Tuning Out: What Happens When You Drop Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

Tuning Out: What Happens When You Drop Facebook?

siepr.stanford.edu

15 pointspulisse13 comments

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I'll tell you what happens.

You end up compulsively refreshing hn and reddit while telling yourself that you've increased your productivity.

^^^ Bingo.

LOL. Yes. I feel the same.

This does come with the bonus of leaving far less of an advertising trail across the net, so I think it's still a win.

> You end up compulsively refreshing hn and reddit while telling yourself that you've increased your productivity.

Anecdotally, I didn't. According to this study, on average, that's not what other participants did either: "They didn’t replace Facebook with another social media platform like Twitter."

Anecdotally I just looked at your profile and you comment on hn approx once per day.

Half an hour a day isn't an issue

Correct. I closed all of my social media accounts 6 years ago and I must say that you do end up missing collections of stories. I could read a blog here and there but at the end I'm drawn to links and comments in a chronological order.

I dropped FB after one of the many privacy scandals, and after not using it much at all for years. Thus, I'd not fit the study inclusion criteria of 15 mins daily, but is there really 15 minutes of fresh content from friends and family? Most of the content I recall was quick to read, and a ton of it was garbage, sponsored, memes, etc. If anything, I just replaced that minimal time with more HN and reddit and NYT. Reddit is going a similar way, I am contemplating deleting and blocking it, but its very good for niches like starcraft, personal finance, ask historians and scientists, etc.

The heading "Small, but significant, impact on well-being" should really be "Small, but significant, negative impact on well-being". There's no reason to bury the lede further.

Quitting Facebook is a very nice thing to do for yourself.

Actually, it was claiming a small but significant positive impact on well-being from quitting FB.

If you find anything negatively impacting your mood, seems good to cut back.

Ah, I see what you mean. Your restatement disambiguates nicely, thank you.

> If you find anything negatively impacting your mood, seems good to cut back.

Of course, yes. The insidious thing is, like many additions, there's a reward component too.

I definitely had a noticeably improved mood after simply uninstalling the app from my phone.

I ended up deactivating Facebook altogether shortly after that.

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