Facebook admits that it is a problem

Facebook is the ultimate individualism app.

Before, you had media that was consumed simultaneously by all members of the family or together with your friends. There were some, not that time consuming media sources targeting a certain age group.

Facebook targets all age groups and compartmentalizes everyone perfectly into their own echo chambers.

People consume stuff together less, compared to times when they consumed television or similar media.

Even families don't spend time together watching their favorite comedy shows or similar as much as they used to. Shows are all compartmentalized.

That's what targeted advertisement and machine learning do. Tweak for the best click through rate.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but there might be some effects of people consuming information mostly alone without any external input, other than their echo chamber. I've definitely felt this affect me.

> The structure of these posts is usually the same.

> Step one: identify some ill in society.

> Step two: admit that people think technology, and Facebook, might be contributing to that ill.

> Step three: assert that more Facebook, not less, is the cure for said ill.

Genius marketing. Looks like their MAU (Monthly Active Users) number has been declining...

Facebook is fast becoming the MySpace of this generation.

This is exactly what I was thinking when reading that. It seemed odd to me that nowhere in that post was it noted that addiction to social media might be, y'know.. harmful?

That said, I do applaud the "take a break from person {x}" feature which is very thoughtful design, and something we want to add to Discourse.

It would be great if people would go out more to meet real people and have real conversations.

Edit : What is so brave to admit a company is a problem ?

I didn’t mean to stop using FB. It just drifted away. The FB blog writer’s suggested solution is part of the reason. To get the same value out of FB takes much more work than it used to. For me, it became a chore. In the face of every other demand on my time, FB started to lose out about a year ago. I haven’t checked it in about two weeks. 2-4 weeks is the average gap these days for me.