Facebook's mental health problem
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IMO, this is more a case of social media bringing deeper problems to the surface than social media being the actual cause.
This isn't Facebook's problem, as someone else pointed out: 75% of Facebook users are almost certainly not suffering from depression. But it is a problem, and she wrote about her condition (as someone who's written about his own issues with depression, this is not easy to do) to present it to others, for them to maybe see a way to get a little better or perhaps to be more aware of what the condition is like for those that have it.
The whole point of the Facebook platform is to manipulate you -- it's a advertising engine. We don't have a lot of experience as humans with mass delivery of tightly targeted marketing designed to press your specific buttons.
I don't know that it's a bad thing, but I'm not willing to say that that type of intense marketing is ok for a person in a vulnerable mental state. If you're vulnerable to getting depressed, is Facebook exposure akin to putting a gambling addict in a casino or an alcoholic in a gathering with an open bar?
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-s...
I think its a combination of both. You draw a parallel between social networks and budweiser. Alcohol worsens depression and I believe social networks do as well. Whether or not they CAUSE depression is a totally different matter of course.
> depression... distorts your worldview
I think this should be up for debate as well. Even though I've echoed this sentiment myself, as someone with depression I'm starting to suspect that my own is brought on due to a very accurate understanding of the world. I've been painfully aware of my own and my family's place in the world (lower-middle-class) since I was a kid. My own and my family's mortality is another thing that makes me extremely depressed if I allow myself to think too deeply about it. Wars, world injustices, the ultimate meaninglessness of life... I've been thinking about all of this since I was around 5 years old. That's not a distorted worldview, its reality.
I think a lot of my own depression stems from the inability to block out all of the negative things in my life. Once I started meditating, stopped following the news so closely, got rid of my repressive religion, stopped letting lack of funds ruin my day (partially by blocking out all advertising), deleted my social networks and got into an excellent sleep routine I've been able to manage my depression and I feel a lot better.
I downloaded a video of a monk teaching it a while back (have since lost the vid so I can't say which one it was) -- i don't agree or believe in any of spiritual teachings associated with meditation but the physical / mental benefits were impossible for me to deny, even if it was a placebo effect.
I think it probably has to do with focusing your thoughts rather than letting them run wild -- i can't help but think of brains like a computer, and mine tends to get stuck in a recursive loop of negativity, but mindful meditation would almost always break me out of that loop.
Interestingly when I was religious I would pray during those same panic attacks (and always at night) and it would also calm me down. My former religion would have us pray as though we were actually carrying on a one sided conversation with god... being that I'm an atheist I think of prayer as a form of meditation now so i think the effects are very similar.
Sleep and "news deprivation" have both been very helpful to me as well, as has meditation.
> very acute understanding of the world without pleasurable inputs.
This sums it up perfectly. It's also what makes depression so dangerous. When you're at your lowest point you don't feel like you have a distorted worldview at all. You feel like you're seeing the world perfectly clearly. Of course, you're actually not. You're blocking out all the wonderful stuff that actually makes life worth living.
Blocking out news and advertising wherever possible has helped me too. And yes, this included quitting Facebook.
I've since realized that a lot of my unhappiness was created when I started reading all this news about how much money people like Zuckerberg were making while fucking up the world. It's great and amazing that we have access to this information, but expecting my own life and experiences to be different, or expecting myself to be wealthier or more powerful than I am just causes unhappiness when I'm not. I can't ignore these problems, but I had to accept where I am and stop beating myself up over it. Part of that comes from realizing I can remain calm, and work towards a better future, fixing problems as I know how to solve them.
Absolutely not. Facebook is engineered to be addictive, and happiness is based to a very large extent on perceived relative position in a social hierarchy.
Facebook is more like a horribly insidious version of advertising than food or alcohol.
People largely only post things that are happy, such as birth of a newborn baby, smiling kids, winning awards, having fun on vacation, while cropping out the sad or dull moments.
Those posts garner a lot of likes. And then those rise up in importance on feeds.
It's not uncommon to feel a bit envious of seeing these. So then we eventually we post something of comparable significance. Perhaps a new house. Or an achievement of our own like releasing a first version of something. Or a vacation we've scheduled.
It's creates a weird cycle detached from reality. I'm not depressed but I can't honestly say the experience doesn't affect me.
Except they don't. I see political garbage like outrage pieces from some liberal rag or some conservative website garnering all the votes. Everyone gets outraged, argumentative, etc. Facebook is like an eternal thanksgiving dinner with your overly political uncle.
The baby photos, vacation photos, etc are the ignored content here.
Dunno about that. I can avoid beer and ice cream or buy them at my own pace but due to familial, work, and social obligation I pretty much MUST use FB. My feed is a lot of hot cause celebres like the debunked Clock Kid or outrage political articles with questionable facts. Its overwhemling and I can see it driving people into sour moods if not aggravating depression. Its an endless chorus of extreme negativity. Hell, I think how much poorly sourced and biased political junk you post on fb is a character judgment and its sad to see how many of my acquaintance fail this basic test. I just want to log in to see whats going on professionally or see people's baby or vacation photos.
Worse, FB is gamified to produce these results. People crave likes and just cater to their audience, hence the political crap and other negativity. There's a lot of work in this field and the FB guys know how to exploit people's desire for attention and validation.
>IMO, this is more a case of social media bringing deeper problems to the surface than social media being the actual cause.
As technologists, I think this kind of attitude is especially dangerous. Our products cause harm. Lets stop pretending they don't.
I wonder to what extent Facebook's advertising algorithms (which dilute the content/ad ratio of news feed items) are capable of driving depression. If their algorithms are bumping posts from friends in favor of ads, your news feed feels more "cold". I'm guessing that at least a small percentage of Facebook's users are unaware that the news feed is generated by an algorithm, and that your friends may be saying / sharing things that are not shown to you.
Are Facebook's algorithms capable of influencing the happiness of its users? I don't have a good answer for that, but it does seem plausible.
In my 20s, for sure, I saw status updates and random pics all the time.
Now? It's practically only wedding/baby/children/home improvement pics. Instagram is pretty much the only way I see how remote friends are doing on a day to day basis.
I think you hit an age where your realize your social capital has real worth and just blabbing about the inanities in your life makes you seem immature. Your social capital gets pissed away on this stuff and now people remember you as the girl who always complains about runny eggs and berates waiter staff or the guy who is always posting angry libertarian screeds. Why would I want to spend time with either of them?
I also imagine there's a lot less "peacocking" from men and women in their 20s trying to find relationships and using FB as a way to do that or promote themselves in a certain light for those ends. By the time youre in your 30s, you're probably already in a LTR and have no need for that kind of thing.
I think this is because, as you say, people maintain radio silence apart from major life events. When someone posts one of these major events, everyone else feels like they have to hit 'like' out of a sense of loyalty, which propagates these posts much further across the graph. These are the only type of posts I've seen that routinely get 100+ likes.
I actually think this could be a factor in the downfall of FB, as it develops its own social norms (e.g. "I must always 'like' any photo of a female hand with an engagement ring on it, despite the fact it looks identical to every other one"). The number of likes a post receives is now completely divorced (pun intended) from the inherent quality of the post, so the like button no longer works as an upvote system.
I don't think it ever worked as an upvote system. I think that many users have that expectation, but Facebook has never really used "likes" alone to determine news feed placement.
But I agree, I think this social phenomenon combined with ad blockers (which effectively block Facebook's data feed into what sites users visit outside of Facebook) will lead to significant downward revenue pressure on Facebook. There's not really anything competitive yet; but advertising doesn't feel like a viable model long-term.
Last year Facebook did an experiment/study where they tried to see if they could affect a user's emotions through manipulating their news feed.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-u...
>This is shoddy statistics, but: 350 million people is one quarter of Facebook’s global user base.
Admitting that you're using shoddy statistics doesn't somehow excuse it. You can draw absolutely zero conclusions from those two data.
(Though technically, you can conclude that at least 75% of Facebook's global user base is not suffering from depression.)
Na, they have other issues ranging from exhibitionism to narcissistic tendencies
~10% profiles are fakes/bots
x% are duplicates
x% are created as business profiles
FB has more fake profile than 186 out of 196 countries actually have people, in fact all but the top 10 countries by population. Therefore, more than 75% of FB users (distinct from profiles) could suffer from depression.
I may not have scientific evidence but I think alot of us could say it feels like an addiction, and even is something we don't want to do but do anyways, it makes us less happy but we still do it, it distracts us from work but we still do it, it robs of of intimacy but we still do it. I don't know about scientific research but that sounds like an addiction to me. THAT, is why social media is dangerous.
Do you have goals in life? Is social media effecting your goals and the people around you? Then limit it or get it out of your life.
I also think it plays into depression for a lot of people because:
1. People cherry pick what they want to share so you are not getting an accurate representation, and thus youre comparing all of your life, the cherry picked and non cherry picked to theirs, which will inevitably lead to dissapointment. They will show their photos of their trip to France but not that they fight almost every night or have not done their dishes in a week. They will post pictures of sushi but not how eating out all the time is racking up their credit card debt. Maybe you should stay at home and save money and maybe they are destroying their financial lives, but yet you still feel inadequate for not having as exciting of a life? That doesn't sound healthy..
2. It's a stalking website for insecure people and people who do not have the courage to engage or care enough to maintain a real relationships but want to keep tabs on you. Why would someone who never interacts with you in real life want to keep tabs on you? Try to that answer that quesion. Does it lead to anything good?
Now ask yourself why do YOU need it? Do to those same things to other people? To feel better about yourself? Why do you have so many selfies? Who are you trying to impress? What are you trying to prove to other people? What are you trying to prove to yourself?
I'll admit when fb first came out it was fun, before relatives and employers and ads came onto it. It was a way to get invited to college parties and wake up the next morning and laugh with your roomies as you scroll through pics and remember what happened the night before. It was NOT about relationship pain, being forced to announce to the whole world when something happens to you or you break up, hating other people and ways to engage in infidelity, or bragging about how many tens of thousands of dollars you spent on your wedding photographer, but lets be honest with ourselves, now it is.
SOME ANECDOTAL STUFF:
For some people its reddit. my ex boyfriend was so addicted to reddit we could be in the middle of a crisis, or on one such occasion I was discussing the pros and cons of a long distance job that would require one of us moving or living apart and thus him doubling his rent expenses, things I would assume he would be inherently interested in and he was browsing reddit on his phone the whole time. its like, nothing was more important than reddit. Sometimes its just about maturity and respect. He would stay up late at night and complain about not getting sleep because he couldn't stop browsing reddit.
It even affected our intimate life. I'm not a controlling girlfriend, and I respect if other people have different opinions or boundaries for what is ok with their boyfriends to do or not do, but I didn't really care he looked at porn. But over time amateur stuff on reddit became an obsession and anytime I did not feel comfortable doing something he would try to say well other girls do it on here. Well I'm not them.
How am I supposed to beat the collective satisfaction of the entire internet or even compete with it? There will always be a prettier, more successful girl with better photoshopped selfies and a shorter skirt on facebook you are friends with, than me. There will always be a girl on the internet willing to do something in bed I'm not willing to do. So accept me for who I am or get over it and move on. (The long end to that story is I did have to dump him because this kind of stuff ended up destroying our relationship and now he is incredibly depressed and I get emails from him about how its "eating him away inside" regarding the state of our relationship when it ended. Yup, thats right social media distorted his ability to properly value what was standing right in front of him and as a result he lost what really mattered to him, wow, sounds like an addiction to me.)
But the truth is with that attitude nothing will ever satisfy you, so the more you do it, the more of a drug it is the more you need it the more it's never enough, the more the person your dating seems somehow subpar to the collective standards of all the other people you browse or look at or are "friends" with on facebook while forgetting that as individuals all of those people have flaws and limitations and after a year of living with them will probably dissapoint you in some ways as well, and the less the people around you in your real life will be able to satisfy you.
I got rid of facebook in 2013 after I broke up with my ex, because everyone in our friends group didn't want to talk to either of us about how we were doing or help, they just wanted to see when we would change our relationships status so they could talk about us behind our back. The second I did guys that had not spoken to me in months or years were suddenly texting me like hey whats up. Really?
That's when I realized the people who actually care about you don't need your facebook profile. People who need your facebook profile are people who want to talk poorly of you and compare you to other people and judge you and keep track of when you can be of use to them, relationship wise or otherwise. What a pointless network it's devolved into.
Since I got rid of facebook the week we broke up, my life has gotten so much better. I'm focused on MY life, not anyone elses, and when I accomplish something its for ME. I don't have anywhere to post it or brag about it so you have to ask yourself what really motivates you in life? If impressing other people has anything to do with it then social media is probably going to aid in that toxic thought process you have an influence your behavior in a way that may ultimately be harmful to you.
My real friends which is maybe 5 or 6, some who live across the country still remember to call me on my birthday even though fb does not remind them. People I was not that close to or I didn't think I would ever be friends with stepped up and really reached out to me and helped me get through a hard time, people i least expected and they are not toxic or gossipy and they are not checking my facebook to laugh about me behind my back.
If a guy or really anyone at all ever wants to get to know me, he has to actually walk up to me and start a conversation, or is going to meet me through mutual friends, REAL friends, not friends scheming to hook people up on facebook, and before the conversation he doesnt kno w 1. how old i am where i went to school who i am dating who im friends with what i looked like on my summer vacation last year...
so all of my relationships friendships or otherwise feel much more organic and it weeds out people who can use information about you to manipulate you or mirror your interests fakely to get close to you.
Yep, this paragraph nails it. It all became serious business.
Yeah that's called addiction. Sweet Christ people actually do that? I post on Facebook very occasionally and it's usually bitching about something relating to code or just posting a picture of something cool. I don't even invest enough in this stuff to call it "composing" without feeling a little weird saying that.
That part of facebook contributes value to my life - I'd quite happily ditch the rest of it.
I've long quietly suffered from depression. I didn't bother to make this known to friends or family. I didn't want people to think of or treat me differently. I didn't want to go on medication and knew if I revealed my suicidal thoughts that people would look at me differently and probably force me to go on medication.
Several years ago I went through some really rough experiences -- divorce, loss of religion, family shunning, all at the same time. This hit me incredibly hard, but I buried my depression in constant recreation, work and alcohol. That's not to say I became or am an alcoholic - I'm not. I go for months without touching the stuff sometimes... but I began frequenting bars for a while on a near nightly basis.
Several years prior to that I also caved and started using social networks - twitter, facebook and instagram. Eventually my depression won out and started to show through. I couldn't stop complaining about everything in real life, but more so on social networks.
When I hit peak depression I felt like I was also losing my mind... and it showed in my facebook / twitter posts. As I feared my friends started viewing me differently. I got dumped by my GF because of my depression and inability to seek help (this was made known to me on her exit). That caused me to go on medication and then things got really bad.
The shit the doctor put me on had me thinking really crazy and I made plans to kill myself, which I obviously backed out of (not a ghost lol).
Eventually I went off the pills and got my head strait and I recently got a fulltime job and have been living with a new wonderful GF who understands depression for a couple of years now.
One of the biggest things that helped was near complete seclusion -- I noticed that the pressure (and worse - feedback) on facebook was crushing me. Often I would get mocked or would draw the ire of some of my "friends" for some of my crazy / emphatic posts. Rather than trying to understand me or help, these people turned on me. Interestingly these were people I know in real life (I had a rule that I would only friend people who I considered real life friends). When I deleted my facebook account for the first time, I gave warning and got at least one "good riddance". These were from adults in their 30s by the way.
Instagram was no better. I kept it around for way too long. I would get almost no likes on my photos or the same mocking comments (from different people than the FB posts). Then my "friends" started following my girlfriend and would like her photos, but would skip mine over, or they would like photos I posted of her art but would ignore my work. That could have been completely innocent and coincidental of course, but in my depressed state it felt like a judgment of myself.
I ended up deleting everything -- fb, twitter, instagram, gmail, yahoo, my phone number... i left it all behind and after a couple of months have felt like my old self.
I know this is all anecdotal, and its possibly a coincidence that my depression became more manageable after dumping all my accounts. I also know that social networks didn't CAUSE the depression, but they absolutely kept me locked in my head and in a moment in time that I need to move past. Deleting them seems to have helped and I have no intention of going back.
By the way, I just unfollow all of my friends by default, so I don't have to read their status updates when I just want to check out some events.
I take it from tone that the author expected an obvious point to hit home here. It completely flew over my head. Anyone else pick up on it?
> (One study from the University of Missouri from February 2015 basically tried to settle the debate by saying it all depends on how you use it. Stalk acquaintances and compare your life to theirs, and bang, here comes depression. Dotingly check on your friends and family, and you’ll be happy. Which begs the question: Have the researchers ever actually used Facebook?)
I assumed she was implying people use it for the former much more than the latter.
My best guess is that Facebook's interface and presentation can encourage one over the other. It's biased to show success stories, so I'd say it is more leaning towards the former.