Depression, Self-Identity and Reality: Living in a Story Created by Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Depression, Self-Identity and Reality: Living in a Story Created by Facebook

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106 pointsborjamoya44 comments

Interesting article about something we should definitely be having a conversation about.

But i want to point out an anecdote: we have a newborn and we share pics of her privately with fam. All the pics are of her good moments: her first smiles, her just being cute, etc... We don't share pics or videos of her screaming her lungs out, or of her diaper explosions, which intuitively woul be weird.

Reading this article it sounds like we are doing ourselves a disservice by not sharing the bad. Like we're not being honest with ourselves or our family. But are we? isn't the point of memories to preserve the good ones? The printed photo albums my parents have of my childhood don't have any pictures of me having a meltdown. There is a saying among mothers that you forget the pain of childbirth otherwise you'd never have a second child.

I'm sure social media makes things worse by being too present in people's self esteem but I am not sure memories have to preserve the downsides of reality.

You might well be doing yourselves a disservice by not sharing the bad, but that definitely doesn't mean that Facebook is the right place for it.

Going deeper, I don't think we can just look at memories either being good or bad here. They'll all have different emotions attached that you might use to evaluate the goodness of the memory, but that goodness is going to change as soon as your perspective shifts. And keeping the unpleasant memories entirely to yourself may do more harm than good.

For example, I have memories of some truly awful experiences that left me deeply emotionally scarred; traumatised. I don't enjoy recalling those at all, but they have allowed me to protect myself and better understand my boundaries. Eventually my grip on those memories will loosen up because my survival instinct no longer depends on avoiding that experience, because I will have learned how to deal with it.

There are other memories I have that I truly cherish, but not because I call them good. I cherish them because they also amount as evidence to help me move on. I could easily go into any of those and flip them into painful memories: maybe instead of connecting with my best friend I start to think about what else could have happened. And the same with finding positive interpretations of a painful memory.

At the end of it all, I wouldn't want to reflect on my life from my death-bed and have absolutely no memory of anything I struggled with. That's usually where the beauty begins.

Interesting point. But I believe the problem relies not in the sharing but in our perception of reality based on what others have shared. I understand that it's an inevitable consequence of the first but that has been the case for centuries. The new problem is that this misperceptions are now on a massive and unprecedented scale and our brain is constantly attacked by this misperceptions.

This is exactly right. The scope of social media is greater. It's a status show where your stuff isn't just in your living room but out there for you to “show off” to the world and compare it with others. This ultimately builds our story, our culture, that's when everybody believes a particular story and leads to the madness of crowds.

To make a fair comparison you’d need to put it so that you’d be checking happy family/friend album photos every day (perhaps several times per day) from different people.

Occasional photo album watching (e.g. during Xmas) is a different story.

I post screaming crying pictures and people love it. Just like you said, they appreciate the authentic. It reminds them of their years in the same position.

Heck, Facebook has a poll option. Poll your crowd and give them what they want.

> isn't the point of memories to preserve the good ones?

ugh, no. why would it ? sad memories make you go forward as a human being, too

Facebook is playing a very dangerous game by not allowing people full control of their feeds and even algorithmically sorting things. That's different from just "social media", it's a specifically Facebook way of doing things

I totally agree. And we're the ones paying the price of their actions.

Who is we? I am not paying anything AFAIK. When my girlfriend had problems, she simply stopped using it that much. I myself simply don't subscribe to pseudomotivational bullshit or internet "personalities".

When people get stuck in a bubble of fake news and manufactured outrage they tend to vote accordingly, and that does impact you.

fake news and manufactured outrage is how our political system has always operated, it's just easier to see the process applying to people you disagree with now

Good point

"We" is referring to society in general. There will be exceptions to everything. Maybe you'd like to point out that people are free to opt out? Is that what you're saying?

It sounds good on paper, but in reality, it is not. For many people, they absolutely need to be on FB otherwise they will be excluded from all their friends. Sure those people can choose be hermits.

I think it's mostly this mindset that keeps that being true. As soon as some of your friends defect from FB, it becomes much easier to defect yourself. Or, you could be the first person, and make it a bit more viable for your other friends to stop.

At this point, most of my friends don't really use Facebook much, we mostly stick to messaging apps and email. Maybe start by making a chat group in Telegram and telling people about it?

That's what I meant, "we" as society, as culture. Because people aren't just tweaking their stories. When you do this at a mass scale you have a responsibility as citizen. And as I pointed out, building fictional stories can lead to genocides and wars (we've already seen it). We all suffer from this.

I have scaled back my usage of Facebook after I discovered they are advertising my like activity to my audience i.e. "friends". I've had relatives accost me at family gatherings or have been unfriended over a Facebook page I followed, even though I rarely if ever share my personal views directly in my feed. Sometimes I'll like something even though I have a marginal interest in the subject.

Facebook has the power to destroy life-long friendships because we continue to give it this power.

Ya...I really think hard about it before I like anything on facebook. Even scrolling through the feed or something I'm always concious not to accidently like anything or press the wrong button. I actually prefer looking through things on the few private groups i'm part of and if I post anything it'll be to one of those for the most part. Your normal facebook friends don't see anything you do on those.

I think worse though is when people tag you in public posts. You have no control over it at all, it gets announced to, seemingly randomly, some or all of your other friends...i'm not sure who exactly but I know other people end up seeing this...and the only way to get rid of it is to ask the other person to remove it or find the post, click untag yourself, not remove post from feed...that leaves you tagged in the post still...it needs to be the right one because if you remove it before untagging yourself good luck finding that shit again.

Isn’t Twitter doing this as well by algorithmically sorting their feed? Why single out Facebook?

There’s a single switch on Twitter to turn this off.

You can bash Twitter for a lot of things, but this isn’t it.

As long as algorithmic is the default, it’s changing aggregate behavior in a big way

I can switch algorithmic sorting off, but if it’s the default for everyone else, and causing the most polarizing political content to spread even faster, it effects me and even people who don’t use Twitter at all

I think this type of depression that is supposedly a response to social media is simply a symptom of something that would have manifested itself with or without being plugged in.

One might write a novel on the subject, but humans are easily dissatisfied. We chase after things we think we want, but are really unfulfilling. Many of us lack a true calling. We travel to exotic places and buy expensive things only to realize that the hedonistic treadmill is real.

You're right. This isn't new. It started way back with advertising. The problem is the scope it's getting right now--we no longer have an active role on this process.

Maybe your theory is compatible with the idea that some ways of using social media simply turn up the speed knob on the hedonic treadmill.

Facebook is the "cigarettes" of our era. It's addictive, and evidence that regular use is detrimental to our well-being is mounting.

Strangely, it's also what we do at parties when we're bored.

I'm all for burning Facebook to the ground but the rise in the use of antidepressants started well before modern social media.

It does look associated with alienation, so does travelling alone, but social media use is probably a result of loneliness, an attempt to connect however feeble, not its cause.

I agree that other forces are at work behind the rise of loneliness and alienation in modern society, but I think Facebook exacerbates these problems.

Facebook ultimately encourages you to carry out social interactions online with people who aren't physically present. It's very easy and convenient and next thing you know your eyes are glued to your phone so often that it starts to replace physical interactions. You go out and spend half your time texting instead of talking to the people you're with, or maybe you stop going out at all.

But we are animals after all, not buckets of bits, and physical presence matters. It directs attention, priorities, investment, it gives people unique opportunities to bond. Anyone who's had a long distance relationship can tell you that they're fraught with challenges because you just don't get to spend a lot of time together. So maybe socializing in cyberspace, while it has advantages, simply doesn't have all the benefits it has in meatspace.

For my part I now put meatspace connections first, and aside from work, my calendar revolves around meeting other actual humans in person. Even if we don't share all the same interests, maybe even if they get on my nerves a little, I lived most of my social life online for a long time, and I like meatspace better. My Facebook usage waxes and wanes and I don't feel it makes me depressed--but if Facebook relationships were all I had, I'd be practically suicidal.

I think that FB is a crutch and a mild vice. And like all vices, the solution is to replace them with something positive.

Yep, I think it's more that the US and other similar countries have become less community oriented and the social fabric has weakened. As we've become less religious, many people in towns/cities have lost their primary shared social gathering point (Church/Temple/etc), and it doesn't seem like anything has really replaced that yet. Social media has to some extent, but it's a meager gruel compared to gathering in person.

Sometimes I've thought about what could replace this. Maybe some updated version of the Rotary Club/Lions Club/etc?

Interesting thing is that antidepressant use rised despite antidepressant being mostly ineffective and their underlying principle of action being flawed.

This raises the question of why antidepressant use rised this way. Could it be that heavily medicated people are easier to manage and keep under control to prevent them from rebelling against the lives they're forced into by the societal system ? Could it be related to huge profits from pharmaceutical corporations ?

Then again Facebook and the computer as a machine middleman in human interaction is destroying social interaction and society fabric by replacing actual meaningful interaction that builds human ability to be human. Not the single cause but a recent and efficient accelerator of a trend that push us further apart from each other.

I recommend watching the following BBC documentaries by Adam Curtis:

  The Century of the Self[1]
  The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom[2]
  All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace[3]

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series)
  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series)

I have a lot of friends that are significantly happier now on antidepressants than they were before. Maybe some are ineffective, I don't know, but when your first sentence completely contradicts experiences of my friends, I have to call bullshit.

Interesting thing is that antidepressant use rised despite antidepressant being mostly ineffective

Except for antibiotics and simple surgeries, which are basically miracles on demand, most medical treatments don't offer great odds. Antidepressants do work, just not very well or reliably. We won't leave people to wallow or die though and have a need to do something for them. This is something.

However, it does indicate that people were battling depression before social media and its rates were increasing rather quickly.

> antidepressant being mostly ineffective

That needs a great big giant source. Because there are so many peer reviewed studies and meta-studies that show that they are effective.

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/

It seems to me that mental health cannot be outsourced the same way that other services can be. Additionally, we probably individualize mental health treatment more than we should, neglecting what I would term mental ecology - how one survives/thrives/writhes in their environment.

The ending was perfect. “Be very careful with stories and social media ALSO NOW IM ON YOUTUBE, LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!”

What's wrong with that? I'm creating youtube videos because I know people are there, and the change I'm trying to create is to change people's minds. I can't change the way people consume media, so the only chance we've got is to adapt it and make change happen.

I'd like to see studies of how social media affects different personalities types. My intuition is that the negative effect can manifest in different ways. For example a person that has social anxiety in real life, let's say because is unconsciously worried about how to behave socially, maybe because the fear of rejection or being bullied by the group. This person would post probably close to zero, and avoid public comments, while being very anxious while waiting for a private response. I think the effect in this case, is that the person becomes even more isolated and even less social. Because these people can manage still in small groups of 4 to 5 people but I think on average we have 300 facebook "friends", that might not be manageable. And the extroverts would engage reactively only to other extroverts, causing other type of harms. That's my intuition from my direct observations.

I would say that most of the Extremely Online people I know who post a lot talk of introversion and social anxiety. These things manifest differently in online spaces.

There are so many different paths this discussion can take. But what's for sure is that everything is going to the extremes--there's no middle ground here.

I'm happier and healthier that these conversations are happening; I'm not alone.

Facebook is clearly problematic, and I've been suspicious of the negative effects of Instagram and Hinge (dating app). The former would make me jealous/depressed/frustrated as I compare myself to glimpses of my peers supposedly winning at life. The latter would make me less outgoing in real life, b/c somehow flipping through dating profiles satisfied an underlying desire to meet new people.

I highly recommend Johann Hari's work: "Lost Connections" book [1], Sam Harris and Ezra Klein podcast episodes [2, 3], TED talk [4].

[1] https://thelostconnections.com/

[2] https://samharris.org/podcasts/142-addiction-depression-mean...

[3] https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/5...

[4] https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...

Thanks for the links!

Malaclypse: Everyone is hurting eachother, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war.

The Goddess: What is the matter with that, if it's what you want to do?

Malaclypse: But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!

The Goddess: Oh. Well, then stop.

https://youtu.be/iGCGhD8i-o4

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