Comment by banana_giraffe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by banana_giraffe | Hacker News Reader

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I'm very happy that there are those that can interact with Facebook without negative side effects. If you're in that category, I hope the site adds value to you and you enjoy it.

I can't. Yes, it's a failure on me, but my experience is better without Facebook in my life.

You mention negativity, and that's part of it. I saw a steady stream of "the world's on fire" type posts. The other side, the rosy view of my friends and family also wasn't great. It was a steady stream of my brain using this as a chance to remind me I can't live up to these people, that I'm falling behind, and that in general, I suck.

It's not true. I could have crafted an equal fantasy and posted it, but I'm not that person. I could let the positive and negative posts go without influencing my mental well-being, but I'm apparently not that person.

All of this is a long way of saying, for me, Facebook is baggage I had to carry around with me. I didn't need to open it, but I knew it was there, ready to mock me at any time. Now my account is gone, and that bit of unnecessary baggage is gone. It added nothing to my life, only made it worse.

It sounds like your two feeds are very different. I didn’t like facebook, then unfollowed everyone except immediate family. It’s nice now! Not distracting, occasional baby pictures.

One of facebook’s worst long run mistakes was optimizing for engagement vs. enjoyment. It boosts metrics but makes people quit or go cold turkey.

Instagram has never felt like that.

My family only reposts articles and never has anything to say themselves.

Sounds like a problem with your family and not Facebook. But quitting Facebook will indeed help you distance yourself from all of that, so, I guess, it is still a net benefit.

Facebook doesn't care about enjoyment. They want to maximize eyes on the screen time and sell that for maximum ad revenue. If you are someone who would like to spend 5 minutes a week on Facebook catching up with friends they do not care about you.

Possible. But I used facebook a lot more when I enjoyed it. I enjoy instagram now for example and use it a lot.

Facebook showed me stuff I didn’t care about it that aggravated me, so I stopped using it. now I’m in thE 5 min a week category. But I’d rather follow more people, but only the important stuff

They may not care about you, but that doesn't mean we can't mold it to meet our needs.

I try to behave on Facebook like it's 2005 again, before the outrage or glamour.

That being said I think it's totally reasonable that the difficulty each of us experiences in trying to exert such control will vary.

Right, which is why the result in the headline seems misdirected. "Facebook quitters" are, in fact, a special group. They/you recognized problems that were addressed by quitting facebook! And the study found that when this population removes something they feel is a problem, they feel better. That's... not really surprising, if you think about it. And importantly, it's not a result that says "social media will make everyone feel bad".

I'm one of the normies like the grandparent comment. I don't use Facebook all that much, and most of what I see there is just a stream of banal life events from a selection of people that I'd otherwise not hear from. Most of it isn't that interesting directly, but I'll admit that my life is enriched by retaining these relationships I'd otherwise have dropped. It's definitely not something I feel bad after using.

Obviously that's not your experience, and there's nothing wrong with that. Certainly you shouldn't be forced to use this platform if it makes you unhappy. Really this just goes down to "people are all different and we all have to find our paths through the world". Technology changes the battlefield a little at the margins, but it hasn't changed the war.

You just changed my mind a little about Facebook. I mean, I still think they’re a threat to democracy, but you made me see the value of a feed with a small group of people.

> most of what I see there is just a stream of banal life events from a selection of people that I'd otherwise not hear from

This was part of the problem for me; it made me think I had more friends than I actually did. What I really had was an app that showed me what everyone I used to know at some point was up to, and many of us start to mistake that for friendship. At some point I had the epiphany that I don't really know the kids from my high school friend circle anymore, and keeping up with them doesn't improve my life. We had our time, the friendship fizzled out as they tend to do, and the healthiest thing for me was to just move on.

My life improved after quitting Facebook because it forced me to be more intentional with who I spend my time on. Rather than passively blasting everyone's news feed with something, I send it individually to the people I want to see it. It makes me be an active participant in friendships, which is something I've had trouble with (at least when using Facebook).

This is an interesting comment to me. Your conscious mind says you received no value, when reflecting. Yet your behavior indicated that you got enough value to create a compulsion.

What a funny world we live in, in our heads.

>your conscious mind says you received no value, when reflecting. Yet your behavior indicated that you got enough value to create a compulsion

well social media is designed to give you little dopamine hits all the time and we all know when we think about it for a second that the constant, cheap stimulation is bad, but it also hijacks our lizard brains and it's designed to work that way.

The big problem I think is that we let the designers of these applications get away with exactly the 'your preferences indicate you like it' line, well the same applies to gamblers in a casino.

I mean, the same can be said about gambling.

I refused to get on FB for many years, until I was finally convinced to do it. I never did more than post funny pictures I found around the internet.

And then the next political cycle hit and I straight up quit. I found the political ads more offensive than anything, and I've never been back since.

FB is a terrible place, ignore the poster you're responding to because they very well could be putting on airs while you're trying to be more honest about things. That's the nature of social media, of which HN is included.

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