Another day, another person telling you how to live your life...
Sorry, but even though we know social media has its downsides, it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc.
It's a tool, like any other, and if used properly it can enhance your life.
Don't want to dunk too hard on this article, because the points made in it are valid. But they can be achieved while you're still active on social media.
For example, if used properly, you can get exposed to a lot of novel ideas in 2-minute bite sized clips. You can get motivated to hit any of the points mentioned in the blog.
Saying that, of course the article was written to be a very one-sided view on the topic. Given that, it's obviously going to be shared on social media and garner even more attention / clicks / eyeballs. It's not ... irony per-se, but something close to it.
There does seem to be a rather large "anti-social media" current here on HN and in tech spaces in general. I find it a bit odd how common that sentiment is, since for me it has been relatively easy to tailor social media to my interests in a way that regularly enriches my life.
I use Facebook for finding and registering to IRL events, and Instagram / Tiktok / Twitter almost exclusively for consuming tech, programming, and gaming content. With exes of mine, they seemed to mainly be scrolling through either comedy content or content related to their interests.
I'm sure it's very possible to engage with social media in unhealthy ways, but for the issue of modern life feeling isolated or empty, I wonder if social media has become an easy scapegoat for deeper societal problems. (some possibilities: work that doesn't feel meaningful or rewarding, insufficient leisure time, car-centricity / hostile urban planning)
I wasted my time on BBSes and IRC long before social media. I absolutely agree that optimizing for engagement can have some seriously bad consequences and it might even be good to look at regulating it, but a lot of the anti-social-media stuff feels like hipsterism, or ludditeism, or something.
It's sure interesting to notice a crowd who, no doubt, mocked the "violent video games caused Columbine" go full throttle after social media.
Correct in theory, but we universally agree that illicit drugs can be damaging to your life. -- even in some cases taking them not seriously enough can cause addiction and serious issues stemming from that.
We just need to figure out if Facebook/Twitter/Youtube are paracetamol, codeine, vicodin, cocaine or heroin.
Always happy to hear other perspectives, but I genuinely don't think I've ever heard someone say "drugs cannot damage your life in any way". I would be pretty surprised if more than 1% of people believe this.
We definitely do not universally agree whether cocaine should be illegal. Drugs are a good analogy though because they can be used to improve life or misused with very bad outcomes. Tarring all instances with the same brush, or expecting every user to experience them the same way, are both mistakes that shouldn't be applied to drugs or SM.
> it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc.
In what way are these advantages over not using social media?
They're all things you can do — provably — without social media. In fact, the problem we've identified that leads us to questioning our use of it is that social media is actually a less effective way to stay in touch with friends and socialize.
> They're all things you can do — provably — without social media.
People who hold this opinion, when asked to define what counts as social media, will invariably draw the line based on "what do I like/dislike." Facebook, Snapchat: social media. HN, WhatsApp: not social media.
I'm not making that argument though. What I'm saying is, you can do all of those things (keeping up to date with friends, socializing, finding recipes, etc.) without social media. Indeed, without computers of any kind. The proof is that people did it for thousands of years before social media existed. If the argument is that you can do those things better with social media, my second point was that that hasn't turned out to be the case for many people, particularly when it comes to maintaining meaningful social connections.
> The proof is that people did it for thousands of years before social media existed.
That argument does not make sense. For "thousands years", you lived in small one room cabin with kids, grandparents and maybe even sibling there. You socialized, because there was no way to be alone.
Good luck finding people now willing to live with you that way.
No one will trade letters with you either. They expect you to communicate and socialize at places normal for contemporary society.
Are you using social media, correctly, as you put it.. Or. is social media using you?
I find that even if you go out of your way to sanitize and make SM useful to your needs. You can't do away with the unhealthy incentives around it and possible potential dopamine addiction.
Everybody seems to like to accuse you of secretly being brainwashed if you say you like something they don't. Honestly, what is so different about being on here and being on Reddit, for instance? It's the same thing.
Speaking of myself, I have been on Twitter for ~10 months. I have created a nice bubble for myself by carefully following serious experts in my topics of interest. I unfollow someone at the first sign of them exhibiting troll behavior (which I define myself).
I can confidently say that I have benefited significantly by way of increasing my knowledge in my interest area and gained a good variety of perspective.
I do agree that there’s always a temptation to go for “likes” and get pulled into some heated debate. But after a while it becomes easier.
> Sorry, but even though we know social media has its downsides, it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc.
Alcohol is useful for helping me sleep but it’s not healthy to use alcohol to help get sleep and there are other, less harmful, ways to achieve the same end.
Sorry, but even though we know social media has its downsides, it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc.
It's a tool, like any other, and if used properly it can enhance your life.
Don't want to dunk too hard on this article, because the points made in it are valid. But they can be achieved while you're still active on social media.
For example, if used properly, you can get exposed to a lot of novel ideas in 2-minute bite sized clips. You can get motivated to hit any of the points mentioned in the blog.
Saying that, of course the article was written to be a very one-sided view on the topic. Given that, it's obviously going to be shared on social media and garner even more attention / clicks / eyeballs. It's not ... irony per-se, but something close to it.