Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works
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Without rambling too much, I'm one of those over-sensitive, slightly aspie types that reads SSC and gets carried away with over-analysing the zeitgeist. Uncharitably, you might say 'smart but weak-minded'. The longer I spend in front of social media, the more and more in tatters I feel. I spent a week entirely disconnected from the 'net a month ago and I can't stress how restorative it was for me. Though, alarmingly, I was back in full swing soon after I returned.
For those of you who have problems with self-control and sustaining your attention, and think it has something to do with your browsing habits, I highly recommend you - I urge you - to disconnect in a significant way. Of course it's up to you what that means.
In September I gave up smoking, and the physical and psychological changes I underwent were pretty surprising. I felt more present and in-the-moment (and other barely-describable-but-definitely-nice feelings) than I had done in years. Despite smoking 25 a day, I have found quitting Reddit much, much harder; despite being convinced it's as bad for my mental health as smoking was for my physical.
I think there's something to be said about identifying addiction patterns in your life and exorcising them. The small amounts of progress I've made recently have certainly felt as though they've increased my net level of agency and free will. I wish that flowery metaphors about demons were more readily acceptable, because software is a lot like wizardy - and it really does feel like dark sorcery has been cast to possess the West.
[1] http://www.tristanharris.com/essays/ [2] https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-is-technology-do...
Only reason I ask is because I've had a similar experience...twice. Once when moving into an apartment (no power, close proximity to roommates) and again when on a trip (golfing all day, close proximity again). My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.
Well, I guess I'm not alone. I feel like I've struggled with that for many years.
That hit really close to home. I've attributed my symptoms to lack of exercise and perhaps not reading enough long-form but this all conjecture at this point.
'In tatters', hmm... My self-regulation is poor but I'm desperately trying to claw upwards, so I have erected a lot of barriers between me and my lovely but drug-addicted friends, which gives me a lot of free time. I spend a lot of time purposefully and sanely researching things I want to learn, where I should learn them from, then feeling pooped out and gawping in front of YouTube or Reddit, then blaming myself for wasting time etc etc. It's hard to summarise, to be honest. Feeling 'locked-up' and 'scattered', maybe? I'm often exhausted by reading Reddit, it really feels like work. Honestly, I feel like I spend most days working intensely and not sleeping enough to manage it. Despite spending most of my time gaining weight on a desk chair, and not actually working.
I'm very gullible. I tend to remember a lot of what I read, and I'm naturally full of doubt, and over-analytical. So reading a thousand conflicting opinions on subjects makes me... A little loopy and conflicted. Like I'm always in last place, trying to catch up with the 'right' opinion on everything. There was a Reddit thread for the OP's link just today, where someone mentioned arguing with their girlfriend like an anonymous Redditor - I also definitely empathise with that one.
I have problems with eye contact, for sure, I tend to 'fall into' it if I look too long, as it seems to me to be a remarkably intense thing to hold eye contact for longer than an instant.
I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI in September, and haven't gotten on medication for it just yet (I've been disorganised...). I think reddit-like media is particularly bad for people like us. They say ADHD is more of a working memory disorder than anything, and I think we need our cache clearing regularly, let's say. A Reddit addiction tops it up at every opportunity.
I started using BBS systems in 1985 and reddit in 2006. Left reddit several times, deleting my account(s) each time. Finally left it for good about a year and a half ago and am so glad it's gone. I've replaced it with some similar things like HN but reddit is such a particularly addictive and destructive site it's worth singling out for avoidance.
Blogs, books, and media of all kind are basically meaningless. Vanity of vanities and all that jazz.
You need to experience life. You need to find meaning through action. You need to become a poet by becoming the poem.
Help your neighbor with his hobbies. Cook dinner for your family. Sing a song for a friend. Do something, anything, for someone else.
Realize the inaction and the meaningless nature of sitting in one place and searching for answers on screen or in print.
If you must read, read all text as a poem, or at least read poetry itself!
The darkness that you see is just a fiction. How could it be anything else? The magic spells are just words on a page. Belief is what makes them seem real.
Go outside. Go for a walk. There is no darkness. It is boring and peaceful and that should put your mind to rest.
Thank you for writing that.
I tend to intellectualise this way of looking at depression (and how to get out of it - how to just get out the damn house!) as related to the Symbol Grounding Problem [2], in a semi-serious, semi-metaphorical way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl [2] http://www.socphilinfo.org/node/100
Depression is a son of a bitch that I have also known at times and it really is as hard and as easy as just doing anything at all.
Reddit is entertaining and free. Every time I quit, I end up still seeking out entertainment, but it's no longer free. Movies, gambling, restaurants, bars. TV is free but even less entertaining, imo. Books feel like mental masturbation and very few change my worldviews at this point.
My overall conclusion has been that reddit is not that bad of a habit, comparatively.
My life has plenty of meaning (as far as I'm concerned) but yeah, I see your point. Reddit replaces other entertainment for me, it wouldn't be productive time anyway, which I've learned from experimenting.
In the end I lost my phone and felt that I shouldn't get a new one, at the same time my computer was at a friends place. All of a sudden my appartment was without mobile and computer connectivity (not a even a clock!). All of a sudden I could here myself again and I felt stronger and more filled with energy than in a long time.
Later on I have seen talks on precisely the same thing where they talk about how we end up skipping those small breaks we need to take during the day.
It was just a couple of days ago I heard about people who build dark rooms in their home where they can retract and replenish. Munks being the extremes.
I think it's great to find the things you can't handle, IRC, Reddit or Facebook, it's all the same if it steals those small breaks from your schedule. A compact schedule without those will eventually make you break.
Oddly enough I find that Hacker News is totally fine since it's easy to surf in on the most upvoted , read through the headlines, read comments for the interesting parts and be done with it. In the end that's basically the only site I read now a day since my life is busy enough with family and work.
I too have problems with controlling how much I do stuff, obviously. But taking note that it is actually an issue and doing it in controlled doses are really empowering. Choose platforms wisely :) Meditation helps.
Also, quitting IRC was about the hardest thing I've done (but I got my life back), but taking away part by part, channel by channel, i.e. stop gaming since that was why I used chats, made it so much easier to just walk away. Did the same with facebook recently and it was awesome.
- I think everyone understands this, but it bears repeating: dopamine isn't the problem here, as it will be involved in any rewarding behavior. The real claim being made is that we have created technologies that give us too much and/or the wrong kind of pleasure.
- We should consider that "junk food" pleasure (the internet, TV, drugs, actual junk food, etc.) can be useful as a coping mechanism for individuals facing trauma, stress, depression, or other psychological issues. We should consider the possibility that healthier coping mechanisms might be insufficient or unavailable in certain situations. It might actually be a good thing that we've come up with a portable technology (the smartphone) that can be used on the go for short bursts of dopamine. In terms of addictions, you could do worse.
All that being said, I agree that people can develop unhealthy relationships with technology, and we should be working (as always) in the direction of harm reduction.
That's when you get children's advertising for junkfood. Facebook pushing controversial shock stories to stir up users. And the War on Drugs leading to environments like the Opioid crisis.
I wonder if this is even avoidable - exercise for example is a huge industry and whether you're paying for a gym membership, exercise classes, or a new bike, you're paying...
Social networks require new social education that should start with realizing their potentials downsides which I believe is still the most difficult part.
If you struggle to disconnect from social media because you feel like you’ll miss out on friends, remember this: If social media is the only thing connecting you to a friend, they aren’t that good of a friend anyway. Your true friends will not disappear if you delete Facebook.
Lastly, not everyone has super rich social life that would make it easy to make and keep friends. Many people work a lot of hours in companies that change every 2 year, limiting opportunities for friends time. Others have children they already feel they spend too little time with. The loose connection when you react to each others posts is much better then comelet cut off.
The fear is unjustified. Your actual friends will keep in contact, just like they did before Facebook. I left FB 5+ years ago and by some great miracle I still have a robust social life, and as a bonus am not wasting hours a day scrolling through useless information about the lives of remote acquaintances.
Sure, I have friends like that. I also have friendships that began on social media and endured for years, including both people I've never met in real life due to geographic separation/difficulty of travel and people that I have met and got on with equally well in person. Perhaps you haven't experienced that yet, but I've been hearing this clicheed dismissal of virtual relationships for ~25 years now and it's getting pretty old.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk
EDIT — Thanks to cpv (below), this is the discussion I should've linked to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15900551
Moreover, I couldn't find any larger discussion: I searched HN with the link you gave and found only two postings, one with 1 point and another one with 7 points and only 2 comments.
Then it hit me. I know what makes me disappointed about society today. It's that we consider the image of success more important than reality. For example, the mainstream collectively considers steve jobs as the ideal entrepreneur, when when we knew he made billions off the backs of children and women in horrible working conditions in an authoritarian government. How about Bill Cosby, Mel Gibson, Lance Armstrong, Trump, Weinstein? How great did you think those people were before revealing themselves to be a complete hoax? Especially when society has been reduced to spamming a running commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books make us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards.
I also have a jaundiced view of society, but it's naive to think it was great and than got completely wrecked by social media (or TV, or jazz music, or dancing, or...). Going down that path will just lead to being a bitter reactionary. Instead, examine your prior premise of what you thought society was or should be, and consider whether that was a historical actuality or a frustrated desire. A good deal depends on whether you conceive of people to 'naturally' be good or bad and whether/how they are shaped by society or vice versa, so your consideration should include some philosophical reading since this is a fundamental question philosophers struggle with.
Read some history too. If you're American, I suggest 'American Nations' by Colin Woodard, which offers a sweeping overview of the competing forces that have shaped US society and makes for an interesting contrast to the increasingly dysfunctional idealogical monomyth.
One of Facebook's defenses of this is that they hire psychologists etc, but it's to better train this system.
More people coming out against this sort of thing after they've had first hand experience is good!
We should be encouraging this kind of discussion, not trying to shame or judge past actions incessantly.
Just seems like he's working a new angle now to grow his billion into two.
Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post any more of these.
Social media is great for the individual but horrible for society.
I think you suffer from the delusion that the human mind is rational and logical. It can be, under certain limited conditions. But under most circumstances it is a complete mess.
I don't suffer from it, not more or less than the countless text of law that base their logic on citizens from being trustful agent in the society, but thank you for your concern.
Social media is the new rock n roll.
Please don't post rage rants to HN. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.