While I get your point, I am amused you are worried about "building relationships" with an account named throwaway14356 which kind of implies you are ready/happy to drop this account at any moment. :-)
My view, not every relationship in the world is to be deeply meaningful or productive. I am happy if I get a nice thought or new angle from this blobs-of-text site.
Im not trying to stop the world from spinning. The sterile exchanges have their value.
The thing to reflect on is who you are: You are to some extend the way others see or experience you. The way you carry yourself or present yourself depends a lot on that perception.
You've changed into an entirely different creature communicating like this. We all have! All parts of humanity have changed as a rssult with huge implications.
I suppose I wish I wanted to go back. I'm still trying to figure out where we are and where we are going with this. If I wanted to go back it would mean I had that all figured out.
We get to bring non of our expensive cloths or other status symbols to the conversation, no race, sex, age, violence, leverage or accountability.
The diffence is mind blowing.
The HN kangaroo court is already hilarious but the trial by robots is many times more commical. People now build their lives on platforms that may erase them at any moment for no reason at all.
Is everything I wrote here advertiser friendly or constructive for the HN tech crusade to progress? I've never had such constrains on my personality. A new world where being generous, kind and helpfull simply isnt enough?
I could go on for days but im going to have to attend to the push notifications now. haha
The data is pretty clear that the only time social media is beneficial is if it leads to the formation/maintenance of long term relationships. Without that it's just entertainment, and entertainment that is not "happy" making for most.
Ok. But social media use itself has to be placed in context of the larger attention economy.
For example, is it worse than watching TV/cable/netflix/gaming/multiplayer gaming/crafting hobbies/reading books etc etc?
To answer my own question, I think Social Media is worse than the other options mentioned above and so I have long drifted off FB. And most of my friends on FB are continuing longstanding relationships.
But I don't know the studies on that and I am willing to accept that different people do things differently.
For example, on this site, I like the intelligent responses, thought provoking discussions, sometimes amazing recommendations on any number of topics. But I don't feel I need to be friends with any particular individual to benefit from that nor contribute to it.
The difference between liking/enjoying and gaining benefit I think is crucial here. It's akin to the difference between pleasure and happiness. No doubt the vast majority of people (if not everyone) on social media gains some pleasure from it. But as far as increasing happiness, aiding in quality of life and well-being and similar measures, it - in general - does not move the needle and not infrequently pulls in the opposite direction (in the absence of personal bonds).
The other important difference is between using social media sites as "literature" (i.e. not interacting with it but just consuming its thought-provoking and useful content, as you mention) and as a conversational medium. The former - in the absence of obviously harmful content like people showing off and then comparing oneself to them, or outrage porn, ect - is as far as I'm aware harmless and has a similar profile to reading in general.
But the constant one-off interactions, like this? It hits different. We know that consistent interaction with the same person - even if it is light meaningless interaction - has benefit. One study that comes to mind is of the daily interaction between customer and cashier every morning at the coffee shop. Believe it or not that has a statistically significant (though by no means large) positive effect on a person's mental state. Deep personal one-off conversation in person also have a significant benefit, at least in the short term.
But this - whatever this is - generally doesn't. Of course everyone is different, and obviously not everyone uses it exactly the same way, so there are outliers. But also human beings are talented at lying to themselves about the effects of things on them, often in the direction of exaggerating or inventing a benefit (and also failing at the afore-mentioned differentiation between pleasure and happiness). That's one of the big problems that researchers in outcomes studies on any number of things have to deal with. Objective observer and close other ratings of a person's happiness after say therapy or anti-depressants are often wildly less rosy than the person's self-report. We humans are often not good at being honest with ourselves.
But you are right about the "attention economy" context. We - near worldwide it seems - have little perfected the art of leisure. Our institutions have failed us, and we in turn have created little to take the place of the old ways. Our choices are too often between similarly poor options. That's probably why work and over-work have remained as popular as it has - what lies outside of it is too often stupefying. Which is one reason why I'm here now, talking with you, embracing (or stomaching) this momentary pleasure in what is perhaps a trade-off with a bit of my happiness.
I largely agree with you. You make a compelling case for meaningful interactions over the trite. You make good points as to like vs benefit, the possible detriment of a battery of one-off interactions, the failures of humans to recognise their own state/risk.
I feel we could go listing more things around social media and this post could go on forever. But I won't, because of the below.
Every person is acting in their own perceived self interest. Including me.
So for myself, because of many of the reasons you state, I largely gave up on FB. I think I am better off for it due to more meaningful real world interactions.
But then with a social group in the real world space do I need to continue adding friends all the time via HN? Not really. Cue Seinfeld "I'm sure you're a very nice person you seem to have a lot of potential, but we're just not hiring right now." Maybe I am doing myself a disservice by not "socially climbing" but honestly at some point, I can only do so much. I love the people I do, and I am content with that.
But - like the world in general - HN as a site has some amazing people. And what I glean from this site through "literature like" reading I feel benefits me.
And then, like you, I comment occasionally - in the vein of HN trying to make it a positive contribution - so as to try to return to someone else a similar benefit as I feel I have received. I try not to be trite. I try not to worry as to whether a comment is well received as long as I have tried to make a decent contribution. I don't always succeed of course, and maybe that's where the detriment sets in.
But - despite the evidence that social media is only good for pursuing deeper and more meaningful relationships - I don't feel I need to be a particular friend of yours to try add a thoughtful reply. It doesn't mean I love you any less however. Hell, maybe a meaningful relationship will develop of it's own natural accord as we both live on. But it's not my aim.
Have a great day, whether you celebrate Xmas or not.
Google scholar is the easiest source, but I can help by sharing a few (there is no single paper I know of that sums everything up). It's a difficult topic because so few solid studies have been done - but everything we know suggests that its effects are - on average - weak. In other words, online time appears to neither add to nor detract from the lives of most people (at least directly). It's just time filled up with vanilla.
But there are a minority of folks on either end of the spectrum. On the negative side, specific types of personalities, attachment styles, and so on can suffer significantly on the internet and especially on social media. The media loves these studies, there’s a ton and they are easily found so I’ll just refer you to scholar.
Then there are groups of people that gain from the internet. The few studies that have bothered to investigate how people use their time online and in social media in detail have found that talking to internet randos in one-off fashion does not help, but that - and I’ll quote here:
“When people use social media in a truly social manner (i.e., actively interacting with meaningful social relations in a way akin to in-person social interactions) it was positively associated with psychological well-being. We propose this is because truly social usage promotes meaningful social relations, which result in positive psychological consequences such as reinforcing one’s identity, feeling valued, and mitigating stressful situations. Yet, when people use social media in other ways (e.g., passively engaging with weakly connected others, celebrities, brands, companies, or strangers typically for entertainment purposes) it does not influence psychological well-being. Therefore, how and how much people use social media has implications for their psychological health.” (in https://www.msi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MSI_Report_21...)
Another recent study - this time on the 60+ crowd - found “answering questions online were positively related to depressive symptoms” and looking at photos of non-family members on social media was associated with anxiety (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/146144482110543...)
Then there’s the work of Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen, in which he focuses on who exactly gains from their time on the internet and how - and how this in turn perpetuates inequality. You can find his work here: https://research.utwente.nl/en/persons/alexander-jam-van-deu...
But the foundation of the argument for me lies more in the research on what contributes to happiness and well-being, and which of those variables can be realistically gained from time on the internet and social media. What in the long term will make a difference in a person’s life? And invariably the most impactful outcome is the formation of an offline friendships and so-called "social capital". Which appears to generally be a rare thing - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118080263543... - though it does happen, and it seems self-disclosure is a key to that (among other things) - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/146144481985874....
There’s more research that can be brought to bear on this, but that at least may provide a start for your own inquiry.
Thank you for taking the time to collect and post these, that is indeed an interesting starting point to dig deeper.
From what I gathered from glancing over a few of the links given, my own takeaway right now is “it’s complicated” since the effects on an individual seem to be mostly determined by the type of interaction as well as who you’re interacting with.
My view, not every relationship in the world is to be deeply meaningful or productive. I am happy if I get a nice thought or new angle from this blobs-of-text site.