There are lots of bullshit studies out there that just don't need to be done, but Meta apparently got a study started that should be done, but when they didn't lie the results, they shut it down. They are blaming the methodology, which might be the case, but they hired Nielsen to do the research, which has been doing it for over a hundred years now and are considered reputable. The findings showed that users who took a week break from Facebook and Instagram
experienced fewer feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison pressure.
We were on a break!
*No surprises though, are there? I mean, if people don't realise how harmful all of these platforms are to their wellbeing, than they must be bloody idiots. With all the information out there, as well as personal reflection, it is akin to the people who keep smoking knowing that it is severely reducing their quality of life. Most people would call them idiots too.
Yet, there are billions of social media users who are sucked into the algorithms across multiple platforms, spending copious amounts of their awake time scrolling mindlessly through a feed that is tailored to keep them scrolling, whilst offering nothing of value. Yeah, you can say that you find some value in it if you want, but if it isn't spurring you into positive action, it is not changing you for the better. So that means, it is valueless.
While turning over trillions.
Pretty pathetic.
I wonder if there will come a time where we look back at these few decades of history and say, what the fuck were we thinking... but that is unlikely. Because as we do more of it, we think less, and our behaviours change to become less intelligent, less reflective, and requiring more instant gratification. Not many addicts make it out of their addiction, by doing more of what they are addicted to.
Yet, I think it is pretty clear that the current social media platforms, in their current forms are harmful, so why do parents keep pushing their kids onto them? Why aren't parents taking the parental reins and putting a stop to it? Why isn't knowingly putting children in harm's way, not considered child abuse?
Depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison pressure.
As far as I know, it is illegal in most countries to show underage children pornography. And I am guessing that most would frown upon a parent sitting their kids down in front of horror movies, seeing it as a type of abuse. Yet, the same people don't seem to mind kids spending dozens of hours per week scrolling through feeds that encourage depression, anxiety, loneliness and comparison pressure.
And it isn't that these states don't exist without social media, but the platforms create an ecosystem and conditions to nurture the growth of negative personal and social experience. They create a place that supports harm in many ways, even though most of it isn't explicitly saying to be harmed. Instead, it is rather insidious, taking users on a journey of incremental steps into a world that they would never have agreed to had they known the destination, or even the direction.
But now we know.
Yet, every new shitty platform attracts hundreds of millions of users to subject them to new harms, in a more targeted, tailored environment. And parents support their children in this too, despite knowing the dangers, even if they do not understand the platform. Changing the brand of cigarette doesn't make smoking nicotine healthy.
Much like reality television and the million shows that have wannabe, has-been and nobody "stars" on them, I will be glad when social media as we know it today comes to an end and is unsetted. It isn't that it is all bad, but the majority of it is terrible for us. We can take some of the lessons learned and the bits and pieces that might be useful to improve experience, and get rid of the rest. Perhaps then we could return to a state of actually being social, talking with people locally and more directly, rather than broadcasting to millions of strangers in the hope to trigger the advertising mechanisms and go viral.
I am not holding my breath.
People will keep harming themselves, because it is easier than quitting.
Taraz
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The findings from that Meta study emphasize the necessity for a change in how society perceives social media. It is sad to see parents pushing their children to use platforms that might cause anxiety and feelings of loneliness.
But it is easier for parents than actually having to interact with their kids.
I've known this facts that social media has it positive impact and it's negative impact also. @tarazkp but I will always maintain a stand that the positive impact is way more accommodating than the negativity.
Let me state some negativity that these social media indirectly prompted or promoted was the propaganda on sensitive information, information without fact check can be easily put out there and may cause uprising, the religious war and tribal sentiments cants just die down if there's no strict rule and enforcement laid down because someone in his room can just fabricate a lie and send to the public and it can cause a very serious tension. Same way the positivity of social media impacted human life better and faster than ever imagined. I just has it merits and demerits.
*Now for self discipline pertaining social media, the tender age needs parental guardians for proper indulgence to media. The kinds of message passed through the media destroy life's way easier than when social media wasn't in existence.
I think. *
I suspect that there are more negatives than positives, but the negatives people highlight are large, but the positives minimal. There are also many small negatives that stack up, compounding to make a massive amount of negative outcome, that people don't attribute directly to the platforms, but could.
I have been off Facebook for over five years... And I never got into any other social platforms. My only social platform is Hive and I think it is very tame compared to the Facebook and what sets Hive apart from other social platforms is stake and it feels like you are actually accumulating something, vs Facebook became pointless once I shut down my photography business...
This is the thing with all those platforms, they are there for "self-promotion" of some sort or another, which means they are not actually social. This is even more true now, where it has evolved into OnlyFans type things, a natural evolution of the medium.
There are actually some class action lawsuits going on right now where school districts are suing META for to the close they used which they were fully aware made the stuff addictive. Our district is part of the class I think.
At some point, the class actions should be against the governments too, for encouraging these platforms.
Oh, I am sure that is already in the works!
Sometimes I come across short videos on YouTube based on recommendations, and I watch two or three and realize I'm interested in something else. But I think there are people who get hooked and can watch 100 of these short videos in a row.
And the more they watch, the more addicted, and the less interesting the content becomes. The cycle speeds up, for more, more, more...
The Pain I've Seen
I've seen children playing, and automatically, when they win a physical game, they say, "If you like it, subscribe, comment, and like." As if it's automatic—they no longer know the difference between real life and the damn internet. They're poisoning their minds, and as a result, we'll see many suicides in the future. It will increase, and we'll see children turned into adults who spend millions on medicines to cure diseases being created right now.
It's the duty of parents to take care of them. Greetings, and keep your kids away from phones.
It is the same with babies who try to swipe the pages of a book....
This is the golden age of entertainment. It's what drives the our society. It's what people crave the most. That's the simple reason people are willing to part with their hard earned cash or spend a good chunk of their time enjoying these entertainments, even if it doesn't change their lives in any visible way.
That feeling of pleasure when scrolling or watching, is something they would do anything to have, because it feels so good. I can't blame them much because we humans are pleasure-driven. That's where discipline comes in and helps us not to pursue pleasure at the expense of our well-being.
A pleasure-hunter is no different from a beast. One whose main priority is just to feel good even if his life is being destroyed in the process. He might as well go forage for food with the wild goats.
"low quality entertainment" perhaps :)
Which makes blaming drug traffickers a problem too, because they only traffic because of demand. Blow up the users?
I knew it would play wit human trigger mechanism and dodged it. But others sadly got caught 😁. Media as a whole needs to be reset and only the accountable ones be let in...
Now everyone is triggered.
What makes all of this even more worrying is how quietly it’s happening. Most people don’t even notice the small changes in their mood, attention, or confidence until it becomes their “normal.” You don’t feel the damage in one day, but after months and years of scrolling, you suddenly realise you can’t focus, you compare yourself to everyone online, and your mind is constantly restless. This is rapidly affecting our younger generations and as they are often neglecting their role and opened to a lot of vices through the endless scrolling.
Nothing is wrong with the internet, but the wrong usage is what terrible bad.
And the saddest part? Many people know something is wrong, but they still can’t put the phone down. It’s like living in a world where everyone is tired, distracted, and emotionally drained, but nobody wants to admit that the cause is sitting right in their hands.
Maybe one day we’ll finally learn to disconnect, even if just a little. Life feels different, calmer, slower, more real, when the screen isn’t the centre of everything. But until more people take that step, the cycle continues: the platforms grow, the users shrink, and we call it “normal.” This affects the kids more. The parent needs to rise up and take their position by ensuring that what their ward is exposed to in streamline to the meaningful content.
The funny thing is that the children these days do lie on social media by not using their real ages in order to have access to many of the social media. The parent needs to seriously caution their ward in ensuring that they didn't abuse the mobile phone. However , what do we do about the parents that even used to endless scrolling on phone on their own? Are they not guilty of what they are to guide against?
Instant gratification you said. That is it. The origin of the problem. How can the parents correct and model their children when they themselves are hooked into the same thing. how can the government provide laws that will safeguard it's citizens against these threats posed by social media when they receive a lot of monetary compensation and propagate their ill motives via these social media platforms to convince a huge chunk of the masses.
I guess Meta's research revealed a deep truth they didn't want us to know that's why they had to shut it down. I believe that if they could find a way to make us believe otherwise they would do so without hesitation.
I agree with you on this; majority of the societal deviation from moral values is propagated through social media. No doubt that good things have also happened through social media but I really think we need a break. Self discipline is required if we must make a head way from what we have currently.
Parental guidance and Monitoring is important especially for minors and children in the early years of their development.
Social media has it’s positive and negative impact, As adults I feel like we can make intentional choices of what we watch on social media. For the kids I genuinely feel like parents have much roles to play in avoiding the negative impact of social media from affecting their kids. This includes parents getting involved in the kind of content their kids view, there should be a number of hours allocated for screen time, parent should also filter the things the kids should watch online, physical activities off social media should be encouraged, when there is more to do offline, there will be less time for them to spend online, parents should find areas of interest of their kids and engage them in those offline areas they picked interest in, and other things that exposes then to real life situations.
We're living in a society that sees all the evil going on, but choses only the things that prey on their pride to call it evil, other evils are just normal social dynamics that needs to be adjusted they tell themselves.
I believe that majority of our problems are caused by us and our government. We just believe that everything that does not discomfort us is good for our health. But until our lungs stops functioning the. We'll see how much evil we've done to ourselves.
No arguments about it, social media is has its good and bad side. And I think it has done us greater hem than the good it has done to us. Someone has to take responsibility,
When we begin to see and accept our flaws both as a society and as parents, then we would would take active measures to adjust appropriately.
In the new era, social media is making people addicted like drugs. Among them, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are among them. I have seen many of my younger brothers or roommates who, if they log out of Facebook or other social media for a short time, become disoriented because they are overly addicted. To be honest, I logged in to social media very rarely for a few years in the last 2020 and I think that time was spent quite well. Even when we went to the hilly areas with 15 to 20 people where there was no network, we did not have any headache about social media and we spent a lot of time together and those moments were the best moments between us. But nowadays we are becoming addicted a lot and cannot get out of it easily. Nowadays, parents are pushing their children towards this path. Because we ourselves are addicted, it is natural that we will push our children towards this path, but we do not know about the harmful aspects and we have no idea about how much mental and physical problems it causes us.
It’s wild how we all know these platforms mess with our mood, yet we keep going back like it’s a reflex. The study doesn’t surprise me at all,most of us can feel the difference in our mental state when we take a break. I think the scariest part is how normal the harm has become. We treat it like background noise instead of a warning siren.
Social media have big effects to how this generation think, act, and react. It will make you or break you.
It's such a sad phenomenon... And the worst part is that it's multiplying exponentially every day...
I was once an avid facebook user, during a particularly difficult and lonely period of my life. I am surprised folks felt less lonely off social media, unless they then spent more time in actual human contact. Were whole families off for that week?
I haven't been on facebook for five years, but man is it hard to get information without it! Nearly all businesses around here have abandoned costly websites in favor of free facebook accounts to advertise hours, menus, inventory, contact info, etc. Fortunately, it takes nothing for me to drive over there and see for myself.
No surprise that the results were questioned when they came up with the undesired conclusions. We ought to see this as an opportunity to question all studies of human nature, because all data can be manipulated to get whatever statistics are sought. Use your own eyes to decide what is true. Get off social media and see how it makes you feel.
Congratulations @tarazkp!
You raised your level and are now a Whale!
Social media has so many rude and argumentative people, many of whom are doubtless bots or engagement farms abroad. It's creating a palpable sense of hostility and manipulation far beyond the old days of internet trolls.
The algorithms feel designed to sell us stuff instead of bringing what we really want to see, like they know we'll scroll past some filler and ads in the hopes of the next good suggestion instead of showing us what we want up front.
And then there's the A.I. slop. So much slop! They can filter it if they want, like they filter alleged copyright violations and wrong think routinely. They can also stop the reposted imposter accounts sharing someone else's material as their own if they cared about their users as mucha s the kowtow to Disney et. al.
We know they don't care, and we know most of our friends are not disgusted enough yet to move to alternate platforms. So we go back. But it sucks.
I'm shocked to find those kind of results in your establishment, shocked, I must say.
It's kind of funny that Meta put that study into life in the first place. But also sad. It seems like they truly believe that they're doing good. That they're a real social network, that they're connecting people, bringing them together. Can't break that illusion.
Which it is. Everyone who thinks twice about those networks finds the danger in them. In the first place - making people not think twice.