At Facebook / Meta, employees often questioned Mark Zuckerberg whenever a study like this came out. Zuckerberg noted that the same held true for news media. Reporters do not like to mention this.
Sure. But in the same way that 24 hour news networks are an obvious detriment compared to brief half hour or hour long "evening news" programs, social media's patterns to keep you engaged are also a detriment compared with, say, a quick text to the people you care about checking in. There's a real positive buried in there, but the financial incentive to capture eyeballs turns it into a negative.
"Studies have linked poor mental health to news exposure during negative and traumatic events such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters; the more news a person consumes during and after these events, the more likely they are to suffer from depression, stress and anxiety. For example, a 2014 study surveyed 4,675 Americans in the weeks following the Boston Marathon bombings and collected data on how much media they consumed. Participants who engaged with more than six hours of media coverage per day were nine times more likely to also experience symptoms of high acute stress than those who only watched a minimal amount of news."
Kinda agreeing with me though? I said "doesn't matter as much".
Case in point, I think someone that watches 1 hour of news about the Boston Marathon bombings is going to be worse off than someone who watches 12 hours of news that happens to be mildly positive. The problem is (as I said) that the news these days is almost entirely negative, because that is what sells.
The news has always been "almost entirely negative", even when the only source was newspapers. But being informed of what's going on, vs being clueless; there's a societal benefit in having an informed citizenry.
This does presume that that half hour or hour is not a purely editorial function (think Walter Cronkite vs Tucker Carlson), and that the goal is to actually cover the news of the world, not create partisan wedges and glue eyeballs (again, same comparison). But even if it's negative, understanding what is going on matters, and is likely a net gain for society, with a minimal individual cost.
What isn't a net gain is being so consumed by world events (or worse, editorialized versions of world events) that you lose sight on your personal world, and are unable to enjoy the moments around you. A similar effect is at play with social media.
> he news has always been "almost entirely negative", even when the only source was newspapers
This doesn't ring true for me at all.
What percentage of broadsheets were dedicated to crime/murder back in the day? Now estimate the same for crime/murder being covered in the local evening news.
From my experience it's not even close. Broadsheets were actually informative, cable news is a lot of fear-mongering.
Depends on the news source. There is a noticeable difference between Tweets and unverified Facebook posts, news media from Buzzfeed or Salon, articles from a local newspaper, articles from The New York Times/Washington Post, and articles from the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal.
Not all news is designed for outrage. Several publications publish in-depth articles in a neutral way, where you can actually learn something. Investigations are also often genuinely useful for a better society. Zuckerberg's position therefore doesn't hold true for all news media.
Separately, depending on how your social media feed is set up, you can be feel jealous/lesser due to seeing the high points of the lives of people you know (depending on your personality type), seeing news on your feed, or seeing neither due to subscribing to accounts in niche fields.
And you could say the same about social media. I'm on facebook. I get no outrage. I unfollowed anyone who posts it and FB doesn't insert any. As an example right now my FB feed is:
> Picture of a the blood moon eclipse a friend took
> A Picture of a CD cover of a song a friend is listing too
> Pictures from my sister visiting her best friend in another state.
> A funny gif from a friend making fun of crypto crashing
> A poster of the new Japanese Ultraman movie and a friend saying he saw it and really enjoyed it and is looking forward to the Masked Rider movie.
> More pictures from my sister
> A collection of doodles from an artist friend
> A picture of my sister with 2 x-neighbors I haven't seen in 35 years
> A friend saying he loved the video game "The Final Station"
> More pics from my sister
> A friend posting a link to a music video she loves
> A friend posting about a game they made at a game jam
> A friend saying he started doing trip planning for families going to Disneyland.
> My aunt posting a picture of flowers my uncle bought her.
> A friend posting about a show he went to in Argentina
> My sister posting a words of wisdom type picture
> A friend posting he can't believe he's had the same job he loves for 8yrs already
> A friend posting an artist concept drawing of Cassini taking a picture of Saturn
> A friend who makes one off dresses on etsy posting her latest creations
> A friend posting he likes "Picard" but it should have had a "Shut up, Wesley" scene.
No outrage in my feed.
To put it another way, social media is what you make of it. If you don't want the outrage the stop following the outrage.
I've stopped going to facebook myself because even though a lot of it for me was like that (and no outrage or politics, that's just outrage and edge cases that filter onto aggregators like reddit), I noticed at some point that a third was Facebook ads, and another third ads made by other people.
I'm latching onto your post because a number of those are advertisements / promotions; social media has turned a lot of people into unpaid marketeers. In a sense, I mean I get that people are fans of e.g. TV shows, but still. Anyway here's some that I think are advertisements in disguise:
> A Picture of a CD cover of a song a friend is listing too
> A poster of the new Japanese Ultraman movie and a friend saying he saw it and really enjoyed it and is looking forward to the Masked Rider movie.
> A friend saying he loved the video game "The Final Station"
> A friend posting a link to a music video she loves
> A friend posting about a game they made at a game jam
> A friend saying he started doing trip planning for families going to Disneyland.
> My aunt posting a picture of flowers my uncle bought her.
> A friend posting about a show he went to in Argentina
> A friend who makes one off dresses on etsy posting her latest creations
> A friend posting he likes "Picard" but it should have had a "Shut up, Wesley" scene.
This kind of reads like an ad for Facebook. It sounds way to ideal. My feed is just reposted meme pages with the occasional baby and vacation picture thrown in
That does not seem controversial. However Facebook/Instagram does not allow you to only see results for friends you follow. Explore page, ads, recommended posts, shorts, reels pepper your news feed. And your friends posts are also sorted with the intention of maximum engagement, not relevance.
To add to this. I don't watch the news anymore (maybe that makes me a bad person). I also rarely read it (except for hacker "news") but... Every few weeks I visit my mom for a few days and she wants to watch the news around 10pm. It always massively over hyped violence, crime, political outrage, and it's funny, in a sad way, that she always gets upset at it and ask her why she keeps watching. She says "for the weather" to which I reply (you can ask your ipad/iphone) but she keeps doing it even though every night it's clearly upsetting her. I think it's a habit like she feels they day isn't over unless she ends the night with news, even though it's 90% designed for outrage and sensationalism.
That is the point of my comment: not all news sources are designed for clickbait. In contrast, consider The Financial Times's (FT's) headlines:
>Tiger Global slashes bets on tech groups after stock market sell-off
> News in-depth. Military briefing: why Russia and Ukraine are fighting over a Black Sea outcrop
> Investors pull $7bn from Tether as stablecoin jitters intensify
> Buffett buys $3bn Citi stake in value-hunting stock splurge
> Ethiopia atrocities cast long shadow as city of Lalibela prays for peace
> Qantas says synthetic fuel could power long flights by mid-2030s
Some of the news itself is tragic. But it's a false equivalence to claim that the headlines and article content between news sources (e.g. Washington Post vs. the FT) are equally outrage-provoking or informative. The Washington Post was listed in the middle because their articles are usually highly informative (from the number of interviewed people and documents analyzed), though their headlines are more clickbait.
Both The Washington Post or the FT are different from (typically) Salon, and each is a far cry from social media. Also, the debate of news media in place of discussing social media is exactly the effect that Zuckerberg intended with his comment.
Maybe try FT. Currently the Most Read headlines are:
- Bitcoin has no future as a payments network, says FTX chief
- Putin signals acceptance of Finland and Sweden joining Nato
- China’s economic activity plummets as Covid lockdowns hit growth
- "Russia learns a hard lesson about the folly of war"
- Harrow Beijing school loses its hallowed British branding
Or Wikipedia's Current events Portal:
- Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (pictured) is elected as President of Somalia.
- In the United States, ten people are killed in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
- Ukraine, represented by Kalush Orchestra with the song "Stefania", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
- Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan inherits the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and becomes President of the United Arab Emirates after the death of Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
I don't agree that it depends on the news source. The problem is consuming media and not acting on it. A person can use social media to inspire real positive change in their behaviors and their life, and a person can read in-depth, well-written articles about atrocities happening half-way around the world and just end up feeling powerless and depressed.
There are legitimate opportunities to act on the news. For example, I avoided a fairly convincing phishing attempt with my work email due to reading a relevant article in a mainstream newspaper. News can similarly help a person avoid scams and cons.
News also provides common conversational topics with different types of people. A lot of people in business read The Wall Street Journal, and it’s easier to find common talking points with them if I read the news (especially on news about their industry). Similarly, a lot of academics and people in education read The New York Times. Though reading the news isn’t necessary to start a conversation, it’s often an easy starting point.
My Twitter feed is basically the news. The first 4 of 5 posts are from established news organizations or about current events. Social media vs news media is a distinction without a difference.
Well no, not legally. Social media platforms have certain legal protections against litigation for their content while news organizations do not.
The distinctions are actually fairly profound and include established practices and professional norms concerning information sourcing, verification/due diligence, and editorial discretion. This is all before the agent-principal relationship, contractual obligations, and regulatory oversight to which news organizations are subject.
I understand why Zuckerberg needs to make the false equivalence, but we don’t (necessarily) share his profit motive and can be more objective here.
Firstly, traditional news media’s intrusion is not as severe or wide ranging. To give one example, the surge in teenage mental health problems that Facebook and Instagram in particular seem likely to have caused.
Second, there is a very large qualitative difference between social media and traditional media. Social media is monitoring your every action, and adapting to it, and creates a tight feedback loop where you are manipulated into staying engaged and consuming more adverts. That personalised real-time feedback loop, based on giant datasets that are very invasive, is incomparable to traditional media.
Finally, the extent of attention capture by social media cannot be compared to traditional media. This can be observed by simply taking a walk down the high street and seeing how many people are staring at their phones. Traditional media do use apps as a medium, but there aren’t many people who would seriously argue that most of those glued to their screens are likely to be reading an online newspaper and not looking at Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.
The only doubt I have is whether Zuckerberg actually believes what’s he saying, in order to have a clean conscience, or whether it’s a cynical argument used to reassure his staff.
> Social media is monitoring your every action, and adapting to it, and creates a tight feedback loop where you are manipulated into staying engaged and consuming more adverts. That personalised real-time feedback loop, based on giant datasets that are very invasive, is incomparable to traditional media.
I just want to add here that YouTube, while not exactly a social medium and not a traditional medium, also has a tight and instantly adaptive feedback loop. With this argument, staying off YouTube should be similarly relieving than staying off at least TikTok. At least, the hours you can waste are comparable.
Yes, the correct headline and takeaway should be: "Taking a break from ALL media makes you happier", or rather, "go outside and spend time with real people".
While that’s true, it misses the point – which is that Facebook is consciously and painstankingly designed you keep to “engaged”. Sure, everyone wants to keep their website visitors, but what Facebook does is a different level. (And many media consider their readers to be their customers, not the goods being sold. That’s a huge difference.)
You hear this kind of equivalence made a lot: social media is no different than the newspaper, or the TV news. This never made sense to me. Obviously, some characteristic of social media persuaded people to drop their newspapers and turn of their televisions to use their phones instead. There must be something qualitatively different about social media on mobile devices that explains this.
The difference may be that it is better and more enlightening, or it may be that it is more addictive and intrusive. But, it is not the same.
My significant other has a news app "addiction". A lot of them now mimic the feeds of social medias. She went up to spending 6 hours a day scrolling down the infinite scroll until we noticed the issue.
It might be the case that the psychological process here is that making a conscious change to your lifestyle makes you happier and less anxious (temporarily?). If so then the same is true of literally anything.
