessly frustrated by the life that could be, the life that should be, perpetually occupying the space beyond our finger tips.
By boplicity 2024-04-1016:04 This sounds very much like classic addictive behavior. I recommend reading up on Al-Anon, so you can learn more about what you can and can't do, in terms of helping an addict.
i find this to be, unfortunately, the current western stance on responsibility towards anyone: irresponsibility. for some reason, leaving people to go their way, wherever it may lead them, has been interpreted to be the good and the moral duty of anyone who understands what freedom (for intelligent beings) means. with all due respect, that’s cowardice and a neglect of duty.
i explained to my sibling the other day that we cannot live our lives however we wanted because of our layers of responsibility: first to ourselves (as a human beings in this civilization), then to our family and friends (who expect to count on us at some point), to the society we inhabit (i am currently an immigrant), the human race, and lastly the environment. those are not easy responsibilities and they could crush anyone. but absconding isn’t a choice: we’re not here for selfish reasons.
i think you should intervene, at whatever cost to you. because no one else would, and depending on how persistent you are, she’d be grateful for the care and attention you showed. because that’s the sort of action that pure love motivates. good luck
I have tried being supportive on multiple occasions. I offered to help with building her a platform online since she spends so much time there. I offered to team up with her in case she wants to create an eCommerce site. The discussion always ends with, “I don’t know”.
I have tried various approaches, including being provocative, and that is why I said it is not worth it.
I am not abandoning her by any means and we talk. We are on good terms so to speak, but sadly those good terms only extend to lengths of her own comfort. She has a genuine problem with sharing who she is as a person and that is not easy to work with.
When every other thing you say gets interpreted as an “attack” or “you are crossing boundaries”, it makes no sense to push the person to end up where you started.
By michaelsalim 2024-04-1011:281 reply I don't normally comment on these kinds of topic but I thought I should chip in on this one. The things you have listed are all solutions to a problem that you think she has. Something in the line of "If you/we do X, you'll be happier. Trust me"
Honestly, it doesn't have to be that complex. I was shocked to read about the platform and the eCommerce site. That's such a HN solution to an ultimately human problem.
I believe the only thing you need to focus on right now is to understand where she's coming from. Do you know why she does the thing she does? Do you know what she feels about it?
That's it. Simple. But it'll be hard for sure. Because to you (and me), it's very clearly an issue that needs to be "fixed". But how would you feel if someone keeps telling you solutions to things you don't think are a problem? Like: "Hey, do you want a custom social media site so that you don't spend so much time on HN?" - the implication is that you're a HN addict. My first response would be defensive. "I think HN is good. You haven't even spent much time on it. How would you know anything about it? "
I think that unless there's this common ground of understanding and support, you'll never get anywhere.
By yawboakye 2024-04-1012:07 i’m extremely ill-qualified to advise here, and i think it will be even more reckless to assume i understand or appreciate the scope of your effort.
it’s more difficult to even suggest what to do. what are your thoughts on genuinely being interested in her? not for the purposes of helping her. but being interested in her so that you spend time in conversations? start with a minute here and there reminiscing about moments between you two (and perhaps the larger family) that you both enjoyed, and gradually moving into longer conversations? i think what i’m saying here is that you might need to rebuild trust then build a new relationship on top of that. how to go about that? i really don’t know.
By wholinator2 2024-04-1011:51 Yeah, that makes sense. She's pushed you away. Sounds like she's pushed everyone away. You don't have to keep fighting. I don't know if you currently live in proximity to her but if so, one day that will end and you'll have no chance at saving her then. I don't think building online platform is the fix for this, and it doesn't sound like that's what she really wants. If i armchair about my own experiences, sounds like she wants friends but is scared and doesn't remember how to get them. If i we're living the scenario that's in my head in reference to your words, i would focus my efforts on going outside and enjoying the world, then attempting to find people, you only have to force the first couple conversations before it becomes possible.
Also, is it possible she's just depressed? I her a couple therapy sessions would help. These methods are how i got out of my video game hole, and i woulda killed for someone to go through this with. I can't tell you what to do, but what I've heard so far it doesn't sound impossible. It does sound like you've accepted the barrier to assistance she's set up. Maybe when you're ready to leave someday you can make a final push
> i find this to be, unfortunately, the current western stance on responsibility towards anyone: irresponsibility.
The complete destruction of religions, then traditions and now families/education (lack of education, lack of authority, &c.) probably had something to do with it.
You can't replace god/families/education with an iphone 15 and expect society to continue on the same path. And I'm saying that as a complete atheist, people need a framework, goals, rules, models, outlooks, a moral compass, &c. if all we have left is complete relativism and consumerism it's much harder to find a personal meaning and straight up impossible to find a global one
By __turbobrew__ 2024-04-1015:19 The lack of authority is something I hear about from teachers in my locale. Many kids do not grow up with authority figures in their lives whether it be their parents, teachers, coaches, or other family. One of the teachers I know got in hot water for firmly telling a kid to ‘sit down’. The child was so upset — most likely because they have never encountered authority in their life — that the parents complained to the school board.
By wholinator2 2024-04-1011:451 reply I'm confused. I've seen how the breath of Christianity in society has reduced, that's definitely true. But it seemed to me like my generations parents just weren't that interested in church and so we didn't grow up with it. I don't think "destroyed" is a term that could describe at least American Christianity (where i see these arguments the most). Likewise, modern families wait to have children longer. This is because career expectations and housing prices have been raised by the people who have more influence over it than we do. I can't change housing prices but i bet a sufficiently motivated private equity firm could, if not least by just selling their portfolio of rent-seeking.
And what is wrong with education? This one truly baffles me. Kids these days learn more math faster than kids 50 years ago. They learn about a large and varied swath of subjects. High school's as i understand haven't really changed much except for upgrading curriculum and expectations occasionally. Colleges definitely aren't cheaper, but there's a lot more options out there, more degrees, more possibilities, maybe not more but different jobs to go to.
I do think it's bad to let children in school have iPad time, any at all. They should learn to use the internet in the proper way, focused on learning and informational resources. But my phone has been immensely useful for my education! Actually irreplacebly helpful and expanding. I've got dozens of textbooks on here that I've used for many things over time. I've got a youtube tuned to educational content and i don't let myself have enough time to get off track. This phone is what I'm reading your comment from! It's what I'm engaging in this conversation with.
I'd say yes, finding meaning is different now. The old tricks don't work anymore because you just don't have to. What did people used to do who didn't find meaning? I do think GP should at least attempt to help his sister, that's his responsibility to bear in society. I think phones do make certain things harder, and others, like wasting away, much easier. I don't think having more churches would solve that. I think we need actual education in schools about this, the same way we talk about drunk driving, "be careful, you don't wanna waste your life, or someone else's".
This is just the first time anything like this has happened in society to my understanding. I'd blame the corporations who parasitically feed on the time, attention, lives of people who are unlucky enough to get sucked in. We have the term "whale" to describe a person who gets too financially invested in a game (phone or other). Perhaps we need a derogatory term to describe people who get to chronically invested in social media. Something good, to really discourage people from wanting to be like that. There's lots of solutions, i don't think bringing back "traditional family values", "christain morality", or homeschooling is gonna fix it. Those are our old tools, useful at times for certain things. We need to build some new ones.
By Izkata 2024-04-1013:30 > But it seemed to me like my generations parents just weren't that interested in church and so we didn't grow up with it. I don't think "destroyed" is a term that could describe at least American Christianity (where i see these arguments the most).
Millennial with Boomer parents here: There were a few things leading up to this, but in our family the tipping point was when our parents found out our religious education classes were telling me to stop asking questions. One of my parents' primary goals in life was for us to do better academically than they did, and they saw that as religion working against it.
By pgwhalen 2024-04-1016:58 I like that layers of responsibility theory, and applaud you if you live your life by it.
One thing I would amend for myself - I don't think I feel as though I have responsibility to the environment in and of itself. I am an environmentalist, but that follows from my duty to the human race. The earth will keep on earthing either way.
By correctstaple 2024-04-1012:06 > how easy it is to get stuck in this cycle. I just wish there was an easy way out of it
What you described may be body dysmorphic disorder. Social media aggravates that, but it is not the cause: BDD is a variant of OCD. Like OCD, it can be effectively treated with a specific kind of therapy (exposure and response prevention). I know a lot of people have replied to your post, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned this possibility yet.
By xinayder 2024-04-1010:35 I try to avoid mainstream social media because it makes me uncomfortable. I started after putting on my tinfoil hat after Snowden's revelations and slowly drifted away from them, then was dragged back because most of my friends had Twitter, then I decided to finally get rid of my Twitter after Musk bought it.
I have instagram and almost never use it. It's addicting to me in a sense that when I have nothing to do I'll open up the app and endlessly scroll through the feed, check stories of people I follow. It made me uncomfortable because all of the stories of people I know looked fake somehow, everyone smiling, having a good time, making specific poses to look good on Instagram, but in reality their life is not full of roses. It made me uncomfortable when I had bad days, where I felt like I was never going to achieve the happiness people show on the social network. Luckily, wen this thought occurred, I was able to pinpoint it and say "well, this is NOT real, they are just faking it for likes and followers. you should feel good that you don't have this and you should value personal contact over likes on a website".
Since then I only use Instagram to browse for dog/pet videos.
But I have some acquaintances that they act like their life depends on instagram. Hell, I had a friend who spent all of her time watching stupid tiktok videos disseminating fake news and pseudoscience (and she was studying to become a psychologist), reading stupid things on facebook, and when she wasn't busy with this she would constantly complain to me how she self-evaluated that she had depression and anxiety, how her life is shitty. She was a pretty woman and all the time told me she wanted to change her appearance because of something she saw on facebook or tiktok, and I guess it wasn't enough for me to tell her she was perfect the way she is, even with her issues. She never listened and tried to convince me that the cosmetic changes she'd do weren't permanent.
By vaidhy 2024-04-1017:23 > It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it eithe For someone not from US, this comes across as weird. She is your sister, so why is the emotional upheaval not worth it? Who is it worth for? Why is not your place to tell her she is going down? If not for family, who will you do it for?
By sidewndr46 2024-04-1012:401 reply Life is devoid of purpose and meaning. It has only what you choose to assign to it. You can't coerce someone into making that choice.
By slothtrop 2024-04-1013:55 It is, but when people bemoan lack of meaning/purpose they're just talking about feelings. It's a sensory thing, the rationalizations are just an attempt to explain and make sense of it.
We're bad at predicting what makes us happy and even worse at making sound judgements through negative emotions. Those in the middle of such an experience don't want to believe that their habits are exacerbating or responsible for their problems, because change is uncomfortable. They want to continue to feed addiction.
By StefanBatory 2024-04-1010:461 reply But isn't there a question of what causes what?
Is she terminally online because she's ill or is she I'll because she's terminally online
By TeMPOraL 2024-04-1011:05 Both. It's a feedback loop keeping her in place. Like with many (all?) addictions, you get stuck in a situation where the same activity makes your situation worse and provides a short-term reprieve from immediate consequences. You take a hit to briefly fix the accumulated damage from all the previous hits.
By OscarTheGrinch 2024-04-1010:351 reply She may not be aware that there is a problem. My understanding is that game / social media addiction is an attempt to not think about real life things, including acknowledging that so much time has been wasted staring into the black mirror.
My advice is to let her know that you think she has a media addiction, then at least she has some level of awareness.
Jonathan Swift supposedly said: You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.
I think that's typically true but I also would try anyway.
By kayodelycaon 2024-04-1016:09 I don't think that's true with mental illness. He's referring to emotions being the source of a person's beliefs rather than reason.
People can learn coping skills to deal with things they can't control. Reasoning can override emotion.
For myself, learning I was bipolar allowed me to understand what was happening and be able to put things in context. I still need medication but I don't need as much of it.
By mensetmanusman 2024-04-1019:34 "It's her life so I leave her alone"
this statement is foundational to secular ethics, and it is arguably part of the problem. Sometimes love requires helping when it hurts.
By aranelsurion 2024-04-1010:161 reply As I'm trying to find a more charitable point of view on her lifestyle: if this is how she prefers to spend her free time and if it doesn't impair her ability to exist as a functioning adult, is it really that bad?
I mean I personally know people who rarely interact with others other than work, and do weird things like playing with electronics and games all day, mostly just for fun and not for profit. They are often happy as they are, I'm sure many of them are on this very website.
Your sister sounds a bit like the TikTok version of the weird nerd stereotype, replace the PCBs with cosmetics and games with celebrity gossip. Their influencers sell lipsticks instead of 3d printed desk toys and mechanical switches. For me it's difficult to recognize TikTok stuff as a legitimate interest and understand her devotion to it, but then many of the hacker stuff must seem the same to the people outside of these circles.
Not that I know her situation better than you do of course, this was more of a thought experiment on trying to understand a niche that I know very little about.
By lm28469 2024-04-1010:41 Are we talking about long lasting happiness or repeated short lasting pleasures ?
Are your short term pleasures in line with your long term goals ?
That's what supposedly differentiate us from most other animals, the capability to think about the future, and act accordingly. Regret is one of the worse feeling
By gardenhedge 2024-04-109:491 reply It just sounds like you're not part of her life. It sounds like you live together. Imo, that's absolutely normal behaviour between siblings.
We don’t live together. But we have a rocky past for sure. I was older and so I got a head start during my teens for all the bad vices during that age; drugs, alcohol, excessive partying.
By the time she got around to it, I had already wisened up and basically lost communication with her. I went on to do other things with my life and actually put in effort to experience new stuff.
She on the other hand did not. She found more excuses (dropped out of uni twice) than solutions.
By me_me_me 2024-04-1010:11 I don't know how much you care about her, but it sounds like you do care at least a little.
Don't tell her what to do, or how to fix her life.
Go to her and tell her you are worried about her, that you are always no matter what there for her. And if she ever needs help you will be there for her.
Don't judge dont advice but make sure to let her know you care and will help when she comes around.
By commandlinefan 2024-04-1014:00 > she spends most of her time in her room on the phone
They said the same thing about TV for most of my childhood.
By Xeyz0r 2024-04-1019:24 It's even harder for women to not to get in influenced be this crap about cosmetics...
By uconnectlol 2024-04-1015:11 > she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre.
this is not the average social media user. the problem is addiction, not doing surgery to yourself. if social media was banned or age gated you would have to ban wikipedia next as its also very easy to get addicted to doing a tree traversal of interesting articles starting at the single one article you intended to read. also stack exchange. pardon my tone deafness to your tragedy, but this is a political issue, and your post is being used for political purposes. this is also a waste of my tax money and proof that taxation is theft. if i was a parent i would just be a good parent like my parents and slap my kids if they get addicted to upvoting shit on social media just as i would slap them if they get addicted to watching tv, playing arcade games (since i would provide them with real games and not gacha shit, the former which still had the addiction problem and the exact same dumb discussions in the 90s)
By MrYellowP 2024-04-1014:31 > It's her life
Clearly it's not. It's the life of those she copies and is influenced by. I strongly doubt any of the people like your sister are actually making actual decisions about their lives.
You absolutely should try getting through to her, because that's in her best long-term interest. She's literally destroying her life.
By rmbyrro 2024-04-1011:21 In my family, helping a sister in this sort of dead end is exactly what a brother is expected to help with.
It's not about 'telling my sister what to do'. It's about helping someone sick (my conclusion from your superficial description, reality might be different?).
By billfor 2024-04-1014:52 It's called a cat person.
By lm28469 2024-04-1010:29 > But it's crazy that a person can get this lost in life and become completely devoid of purpose and meaning.
People have been warning about it since the birth of capitalism and consumerism, although even the most pessimistic ones didn't expect we'd get so far down the rabbit hole, the internet sped up the whole process a thousand times.
The loss of meaning will be the greatest thing we'll have to fight against in this century, we're just at the beginning.
> I just wish there was an easy way out of it.
I personally think it's lost for a few generations, people who fall into the rabbit hole while their brain is still developing will have absolutely no way out.
What makes the system thrive is the same thing that destroys individuals, the group goal is diametrically opposed to the individual needs
By skywhopper 2024-04-1015:12 She gets cosmetic surgery without leaving the house?
> It's her life so I leave her alone, not my place to tell her what to do, and the emotional upheaval from her isn't worth it either.
You are a part of the problem.
By trogdor 2024-04-1019:40 Have you experienced family members in addiction? If you have, I’m interested in hearing your story.
By swader999 2024-04-1012:21 This is where you use your tech skills to break her addiction. Degrade her social media queries randomly. Mess up the dopamine rewards. Maybe a pihole add on or something like that?
The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very different today. But the Supreme Court got it right when they said it would squelch free speech.
You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don't care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences... from the development of critical thinking skills; development of technical skills; and limiting of educational information. Being exposed to shit on the internet teaches you there's bullshit on the internet, and not to believe everything you see.
And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.
I certainly dont believe anyone should be forced to use these platforms. I don't use any of these products, and havent since they launched. That's a freedom you and everyone else can take advantage of also. But those who advocate censorship aren't advocating for freedom... they're advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.
> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them
It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions.
There's a nice quote from Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, which IMO hasn't aged at all in 60 years: "Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the 'content' of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind... The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance."
> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not
Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers.
Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have.
It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
That's true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I'm fucking annoyed by other parents that don't set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too.
We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.
I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.
By belorn 2024-04-1011:17 People tend to agree with expert advice when that advice align with their own personal views and values. Sadly both smart and dumb, educated and uneducated people falls for this and the pandemic demonstrated this in waves and continues to do so.
Take this study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0?error=coo...). How many people on HN will agree with the ranking of those interventions? Early restrictions on travel and preventing people from gathering are the most effective measure to prevent an pandemic, but what people want to form sides around are the discussion around masks. Shutting down airports and imposing general self isolation are not in alignment of what either smart and dumb people believes in.
One of the criteria I used when choosing my son's school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It's a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I've heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early.
I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.
> you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age
Elsagate videos got many tens (hundreds?) of millions of views at the time. If you know where to look you can see the cumulative engagement of babies in front of their tablets.
There's this old stat about video games, oft quoted a decade or more ago in context of Zynga, etc., that one of the largest game market is casual games, and the players are predominantly working-age women.
There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.
By RcouF1uZ4gsC 2024-04-1011:55 > There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.
I also wonder what the breakdown of Netflix streaming hours is. I suspect a huge chunk of it is just toddlers and pre-schoolers watching the same episodes of Cocomelon over and over again.
By RGamma 2024-04-1019:06 Edit: E.g. see this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs (What If 10 SPIDER-MAN in 1 HOUSE ??? || Hey All SuperHero , Go To Trainning Nerf Gun !!)
50M views with lovely comments such as "Ujhgjjgfgk", "ĤĎĎ hcl jdjdsewi10000000000", "nnnmkkk", etc.
This sort of shit gets billions of views...
This sounds like a really good way of approaching it. From what I understand the argument against is clear but enforcing it in the face of peer pressure a little more complicated!
My nephews school allows basic 'dumb' phones but not smart phones which seems a fair compromise.
By nicolas_t 2024-04-1013:24 Yes, the peer pressure is exactly the point. The older your child is, the more his peers will influence his behavior. I hope by the time he goes to middle school, I'll find a school with this kind of restrictions.
Dumb phones is definitely a smart compromise...
> The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.
If you stay home and others don't, it doesn't affect you. If you're isolated and safe, why would you care if others go out and do what they want?
A commenter in a sibling thread asked why "people are so nitpicky" and "why people are so hostile to each other". This comment is why. It's exemplary even. You should look inward and figure out if you're part of the problem.
By triceratops 2024-04-1014:34 > If you're isolated and safe, why would you care if others go out and do what they want?
Because they'll get sick and fill up the emergency room. If I have a heart attack or stroke at home, that's a problem for me now.
By tnel77 2024-04-1014:16 It seems you are a good example of what they were talking about. Not understanding cause and effect such as using up medical resources that could otherwise be used for regular emergencies.
By watwut 2024-04-1012:51 It does, because the hospital is overloaded and I cant get access for unrelated health condition.
It does, because there are places I have to go to and I am at higher risk there.
That's a fine stance if staying home is an option for you, but many people are not that fortunate with their logistical and financial situation.
Meanwhile, it transpires that the outside world is full of people who I am sure are upstanding and willing to self-sacrifice for their fellow man in theory, but will point blank refuse to bear the mild inconvenience of a piece of cloth over their face in shared spaces for the comfort of those around them in practice.
I mean, it's not news; most humans have never cared much about the welfare of strangers; people doing what they want and ignoring the externalities happens all the time - smoking in public spaces, drink driving... the pandemic simply served to viscerally ram home just how self-centered we all are.
And thus we come full circle to the start of the thread. Hell is other people. The more we interact with other people, the more obvious this becomes. As our world becomes more connected, no room is left for illusions on the subject; it's little wonder teens end up holing up in their rooms avoiding everyone.
By belorn 2024-04-1015:42 People should not go out when they are sick. That they do so because of a logistical and financial situation, trading other peoples health for economical gain, is a very bad situation for everyone involved. A piece of cloth over their face may be a symbol for "better than nothing" solution, but it is a very problematic starting point for a discussion regarding pandemics.
The best solution to this problem in general is social welfare. One such choice that countries did during the pandemic was to encourage or force work-from-home, and reducing the economical friction of sick leave. When the situation is so bad that people have to choose between externalities and major negative personal impact, society can help by stepping in by pushing the right choice while at the same time reducing that negative personal impact. It is a social solution to a social issue.
People as a group can be good and evil, just as an individual. Society can choose to ignore citizens logistical and financial problems while at the same time expect people to act altruistic. A major reason for that will coincidental also be the logistical and financial situation of that country, so they may as an alternative choose an better than nothing solution to it. Sub-optimal as it is.
I think this view sucks. A core part of being a functioning human being is being able to interact with others whose views differ from your own.
The core problem is the ostracization of opinion on social media. It also doesn't play very well when social isolation has had other consequences, such as the proliferation of viruses and the broad economic impact. Plus, COVID is now integrated in our society, thus giving more ammunition to those who thought that social isolation was pointless (even if it wasn't at the time).
We need to move on from the isolationism and vitriol of others with differing opinions.
Personally, I think gp's "If you stay home and others don't, it doesn't affect you" sucks, but YMMV.
By triceratops 2024-04-1014:35 You're responding to GP.
By intended 2024-04-116:25 There are 2 contexts for speech, and within each different forces change the outcome of the same conversation. This is why I can say your analysis is resulting in erroneous outputs.
For arguments sake, let’s call it - individual only scenarios vs collective scenarios.
Individual only: What thoughts you say at home in the privacy of your house.
Collective: The vote.
In collective scenarios, the median/average choice dominate.
Eg: The chemical expert knows that chemical X is going to kill humans and avoids it.
The collective votes Yes to elect a representative who advocates for chemical X to be added to all food packaging.
——-
This is a very common trick question where Free Speech argument proponents falter.
Free Speech is a principle for ordering the world. With the internet, this principle needs to be applied to people who would skew or influence collective decisions.
Brandolini's Law also comes to mind. Countering bullshit takes more effort than creating it. It's an understandable self-defense mechanism for an individual or even a community to just isolate and quarantine the source of a problem than to engage with them in earnest discourse. Trolling, astroturfing, and propaganda are real things, no amount of engagement will sway the opinion of bad-faith actors.
By dimgl 2024-04-1114:09 This is still too cynical. A large majority of people are not bad-faith actors but rather normal people who simply want to live their lives.
To be clear, I'm not arguing whether the lockdowns were good or bad. I do think they were necessary. I'm more arguing that we shouldn't suppress and ostracize people who disagreed with them. It's okay for people to disagree.
By pokerface_86 2024-04-1015:321 reply i think THIS view sucks. some things are objectively true. why should we have to tolerate people who literally don’t understand basic statistics and harm reduction? at all?
By midnight2 2024-04-1017:39 [flagged]
By whstl 2024-04-1113:23 > If you're isolated and safe, why would you care if others go out and do what they want?
To answer this question:
Because almost nobody was isolated. Most people couldn't stay at home exclusively and indefinitely. You gotta get groceries, lots of people have to go to work, lots of people have partners and family members that can't work from home, you gotta receive parcels, you had to receive food deliveries, and some people had to be the ones delivering parcels and food, some people could get OTHER diseases. The list goes on.
By mbesto 2024-04-1014:02 > I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.
So, like smoking in restaurants?
You mean that "expert advice" which is increasingly questioned with passing time, and happened to change every Monday and Saturday? That expert advice which at least for Germany is now revealed to have been ordered by political forces, not based on scientific evidence? C'mon. Waving about with the pandemic as a good example is getting hilarious.
By Propelloni 2024-04-1013:33 Except that nothing has been revealed. The blackened protocols of the crisis meetings of the Roland-Koch-Institut (the public health organization funded by the FRG) are incomplete and the alleged political meddling is an insinuation by "alternative facts" journalists. Let's wait and see what happens when the full protocols are released. IIRC, there is a review board for Corona measures anyway and the journalists are sueing for a full release, too.
It is shameful that citizens had to sue for the release of the partial protocols in the first place, for sure, but the conclusions are more than hasty. Anyhow, you seem to have made up your mind, so I'm leaving you to it.
This sounds like post-facto justification for following rumors and disinformation during the pandemic.
Yes, expert opinions do change as new data comes in, and yes, public policy is as much influenced by politics as by science. But during the beginning of the pandemic, the OP is absolutely correct that a shocking number of people showed very poor judgment based on social media.
And this has not changed. Social media continues to be a cesspool of conspiracy theorists and deliberately provocative content that increases "engagement". Please don't dismiss this point by putting "expert advice" in quotes.
By batch12 2024-04-1012:23 A problem is people who are confidently wrong and hide behind science as a religion. If we were to admit a level of, I don't know, this is the best we've got right now, there would be more trust in expert advice. During the pandemic, this expert advice was abused to exercise control over some and not others which helped cast doubt over all information. For instance, political leaders hanging out in public restaurants without masks while others were directed to huddle in their homes made some wonder if this thing was as bad as those 'leaders' claimed.
I would agree with your take if we had a solution for the "who watches the watchers" problem. Since we don't, blanket criticism of critical thinking doesn't go down with me since I watched the pandemic unfold. Our state-controlled local media said 3 days after the first lockdown that we are supposed to only listen to them, and ignore every other media outlet because they are going to lie. This in a democratic country. I was schocked, and what followed didn't make me any more trusting in the powers that be. We tell our kids if they keep lying, nobody will believe them. This is what happened during the pandemic. And claiming experts are cool just because, doesn't make that deeply rooted distrust go away. We tell our kids they are not supposed to lie because after a while, nobody will believe them. But if we're being subjected to improsionment at home based on vague "scientific" experts who turn out to have followed orders from politiccians, we are supposed to forget all about it and more on? Nope, sorry. Trust has eroded, and just saying so will not reestablish it.
By watwut 2024-04-1012:53 Replacing "watchers the watchers" by the sociopaths that knowingly spew lies and made up crap just to get what they want is not exactly a win.
By winstonprivacy 2024-04-1016:34 > The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.
The amount of dumb, educated people that blindly accepted everything that was fed to them during the fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.
"Just two weeks to flatten the curve!"
By tossandthrow 2024-04-108:411 reply > Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have.
The parent commenter propose that you can not escape the negative consequences of social media, even if you fully restrain yourself, as you have the second order effects from your friends using it.
The parent commenter says that this is not an individual problem and cannot be solved on an individual level. It is a macro issue.
Just like you stopping eating meat will not really make a dent on global warming.
I think that is very insightful.
By pas 2024-04-120:29 Where you put your time/attention/money matters a lot though. For you and your friends/family. And even more for those small(er) alternative services/products/markets/communities.
By wonderwonder 2024-04-1011:341 reply Florida has banned social media for under 14's starting Jan, 2025. Generally I am against government overreach and sometimes they make very odd decisions like campaigning to ban lab engineered meat in the state but on this I very much agree. Just remove social media as an option for those that are very young.
Its easy to say, that's the parents responsibility and that is a correct statement but most families require 2 working parents these days, most of whom are not tech savvy enough to understand how to limit social media or access to questionable sites.
Social media is an addictive, mind altering poison by design. Through the pervasiveness of echo chambers and intentionally addictive features such as endless scrolling and recommendations it seeks to do nothing except turn its users into revenue by keeping them online and seeing / clicking ads.
I lost my sister to it as she became so wrapped in the political side of it that any belief besides hers and those she followed meant you were a borderline nazi.
By Shocka1 2024-04-1214:12 I agree wholeheartedly, and sorry about losing your sister. It's too bad we won't see the results of Florida's new law for several years to come.
> It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
If you run against convention too much, even when convention is wrong, you become the zealot guardian, which conjures a family situation with its own distinct pathologies.
By whstl 2024-04-1110:45 Exactly.
By KaiserPro 2024-04-1015:42 > It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
if thats the case, then surely it would be reflected in the studies? (assuming that the studies are reproducible....)
> The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers.
Sorry, I see this a lot but: oh well? They'll get over it. Social media on the other hand gets its hooks in deep.
If every teenager were guzzling gallons of soda everyday and telling them to stop "alienated and ostracized" them, I'd still do it for the good of their health.
> oh well? They'll get over it.
Alienation and ostracization is not something to be taken lightly.
By SV_BubbleTime 2024-04-1015:262 reply I mean back up for second…
We know that kids on social media are suffering depression and etc.
So… if you keep your kid off of that drug, you are saying they’re not going to be accepted by the addicts and peers that are suffering?
Ok? Good?
We know what conformity to the group of damaged friends can do to a kid.
I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged.
By whstl 2024-04-1113:08 Neither are good.
Kids having problems because of social media sucks.
Kids having problems because they don't have social media and gets peer pressure because of it also sucks.
> We know that kids on social media are suffering depression and etc.
We know it raises likelihood, that doesn't mean they're all depressed and anxious across the board, and those afflictions are on a gradient. Younger generations appear to be optimizing for it more effectively.
It doesn't make sense to cast society at large as "suffering and addicted". Downstream from that, the downsides of sheltering your children from society loom larger than their being socialized among peers who use social media.
> I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged.
You do that.
> > I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged.
> You do that.
You don't hear really about Amish kids killing themselves. Maybe there's something there.
By slothtrop 2024-04-1022:22 You don't really hear about a significant segment of the population killing themselves.
By bakuninsbart 2024-04-1015:11 Eh, no they won't really get over it. I interact with plenty of people in their thirties and fourties who still have a chip on their shoulder because they were "losers" in highschool.
By whstl 2024-04-1110:48 I mean, I'm not saying they should keep using it or stop.
I'm just saying what happens when you force "individual responsibility" onto parents and children, without addressing the root societal problem.
I agree 100% that using social media is unhealthy.
And then there are also those companies/institutions/orgs/news/shops that make you left behind from otherwise useful information or services by not being on social media platforms.
By pjerem 2024-04-108:30 This is a real everyday pain that anyone with social media accounts can’t fathom.
Most (like 90%) businesses don’t have a website or when they have, it’s a static website. All the news are on social medias behind nag screens.
It really annoys me how many services - even sometimes public services like our local police - are Facebook first, with all other mediums as an afterthought.
I completely agree, but one thing that bothered me since 2020 - local municipality posted some news on their website, and people on our neighbourhood group were genuinely complaining why they did not post it on Facebook, since that’s what the “internet is” for a significant (dare I say, majority?” of people. Unfortunately, we are in a minority in this situation.
By mbitsnbites 2024-04-1013:09 People are ignorant. Companies are greedy. That's why we need regulation.
Children don't need social media, just as they don't need tobacco or alcohol. As long as all your friends are off social media, you'll be fine. It's when there's a choice that you get the FOMO situation that makes it more or less impossible for parents to dissuade their children from using social media.
I’d aggressively support legislation against this.
Luckily with Elon doing crazy things to X, NYC has divorced a bunch of public services from it.
But not enough
By fragmede 2024-04-110:54 Where have they moved to?
Perhaps worse, in the places I’ve lived the main communications from emergency services and law enforcement are posted on Twitter.
By davedx 2024-04-117:45 Yeah, this too.
I kind of feel like Elon was actually right that Twitter has become the "public square", but I disagree violently that he should be the one to control and steward it. We need a non-government controlled, non-corporate/profit-driven Twitter. The fediverse is okay but the UX needs to be completely frictionless so everyone can use it (also my mum).
And then there's Therapist who keep saying everyone should be in therapy and drug companies with the latest in psychopharmacology.
Histeria (and the virbrator), ice pick lobotomies, electro shock therapy, Quaalude, Benzodiazepines (valium) as mothers little helpers, MAOI's, SRRI's (PSSD), Benzodiazepines again (Xanax, klonipin). <<< (Hint all of these things turned out to be DEEPLY fucked up)
And for good measure a few variations of adrenal Ritalin and other methamphetamines.
Maybe, just maybe, and hear me out on this, we have more people with mental health issues because "self diagnosis" and "self identifications" can get you a prescription. Maybe, just maybe more people have mental health issues because there is a whole fucking industry designed to profit off of problems that have a "diagnostic criteria" and not a "test". Maybe just maybe we should remember that the "reproducibility crisis" has some of its worst offenders in psychiatry and psychology.
Or you know blame social media, like we did for books, radio, tv, Elvis and rock, rap and metal, video games, 4chan and now....
By hibernator149 2024-04-1010:52 Why not both? Pharma and Social Media profit from depressed people. Nothing ever has a single root cause. There are always multiple causes often working together in a vicious cycle. Also, what's wrong with vibrators?
Your tirade against an almost ridiculously broad spectrum of drugs isn’t at all similar to what’s being discussed here, and reeks of a hidden agenda or bias. Many, if not all, of the medications you listed have been a net benefit for the individual and the world.
By zer00eyz 2024-04-1012:09 ice pick lobotomies: Do I need to argue about this being bad?
electro shock therapy: were still doing this, there isnt good research to support it at all.
Quaalude addictive, banned in USA since 1984
Benzodiazepines, Valium, Xanax, Kolinapin: Addictive, withdrawal from these are brutal: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=benzodiazepines+suicide
MAOI: so well studied that we let them out in the public and then realized that taking them and eating leftovers could kill you.
SRRI: This is an entire class of drugs that is getting ripped apart by current research. There are studies that show they dont have greater benefit than placebo with therapy. There is new research that says they may be damaging in their own right and have massive withdrawal symptoms.
The term "replication crisis" started with psychology. And, though it has shown its face across much of academia, psychology on the whole looks particularly blighted. Modern research is having no problem turning over much of the last 30 or so years of drugs and research.
It. Is. Damming.
>> Many, if not all, of the medications you listed have been a net benefit for the individual and the world.
The only medication I mentioned with a leg left to stand on anywhere is the SSRI group:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/no-evidence-depression-c...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130402/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0... (hey better that we figure this out AFTER it has been on the market for 30 years right?)
To summarize all those links: A study that says serotonin isn't involved in depression. Another that is a meta analysis of SSRI research that says "no better than placebo" and the last one that says SSRI's have some gnarly withdrawal and you should taper off them (a multi month process).
So no I did not have a tirade against a broad spectrum of drugs. I had a tirade against the "treatments" that have, or are, turning out to be worse than the diseases they were treating.
By uconnectlol 2024-04-1011:341 reply > It's really not that simple
except it is, because law is dumb, stupid, and slow-witted. if you ban facebook specifically, the next day it will think that means mailing lists should also be banned. btw ive witnessed lots of mailing list and then web forum addicted deadbeats before social media came out but whatever
the legal solution is nothing (i realize not all of you have asked for the legal solution yet but thats essentially the only point of this thread that is brought up routinely on places like HN)
teh fact that every techie and his mom seems to think the law will work out in his favor when it backfires each time (or they just ignores that downsides) is no different than how people keep thinking you can put a web server in every embedded device and they oh so surprisingly have the same RCE vulns as the 90s, every single time.
By fragmede 2024-04-110:57 After the DMCA and the CFAA, what techie thinks the law will work out in their favor?
By karaterobot 2024-04-1014:061 reply > It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions.
I suspect that a lot of the anxiety about how difficult it would be to quit is the mind's way of rationalizing a psychological addiction, like saying you can't stop smoking because things are just so crazy right now.
I quit social networks in 2008, it wasn't hard at the time and it's not been hard to stay away. Yes, there are consequences of being the one guy in the friend group who doesn't use whatever app everyone else is using, but to call those consequences meaningful is an overstatement. A minor annoyance, easy for everyone to adapt to.
You're right that other people are still influenced by social networks. Speaking from the outside, I wouldn't even use the word 'subtle' to describe its effects. But, I don't know that that really matters. You surround yourself with people you like, despite their flaws. You hope the good things about them grow, and that they work through their flaws. That's just having friends.
By raziel2p 2024-04-1210:49 I wrote the comment as someone who doesn't use social media. I still, for example, miss out on important life updates from my friends because media has taught us that it's easier to post a story than to manually select all 10-50 people who might be interested and send it individually.
Your good friends and friendships will survive that, no doubt, but you do lose out on opportunities to make additional or deeper connections.
Teenagers are so judgy about the color of the text message bubbles they receive, imagine how judgy they would be if one didn't participate at all in some digital platform most of them use.
Not around these parts!
They all use Discord and/or Snapchat here in Australia. No one I've every asked about this cares about Android vs iPhone. No one.
No one apart from the Parents uses the built in messaging and SMS.
But then the Parent groups all use Facebook Messenger for most group comms.
The whole green / blue bubble thing is either over played by the Press or purley a US Phenomenon.
But given the marketshare of the iPhone with teenagers in the US, it seems it's possibly less of an issue its made out to be due to the fact that most people have iPhones anyway!
>No one I've every asked about this cares about Android vs iPhone. No one.
They wouldn't necessarily tell if they did though...
This is more like "I asked 100 men if they worry their D is small, and nobody said yes".
By firecall 2024-04-111:19 Haha! :-)
But not really IMHO, as it’s not a status thing.
They say they don’t care because the my don’t care. They just don’t use the built in message apps outside of texting a parent to be picked up LOL
By satvikpendem 2024-04-109:341 reply I think you missed the entire point of the comment above. It's not about iOS vs Android but about not being included socially, regardless of the platform. Imagine in your example where one kid in a group didn't use Discord, they'd be effectively cut off.
I can see how it seems like I might have :-)
But I understand the point well.
Discord and SnapChat are available for iOS and Android.
With Discord being available as good as everywhere.
So using Android does not exclude you socially in my experience, here in Australia.
Similarly in Europe and the UK, the What’s App was hugely popular and the default cross platform messenger.
I don’t entirely believe the rhetoric around Green and Blue bubbles that the press repeat without any real evidence. :-)
By ashyaspen 2024-04-159:41 Again you miss the point entirely. This is not Apple vs Android. This is teenagers not being given a choice whether or not to use social media generally.
The fact is if everyone else uses it, this precludes them from many normal interactions that get replaced by social media. It's a cultural thing as much as it is a personal thing. You will feel excluded if you don't use it, so unless everyone changes, it's hard for you to change. That takes a determination even many adults lack.
The harmful effects of social media are not eliminated by choosing not to participate. They have a cultural impact (both benefit and harm) that expands beyond an individuals choice. We should reconsider how to handle teenagers on social media as a society. Not just tell them to preclude themselves if it's harming them.
By dpkirchner 2024-04-1014:011 reply It's less about the color and more about the lack of feature parity. If one person joins it can downgrade the experience for everyone. This isn't the teenagers fault, they're just responding to product behavior.
By AlexandrB 2024-04-1015:00 When I was a teenager, I responded to shitty product behavior by switching products. But that was an era where you had a half dozen competing desktop messengers as well as third party client options for most of them. We need to make adversarial interoperability possible again so users are not at the mercy of tech companies and their marketing teams.
By base698 2024-04-1013:57 If TV turned everything into entertainment, including discourse, then social media has turned every discourse into being an influencer. I frequently see people at a coffeeshop set up cameras like they are filming a TV show to talk about their latte or muffin for Instagram. This happens everywhere in all walks of life. Any hobby, no matter how esoteric, will be molded into the shape of good for instagram.
By trgn 2024-04-1016:34 It's baffling to me, that despite how famous McLuhan still is today, that people somehow do not follow the implications of his criticism (and that of Ellul, Debord, Kaczinsky ;), ...). Technology, in and of itself, the actual physical _thing_, shapes the world, our dispositions, our aspirations, in its own image, and does so in absence of our judgement.
By xnx 2024-04-111:52 First paragraph is at least (or even more) applicable to cable news and talk radio. The amount of brainrot in the geriatric electorate due to the 8+ hours of daily screentime(/screamtime) they get from "news" hosts has been a disaster for us democracy.
By hypertexthero 2024-04-1012:42 See also The Medium is the Massage, a very illuminating book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_Is_the_Massage
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-medium-is-the-massage-revis...
By octopusRex 2024-04-109:19 I remember when they taught mcLuhan in highschool - 1970s - in order to make us more aware of media manipulation.
I wonder if they still do. Ironically, this was in Florida - probably be considered too woke by Desantis.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer).
What do I care what others do?
If you have children or niblings, you’ll realize how ostracized from the community one gets if they have no access to social media. It would work if parents banded together and nobody in school would get access, but otherwise it just becomes a “there’s a giant club and you’re not a part of it”. As a child, that really hurts.
When I was in high school, Facebook was just opening up access to everyone. I remember literally everyone getting on it, and swapping between messages in MSN, and some posts on FB. We had whole school wide conversations, planning and etc. on social media, and on days when I didn’t get in front of the computer to check things, I remember feeling left out. It’s just so much worse now, because every kid expects every other kid to be on the loop of things 24/7. I think that’s where we screwed up. Having just casual access without mobile phones was the sweet spot, in my opinion.
By rTX5CMRXIfFG 2024-04-108:364 reply But why do you make it sound like it’s not an option to teach kids to not have fear of missing out and having meaningful ways of spending their time in the real, offline world? I guarantee you that there is nothing of value that other teens are saying that your own children need to be updated 24/7
You seem to be ignoring the fact that people plan things in real life over the internet. Conversations started online continue IRL, and vice-versa.
Social media can be really bad, and maybe it's actually mostly bad, but it does facilitate real life interactions and good things.
Imagine your child going to school but not being allowed to play with other kids in recess. Lots of bullying and physical violence can happen during recess, after all. Would you use that as an opportunity to teach them the dangers of FOMO, and to just read a book?
By rTX5CMRXIfFG 2024-04-109:043 reply It’s the perfect opportunity to teach them the lack of value of FOMO, especially when it’s validation from people who would bully you that you seek. I don’t see why what you’re recommending is a healthy response.
By raziel2p 2024-04-1010:25 I don't want children nor do I work with children, so haven't put any serious thought into how I would practically do it - I just don't think there's an objectively superior way to go about this. I won't judge anyone (parents nor teenagers) for surrendering to the peer pressure of social media, because it's so pervasive.
By varius 2024-04-1010:22 You haven't been around teenagers, or even humans in general much, huh?
Teaching another person, even an eager one, how to change their behaviour and mental patterns concerning validation and FOMO is a really hard task. It's not knowledge like math or something that you can just pass onto them. It can take months or even years even for pros (psychitrists etc.) to do that. Combine that with the fact that teenagers brains are wired differently (their need to fit it is greater than that of an adult) and their "natural resistance" to adults' teaching and it becomes almost impossible task.
>It’s the perfect opportunity to teach them the lack of value of FOMO
Ever tried teaching anything to teenagers where their peers and society in general promote the opposite? Good luck with that...
By short_sells_poo 2024-04-1011:111 reply I agree with you. It feels like some people here never interact with kids. It really is a very difficult problem to solve. You ban your kids from participating in social media, and you might end up hurting them much more by isolating them and getting them ostracized. In the end your cure ends up doing more damage than the illness would've. I absolutely agree that we should do something, and I'm trying my best. However, as long as a critical mass of young people are partaking, I cannot in good conscience force kids to stay off, because I know how bad that would make their life. So it's all about education and drilling the dangers into them as much as I can. Ultimately, this is a new world, with new rules and new dangers. The generation of millenials, boomers, etc - we are on the way out. We can advise the new generation, but they will have to find their own way to handle the dangers.
By coldtea 2024-04-1016:08 Not to mention the kids over-compensating for your restrictions, and doubling down on the things you forbid/discourage them from - whether covertly behind your back, or after they grow up.
Like a strict parent whose kids end up doing drugs and partying as soon as they can leave the house, or even the opposite, some "hippie" all-too-liberal parent whose kind grow up and seek strictness and discipline, and e.g. turn religious or join a cult, or find some abusive partner who gives that to them.
I also guarantee you that a teen who is not in the loop is much more likely to be ostracized and bullied in the offline world.
So, yes you might try teaching your kid that they're not missing out that they can find more meaningful way to spend their time in the real offline world but, the fact is, they go to schools with kid who overwhelmingly are not taught that and who will dislike your kid for being different. Your kid doesn't live in isolation, he lives in society and, during school years is when social pressure to conform to the group norm is strongest.
I'm speaking from experience here, I've been bullied as a teen, I definitely would rather avoid my son going through a similar experience.
By rTX5CMRXIfFG 2024-04-109:016 reply Eh, that’s not necessarily true. Other kids might bully your child for having a healthy set of offline interests and for not being like them who are all plugged in online, but I don’t see how it’s not an option to teach your kids to have a strong sense of identity and not give in to peer pressure while also assuring them that you’ve always got their back.
What you’re describing doesn’t sound like parenting to me, it’s giving in to peer pressure. From kids. And you’re supposed to be an adult who already knows what’s right and wrong. If your kid’s peers all gain a liking for drugs or gambling or some other vice and they bully your child for not partaking, are you going to tell your child to participate? No, what you should do is show them the right way and to what’s good for them in the long term, even if it’s difficult for them to see it now because of their youth.
By zelphirkalt 2024-04-1011:48 Surely being a good parent and having your kid's back is very important when the kid is being bullied.
I have been bullied by losers the whole school time, because of something as simple as my name and being smarter. I managed to develop a strong resistance to certain things and learned to go my own way, questioning the mainstream, including dealing with network effect and peer pressure to do things I do not want to participate in. For children in primary school it can be terrible.
However, I can easily imagine, what can happen, if a parent does not support their child as much as my parents did support me. I think except for exceptionally strong independent children, there needs to be a balance in children's lives. If almost everyone in their social circles is basically telling them, that they suck, because they are out of the loop, then it needs parents to support them and make them feel that they do not suck.
I had a strong sense of identity, I had good results, a good family life, my parents had my back, etc.. That didn't stop me from being bullied or pissed on while being held down by fucking assholes. So, I'd say, you either don't know what bullying is like or you're overly naive. And by the way, having my parents having my back and telling my teachers about the bullying just made things worse. It only improved when I changed school and punched the first guy who namecalled me.
Anyway, to respond to your points:
> What you’re describing doesn’t sound like parenting to me, it’s giving in to peer pressure.
What I'm describing is knowing how society works and planning around it. It doesn't mean that I would give unrestricted access to social medias, it also doesn't mean that I would not be there to guide my child about how to use them, what the dangers are etc...
I'm saying that straight up abstinence is not a good idea and doesn't work if your child lives in a society that doesn't abstain. There are also perverse effects whereby preventing your child from completely accessing social medias, you end up with a child who just hides it from you.
> If your kid’s peers all gain a liking for drugs or gambling or some other vice and they bully your child for not partaking, are you going to tell your child to participate?
I'd probably consider switching my child to a different school.
By circlefavshape 2024-04-1011:44 > It only improved when I changed school and punched the first guy who namecalled me.
fwiw fighting is the only thing that mitigated bullying for me too
By rTX5CMRXIfFG 2024-04-1011:471 reply > you either don't know what bullying is like or you're overly naive
I was about to say teach your child self-defense and how to fight, and the last sentence of that same paragraph just proved my point.
Look, as a parent, your goal should not be to teach your child how to avoid bullying. That's not within your control, nor your child, and in the real world, even once your child is grown up, there's always some moron out there in the world who's going to bully you or want to beat you up, sometimes for no reason, sometimes for not being like them. That's not an excuse to teach your child to be like other children just for the sake of conformity because that is the wrong thing to teach. You teach them how to fight back when people beat them up for being the way that they are. None of your other points matter against that.
Fair point but I'd argue that self defense and knowing how to fight helps but I was a year younger than everyone else (skipped a grade) and was fairly small for my age until I hit a growth spurt (which coincided with when I changed school by graduating middle school and went to high school). I'm not sure I would have been half as successful when I first was bullied.
The thing too is that I'm also not convinced abstinence on something that's part of society and that your kid will have when they grow up is that useful anyway. Social media is unfortunately needed to function in society so learning to use it reasonably (and not in an addictive manner) has value too.
That said, yes I absolutely will teach my son to fight back, violence in some circumstances is a useful tool to have.
By rTX5CMRXIfFG 2024-04-1014:07 > Social media is unfortunately needed to function in society so learning to use it reasonably (and not in an addictive manner) has value too.
No, wrong again. It’s not necessary to function and there already are secure messaging apps through which kids and adults can communicate. You don’t have to have a Facebook page. You don’t need an IG profile of portraits where you pose like a model. You don’t need to make funny Tiktok videos.
This entire issue is being murkied by adults who are projecting their deep-seated bullying issues as value judgments on how to raise children when evidently they haven’t sorted themselves out and they are already having kids.
By coldtea 2024-04-109:47 >What you’re describing doesn’t sound like parenting to me, it’s giving in to peer pressure.
Parent, after an age, has very small influence in what kids do. Kids will be spending most of their time with peers, not with you.
By michaelt 2024-04-109:54 > What you’re describing doesn’t sound like parenting to me, it’s giving in to peer pressure. From kids.
Are you a parent yourself? Just wondering.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-1012:14 You're missing the point. This is not peer pressure over what brand of jeans or shoes your kids wear.
It's at the heart of socialization itself, which is an important part of growing up healthy.
The analogies with drugs and gambling are also misplaced, because these things are illegal and/or generally frowned upon by parents, the legal system, and society as a whole. In other words, the exact opposite of what's happening here.
And, those things are illegal/frowned-upon for reasons you respect enough to use them as examples. That fact should actually help you see the point?
By desert_rue 2024-04-1010:06 I’d recommend listening to the Hard Fork podcast to answer some of these questions. In particular the March 22nd and 29th episodes.
By searchableguy 2024-04-109:392 reply Because people will not invite you if you are not in the group chat. Unfortunately, people have forgotten how to call and are afraid of receiving calls.
This is more prominent among people who grew up with social media everywhere compared to ones who did not.
By JoshTriplett 2024-04-109:562 reply > Unfortunately, people have forgotten how to call and are afraid of receiving calls.
That's unnecessarily reductionist. Calling is less convenient and takes longer.
By doublerabbit 2024-04-1011:491 reply > That's unnecessarily reductionist. Calling is less convenient and takes longer.
No, I don't think so. The time for me to ring you, tell you this in voice would be far quicker than typing.
Calling conveys so much more than text ever can.
A call can take seconds, "hey mate, want to go to the cinema tomorrow? Ill text you the time" "yeah cool, see ya".
Voice expresses emotion, you can pick up the mood of your buddy if they're up, down, need cheering up.
Its real, you hear a voice and you know it's your mate. Text, you assume. Text leaves you on edge waiting for confirmation.
The only inconvenience is that you could be interrupting something and even if so, then send a text.
By JoshTriplett 2024-04-1012:073 reply > The time for me to ring you, tell you this in voice would be far quicker than typing.
The post you I was responding to was talking about "group chat". How long would it take for you to call 6 people? How long would it take for you to text 6 people?
I'm all for calls from one person to another person, if you know that person doesn't mind voice calls. Text and group chats are great for coordination of groups.
By searchableguy 2024-04-1013:29 Apologies. I meant when you are the only person who is not in the group chat or messaging platform, then people won't call you to invite. It is much higher friction.
By doublerabbit 2024-04-1012:46 Then apologies, I didn't clock on to that the discussion was regarding to group chats.
By illegalsmile 2024-04-1016:51 I don't like calling because it's not like it used to be. Everything is so damned asynchronous these days even voice calls where it's supposed to be synchronous. When conversations were over copper/analog, yes I was younger, I enjoyed talking on the phone much more. Back then it felt like whether it was one person or three on the line there was actual presence and you could have two people talking on top of each other no problem.
Now, every conversation, whether it's by phone or zoom, feels like a struggle of who's going to take up the air time, trying not to talk over one another, dealing with delay, etc... It doesn't feel natural at all and there's little to no presence. Having smart phones makes it so much easier to tune out on a call and scroll reddit, check headlines or play a game. I agree that it's less convenient and takes too long for most things. I'd rather check in once a day with someone via text than have one longer phone conversation once a week.
If a friend is going to leave you out of an event purely because you do not use their preferred BigTech-facilitated chat tool, then I have some bad news for you: that person might not actually be your friend. Friends don’t treat each other that way.
By desert_rue 2024-04-1010:09 Something that causes some friction might absolutely lead to people treating others this way. Like if coworkers stop by your desk to invite you to lunch but you are in a meeting so they go without you. Should they have left a message? Track you down in the meeting? Waste their lunch time waiting for you? Friction matters in a social context.
By nevom 2024-04-1011:33 For adults, sure. We're talking about children/teenagers, they're all insecure and self-conscious and don't want to hang around with the weird kid because they then become a weird kid by proxy. And the smallest unusualness makes you weird.
I’m sorry for sounding so harsh, but have you been through public or private school where you’re some sort of a group of at least 50+ children? Sense of belonging is so natural, especially at that age, that you can’t tell a kid that it doesn’t matter.
If your child just tells you “yeah I don’t care about others’ opinions”, then I’ll have a hard time to believe as well. As we age, and grow up, sure those things matter less. But come on, we’ve all been children, we’ve all wanted to be a part of some group. Some of us got bullied, some of us got ostracized, but we always wanted to belong.
By watwut 2024-04-1012:55 > If your child just tells you “yeah I don’t care about others’ opinions”,
This usually means "my close friends and peers have same opinions as I do and nobody else matter to us".
By thinkingemote 2024-04-107:412 reply Do you live or work with others? Do you have a family or children? Do you interact in meaningful ways with people online? I ask seriously (but no need to reply, this is to aid understanding) as many here on HN do not have all of these so the range of examples may be narrowed for some people.
I would however imagine you have some relationships of some kind that you care about. Can you imagine your relationships changing if these others you cared about changed their behaviours? Then extend this imaginary possibility to the relationships of these others. It's a network we are in we are not operating entirely alone.
Care of the other is wanting what is good for the other.
Sometimes this care is not forcing the other to change, sometimes it's encouraging them to change to benefit them as it benefited you.
By XorNot 2024-04-108:18 How is this not the OP's exact point? If you're not forcing people to change - by banning things with the violence of government - then you're simply making an argument to people and hoping they listen, just as we ever have to.
By stareatgoats 2024-04-107:491 reply > What do I care what others do?
While a perfectly fine rule of thumb in general, I think you might find the sticking to "I don't care what other people do" as an overriding principle doesn't hold water in a substantial number of edge cases. One such case is where someone is willfully influencing others to act against their best interests, or against the best interest of society as a whole. That's when one needs to make a judgement call on a case by case basis. Is this such a case? Not sure. I just wanted to point out that "I don't care what other people do" can't be your guiding light, always.
I might have expressed myself poorly.
I "don't care" what others do in the strict sense that I don't let it influence me.
But I can tell you that me quitting socials did impact relatives and friends to quit those too, and thus I absolutely do not relate with his statement:
> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not
I'm glad that you were able to convince all your meaningful friends and family to change their social media / internet behavior according to your values - but please don't assume that it's a viable option for everyone, with no downsides.
By ctoth 2024-04-1019:49 But have you tried?
> What do I care what others do?
I’ve done the same, but it’s not without cost:
- Two hobbies I’m involved with have large local communities on Facebook. I’m not in the loop, and sometimes miss out on events and catchups.
- I’m not on Twitter, and there’s a massive amount of chat about my field (realtime collaborative editing & local first software) that takes place there. I miss out on what’s going on, and I’m reliant on other people to promote my work for me.
Im happier. But it’s you really are cut off from a lot of society - especially in the tech world - if you aren’t on social media.
You can join those communities and discussions with "work" accounts. Instead of creating a personal twitter or meta account, you could create one that is only used to join those specific groups and discussion.
By pjerem 2024-04-108:35 Yes you can. But then, you have an account. Most people that dont have an account on social medias just don’t want to accept the TOS.
Also worth noting that it sounds like meta thinks like they already have all earth population in their products because new accounts are really easily banned for no reason. Any temporary account I made to access some information have been blocked minutes or hours after creation.
By notachatbot1234 2024-04-1011:19 Those sites are designed to exploit you psychologically in various ways (ads, order of display, design, gamified interaction etcetera). The purpose of your account does not matter if you cannot access and consume the information in a reasonable and healthy way.
By randomdata 2024-04-1010:061 reply Twitter is also where the discussion about my field takes place. What's not to like? I find Twitter's recommendation algorithm does a great job of honing the content down to just the relevant information I need and then I can go back to carrying on with life.
Before Twitter, you had to go to the coffee shop and listen to people ramble on with their inane political rants and conspiracy theories just to get at the occasional tidbit of useful field-related information. That was depressing.
> What's not to like?
I left Twitter after it started showing me posts from people I don’t follow that I found annoying and in one case just straight up racist. I replied and he was as surprise as I was. He asked “why are you in my replies?”. I didn’t know why I was there either. I deleted the app and haven’t been back.
By randomdata 2024-04-1013:371 reply The algorithm has definitely improved – or at least has been able to collect more information to provide better results. It wasn't always so well honed, granted.
Of course, we know enough about these algorithms to know that they are based on your action, not what you claim. Pretending that you find something annoying, but then contradictorily dedicating your attention to it is going to tell the algorithm to give you more of the same. If you don't want to learn the truth about yourself, I can see why you'd want to steer clear.
> Pretending that you find something annoying, but then contradictorily dedicating your attention to it is going to tell the algorithm to give you more of the same. If you don't want to learn the truth about yourself
Wow, um - I don’t know how to say this politely. I know the truth about myself. I know I’m drawn towards stupid stuff like that. That xkcd “I can’t come to bed yet honey, someone is wrong on the internet!” - that’s talking about me.
It’s like an addiction. Just because I’m addicted to stupid drama online doesn’t mean I want an algorithm to feed it to me. I want technology to support the better angels of my nature. Not inflame my worst parts.
The problem with algorithmic news feeds is they’re too compelling for me. I don’t want to live in a constant state of battle, where I need to exert self control to make my attention my own. I want technology to support my life choices. Not to constantly tempt me to doom scroll. Just because I do it, doesn’t mean I enjoy it or that I choose it.
It’s much easier for someone who’s a problem drinker to just not have alcohol around the house. Me? I just can’t use algorithmic news feeds in a healthy way. I think a large portion of society has the same problem, and just doesn’t know how to quit. If it were up to me, I’d ban algorithmic news feeds entirely. They’re bad for us.
By randomdata 2024-04-113:131 reply > I don’t know how to say this politely.
Then say it inpolitely? Software doesn't care if you are polite or not.
> Just because I’m addicted to stupid drama online doesn’t mean I want an algorithm to feed it to me.
Understandable, but that which annoys you will not produce addict behaviour. You are drawn to the stupid drama because it does the opposite of annoy you.
> You are drawn to the stupid drama because it does the opposite of annoy you.
Emotions aren't an either/or sort of thing. You can love and hate someone at the same time. I love and hate exercising, and junk food. Just like I love and hate algorithmic news feeds. I find social media both annoying and compelling, all at the same time.
The fact I'm compelled to doom scroll doesn't make it good for me, or mean I want twitter in my life. Twitter and FB's news feeds annoy me. I know they're bad for me. But that doesn't magically stop them from also being psychologically compelling. Maybe yours do, but my neurons don't cancel out like that.
> Software doesn't care if you are polite or not.
But we aren't software.
By randomdata 2024-04-113:45 > You can love and hate someone at the same time.
Sure, but if they annoy you, truly, that's it.
> But we aren't software.
You might not be. But there is no one else. There is only the software you are talking to. What, exactly, do you think the impolite words floating around in your head are going to do to you if you write them down? They aren't going to do anything to the software, that is for certain.
By JodieBenitez 2024-04-108:373 reply > What do I care what others do?
example from real life:
My local musicians community decided to use only FB to communicate their gigs dates. I refuse to use FB. I no longer know when or where is the gig. I don't see my fellows anymore.
That is very similar to why I use FB. It is what people use.
I even admin and moderate FB groups.
In my case it is home education in the UK. It is what everyone else uses, so its where you can discuss things or ask questions. I just asked about parking at the exam centre where my daughter is doing her GCSEs (UK exams typically taken at 16). It is where I found a GCSE classical civilisation tutor for her. It is where I can use my experience to help others. It is where I can find out about local events and activities.It is where people find resources and courses and can discuss them with others. It is where discussion of approaches and how to do things happens.
not using FB would mean giving up all that.
By JodieBenitez 2024-04-1012:04 Bite the bullet, I guess.
How hard is it to discuss this topic with other people that have access to fb when you meet them around the city ? Honest question. Sure, it require more involvement than opening the Facebook tap and getting everything instantly, but at the end of the day, isn't your goal to getting involved in the community ? This will require some energy.
By boppo1 2024-04-1011:44 You are out of touch. Scenes and events really are that reliant on facebook. "Hey man, when/where's the next show?" "We dunno yet, but we'll post an event about it for sure."
There are some small, insular scenes where everybody knows everybody and word gets around, but those are getting fewer every day.
By JodieBenitez 2024-04-109:37 See above
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-109:151 reply Maybe text or call a couple friends in the community once a week?
By JodieBenitez 2024-04-109:242 reply Been there, done that... "it's all on the page, just check it mate". And suddenly you're that annoying weirdo that refuses to do things like everybody else.
Maybe try explaining why you don’t use Facebook, and why it is not an appropriate, inclusive way to organize the group. Or, maybe Facebook has some kind of E-mail gateway that can notify people who are not on it (I have no idea, I’m not on Facebook either). You’re just one person, but if the group sees more people not participating because of their bizarre insistence on use of social media, maybe they can eventually be convinced to change.
This seems so weird to me. I help organize some local groups centered around hobbies and games, and none of them use Facebook because we know not everyone will be there, and we don’t want to exclude people. Sorry, but that musician group seems pretty poorly run.
To those people you are the weirdo refusing to use the convenient platform that everyone else is on. This stuff just does not enter their brains because it has become utterly normalised. To them it's not bizarre to insist on using social media, it's bizarre to insist on not using it.
By boppo1 2024-04-1011:50 This is accurate. disdain for social media is such a norm here that people don't realize it's the opposite almost everywhere else.
By JodieBenitez 2024-04-1011:35 Again: been there, done that. Good for you (and others, even if they don't know) that it worked, but in my case it didn't. Part of the reason is that FB is also the place where events get promoted. The integration is so tight that any other solution is an inconvenience to the normies, ie. the 99%. You have your events, your communication tools and your audience, all in one place, it's effective. FB is eating the world really... convenience for the masses.
Luckily, I have other hobbies that are less prone to this, mostly because they don't involve much event promotion if any at all and don't need any audience to exist. Example: my local shooting range uses a mailing list for communication and you can always hang with fellows at the club-house.
I'm a meetup organizer and sometimes get this but the other way. People insist that our current platform is not appropriate or inclusive because it requires an email signup, or the group chat is on a Meta-owned platform, or whatever. Who are you to say that your opinion on what's inclusive or not is correct? Choose something other than Facebook and you'll get others saying you're not inclusive because you're not there.
No one has "bizarre insistence" on use of social media, they're just there and it's the easiest option for all parties. People like you and me are the ones who are perceived as the ones bizarrely insistent on not being on social media. This doesn't make it wrong, and it's luckily slowly becoming more and more accepted, but it is important to keep in mind.
You are right that ideally groups like these should cater to all audiences but that's a lot of effort, and many organizers do it on a voluntary basis, not as a job. In my case, I know that 98% of people are included in the media that I use for my audience, and catering to the last 2% would double my workload. Not happening.
Since as far as I know, an E-mail address is required in order to sign up for Facebook and other social media, E-mail users must be a strict superset of Facebook users. It is clearly more inclusive of people.
As far as workload goes, we have not found anything lighter weight and less maintenance than an E-mail list.
By rchaud 2024-04-1017:21 You need an email and a phone number, so that makes it a no go for a lot of people.
By JodieBenitez 2024-04-1012:00 You (and I) are right. Now for others to realize... it can be a long road.
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-1010:31 Ugh, that's what I was afraid of. Was a time folks were happy to get a call from a friend regardless of topic. No going back I guess.
My life is also better, overall. However, I do miss out on important life updates from my friends because I'm not on Instagram. I could be a hardliner and say "well they don't care about me enough to share 1-on-1, so they're not real friends", but that's... stupid. I feel sad for missing out on opportunities to take part in their lives and life updates that way, and I know for a fact that there are rich connections/conversations that would happen if I were able to use these in a healthy way.
By randomdata 2024-04-1010:37 What do you talk about with your friends if the important life events don't come up?
Perhaps I just have boring friends that we resort to sometimes talking about what is going on in our lives. I also wouldn't feel like less of a friend if they didn't tell me something, but important life events in their lives are usually important to them, which means that they ultimately end up talking about them in some way or another.
By coldtea 2024-04-109:44 If you don't live in a society but in some remote wilderness and hunt for your food, then you don't need to care what others do.
If you do live in a society, you do need to care, as "what others do" affects society in general, including you in the end. Affects how they behave, how they vote, what causes they support, their mental health, and tons of other things, all of which end up also affecting those who don't use those apps.
By EMIRELADERO 2024-04-107:411 reply The commenter is arguing from a broad "what's good for society" sense, not on strict individuality. While I disagree with the whole idea of legislating access to social media/internet services in any way (RIP anonymity), I do think there can be valid places and times for regulation that seeks to change society itself, not just individuals.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-107:573 reply >RIP anonymity
Maybe anonymity has had a good run and is actually at the root of the issue in many contexts. After all, people don't (generally) walk around IRL wearing ski masks so they can say crazy shit or troll people without consequence. And we also get the courtesy of knowing who the people we're talking to actually are.
And if you say, "yeah but doxxing and death threats" or "my employer might fire me", etc then maybe these are the actual problems that need to be addressed.
And, yes, I realize that's coming from someone who's IRL neither Uncle Buck or Buc Nasty, as his handle might imply. But, obviously that's where we currently are, which is the point.
Anonymity is not to blame here, but rather proximity. People with real real identities tied to their online avatars are just as bad if not worse than anyone else on the internet. ie, they're not anonymous. Internet hostility is more analogous to road rage.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-1012:321 reply >People with real real identities tied to their online avatars are just as bad if not worse than anyone else on the internet.
So-called "edge lords" and people for whom provocativeness is their brand, perhaps.
But, I don't think that's true for the average person at all. I think we all know this intuitively / empirically, but there have also been studies that bear it out. [0]
>Internet hostility is more analogous to road rage.
No. Road rage is a function of losing one's temper and acting outside of one's self in the moment. Distinctly different from purposely shedding one's identity to engage socially.
Besides that, we're not just talking about hostility, but an overall disposition when one is acting without the social constraints of identity and accountability.
[0]https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-th...
A big fear I have is that the folks who want to do away with anonymity finally win. Most of the negative effects and hostility of social media (youtube, twitter, facebook, etc.) come from named and publicly-identifiable individuals.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-119:31 >that the folks who want to do away with anonymity finally win
I wasn't aware there was a sizable effort to this effect, and I'm not even sure that I'm proposing it. More just observing the impact of anonymity on society/civility and considering aloud that perhaps the price of anonymity is not worth its perceived benefits.
>Most of the negative effects and hostility of social media (youtube, twitter, facebook, etc.) come from named and publicly-identifiable individuals.
Citation? Because this seems counter to the accepted understanding, multiple studies (see my previous comment) and, anecdotally, my own observations.
But, even allowing that wouldn't preclude that a significant amount of toxicity is also coming from anonymous usage.
By LAC-Tech 2024-04-109:23 For people who live in oppressive regimes where certain political speech is illegal, like China or the UK, anonymity is a powerful tool. I would not want to take that away from them.
IRL nobody is running facial recognition tech and uniquely identifying you. And, despite what your teachers told you, no one is keeping a permanent record of the minutia of your life. So I know my neighbor is "George", but I don't know anything about his political opinions, where he shops, how he treats waiters, or what kind of porn he watches. Thus he's not anonymous, but his daily activities are generally private and ephemeral.
The internet flips this on its head because pseudonymous handles can be linked to reams of online activity that's retained effectively forever but can't be connected to a specific person. This is why "doxxing" is such a big deal online.
If online activity was like IRL activity and ephemeral, I might agree with you. But the internet never forgets.
Edit: By the way, this is not universally defined:
> say crazy shit
"Crazy shit" is very culturally and contextually dependent. If I condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs, that's fine in North America but considered "crazy shit" and can land you in jail in China. That's an extreme example, but there are plenty of other more banal differences in culture and what's acceptable globally.
By Y_Y 2024-04-109:47 > IRL nobody is running facial recognition tech and uniquely identifying you.
Maybe this is true in some places. In big cities in Europe and the Americas this is definitely the case. It's done by law enforcement, commercial retail, and private security. It's more or less trivial nowadays to buy a cheap IP camera and collect an database of faces across your camera network.
My guess is that there's more of this going on, but I'm only listing stuff I have personal knowledge of.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-1012:14 First, it's useful to separate things like watching porn and other explicitly private activity from actual speech and interaction, which are deliberate forms of engagement.
The anonymity we're talking about here is WRT the latter.
With that in mind, my point is that it's a social problem that people have to worry about death threats for expressing political opinions. It's not solved by people becoming anonymous at scale to offer up their opinions. In fact, this adds to the problem, in that anonymity tends to lead to increasingly offensive forms of expression (absent the social governor and accountability that are present IRL). Anonymity can change the motivation for engaging and remove constraints that have social utility.
It also makes it easy for bad actors to do their work.
Put simply, if people don't feel comfortable offering an opinion in person, then maybe it's not a good thing to give them an opportunity to offer it anonymously at-scale.
>Crazy shit is very culturally and contextually dependent
No. I'm speaking WRT the context of our discussion. That is, saying things anonymously online that one would not say in-person for understood social (or legal) reasons. e.g. threatening people, being overtly snarky, trolling, etc.
By abc123abc123 2024-04-109:21 I agree. Same here. The only social media I have is mastodon and usenet. Yes, I live and work with others and email and phone is sufficient. If people try to get me to use slck I refuse. If I cannot refuse, I deploy my slck2email bridge and reply once every 24 hours and usually colleagues stop chatting with me when they realize they won't get an answer until 24 hours, or they drop by my desk, email or call me on the phone if it is urgent.
I think a lot of the complaints from people who "cannot stop" is just laziness. They need the government to construct an excuse so they won't have to man up and take control of their own lives.
That is also sad, because it means those people will never grow up but will be constant children in the eyes of the state.
Then I would say there are the 0.01% who do have psychological problems and they need to see a doctor.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-107:411 reply >What do I care what others do
Because we live in a society?
Would you care if everyone around you was smoking crack, sociopathic or seriously mentally ill?
By kys_now 2024-04-109:49 [dead]
By doktrin 2024-04-1011:14 > What do I care what others do?
This is libertarian virtue signalling that simply does not stand up to reality.
By jascination 2024-04-108:382 reply > It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions
You could say the same thing about the Bible, or Harry Potter, or any number of things too
The Bible, I absolutely would, the negative impact of dogmatic Christianity has been pretty bad on society IMO. Harry Potter, not so much, but still some yes. I still have to argue with some of my friends that the books have some dubious morals that I wouldn't be comfortable ingraining in my children (if I had any).
The scale, extent and addictiveness of these two things are nothing compared to algorithmic social media though.
By abnercoimbre 2024-04-108:54 Tangent: Children's literacy (and that of some adults for that matter) skyrocketed under the HP phenomenon, in profound ways that activists/scholars are typically grateful for. I wish I could find the studies done, sorry that I don't have them on hand.
I guess I'm saying that it was worth it, dubious morals aside.
By zer0zzz 2024-04-108:54 That’s an interesting thought. I wonder how detrimental Christianity’s impact on society has been compared to social media? It kind of makes the argument pointless when you frame it that way.
By yard2010 2024-04-109:33 And you would say it as well about party/designer drugs
By thegrim000 2024-04-106:5110 reply It's funny .. earlier today there was a front page HN post about the federal government mandating safer circular saws. It seemed like the majority of users in the thread were in favor of the federal government mandating technology changes to prevent harm from being done to the population.
Now for this issue, there's harm being done to children, and the majority of users in the thread seem to be against government intervention; you say: "well if you don't like it, if you think it's negative, just don't use it, don't let your kids use it".
Kind of a random parallel to draw between the two stories, but it's funny the same logic doesn't seem to apply in both cases. Why wasn't for circular saws the response "if you think they're dangerous, don't use them" or "just keep your kids away from them"?
Because people don't think the government should always prioritize protection over freedom, nor do people think the government should always prioritize freedom over protection.
It's like asking, if people are okay with the government restricting the sale of bombs to private citizens, why aren't they okay with restricting steak knives? They're also dangerous weapons.
People judge the cost and benefit of each situation.
By zelphirkalt 2024-04-1013:042 reply Playing the devils advocate: Isn't social media much more a "bomb" than circular saws?
This is a silly comparison. The table saw was not designed to be addictive, turn its users into a highly lucrative commodity, or push algorithmically driven agendas. Social media was. The dangers being compared here are very different.
By moffkalast 2024-04-109:35 You mean to say, with a saw the intent is for it to be a useful tool and the danger is an unintended side effect, while for social media the danger is the intent and it being a useful tool is an unintended side effect.
By kristiandupont 2024-04-108:50 That seems to reinforce GP's argument, though?
By raxxorraxor 2024-04-107:362 reply The reason I am against government intervention is the fact that governments seem to not be competent enough to solve problems like this and they would use content controls for their own purposes. It is vastly different and more complex than regulating saws. The comparison falls short by a huge margin and a false conclusion that any federal legislation would be desirable just because it is the case for saws.
Some suggest it would be the "hate" on the net that is causing the issues and we see legislation that penalizes some content already, but I heavily doubt it to be the source of any problem.
Might be something similar, perhaps the strong indignations some statements on the net seem to get to some people, although these can be as politely stated as any frivolous statement can be. And the resulting expectations on opinions you are allowed to harbor.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-107:481 reply Irrespective of where people fall on this particular issue, I find it odd how the people who are so distrustful of government would allow things that are overtly dangerous, as long as it prevents government from...governing.
It's like we have this generation of people who believe government overreach is a) inevitably the outcome in every scenario; b) present in every situation; c) always the worst possible thing that could happen. As in, literally worse than mass sickness and death.
Not only that, but they assume that corporations, free of government regulation, will simply act in everyone’s best interest, with responsibility and accountability.
At least in theory, my government representatives are accountable to me. To whom is Facebook accountable?
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-1012:481 reply Exactly. People who want to disempower democratic government are just disempowering themselves. But, they seem to think the power held by the government would simply evaporate.
They don't realize it's really a question of who will rule over them, and whether there's any chance it will be themselves.
Sure, our democracy has been crippled, but the solution is to fix it, not dismantle it.
And ironically the people who are crippling it (Citizens United, lobbying, regulatory capture, etc) are the same who would rule over us if it were completely abolished. That is, essentially, their project.
By pas 2024-04-120:10 They feel that the government is a singular hivemind whereas FB/TikTok/Instagram/Reddit/etc offers the illusion of choice. (And how wonderful it is to feel some control! You can pick the content you want, who to follow, vote on content, comment, post! The friendly algorithm is just recommending things, it's helping!)
The government is never a passive actor. So non-intervention is also active policy. You can only choose what the policy is. The active policy for the last 15 years has been to consolidate a social media oligopoly with very few restrictions. Users are being tracked, advertisement laws are being skirted and are less restrictive than in other mediums, data is being sold, dark patterns are used to keep people from making their own choices. The algorithms are actively promoting bad content because the social media companies are not held liable for their part in promoting false content.
By raxxorraxor 2024-04-1011:26 Depending on where you live it is not true that there are no restrictions on false advertising and accountability for commercial content.
That said, a government can be passive and not regulate a field and non-intervention stays non-intervention, be it conscious or not. But that is besides the point. A government that tries to regulate all aspects of life is usually connected to totalitarianism, an that isn't only a libertarian position.
It was about table saws, not circular saws. There’s a big difference between the two. Table saw accidents often result in losing fingers and it’s not that difficult to mess up while using one.
There’s a well known, proven, easy solution to table saw accidents called SawStop. It’s basically as obvious to use as a seat belt is if you want to be safe. The only problem is those table saws are very expensive.
Social media doesn’t have an existing and obvious solution (besides not using it).
Isn't SawStop patent encumbered? AFAIK the three point seat belt design's patent was made open by Volvo at the time, so the patent didn't hold back adoption.
Yes - in fact the whole company was started by a patent attorney.
SawStop says they'll release one patent (which is about to expire anyway) but they've got a huge portfolio of other ones, and companies like Grizzly say that SawStop is unwilling to engage with them in good faith on licensing their technology.
Bosch released a saw with similar tech, except unlike SawStop it didn't use overpriced consumables every time it triggered. SawStop sued the product off of the market.
The company founder also serves as an expert witness when people shove their hands into moving saw blades, then sue the saw makers - testifying that the makers should be held liable because they haven't licensed his invention.
Of course, I'm sure for SawStop getting all their competitors banned will be a highly profitable decision; it's no surprise they're lobbying for it.
By OvidNaso 2024-04-1014:38 Sawstop did sue Bosch, but then changed their mind and gave them a free license immediately after the case was won. It was boschs decision not to release their product in the US for whatever reason.
By pcl 2024-04-1010:22 The CEO committed to releasing the one remaining patent to the public domain earlier this year.
By margalabargala 2024-04-1010:23 SawStop has publicly pledged to dedicate their patents to the public if this becomes mandated.
I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media. You can absolutely slip and lose one or several fingers or your entire hand using a table saw.
The more pertinent comparison would be alcohol IMO: none of the people who want "something" done about social media seem to have a problem with the widespread, massive use of alcohol within society and the incredible amounts of continuous and ongoing damage it does.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-1012:161 reply >I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media
I think the point is exactly that you can.
No you can't. You can, through usage over a long period of time, and by ignoring a lot of good advice, create problems for yourself just like anything else.
If a table saw could only remove your hand after years of dedicated usage, then sawstop wouldn't be the obviously good idea it is.
Hence why the comparison to alcohol is much more apt, and yet, mysteriously - absent in the discussion.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-119:211 reply These read like distinctions without differences.
Damage from social media use is gradual and insidious. Additionally, it's designed to be addictive, slowly pulling users in. There is no threshold that announces itself when users are addicted or have begun to "ignore a lot of good advice".
There's also no absence of discussion around the dangers of alcohol or drugs. And, there are actual laws regulating or outright banning their use.
But, even if it was absent from the discussion, that would not absolve social media. Is every world issue rendered illegitimate if we don't also mention the dangers of alcohol with equal fervor? It seems a random, meaningless requirement.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
By XorNot 2024-04-1110:35 I think every issue is due consideration in the context of "do I personally not care about the thing I want to regulate about everyone else?"
Alcohol is a useful yardstick, because it was banned (to considerable disaster), almost everyone likes it, the misusers tend to not realise it till considerably later, and we've got studies which look dire on the cost to society of it in fiscal terms.
If what you're calling for would seem ridiculous if it were applied to alcohol, then maybe it's just going be ineffective or you just don't have any "skin in the game" so to speak: after all, both serve a considerably important social cohesion function as well.
Which to loop it back around is why trying to compare social media regulation to something like mandating sawstop is especially disingenuous.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-108:221 reply So, if there's not an easy solution, we should de-emphasize the problem?
That’s not what I meant. It’s hard to compare these two problems because one is effectively solved (table saw) and one is not (social media).
By pas 2024-04-120:24 People need mental healthcare too. Done. Solved. Treat it like any addiction.
Of course the trick is that social media access doesn't require folks to pay an upfront cost, so it's harder to slap the cost of this additional service on the transaction. But of course as financial regulation makes banks do KYC and file SARs (suspicious activity report) social media regulations could do something similar. (Hurray more surveillance saves the day!)
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-119:55 I see. Just seems a bit circular, as the original question implies creating solutions.
Also, seems like an odd gating criteria for whether or not people support the idea of regulating social media (i.e. per the specific thrust of the original question).
By dfxm12 2024-04-1014:21 Regulating a physical product being sold within the country, like a circular saw, is obviously materially different from enforcing age restrictions or other regulations to a website probably owned by a multinational company.
Personally, I don't have much of an opinion around circular saws, but I don't want my government to build a framework where they can choose to hide certain parts of the Internet. I also think the issue isn't social media, per se, but algorithms that promote negative content, personal data harvesting, etc. Banning tiktok et al isn't going to solve those problems. They'll still exist because other types of sites are implementing them.
By s3p 2024-04-1219:31 Well, circular saws can maim and rip off human body parts within a fraction of a second, and children can't use them ?
By ImPleadThe5th 2024-04-106:593 reply While both paternalism. Requiring safety features on a saw does not restrict free speech. It's more akin to seatbelt laws. It's also made to protect everyone who uses a table saw and not just children.
Imo, I do think social media needs to be reeled in by policy. But I can see why it makes people uncomfortable and why there is a difference with the saw.
By Capricorn2481 2024-04-107:103 reply How does not having social media restrict free speech? Do you think free speech didn't exist before social media?
Arguably, the presence of social media homogenizes the speech we're allowed to have.
By sambazi 2024-04-108:03 good point.
a lot of ppl got reeled into the narrative that social media can democratize (free) publication of conversations and ideas, thou it is dominated by monetary incentives that mandate propaganda/advertising and in turn moderation and censorship.
How does banning an individual from printing books restrict free speech? Do you think free speech didn't exist before the printing press?
By Capricorn2481 2024-04-108:28 Not really the same, because the article is not calling for banning any source of social media. How would you even classify social media? We are taking about ad infested hellholes with no incentives other than maximizing revenue, regardless of the content pushed.
The proper analogy would be banning books with certain content, which we already do. You can't distribute a book calling for a specific person to be killed or doxxing them. Doing this on social media in Ethiopia is encouraged, as it drives engagement and has lead to actual deaths of people I know. They have a policy not to moderate this content despite having the resources. Just like they have a policy to make the apps as addictive as possible.
More importantly, Facebook is not a "printed book", it is the printing press. It owns the internet. It's not remotely comparable. And that's why it is a threat to free speech
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-109:201 reply How is access to a wholly privately owned walled garden in any way relate to printing books? Private networks are by definition not public domain and thus are totally irrelevant to any discussion of free speech.
I would agree if it weren't for the complete transition to privately owned communication platforms. The answer to your question is actually quite simple: because communication via privately owned walled gardens is humanity's primary means of mass communication, just as it used to be printed media.
It would be as if printing presses were so complicated and expensive that the barrier to entry was so high as to price out everyone but a few select publishers. I wouldn't try to over-extend that metaphor though.
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-1010:25 That folks have opted to interact (or been manipulated into it if we're really honest) with modes of communication that are outside of 1st amendment protections doesn't change either the spirit or the letter of the law. That would be like saying that if folks suddenly decided to communicate over transcontinental distances via morse code utilizing geophones and large explosions as the transmission mechanism so now the first amendment demands semtex should be broadly accessible to the public.
By fabatka 2024-04-108:25 I guess if it's only specific individuals/groups that can't print books, it's restricting free speech, if nobody can, it's not.
It restricts free speech in the most direct, literal sense - by... restricting your ability to freely speak.
The historical existence is simply irrelevant. Just like existence of pre-TV/newspaper speech is not a relevant factor in determining whether banning all TV/newspapers in 1950 restricts free speech
By sammorrowdrums 2024-04-107:422 reply Making publication easy on social media has certainly had an impact on public speech, but private platforms do not offer free speech by design.
Naomi Klein went into this in No Logo with shopping malls replacing public spaces where you also don’t have a right to free speech and can be evicted arbitrarily at the owners discretion.
You’ll find virtually all of social media platforms have moderation, usage policies and user banning practices that go well beyond allowing the fully legally protected free speech you are afforded in a public space (in many countries).
By cnity 2024-04-108:12 If all spaces that attract the majority of people are private and have homogenous terms of use, then free speech ends in all ways except on this technicality.
Edit: removed unnecessarily inflammatory phrasing.
By eviks 2024-04-1016:42 It (practically) doesn't matter what the moderation policies are, a legal ban on social networks will still be a restriction on free speech
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-109:23 This is a telling argument. Newspapers and television broadcasts, while geared towards broad public consumption, were never wholly democratized platforms and that didn't run afoul of the first amendment. It stands to reason that management of content on social media platforms or outright banning the same wouldn't either.
By kristiandupont 2024-04-1011:061 reply The restriction that this freedom is supposed to save you from is that of prosecution. Nobody is promising everyone a megaphone.
By eviks 2024-04-1016:45 And this whole conversation is about laws mandating something and the resulting prosecution with comparisons to safety standards in saws, not your made up megaphone
By RandomLensman 2024-04-107:35 What access to tools or avenues for speech should fall under the first amendment then?
By drawkward 2024-04-1013:25 Which of Haidt's 4 suggestions restricts free speech? Is free speech (for adolescents) more important than the well-being of those same adolescents? Has American jurisprudence aligned on the notion that adolescents have an inviolable right to free speech?
I wonder how many would be for seatbelt laws if the addition of seatbelts say doubled the price of car.
By red_admiral 2024-04-108:53 I think this confuses cause and effect.
Seatbelts are brought up so often precisely because they are an intervention with a huge benefit-to-cost ratio. Seatbelt laws were made long after the fact - seat belts for cars started to appear in the 1950s, with the common three-point variant in 1955; the first seatbelt law appeared in 1970 (in Australia). The US started introducing seatbelt laws for cars in the 1980s (though as far as I know, some organizations/insurers required them earlier for employees driving for business).
By throwaway2037 2024-04-107:591 reply
Here is the problem: They didn't. So what is your point?> if the addition of seatbelts say doubled the price of car
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-109:17 Yeah funny as a one-legged rabbit hopping in neat little circles. If I were still on social media I wouldn't want to take a long look at the quality of my interactions or the costs associated with them either.
By uconnectlol 2024-04-1014:42 hes actually trying to say, "that's stupid". HN and reddit would be so much easier if negative posting were allowed.
your argument is dumb too, it doesn't even deserve acknowledgment, but we are little babies here and have to politely explain to everyone why they're wrong, to the point that the insane people just always win and get their dumb ideas into law because nobody cares anymore and are tired of explaining common sense over and over. having safety controls on hardware is not anything remotely equivalent to the hypothetical problem the article pitches. there is not any world where regulating social media makes sense, and i say this as someone who has never used social media in my life. the entire issue at hand here is like a bear shitting in the woods and someone happens to step on it once in a thousand years, almost none of these so called people who get addicted to social media would have any better off chance at life without it, they would just get addicted to one of the millions of other things one can get addicted to. the remaining one in a million people who actually had their life ruined by social media is like the bear shitting in the woods, its just life.
Because it is the parents responsibility to set boundaries for their children. It can be complicated at times, granted. But that doesn't make it less of their job. Heck, I got my first CD player with 14. Yes, I felt left out at school, but... guess what, I didn't die. Children need to learn that there are rules, and someone else dictates them. Throwing tantrums is a typical reaction that needs to be weeded out as a part of growing up.
Besides, the "somebody has to think about the children" meme is slowly but surely getting old and tiresome. Not somebody... Their PARENTS. If you dont feel like setting boundaries for your children, please, with sugar on top, dont have any.
By RandomLensman 2024-04-107:371 reply You can say it should be on the parents here and reason why, but for a lot of things it is not just on the parents (children are not allowed to vote, drive a car, buy guns, go to bar and drink alcohol, gamble, ... - it is a long list).
Such bans are not clear and are contentious, and often leave room for parental discretion.
In most countries whether children drink alcohol at home is up to their parents. In some countries an adult can buy teenagers a drink (in the UK they increased the required age from 14 to 16 - and I think its a bad thing).
There are people who think 16 year olds should be allowed to vote.
Kids cannot buy guns, but can use them. I did a bit of rife shooting at school.
By RandomLensman 2024-04-108:56 Is it really contentious if 10 year old children cannot on their own buy liquor or guns, for example? I would not have put that high on the list of contentious issues.
There is a difference in being granted unsupervised abilities vs supervised ones.
By hgomersall 2024-04-107:392 reply As is pointed out in the article, a huge factor is the collective action trap. An individual set of parents can do very little to deal with mental health if they are the only ones.
By arkey 2024-04-1010:26 No, they can do quite a lot, it's just VERY hard, for both the parents and the kids.
But if properly done, it can work. I was/have been the kid in this scenario, and now I'm being the parent and bracing for it.
Social pressure might be a tidal wave, you can either give up, or you can try to stand against it.
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-109:271 reply Tell us you don't have kids without telling us you don't have kids. Short of totally unplugging your children from broader society via homeschooling, joining a commune, or similar extremes, children are exposed to whatever other children's parents permit through nothing more complicated than their interactions with other kids. An example from pre-digital times would be that one kid who's dad kept a stash of nudie mags unsecured which invariably lead to hushed giggling in the back of the bus.
I was that kid (I mean one with boundaries set, with parents that acted against all of this, just to be clear) and now a father, with my second kid on her way. Still very young, so I can't claim to have much experience. But I am getting ready to stand against all of this, and I do intend to delay their exposure to social networks, mass information, etc. as much as possible.
At least until their character is formed and they have developed essential human traits like being able to read a book, being able to be patient, being able to communicate in person, and to hand-write. You know, that sort of ancient wisdom.
Edit for clarification.
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-1010:39 Brace yourself for the day your kid comes home armed will rickrolls and starts muttering "deez nuts" under their breath. It's coming way WAY sooner than you think. ;)
As we make parenting harder and harder in lots of creative and sadistic ways, more and more people are taking your advice. That’s got its own problems, it turns out.
By silverquiet 2024-04-1012:24 > The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among parents than nonparents in most advanced industrialized societies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5222535/
I never saw myself as capable of withstanding the stress of parenting and so I never even really thought about having kids. I thought I was a far outlier, but, given trends in fertility, I think I may have just been early in realizing this.
By dotinvoke 2024-04-107:45 I was one of the last people in my class to get a phone, which taught me that not having the cool new thing was not nearly as bad as I had thought.
By brylie 2024-04-107:17 Note that the reforms suggested by the author are primarily normative, not legislative:
""" More specifically, we’d try to implement these four norms as widely as possible:
1. No smartphones before high school (as a norm, not a law; parents can just give younger kids flip phones, basic phones, or phone watches).
2. No social media before 16 (as a norm, but one that would be much more effective if supported by laws such as the proposed update to COPPA, the Kids Online Safety Act, state-level age-appropriate design codes, and new social media bills like the bipartisan Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, or like the state level bills passed in Utah last year and in Florida last month).
3. Phone-free schools (use phone lockers or Yondr pouches for the whole school day, so that students can pay attention to their teachers and to each other)
4. More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. """
Everyone has the ability to exercise personal accountability for how much they gamble, smoke, eat junk food, play video games, use social media etc. However, if these consumer products become so addictive, or are designed to be so engaging and as a result people are by and large struggling to exercise personal accountability and it is causing adverse health outcomes.
Then the government should step in, either should forceful action or through promoting healthier alternatives or shining a light on its damaging effects.
I explain to our kids that it is normal for them to have difficulties with stopping playing or looking at a stream from a social media platform.
My explanation is that they are fighting against a team of PhDs optimizing everything to make them addicted.
Luckily they all do a lot of sport and have this way disconnected time everyday.
Just want to say I love how simple yet effective this explanation is. Can I ask what age range your kids are in and do they understand this perspective enough that they are aware of it and take steps to avoid it?
By Loic 2024-04-115:55 They are 11, 15 and 17.
Thanks to the screen time stats from their mobile, they can reflect on the time wasted per week. This works great for the oldest ones, but not for our youngest.
My impression is that getting older is enough for them to start reflecting as we are as adults also struggling. Screentime hygiene is for us a tooic we try to address like mouth hygiene, think about it every day, but do not make a big fuss about it.
The simply binary of government or individual choice eliminates the middle ground where almost all change happens: the collective aggregate result of cultural change within the community. We don’t have to pick one extreme to change the world!
>the middle ground where almost all change happens: the collective aggregate result of cultural change
happened, past tense. That cultural layer, to a large extent enforced by various religious traditions both in the literal and civic sense, sometimes for better or worse is pretty much gone. Nowadays it largely is a binary question of legal action on the one hand or individual choice on the other.
If you tell people they need to make change within their community 90% are going to ask you, what community? Community with a capital C where people collectively enforce binding rules, rather than occasionally go bowling isn't much of a thing.
By randomdata 2024-04-107:09 Community need not be tight for change to occur. A random stranger calling you out on your shit is just as effective. Maybe even more effective as it doesn't always hit so hard when someone you are comfortable with says it.
By NoPicklez 2024-04-1012:08 I never said it was binary, but we’re talking about governments stepping in to help. The government cannot and will have the capacity to come in and solely fix the problem.
Collective change is required and that could include the help of Government, but currently the Government isn’t doing anything, which is the premise of this post. Should they step in and if so, to what degree and how much can they really do.
Except "struggle" is entirely subjective. In fact, outside of a few things that causes physical dependence (which vary in length except they all, eventually at least, end), the concept of addiction as used by the government does not necessarily match up to how those in the particular field of research would. Government makes laws and laws prefer bright line rules. Something like "did you, without authorization, use the credit card given to you by your company to make purchases unrelated to your work", for example, have concrete, definable, and answerable elements that are universal and more or less binary, provided that the statute has a definition section that makes sense. But "so addictive" or "designed to be so engaging and as a result people are by and large struggling to exercise personal accountability and it is causing adverse health outcomes" is pretty much the antithesis of that. The government would need to define "addictive", "designed" would need to have an intent element (one designs the software, sure, but you're asking for not what the software itself does but one step further - what its impact is on the population at large). How does the government prove that intent, especially since criminal law tends to define intent as intent to act which combined with the act itself, creates the crime. What counts as "so engaging" or even "engaging"? Does it require active engagement? Plenty of platforms do not require any active engagement to partake in the conventional sense, unless reading is engagement. How many people counts as "by large" (I assume that's what you mean, feel free to correct)? How would the government show that the product and any struggle is causatively linked and not merely correlative? How does one define struggle to exercise personal accountability? Where did the duty of exercising personal accountability even come from as to establish liability and would that criminalize those who are disabled or injured as to being unable to exercise such responsibility writ large? And what counts for adverse health outcomes? All these need to be worked out in legislation and likely argued over in court. Every single element needs to be worked on as to not to be overly inclusive or exclusive. And since it's the government, the consequences for violation is without question enormous, and therefore, anything that can be misconstrued can result in the ruin of a company or persons in a variety of ways, but do you really want to have the government determine who is an edge case that doesn't count? Because the government have done that based on assumptions of potential harm and it has caused what today would be considered horrific abuses of human rights and very little positives beyond enriching those whose income derives from the enforcement of the government's scheme.
Laws are lagging indicators but they also last a long time. the CFAA was passed before the advent of the WWW and it took until 2021 to even set a basic check on the part of the Supreme Court that effective set the ground rule that to access what amounts to a computer linked to some network beyond authorization, an authorization scheme needs to exist in the first place. Before that, one can easily be charged and even sent to prison or be assessed massive fines when there's no meaningful distinction between what is authorized and unauthorized space. These were not problems in the early to mid 80s but when problems did arise, it still took a quarter century to resolve. To have one future-proof goldilocks solution is already next to impossible, but you're asking for five or six stringed together in order to have a sensible law that is well tailored enough so that it is effective without being oppressive. Not to mention that unless the behavior is generally abandoned by users, it creates black markets that are simply illegible to the state. The government then effectively loses control over what it purports to control to those with means, leaving only those without subject to the full force of the legislation.
That of course all predicates on the premise that there can be commonly agreed and sensible ways to define all those, and it is in the best interest of the government to do so and passes Constitutional muster not just on speech grounds but a host of other potential issues, like, is this a purely civil matter or a purely criminal matter or both? The federal government can treat this explicitly, or kick it off to an agency as part of its mandate, but which one? Do we need a new one? Are there checks and balances that would provide some sort of agility that keeps up with the times? What if new research comes out that shows the lack of a link, but by legislating it, you've effectively frozen the relevant conclusion in time. Enforcement creates constituencies who do not care about science or potential upsides. The DEA is on the record in the federal register that patient access to legitimate medication is secondary and effectively an afterthought to enforcement of supply, because the agency's mandate presupposes that substances need controls and are presumed harmful and that enforcement, with the teeth provided for by the DOJ, will trump any study the FDA or our academic institutions can ever show. By the time that particular moral panic was given a name, the US government had been attempting repeatedly to use prohibition as a way of imposing a specific set of social mores that at first was a pretext to target specific racial minorities and when that became socially unacceptable (legally it was unacceptable under the 14th Amendment anyway, but they effectively smuggled the laws in through the Treasury Department and protectionist regimes by taxing the goods into oblivion, and avoiding the tax obviously is also a violation of the law).
In that sense, the government operates very much like a machine, whereas given a concrete goal to achieve and it can likely achieve it, but the manner by which it achieves it may create additional problems and convoluted interpretations that ripples through history in ways unimaginable. The loudest voices in the room, or those with existing financial resources or interests, can use the rent-seeking system known as lobbying to shape the laws to begin with. And where does the fines end up? Certainly in most cases they are not given back to the community, but end up enriching the enforcement agencies. Go to a police auction and see how much they're raising from the sale of "proceeds of crime", except not all of it are crimes that are proven in court, and much of it are crimes without specific victims and so, it becomes a regime of appropriation of private property to enrich a few in the public sector.
There's usually an annoying gap between concept and reality. In isolation you want a policy that can solve problems in a targeted and fair way. In reality it almost never happens.
By hgomersall 2024-04-107:492 reply Addiction is well defined in research and it certainly does not preclude things that don't cause "physical dependence" by which I assume you use to mean psychoactive drugs.
Wikipedia has a better definition right at the top than I can offer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction
The crucial point is it is characterised by neurological changes that lead to short circuited reward pathways. The idea of addiction to social media a perfectly consistent with its action and moreover, consistent with the notion that its effect can be enhanced by design.
> The crucial point is it is characterised by neurological changes that lead to short circuited reward pathways
Everything that's enjoyable in life can meet that definition. For practical purposes, we only consider severe cases to be addiction, but it's not well-defined. The article you linked says:
> However, there is no agreement on the exact definition of addiction in medicine. Indeed, Volkow et al. (2016) report that the DSM-5 defines addictions as the most severe degree of the addictive disorders, due to pervasive/excessive substance-use or behavioural compulsions/impulses. It is a definition that many scientific papers and reports use.
> The DSM-5 and ICD-10 only recognize gambling addictions as behavioral addictions
I don't think the DSM-5 has any principled reason for recognizing gambling addictions but not video game addiction or shopping addiction, other than gambling addiction being particularly harmful.
By hgomersall 2024-04-1011:191 reply The critical sentence in the Wikipedia intro is "despite substantial harm and other negative consequences".
Yeah, which I think fits perfectly with jimz description that you were replying to.
Whether social media is beneficial or causing substantial harm is not well defined or easily measured. It's a subjective thing that will be debated and rely on judgement.
By hgomersall 2024-04-116:16 I'm not sure it's as difficult as you suggest. It's generally a subjective assessment of the individual concerned: is this thing that I feel compelled to do causing me significant harm? There's no need to attach rigorous measure or external validation to that.
That's part of why it can be contentious; people can declare themselves addicted but one suspects they sometimes do it to avert blame for some related action.
By NoPicklez 2024-04-1012:14 Exactly, completely agree.
And whilst many things in life can have this property and need to such that we get enjoyment out of particular aspects of life.
There are particular things which short circuit reward pathways to a greater degree. Such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, video games, smartphone addiction.
Smart phone/video games are designed to constantly reward us as much as possible
So, why are alcohol (and nicotine) still legal then? Maybe there is a 100 year old lesson hidden somewhere...
By TacticalCoder 2024-04-108:05 > So, why are alcohol (and nicotine) still legal then?
I don't disagree with your answer but... Kids cannot buy alcohol and kids cannot buy cigarettes. It's kinda the whole point of TFA.
The conclusion of TFA aren't to outlaw social media: it's preventing kids from accessing these mediocre piece of shit websites/apps before 16.
By NoPicklez 2024-04-1012:04 This is actually the classic example of where personal accountability fails, which is what cigarette companies would lobby for. Which is the root of this post
As a result governments have stepped in and now there are age restrictions on both smoking and alcohol, blood alcohol limits for driving, lockout laws, no advertisement of cigarettes in supermarkets, additional taxes on cigarettes, plain packaging on cigarettes.
Making something immediately completely illegal isn’t necessarily the correct course of action. But governments have stepped in to try and help people exercise personal accountability.
Disclaimer: the examples are from within Australia
By johnchristopher 2024-04-107:241 reply And maybe that lesson is hiding in ellipsis or maybe it's not. Who knows...
By lynx23 2024-04-107:39 I wasn't expecting a reference to Prohibition to be that cryptic to some.
By ajkjk 2024-04-1017:55 Um. They are heavily regulated? Isn't that what is being argued for for social media?
> But these are communications platforms.
While technically true, this is a gross misrepresentation. Calling these sites and apps "communications platforms" makes them sound like they're just a mail service or a telephone. This is akin to referring to a casino as "the town square".
> That's a freedom you and everyone else can take advantage of also.
This "can" is only true in a strict legal sense, of course.
By ryandrake 2024-04-1010:21 They’re communication platforms in only a very roundabout sense: like a newspaper’s “Letters to the Editor” section, but quicker. You send your message to Facebook, it decides (algorithmically, not through human editors) whether or not to publish it and to whom, and then Facebook sends that message onward.
I see the "town square" analogy used a lot, but it's ignoring the actual purpose: it's an advertising platform, run by advertisers for advertisers. The presumed function of communication (something it certainly was started for) is purely for keeping the attention of users to sell to advertisers.
As a town square, it's more akin to Times Square.
By 2OEH8eoCRo0 2024-04-1013:18 I dislike the town square analogy as well. What town square requires membership and provides anonymity? What town square do people routinely share dissenting opinions? The fact people feel free enough to routinely share dissent on these platforms shows that it's the opposite of a town square. The very act of sharing dissent in the town square used to be provocative in itself. What's provocative about grieving on Twitter?
The town square analogy couldn't be further from reality.
By TacticalCoder 2024-04-107:59 All you wrote doesn't address the elephant in the room: that social media is responsible for an epidemy of teen mental illness (which may or may not be true).
If that's true, the suggested measures: no phone before high-school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, ... do not seem crazy.
Kids cannot drink, cannot smoke, cannot have sex with adults, cannot buy firearms, etc.
There's a shitload of things kids cannot do: is it really an attack on free speech to have kids not have phones at school and wait until 16 before they can use these mediocre piece of shit social media platforms?
if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.
If it was only this simple. It's similar to the green bubble problem. Disallowing your kids to use these platforms leads to social isolation. All the other kids are on these platforms and a lot of the talk is about what happened on these platforms (it's similar with games like Roblox for a certain age bracket). Excluding them is also going to teenage mental illness due to exclusion.
It's only going to work if all parents would restrict access to these platforms, but that's not going to happen. A lot of parents do not see the issue or do not want to be the first mover.
By jmilloy 2024-04-1016:48 In general, I agree with you, and for the record, I'm in favor of general restrictions or limitations on social media for children. At the same, I want to add that I was not allowed to watch violent cartoons or play violent video games as a kid in the 90s. I felt left out on the playground when I didn't know how to play X-Men or Power Rangers or whatever. But in retrospect it was fine. I'm not sure the social isolation factor in particular is as dire as you claim.
By kstenerud 2024-04-107:18 Why stop there? Why not drop all laws prohibiting sales of tobacco and alcohol to minors? Why should these producers have their right to sell impinged upon by scared parents pushing a bunch of laws through congress?
After all, you're free to use or not to use tobacco and alcohol, right? So it should be every kid's choice.
In fact, why stop there? Why not allow fentanyl pills at the counter of every convenience store for anyone who wants them? You have the freedom to choose to use or not to use them, so there's no problem, right?
By hackerlight 2024-04-105:332 reply > if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them.
Relevant bit from the essay:
"But much of my book is about the collective action traps that entire communities of adolescents fall into when they move their social lives onto these platforms, such that it becomes costly to abstain. It is at that point that collective mental health declines most sharply, and the individuals who try to quit find that they are socially isolated. The skeptics do not consider the ways that these network or group-level effects may obscure individual-level effects, and may be much larger than the individual-level effects."
By GoblinSlayer 2024-04-107:441 reply They meet their society in meat at school every day, how is that isolation? Also ban smartphones at school.
By ashyaspen 2024-04-159:45 They use their phones when they are with each other, isolating themselves even when they are together.
Banning is exactly the argument against this. They are saying we should do that to protect the mental health of teenagers.
An excellent point. Abstention = social isolation, which for young people is far worse than exposure. Restricting your children's access is not an option (lets' be real, they'll find a way to circumvent your efforts anyway) and moving the burden of restriction from society to individuals is not fair.
So as a society do we let unrestrained exposure or do we take collective action? I lean on the second option, but I'm not sure what this action might be.
I'm on the internet ~30 years, I loved the total anarchy of the early web, the unrestrained access to all kinds of information - good, bad and evil. It's very hard for me to get behind heavy-handed regulation. But honestly, I feel oversaturated by the modern cataclysm of information. My bullshit filters are clogged, my defense mechanisms are failing to the point I let information flow through me without an ounce of critical thinking. I can't imagine what the effect is on young untrained minds.
By Mainan_Tagonist 2024-04-108:49 Same feeling here, I loved the early internet, it played a huge part in who i am actually! This said, this is not the early internet anymore, where content was mechanically regulated by a sort of egalitarian rule. Social Media applies a power law to content, so that 80% of the viewers are aware of the 20% that's available and human nature being what it is, lowest common denominator content gets pushed to the forefront.
Hence all the attention seekers on FacebInstaTok...
This is further compounded by the pervert effects generated by these platforms one of them being the mimetism and the general wolfpack behaviour that can surge out of the madness of crowds. Online Bullying is real.
My kids (11 and 14) are stuck on feature phones for now and i'd like, as much as possible to keep them off smartphones and their constant Notifications for the foreseeable future, until they are not kids.
By bigstrat2003 2024-04-107:182 reply > Abstention = social isolation, which for young people is far worse than exposure. Restricting your children's access is not an option...
"Everybody else is doing it" has never been, and still is not, a valid reason for anything. If other parents choose to let their kids ingest mental poison, that does not mean that one should allow their children to do the same. Abstention is not only an option, it is something which absolutely should be enforced by any parent who cares about their child's well being.
I'm not talking about kids, I'm talking about adolescents (as is the quoted paragraph). I strongly believe that an adolescent's well being is tightly coupled with social interactions. If a restriction is not protecting them from life threatening situations, then alienating them from their peers is probably worse.
By ryandrake 2024-04-1010:28 So the choice is between social-media-induced mental illness and alienation/isolation? No wonder kids are so screwed up today: there is no winning move!
By ashyaspen 2024-04-159:48 It absolutely is a reason. Everyone else is doing it, meaning if you don't you feel isolated.
So, either you participate and feel isolated through your social connections by social media, or you don't participate and feel even more isolated because you don't have social connections.
By CaptArmchair 2024-04-107:32 30 years ago, you didn't live vicariously through the published perception of the world you friends held 24/7. Social interactions stopped when you put down the phone or went home for the day. If your friends went on a trip, while you couldn't, you'd only hear about their stories when they got back.
30 years ago, unrestrained access was still constrained to a desktop computer hooked to dial-up. Your access was constrained to a physical location.
Today, the big issue is the lure of having 24/7 mobile access to the Internet. At any moment, you can amend your own crafted online digital identity, meshing it with your real life, as you publish your location via Snapchat, Instagram or WhatsApp with your friends. Meanwhile, you can't but be confronted with notifications telling you where your friends are and what they are up to with who ("X has posted a photo, Y is currently at Z").
On a surface level, that lure has created a host of totally new social conventions and etiquette over the past 18 years, basically since the release of the iPhone. Social conventions to which one has to conform unless you don't want to lose out on social connections.
For instance, seeing whether a recipient of a PM has "read" a message and then "leaving you on read". Having that rather unrealistic expectation that one ought to respond instantly once a message has been read. At worst, friendships are put on tenterhooks as one ties value to the time between that "read" notice, and the moment a response follows.
In reality, the world 30 years ago wasn't more beautiful and people weren't more kind then they are today. In fact, if you weren't asked by your friends to hang out, or were left out when they went to a party and had all these in-group stories to tell, you felt socially isolated either way. That's not really new.
What's new is that this new lure of 24/7 connectivity creates a potential to be confronted with those feelings pretty much every waking hour. It must be anxiety inducing to scroll through your feed, not knowing if your friends did or didn't hang out last night without asking you.
To my mind, the answer isn't outright banning social media, or mobile devices. The answer is to keep having that difficult discussion about the value of the affordances - or lack thereof - the offer to foster healthy human relationships. It's about finding better ways to teach and empower young people on how to approach these tools, built by commercial enterprises, in healthy ways. And it's about being willing to properly publicly invest in aspects ranging from education to mental health support to enforcement and so on.
By GoblinSlayer 2024-04-107:09 If they find a workaround, they will still be unable to sit there around the clock, which is decent reduction of consumption. Also there won't be many, just like smoking schoolkids, so no social pressure. You can ban it completely or you can have your lovely bookface 1 hour per day, why not, it's dangerous when they spend there 10 hours per day.
Overall, I think the internet has basically been weaponised (intentionally or not) by big tech. People of every generation are being manipulated at a scale that has never before been possible, and what’s more is that the algorithms for targeting and engagement make it trivial to do this, either through propaganda, disinformation, or advertising in a way that skirts regulations on traditional media.
Will it change? I doubt it - Google and Facebook are likely too big to fail now, Twitter is still around as a bona-fide hate platform, TikTok is unlikely to go anywhere until something else replaces it…
By Mainan_Tagonist 2024-04-1012:17 The term "Too Big To Fail" is probably inappropriate here (was it ever appropriate actually? banks should have been allowed to fail in 2008), indeed Facebook may well be replaced at some point (is Gen Z even on Facebook?), and AI might well replace Google's killer product: its search engine.
This said, I tend to agree with you, the power law exists and has to be maintained by big tech to control the content because a captive audience is soooo profitable.
By Biologist123 2024-04-107:531 reply > You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don't care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences
You’re conflating these tech platforms with freedom of speech. It might be helpful to the debate to separate out the addictive algorithm and user base from people’s right to think and speak freely.
By mxkopy 2024-04-108:01 As always the real takeaway is to repeal Citizen’s United
By vermilingua 2024-04-108:46 There is a major difference between banning curse words, medical info, porn etc, and banning social media. The former is banning a type of content, the latter is banning the presentation of content; and it is the presentation that is so harmful.
Banning social media optimised for “engagement” at the expense of childrens (and adults) mental health does not remove any content from the internet that could not be expressed in a less toxic way.
The finesse is in defining social media in a way more complex than “this list of companies”, and I agree that (likely) no government would choose a definition that does not either have ramifications for free speech or is inadequate.
By unclebucknasty 2024-04-107:40 Arguments of this form are...not good
This is a social problem, not a parental one. When you allow for-profit companies (or anyone) to create addictive products that intermediate the social experience of an entire generation, how is a parent supposed to stand against that?
It's how kids interact and it defines their entire social experience. Disallowing them access is like sending your kids to school and not allowing them to talk to anyone.
We don't allow our kids to have access to alcohol or cigarettes because it's bad for them. How is this any different, when we know it's doing harm at scale?
Because "it's speech"? That doesn't hold up. Pornography is also generally considered protected speech, but no one lobbies for unfettered access for kids.
Beyond that, restricting social media does not infringe on free speech. That assertion is so obviously wrong on so many levels that it feels silly and pedantic to start itemizing them.
You dont have kids, do you. Seeing them being pushed out of entire school community due to higher principles is heartbreaking to say at least, this is place from which teen suicides come from. Parents usually cave in the pressure.
I would go and even claim I would ban all current social media platforms below 18. Ther are simply not enough protections, consistently, its place ripe for abuse and tons abuse is happening every day as we speak. I know we will keep our own kids off this for as long as possible, but eventually harm from absence will be greater.
Parents shouldnt be choosing lesser evil like that, just that some meta employees can cash half a million and think what a great addition to mankind they are, when reality is closer to definition of cancer.
> I would ban all current social media platforms below 18
Just like porn? Do you think kids would find a way around it?
By bsder 2024-04-1021:50 There's a huge difference between actively seeking something vs having it shoved down your throat.
The biggest problem with the social media systems is that they are normalized. Lots of school and government stuff only comes out on Xitter or Facebook. That's horrible.
It's like dealing with a car salesman. If you engage, you've already lost as you have sooooo much less experience than who you are fighting against.
By Mainan_Tagonist 2024-04-1012:19 some would, obviously, but only those that really wanted to, just as some end up buying cigarettes or alcohol.
But that would be a fraction of what it is now
By non-chalad 2024-04-106:41 Not if we implement mandatory ID internet use and social tracking system. We could introduce it with Elmo, Kermit, and Fozzie, and call it "Sesame Credit"… waka waka!
By carlosjobim 2024-04-1016:09 Parents have to get together for common rules on these kind of things. You can't push the responsibility onto somebody else.
By ignoramous 2024-04-108:48 > You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don't care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms.
Haidt argues these are a leading cause of an ongoing mental illness epidemic. Such a drastic claim deserves a thorough medical review and if true, these platforms must be regulated just like the Tobacco industry was.
> those who advocate censorship aren't advocating for freedom... they're advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.
Don't believe freedom of speech / freedom to information overrides the concern of Humanity collectively and progressively going ill, anymore than freedom to self-defense warrants the use of nuclear weapons for personal use.
That said, the burden of proof is on Haidt. It isn't uncommon for the older generation to be pessimistic or doomsdaying about the next one.
By willvarfar 2024-04-105:382 reply US citizens have the right to free speech.
US companies have a qualified right to free speech https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/freedom-of-speec...
How about AI? If it is an algorithm that is talking to you, does it have the right to do all the things that are protected by 'free speech'?
And does it matter if the AI is commercial, or a home hobby project effort?
Somebody has bought or rented the computer that this AI runs on, somebody has launched it as a piece of code or an API call.
This somebody is using his right to free speech, AI is just a tool.
Praxeology 2.0
I have heard similar arguments about corporations hehe
Very Rothbardian, Mises and Say would be proud too
By otherme123 2024-04-106:331 reply How a corporation can have an opinion?
I can give you that an AI trained to make a mixin of a lot of input texts and output a mashup of those texts, the output might not be the same of their creators. That said, it's known that AI creators/trainers can make their AI lean towards certain "opinions", as we saw recently with the case of Gemini and their understanding of diversity (https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini...).
Corporations can't do that. Corporations don't ask for everybody's in the corporation opinion and then do an aggregate with all of them to write a press release. They have some people choosing what to say in the press release that goes in the interest of the corporation.
By latency-guy2 2024-04-106:44 > They have some people choosing what to say in the press release that goes in the interest of the corporation.
Who are these people? Are they people or something that are not people?
By willvarfar 2024-04-105:492 reply Can you clarify, is your "somebody" a person or a company?
By latency-guy2 2024-04-106:431 reply > is your "somebody" a person or a company?
What is the explicit difference between 1 person and 10 persons when it comes to their rights?
Explicit, I want to know what rights we lose as soon as "I" transforms into "we".
> What is the explicit difference between 1 person and 10 persons when it comes to their rights?
None.
> Explicit, I want to know what rights we lose as soon as "I" transforms into "we".
In this case a company isn't "we". It is usually the owner.
By latency-guy2 2024-04-107:27 > > What is the explicit difference between 1 person and 10 persons when it comes to their rights?
> None.
> > Explicit, I want to know what rights we lose as soon as "I" transforms into "we".
> In this case a company isn't "we". It is usually the owner.
Awesome, I'm glad that rights do not change between 1 to 1 billion, let's not assert that these rights disappear in conditions that make no difference in quality.
By Gud 2024-04-108:39 This “somebody” is part of the wealthy ruling class who makes the laws through billions of dollars spent on bribes(“lobbying”) and propaganda.
By almostnormal 2024-04-1012:19 > US companies have a qualified right to free speech
There doesn't even seem to be much speech of the companies running the platforms on their own platforms. All they do is quote their users.
By forgetfreeman 2024-04-109:33 Nah. They're advocating for an obvious and well-documented societal harm vector be regulated into a less harmful configuration. This is similar in concept to regulating pollution or disease vectors.
One could make that exact argument of cigarettes too. And see why it doesn't work in the real world.
By mcmoor 2024-04-1011:05 Tobacco regulation is actually something I don't see people talked often. Some seem to have restricted it and succeed, or failed. Some seems to let it go and succeed, or failed. It's seemingly less sexy than either alcohol or marijuana, maybe because USA is one example where they just let cigarettes go and succeed anyway.
My country is an example where it failed anyway. Whether we are considered to have tried regulating it or not is a bit complicated.
By throwaway2037 2024-04-108:021 reply Are you making the argument that restricting cigarette sales by age does not work?
By throwaway2037 2024-04-1011:44 Thank you to clarify. I agree with your point. The reduction in underage people smoking in rich countries has plumetted in the last 30 years. Much of that is due to stricter enforcement of retail and advertising rules.
Cigarettes aren't speech. I don't understand why anyone would argue otherwise.
No, but there the issue is bodily autonomy. Which arguably is much more important a right than free speech.
Is bodily autonomy a recognized right in any sense? Is there a society that actually respects the right to bodily autonomy legally or in practice - meaning, using any drugs at will, the right to suicide, to agree to being eaten by a friendly cannibal, and so on? I don't think there is, and nobody is pushing for it.
By defrost 2024-04-109:41 The Okapa District, pre missionary, pre kiaps .. you were good to go until the mid 1950s at least .. and then colonizers spread their values.
> to agree to being eaten by a friendly cannibal
They had standards though, you'd have to work to gain the respect for anyone to want to eat you as a mortuary ritual.
By boxed 2024-04-116:03 There's two parts though:
1. the right to not have someone else do stuff to your body
2. your right to do anything to it
Number 1 is pretty well established.
Number 2 less so, and I think that comes down to us as a society noticing that many people can't be trusted with full access here. Ask any clean addict and they will tell you what a colossal mistake it was to start using the drug in the first place. The regulation of what you can do with your own body is, in my opinion, a regulation to protect future you from present you. Because we all know what the present you has worse impulse control and judgement than future you would like.
By dotancohen 2024-04-108:251 reply
I'm the only parent I know that has. And there is much resentment.> Restrict your children'ss access to these platforms.By arkey 2024-04-1010:41 Hang on in there mate. If not now, eventually they will be grateful.
By virtualritz 2024-04-109:19 > [...] if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them.
And have a severally impacted/constrained social life?
People with all kinds of hobbies use those platforms to organize group activities. You are either on there or you miss out.
I dance tango socially. The tango community, world wide, has settled on FB. Or rather: if you are a dancer, teacher, organizer or DJ, you better be on FB or else you won't know where and when to dance, how to find students, get people to attend your event or get booked. I.e. even if you decided you didn't like FB, you have no choice but to join it and thus help cement their monopoly on how people with this hobby organize themselves.
By madsbuch 2024-04-107:07 you have many ways you can solve the issues without ristricting free speach.
you can ristrict how you can monitize a product - I think the problem would be much smaller if you have to pay a price congruent to the value you get. Only a few people would pay for Facebook.
you can make the platforms resposinsible for what is published on them and enforce that. they would never scale this much.
> And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them.
We have already collectively agreed that this is not an argument. That is why there are agencies like the FDA, etc.
By m_fayer 2024-04-1011:18 If you think of them as communication platforms, you’re missing a big part of the picture.
These systems are the next step in the evolution of media. Media is a complex beast with tentacles into culture and politics and individual society. We’ve known this for a long time. What’s applicable here is Marshal McLuhan, media theory, and heck David Foster Wallace. A lot of this stuff was way ahead of its time, but that time has arrived.
“The medium is the message” was a genius insight. Extending it to algorithmic media has all sorts of (disquieting) implications.
By geocar 2024-04-107:51 > they're advocating for their personal parental decisions to the be decisions of the entire nation.
That sounds exactly wrong. I think they want their "personal parental" decisions to not be the decisions of the entire nation, but "personal" and private to themselves and to be free from judgement for wanting this thing.
> prevented access to education medical information ... you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them.
This is pretty important to me:
Abusive parents deny their children access to communication platforms.
I believe these problems cause problems for the child if the child is already lacking support, but they also represent a way to escape that abuse, so I feel strongly that controlling access to asking-for-help is not okay;
This should not be a personal decision good people can make for themselves in their homes for their own kids, because they should be able to understand that "bad" people are actually using laws and rules like this to hurt children.
> I don't use any of these products
I think you're using one right now: Hacker news is absolutely a communications platform.
By bryanrasmussen 2024-04-108:36 >Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences
sure, but not everywhere is America and some places seem to manage without slippery-sloping to eternal damnation.
> But these are communications platforms.
They are mostly advertisement platforms coupled to recommendation engines. The "communication platform" is just side business at this point. And it's being used to wave around as "free speech" when anyone dares to question the detrimental effect of the big mass mind control machine it actually is.
By thomashop 2024-04-1014:11 Any corporately run platform needs to be financed. In this case it seems the advertising model works best. Many platforms have tried subscription options but people prefer to not pay and become the product.
By ajkjk 2024-04-1017:52 I think of it as: in 50 years it will be obvious to everyone that these things fall in the category of "health problems", because they are, similar to junk food, and we'll have a way of societally regulating the danger that is aligned with our ethics.
But we're presently in the middle of the long transition in which not everyone has figured that out yet, and in which we don't have a widely-agreed-upon moral stance on the subject that reconciles the need to do something about it with our existing value systems.
We're going to have to find it one way or the other, so the question is "when", not "if".
No doubt in 2174 we will have a bunch of new issues that are at different places in the pipeline. We'll probably be debating the ethics of mind-control implants or something. But in the meantime this one will solved.
By Teever 2024-04-108:09 > if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them
What's the secret to doing that? No really. How do I unsubscribe from the tracking that these platforms do on the web and in my apps?
That's the rub! I can't not use (or be used) by these platforms -- no one can!
By callmeal 2024-04-1010:27 >You may not like FB, IG, TikTok, etc.. I certainly don't care for any of these products. But these are communications platforms.
That may have been true once upon a time (i.e. back in the day when your FB feed was chronological and random posts from unrelated/unwanted crazies would not show up on your device unless a friend forwarded it to you).
Now they are psychological manipulators (remember https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... ?) in a quest for advertising dollars at the expense of everything else.
By patcon 2024-04-1017:42 What are your feelings on production and propagation of "foods" rich in refined sugar?
To be clear, I find your thoughts interesting and worth understanding, but if you also believe that the government has zero business in public health decisions involving refined sugars, then we just fundamentally disagree about what good governance is. (nevermind the social media element, which is new and evolving and a higher-dimensional problem space)
And that's ok. I will likely vote and conspire against the interests of people like this (with that view of government) until I the day I die (or my mind is changed), and cultivate communities that openly resist building the world based on those assumptions.
By sidewndr46 2024-04-1013:001 reply That is not really possible. In the US you are required to send your children into public education unless you can afford private education. That public education requires students to use the internet. So you can't just opt out
By zelphirkalt 2024-04-1013:381 reply Social media is not the Internet, but I think you are raising an important point. Schools are run by uninformed people, who introduce absurd policies, when it comes to prerequisites of usage of online services. It is hard for parents to get to their right of not having to participate in these disservices.
I imagine in the US there could be cases, where parents with the required pocket change can sue the school or something, to get it done, but if I think about my own home country, I have my doubts, whether anything would be resolved, before the time of a child in that school is over and in addition to that, there is no accountability for abysmal tech decisions in institutions such as schools. No one is losing their job for forcing children to use social media, unfortunately, even though every adult, especially one to work with children, should know by now, that this cannot be conforming with data protection laws. We simply punish incapable reckless behavior way too rarely.
By sidewndr46 2024-04-1013:401 reply I think you meant "way too rarely" in your last sentence.
By zelphirkalt 2024-04-1013:42 Thank you, fixed within edit time!
> then don't use them
This assumes that humans are rational agents. I think that drug addiction, wars in Israel and Ukraine, conspiracy theorists, and free-climbers sufficiently prove that this is not the case.
If only life were so easy, we would not even need to have this discussion.
It's the country's role or more specifically, the role of education to equip citizens with skills that will help them navigate virtual, deceiving and fake internet space.
That is certainly an opinion and a higher goal we could hold ourselves to, but education is generally just a way to ensure kids grow up to be good citizens - and today good tends to mean productive, contributing to the economy.
By zigman1 2024-04-107:14 See my reply to the other comment of my same opinion :)
Educational goals focus on broader set of skills and competences including critical and logical thinking. You can find this in most national and federal documents. That's because the education in its traditional sense is a country investing in its own working force. Normally, a country would want a healthy, educated and productive workforce, but if this is not the case then we have a different problem.
Sure, but there are so many skills to focus on, that one can hardly expect people to stay off drugs because one lesson was spent on how bad it is.
Companies are constantly inventing new ways to get people hooked on their platforms (or products), and it's a pretty tough race for teachers.
Note also the difference in salaries for high school teachers and developers at Meta.
By zigman1 2024-04-107:13 The point is not to have a one shitty lesson on it, probably by someone who doesn't even know what cookies are. The point is, that alongside learning math, biology and history, you should also come out of educational system emotionally mature and equipped with skills to survive in modern world. Not all skills are acquired through a deliberate lesson, the role of school is not only to teach but to upbring a generation(s).
If Huberman can teach you a basics of nutrition so can a formal educational process. The problem with relying on youtube educators is then that it is down to luck if someone will come across it.
You are focusing too much on formalities. It doesn't say so specifically, but a collateral of education, or maybe it's equally important as knowledge itself, is the ability of critical thinking.
By newzisforsukas 2024-04-106:33 > Being exposed to shit on the internet teaches you there's bullshit on the internet, and not to believe everything you see
Maybe it taught you that, but there are plenty of people that grow up on the Internet who do not learn these lessons. Take a look at any conspiracy message board, group, etc.
Akin to saying something like, "let it happen, that'll teach 'em"
Unfortunately, not everything works itself out.
By GeoAtreides 2024-04-109:36 > if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them
Just don't smoke! Just don't drink alcohol! Just don't eat junk food! Just go to the gym!
> Restrict your children's access to these platforms
That's exactly what the article suggests should happen, plus some protections for children enshrined in law. You can find these suggestions at the end of the post, in the section "What now?"
By namaria 2024-04-109:30 > But these are communications platforms. Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences...
I take issue with the argument that promoting these social media platforms is tantamount to fostering free speech and denouncing them amounts to eroding this right. No one should expect technology assisted broad cast abilities as part of a doctrine of governments and the State not restricting speech.
By unethical_ban 2024-04-1017:36 Your argument is convincing if you ignore the studies cited by this author, or the fact these two phenomena (video games and social media) are entirely different and have social as well as individual impact.
I also disagree with the notion that limiting certain addictive communications tools from minors is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.
By DarkNova6 2024-04-1010:39 This is naive. Not using any of these platforms means that for a great degree you are isolating yourself socially.
Big tech already plays a alrge part in how our society is shaped and defending them means they don't have to face their responsibilities. Boiling this down a mere question of "free speech" is a very amerocentric point of view.
By sourcecodeplz 2024-04-1010:411 reply I am into wildlife & nature in general. In my country, public institutions in charge with wildlife & nature have started for some time posting interesting videos, projects and images on facebook. They don't post them anywhere else, if you can believe it.
Here, everyone has facebook, from your grandma to your little cousin. My family is spread all over the country and you can keep in touch via text, phone but seeing what they are doing with pictures on facebook is very convenient and helpful.
Yes, the older/younger crowd do eat up conspiracies on facebook, sadly. They also don't read news sites, all the news is from facebook and TV maybe (older crowd).
Still, you are missing out a lot if you don't have it here. For example like meeting new people even. That "friends of friends" feature is immense. Kind of a social proof that you are normal/not a creep/have friends.
In the end it comes down to education. The first 7 years at home are ridiculously important. Then you have primary school for another 8 years, which is almost as important.
By wepple 2024-04-1013:51 The social side of things is very difficult to work around.
Public institutions, however, should not be restricting information dispersal to third-party private companies who force even a casual viewer to agree to extensive legal contracts.
By HumblyTossed 2024-04-1014:56 Is speech "free" if you're being manipulated? Someone goes on "social" media to look for political information on an upcoming election and finds themself drawn in to cult-level manipulation of facts all for engagement, is what they say after that truly "free" speech?
By mattacular 2024-04-1011:34 > Restrict your children's access to these platforms.
You don't have kids do you?
By nonrandomstring 2024-04-108:242 reply There are two kinds of freedom [0].
What we are missing in our society today is some essential negative freedoms.
Most of us follow J.S. Mill's idea on restricting the influence of the state. See the many comments in this thread decrying government intervention to ban social media. That's a negative freedom, from tyranny.
Mostly, we tend to emphasise positive freedoms, freedom to; run a business, share speech, own technology. And that is good.
But there are negative freedoms, freedom from; coercion, the scourge of drugs, poverty, censorship. Obviously many positive freedoms can be expressed as negative ones, but how that logic is formulated in law really matters.
Now the controversial bit:
What we are missing is laws that give people freedom from technology The supposed "choice" to participate is not enough.
Like others here I've been a non participant in social media and smartphones. I'm not a Luddite, I'm a computer scientist, but I twigged this problem very early having dealt with addiction and recognising how abuse is mediated by technology. I even wrote a book about it [1].
The problem is, life is made very difficult for those who want to exercise choice. Presently one must live as a second class citizen, in what feels like racism and prejudice of technological snobbery. It is utterly unnecessary.
Governments do not need to ban smartphones or social media for kids or for anyone. Making this only about kids is a cop-out. It's leveraging emotional messaging to side-step a bigger problem nobody wants to face - that our whole society is under siege from technology overuse. The more general problem is that we've entered a period of technological over-reach. Kids don't just feel peer pressure to get a smartphone and social media, they live in a society that wants to mandate it.
Whether for kids or adults, we need to strongly protect the rights of those who want a less technologically mediated (and encumbered - yes it's not all "convenience") lifestyle. This needs us to maintain plurality of access;
Governments can ensure negative freedoms without just banning stuff.No services for government, schools, health available *only* on proprietary and "smart" platforms. Requirement to maintain traditional paper and interpersonal modes. End the insanity of a "cashless society", and "smart societies" that exclude basic human interaction and require and assume smartphones with apps. Strongly protect the rights of parents to choose how their kids use technology, for example in schools, and the attitudes they are raised with.[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative...
Very well written
> No services for government, schools, health available only on proprietary and "smart" platforms
I wish this were a movement, I feel very strongly about this.
By nonrandomstring 2024-04-1016:08 Whatever would we call a movement like that?
"The freedom from the scourge of drugs" is why I can't buy an asthma inhaler without paying out the nose to see a specialist that will prescribe it to me. As a result I don't have an asthma inhaler. I feel very free when breathing gets hard.
This is a snarky comment, but this is the consequence of this "negative freedom".
I do think that there's some merit to these ideas, but I think it would always leave the choice to the individual. But we also have to realize that some things you just can't opt out of, eg electromagnetic radiation from cell towers.
By nonrandomstring 2024-04-1014:351 reply I'd really like to understand your comment better Aerroon.
Is this something to do with the US healthcare system? Can you elaborate please?
(BTW if it is, one of my friends who is a type-1 diabetic was involved in the very political "humanitarian airdrop" of insulin to the USA. - so I kind of get it)
I'm not in the US, but drug politics is pretty similar globally due to the Single Convention of Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and its successors.
Asthma inhalers just happen to fall under a prescription requirement in my country like most other drugs. Sure, this has its benefits, but also downsides. That's really all there is to it. I only brought it up, because I rarely see this side mentioned. Everybody seems to think that prescriptions aren't a barrier, but from my experience that's not true.
By nonrandomstring 2024-04-1122:351 reply Thanks, I see.
Yeah I used to be more pro-control, particularly because of antibiotic overuse. Now it's clear restraint made little difference I'm more inclined to a free market. Thing about food, drugs and stuff you put in your body though, is quality really matters.
By Aerroon 2024-04-1212:45 I think antibiotics being restricted makes a lot more sense to me than most drug policy. We have a decent understanding of how improper use of antibiotics causes harm to everyone. With most other drugs the harm is a lot less direct (often the policy itself is the main contributor to harm).
By CJefferson 2024-04-109:04 Do you feel the same about legalizing guns, alcohol, cigarettes and heroin for children?
I don’t think this is a stupid comparison, as I believe these platforms can be very harmful to children.
By nkrisc 2024-04-109:51 That’s why we allow children to purchase cigarettes and alcohol and if parents don’t want their kids partaking they can just restrict their access, right?
By Moldoteck 2024-04-1011:48 is the problem social media or the greedy privacy invading algorithms behind it?
In my country, India, these platforms are used less for free speech and more for brainwashing and spreading hate and misinformation. Most of these posts are in Hindi, a major language around here, and call for all kinds of hate such as suppression of a specific religion, call for genocide, invading and acquiring neighboring countries etc.
I've tried reporting such posts multiple times but hate filled posts are neither removed, nor restricted. If a platform cannot provide adequate moderation, it should stop operating in my country and be held responsible for providing a platform for spreading hate pseudo-anonmously.
By satvikpendem 2024-04-107:163 reply How is this example any different than what the parent has said? If people feel these platforms are negatively impacting them, they should stop using them. Or do you believe others or the government has a right to disallow what people want to watch via their own choices? You may call it brainwashing but others may disagree.
> If people feel these platforms are negatively impacting them, they should stop using them.
The problem is how to stop the mob attacking you from using them.
An American equivalent might be if social media existed a 100 years ago and was being used to encourage lynchings. Yes, it really is that bad in some places.
The problem is that FB does moderate things relevant to the US but ignores the rest of the world. They will remove white supremacist material in the US, but not the equivalent elsewhere.
By satvikpendem 2024-04-109:312 reply The solution is in the problem, network effects. If everyone stopped using them due to deleterious effects, the problem is would solve itself.
Yes, but how do you get "everyone" to stop using the? I use FB purely because of network effects. I hate it, but there would be a real cost to not using it.
By satvikpendem 2024-04-111:53 What is the cost? The excuses in this entire thread are quite weak and overblown. Some people are really saying their kids should continue using these apps they know are harmful simply because they would be socially outcast otherwise, which is simply not true.
By carlosjobim 2024-04-1016:281 reply Why do you think a lynch mob would stop using social media when they are excellent tools for them to use to organise lynchings?
By satvikpendem 2024-04-1016:30 Notice how the government made lynchings illegal, not the method of communicating such actions.
> do you believe others or the government has a right to disallow what people want to watch via their own choices
Yes. As an extreme example: watching cheese pizza is not allowed by governments. We have collectively also come together to consider murder as socially and legally unacceptable. We can and should regulate social media if posts read as follows:
- we should invade and bomb that country to bits - we should destroy all places of worship belonging to XYZ religion - we should vote for XYZ because only he is going to save our religion from PQR - and much worse which I can't type here as moderation team of HN would omit those
IMHO: give the current form of social media another few decades and it will come out shinning bright just like opioids did in the USA.
These same social media platforms, when required by law, become very effective in moderation but there's next to no moderation in my country and most of the hate and abuse is counted as just another engagement metrics.
By satvikpendem 2024-04-109:30 Watching CP and murdering people is in no way comparable to any of those bullet points you made. Generally in the US at least, uniquely among many nations, the principle and constitutional right of the freedom of speech reigns supreme over many, many others, so there is no chance that any of those bullet points would (or should, given such a principle) be regulated.
One can and should be able to espouse those beliefs, regardless of whether they are true or not, because the alternative is much worse, where the rights of such exposition are severely curtailed. Hell, someone got arrested for taunting the Queen in the UK, something that legally cannot happen in the US had a similar person taunted a government official.
By Fricken 2024-04-1010:32 Hate speech and incitements to violence against the Rohingya precipitated for years on Facebook. Deleting the app would not have saved the Rohingya from getting genocided.
By graemep 2024-04-108:36 I have seen some of the same with Sri Lankan posts. Loathsome stuff in Sinhala. Not calling for genocide, but definitely encouraging persecution and bigotry. One group that was particularly poisonous was removed after a campaign by many people. One person complaining gets nowhere. I am sure there is more similar material elsewhere.
I think the underlying issue is that American companies view everything through the lens of American culture and if its not a problem in the US, then it is not offensive.
I once reported a racist comment on FB. Someone said that people of their race should not "interbreed" with people of another race because the latter are evil. FB said it did not violate their community standards.
IMO it was probably because it was a comment by a black person (probably American) about white people. That is not the major problem is the US so its fine.
By rgpenner 2024-04-108:57 > Restricting the right to free speech does have negative consequences... from the development of critical thinking skills; development of technical skills; and limiting of educational information.
That's not true. Those things are limited in bubbles like the one of the rationalists as well, so free speech has nothing to do with why people don't develop these things. It's a matter of character; and obedience to a system that establishes the rules that evaluate social, academic and economic status.
The Supreme Court was capable of distinguishing between free speech and moron speech but the Party was too convincing.
Most of the parents of these kids don't have the required flow of information to handle their kids consumption. And more importantly, their stress levels are too damn high already. Which is also the result of the Party's long term strategy.
And if all the other parents say it's normal and the same for their kids, even those parents where it is not the case, which are those that know that's why their kids will be better off while everything collapses (vs making sure their kids are better off while nothing collapses), then there is no way but super-rationality to identify a problem and then there's the willpower to go against the accusations and the time required for researching strategies to deal with the problem while the rest of the world, and school, and one's own life keep working as they always did.
If there's bait, the untrained puppy bites. Unless the untrained puppy was trained to bite and puke it out afterwards to find hints at who put the bait right in the path of all those innocent puppies.
By magic_hamster 2024-04-1015:10 > if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.
That's not going to fix the echo chambers, divisive conspiracy groups, anti semitic posts and generally all the other terrible uses for online platforms that contribute to the destabilization of our society.
You can't make a social problem go away by telling individuals "if you don't like this problem please avoid it". Similarly, you can't expect to tell people "the effects of methamphetamine are negative for our entire society so please don't partake". For problems that become a state, country or even world problem, something else is needed.
By passwordoops 2024-04-109:42 Sorry to seem glib, but by this same token we should be lift all restrictions we place on youth including smoking, drinking, etc.
There's a very clear causal relationship between IG and mental health that goes beyond a moral choice and ideals of free speech
By barrysteve 2024-04-107:24 You are not given a choice to opt out. You are included in an ever-increasing dragnet of surveillance. The incentives are set up for it.
You either play the sisyphean game of personally blocking a billion dollar company from including you. Or you reach for the long arm of the law.
We all know FAANG gave us no choice but to use government ruling.
It is important to remember that freedom of speech is more important than having a functioning society of a healthy populace.
By nmz 2024-04-1322:30 FB, IG, Tiktok etc are platforms/publishers, they're not individuals, free speech has nothing to do with them.
> And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.
100% my reply to any critic of teenage social media, but the parents' stance is always "but then my kid is going to FOMO and feel left out".
By hn_throwaway_99 2024-04-0922:154 reply I feel so bad for teenagers/kids who we essentially screwed over with this tech experience. That said, I don't feel great for the rest of us either! I feel like my phone has become a significant negative in my life. And in general, I'm quite scared because we have put things in place that we know are bad for mental health:
1. Even if we may not like it all the time, there is tons of data that show that personal interactions and relationships are good for mental health. With so much technology and so many things going remote (I'm not just talking jobs, but I'm talking about the fact that it's very easy, for example, to never need to walk into a store anymore. I recently went to a fast food restaurant and there were no customers inside at lunchtime, normally a busy time, and I ordered on a kiosk and everyone else just ordered at the drivethrough) it's harder and harder to just see random people and our friends without explicit planning.
2. As someone who recently got over a severe episode of depression, I strongly believe time spent in nature and just outside in general is really good for the mental health of humans. With so much tech it's easier and easier to basically never go outside unless you make it a point to do so.
> With so much technology and so many things going remote it's harder and harder to just see random people and our friends without explicit planning.
The average american adult went from socializing with friends and family 12+ hours a week few decades ago to less than 4.
By tnel77 2024-04-1017:16 One complaint I have is that it feels like I have to put in almost all the work to make plans with friends and family. Also, these plans must be well in advance. My immediate family and I might decide to go to a park and I’ll text a friend that lives nearby. “Hey, if you’re looking for an excuse to get out of the house we will be at <park>.” No one has ever taken us up on this kind of invitation even though they’ll later complain about being bored or needing to get out.
By sourcecodeplz 2024-04-1010:531 reply Depends on where you live and maybe for how long. For me for example, I live in the city in an apartment. I go out in the morning to buy bread. It is 50% likely I will meet someone from my neighborhood and chat for a minute or just say hi.
If I really want to chat a little, I will go to one of the other small shops next to me and buy a beer/coffee and talk with the owner or whoever is outside the store.
Because I work from home most of my friends are at work during the day. But come evening and you can hang out for at least an hour, with someone you know, every single day if you want. There is no planning, you just go to the places you know people hang out, and they will be there. And if you don't want to talk much, you can just listen.
I feel I am blessed to have this because I was an expat for some years and you don't know what you have until you don't have it anymore.
By misiti3780 2024-04-1012:581 reply you live somewhere in europe i assume?
By ametrau 2024-04-1116:57 Haha I was thinking the exact same thing. No way is this a city where I come from
Your points here are worth more emphasis. As a chronically unemployed software dev who's burnt out and crashed at least 3 times, I've spent a hell of a lot of time reflecting, and try my best to communicate these ideas to people who have the opposite problem; lots of work, but no new friends since highschool, and desperately single.
People tend to rely far too heavily on the easiest way to convince themselves they're having valuable social interactions, whether it's social media or betting that their work friends will still be there when they get laid off. They'll rely on Tinder for sex and try to bridge that to something more meaningful out of thin air, or they'll buy a dog and hope that solves the problem. Some of these are uniquely millenial and onward, some others carry over from Gen X and boomer culture imo, whereby you isolate yourself from the rest of society in the suburbs or wherever and count on personal relationships you acquired for free.
Along with this, in many places we've let the catalysts for social growth get stripped away by commodity bullshit and simulated interaction. Costco is probably the closest thing many people have to bumping into someone, no shot are they going to do it at the adult version of the playground, because there often isn't one and they won't go. (obviously this is more true in some places and for some people than it is for people who've realized this or who innately direct their life this way).
My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness. You don't become a pro anything spending 30 min a week on it, and no valuable personal relationships come about that way either. That's how you met people in Uni, that's how you met people at work, you gotta branch off of those places and ya gotta keep it going gradually. If you don't live in a place that facilitates that, vote with your wallet and try to find a new one.
This goes for nature too, if you're only exposure is 2 days of hiking once a year when you travel, and the rest is spent in an office, it's not something you can remedy any other way.
If you drive to work 1 hour each way, and work 8 hours, you're probably doomed, unless you've already done all that and can keep your existing things going. It's just not enough margin, be real about what you're sacrificing and why.
By luzojeda 2024-04-1010:46 >My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness. You don't become a pro anything spending 30 min a week on it, and no valuable personal relationships come about that way either. That's how you met people in Uni, that's how you met people at work, you gotta branch off of those places and ya gotta keep it going gradually. If you don't live in a place that facilitates that, vote with your wallet and try to find a new one.
This is why for many of us the last place we made meaningful relationships was university: lots of time in a same place physically + common objectives + relativeley same age and interests = friendship.
The formula is simple but today the first component is what is most difficulty. Along with #3 I'd say. Many people recommend taking "classes" such as theater, ceramic, etc. but after doing all the hard work of finding a place near you, that you can pay if you find the average age is +- 15 your age it gets really desmotivating. There is nothing bad of going to classes with seniors but reality is you can't make true friendships with someone your grandfathers' age.
By itronitron 2024-04-108:05 I agree with all of your points and would add that the metrification of social interactions degrades social connections as it fosters a bias towards competitiveness. Furthermore, the people that are put off by that reduce their participation so it becomes a market for lemons.
As a solution to teenager anxiety I would propose a compromise solution wherein all school communications, school groups, and extracurricular activities must not use any social media platforms for communication.
By OkayPhysicist 2024-04-1017:241 reply In my experience, most people are adequate at making setting-specific friendships, like "gym friends", "work friends", etc. What they struggle at is progressing those relationships to not being setting specific. Which involves inviting people places, and eventually progresses to full-blown planning, both of which are skills only learned with practice.
By brailsafe 2024-04-1020:41 Agreed, I probably should have emphasized branching off of that too. Another component that slipped my mind, is taking those setting specific friendships outside their context. If you can't do that, it's probably worth spending more time on one's you can; not actively distancing yourself from them, but if you can't talk to them outside that one building, it might be difficult to build something more meaningful, or it may be a sign they're just not into you.
By bigcaesar 2024-04-1110:14 Makes sense, I feel something not talked about enough is the last point, most people spend the bulk of their day at work or doing work related thing like preparing for it, commuting and even winding down for the stress of a long day of work. This leaves the average person with little to no time, and definitely no energy, to pursue other interests, passions, hobbies, etc. Even if you are well paid, the money doesn't buy you the time nor the energy.
By firewolf34 2024-04-105:354 reply > My theory is that to meet a new person and have it be substantial, you basically need to spend a few hours, a few times per week, in the same space doing some arbitrarily interesting thing for a common reason, without being too eager but with a signaled sense of openness.
I like this concept, and I feel like I've experienced this as well, but I'm having trouble picturing an example of what you're describing, practically speaking, for the average city-dweller. Care to elaborate on this?
This the much discussed “third place” that has all but disappeared in much of western life. See _Bowling Alone_ for a very early (pre social media) analysis of this idea.
A third place could be a coffee shop, a bar, a church, a softball league, a book store, or even just a nice park. By and large people don’t go to these places nearly as much anymore, except to consume and leave. And if they do go there they are on their phones until they finish their transaction and leave.
By Tade0 2024-04-1011:36 > This the much discussed “third place” that has all but disappeared in much of western life.
American life if anything really.
Southern Europeans especially are an extreme example of how it is to essentially live outside.
I kinda met a gal in a class I was taking at a community center. Couldn't tell if she's into me or just nice; didn't push it. Maybe I'll see her in another class in the future, but I'm there to learn.
By throwaway2037 2024-04-109:001 reply Why is this downvoted? It answers the GP. It seems reasonable to me. Taking classes at the community center sounds like a good way to meet people.
By abnercoimbre 2024-04-109:301 reply Made no sense to downvote him, it's actually relevant to the discussion.
By abnercoimbre 2024-04-1018:451 reply Sorry. I'm gay, I get it :)
By klyrs 2024-04-1019:17 That's... what she said?
No; if she had, I'd have been more forward. :)
By anonfornoreason 2024-04-1015:391 reply Lots of opportunities for friendship in something like jiu jitsu. It's not for everyone, but it's interesting because it is a physically close sport, you get used to basically hugging everyone for a sport, it's both physically and intellectually hard to learn, and there's a common language around it. Easy to identify people at your skill level and meetup for open mats, share videos of techniques, etc.
There's a million examples of this out there, regardless of what you find interesting. Art, music, sport, working out, adventure, travel, computers, flying, whatever.
I find it baffling people keep talking about disappearing third spaces. There's so much opportunity to do interesting things with interesting people!
By luzojeda 2024-04-1123:31 Paid classes of X never have been or ever will be third places. Because you have to pay a determinate amount to participate. One of the requisites for a place to be a _third_ place is you aren't obligated to spend money (or not a significant amount of it) to stay an amount of time where you can chat and make friends casually. That doesn't mean you can't make friends here but when we talk about third places we mean something else.
By rpacut 2024-04-1012:01 [dead]
By specialist 2024-04-1113:07 re #2: Yup. My solution is volunteering, creating urban forests. Digging out invasives, planting natives. It's surprisingly social. And helps my mental health.
