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So many articles written about a company that adds so little value to human life (at least in its current form).

If you spend just 1h/day on Facebook, over the course of 10 years, that's approx. 150 days or roughly half a year. I'm sure plenty of people spend more than 1h/day scrolling through their pointless feeds.

So my question to you is this: What could you achieve if you could spend half a year of your life, fully immersing yourself in something meaningful and of value?

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There’s a big difference between what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time. I suspect that the average user’s Facebook time is of the former, low quality kind.

This is a great point and too seldom raised when comparisons like this are made. I only have so much capacity for highly focused engagement in a given day, and even within those periods there is variability to my focus. That Facebook, or any other activity, occupies time that I am less engaged is not an indictment of those activities or the choice to spend that time in a less deliberate way; its just how most people work.

A better criticism in my mind would be to weigh Facebook and its value against actual competitors for people’s attention in those time periods.

what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time

Yes and no. Swap your FB time for MOOC time and I bet you can do a lot of worthwhile study in bite-size chunks. Or reading books or... anything really.

That's funny because I probably spend more than an h/day on HN sometimes, and I wonder if it's equally as pointless or even worse than FB. At least on FB I can keep in touch with people in real life, on HN I get to participate in semantic arguments with strangers.

This is a false equivalency. The alternative is not an hour of work, but an hour of some form of either news browsing or social interaction.

If you think facebook does those poorly (I wont take a position on that now, though I certainly have opinions) you should focus the comparision on what you would consider better versions.

You are correct! It is a false equivalency. My comment's goal was to remind people that being mindful of one's time, and reallocating and juggling it could lead to more productive outcomes. I was too sloppy in how I phrased it.

I’m 35 years old and haven’t immersed myself in something meaningful and of value so far. I know who I am and I’m not capable of much. Not everyone can do something great, meaningful, or valuable.

What’s wrong with just scrolling mindlessly through facebook to help pass the time?

I don't think there's anything in particular which is wrong with that at a micro scale, but at a macro scale when literally billions of people are being subtly influenced without realizing it by powers that may have no interest in the truth... I think there's a lot that can go wrong with that.

I believe it was in Myanmar where everyone uses facebook and started getting news from there and anti-Muslim voices spread messages of hate which tinged the entire nation against Muslims and caused acts of violence.

That's a lot more sinister than the mindless passing of time.

That's not true and it sounds like you have self esteem issues. Everyone can contribute.

The problem with Facebook is that we want people to have meaningful friendships. You can only do that face to face.

What? Facebook is singularly keeping me, my family, and my friends together on a single platform. That provides immeasurable value to me.

I'm not spending 1 hr/day on Facebook, not even 1 hour/week, but when I do want to plan something, or reach out to someone, I know I can get to them via Facebook. I know I can coordinate anything and everything over Facebook because everyone I care about is on there.

Facebook is a tool. If it's not useful to you, maybe you don't have the problems others have, or maybe you're not as proficient at using the tool.

> a company that adds so little value to human life (at least in its current form).

Only place I hear this is on Hackernews and Reddit. It's not a coincidence these are two sites where a huge portion of users are socially awkward single males in their 20s. For pretty much every other demographic on the planet, Facebook adds incredible amount of value to people's day-to-day life. They discover their long lost friends/classmates through Facebook. They can keep in touch with each other's life events from thousands of miles away. If that's not "adding value to human life", then I don't know what is.

I added the qualifier "little" for a reason. Unfortunately, you decided to misquote me and paint my views in more absolute terms.

The value you get from using Facebook comes at a cost, so you ought to offset that "incredible amount of value" you're talking about. Some people incur a huge cost, as they become addicted.

> the value you get from playing video games, or watching anime comes at a cost. Some people incur a huge cost, as they become addicted.

you could say this about almost any activity in life. the fact that facebook adds nothing meaningful to your life doesn't mean that others feel even remotely the same way, there's no need for the social media bashing that gets regurgitated ad nauseum across reddit/hackernews.

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