On Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation | Hacker News Reader

On Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation

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73 pointslxm46 comments

>if you're spending your day on Twitter right now, it's shredding your psychological health

>Twitter seems to have evolved more into just really stressed out people yelling at public officials

these are both good points, but i think that there should be a bit of context: by and large in the US, public officials are performing unexpectedly, astoundingly, and utterly unforgivably poorly in their responses to the coronavirus.

it's the correct response to be anxious about the wholesale failure of public and private institutions, and it's the correct response to be livid about it and to channel anger towards those who are letting the country down in its greatest time of need.

it's fashionable to say that disconnecting is important for your mental health. it isn't that the idea of disconnecting for the sake of mental health is in any way incorrect. but democracies function via the will of the public being reflected in the actions of individuals and institutions. if public officials don't have people giving them an earful, they will in all likelihood continue to act in a way which harms the public.

in other words: without the endless hammering of the anxious and unstable twitterati and those like them, the public health response to the coronavirus in the US would likely be even worse than the near worst-case response that we're seeing. it's bad for the people doing it, but it's part of the democratic process at this point.

There's an assumption hidden in that: how do we know that "hammering" on the social media teams of elected officials will have any influence on their behavior?

The CDC is warning about mental health impact as a result of extended isolation. They are trying to encourage public messaging that supports social connecting using technology.

Can you use your knowledge to provide ways to do that outside of Twitter?

And do you disagree that there is a void in our social construct by this distancing that is not somewhat emulated by services like Twitter, even if imperfectly?

Nobody said it will have influence, it just makes you feel a little better instead of constantly taking it in the ass and never speaking up about it. Not to mention the mass amounts of misinformation and disinformation that need to be combated.

Or, for that matter, a positive influence assuming it has one?

The masks thing is a great example - simple enough to tell the public to leave professionally made masks for the professionals and post good advice on how to make a functional one at home. When the public looks like a screaming mob of idiots, why wouldn't you mistrust their ability to act selflessly and carefully.

They are probably going through their days in just as much of an irrational, social media induced panic as everyone else.

Too much info (most of it incomplete and useless) is getting pumped into peoples heads.

Untrained minds will break. And trained minds will break beyond some threshold.

There will be a lot of casualties from this first generation on the social media front lines being mass bombarded with "info".

That's an interesting hypothesis concluding with, if we can't allow untrained minds unlimited access to internet media without them breaking, we'll have to either limit access to internet mass media or limit what that media broadcasts.

Obviously, this is an unprecedented break with current internet and media freedom policies.

I’m satisfied with the response - not sure what you’re so upset about.

As someone who has been through more than one natural disaster the fear and panic is absolutely destructive and often worse than the event itself. Remains to be seen in this case.

Look at all the wackos posting to youtube saying this is god’s sign he is coming back, etc. Those people absolutely don’t need a platform.

> not sure what you’re so upset about

In mid-January or so, the R0 and early CFR values for this thing were publicly available. Authorities such as the WHO and the CDC, and their lackey journalists in the media (both left and right, Vice and Fox) were beating the It's Just The Flu, Bro drum for a full month and a half since then.

Meanwhile, anonymous tweeps with anime avatars were digging into the numbers and disseminating the real news. It's one of those situations where you don't even need expert opinion, just a cursory understanding of what the numbers mean and the ability to write a 30 line monte carlo simulation in python.

So yes, being angry that the experts and journalists were actively trying to get people killed while an army of people with 73 followers and Yu-Gi-Oh avatars were the real heroes is fully justified.

It's so cartoonishly comical that Hanlon's Razor doesn't really apply. Malice is quite evident in this case, and it would be nice to see every JTFB type held to account when this is all over.

To summarize some important bullet points of the USG's failure:

- FDA blocked hospitals from using their existing equipment to test for the virus with an old regulation that has been sitting on the books for a while.

- FDA blocked Seattle Flu study from testing their flu samples for Coronavirus, which would have A. provided an invaluable measure of the early spread in the Washington crisis, and B. provided us with crucial data about the deadliness of the virus untainted by the "asymptomatic cases aren't tested" issue that still hasn't been perfectly resolved. This would have significantly reduced panic.

- CDC indicated masks didn't help, and the establishment media took that and ran with it. Stigma against mask-wearers, instead of being reduced, was fueled. Fortunately now the error has been realized and people are being advised to cobble together masks from whatever they can find.

There are many other examples of the agencies not doing enough, but those are debatable because you can always argue that the action was impossible for one reason or another. However in these examples it would have been better for the government to do nothing, and you can't claim they lack the ability to do that. The most expensive and capable research/medical apparatus in the world can do little to help when it is being actively hindered.

The mask thing is still a recommendation, and for very good reason - they can make things worse for healthy people.

I'm not going to wear one because:

* I'm cluastrophobic and am uncomfortable (re)breathing hot, humid air.

* I know I'll touch my face often to adjust it.

* It will give me a false sense of security, especially considering it doesn't protect the eyes.

I don't see how you can logically that say something will give you a false sense of security. If you know it isn't truly secure, and are saying that it gives people a false sense of security, then you know enough to not have that sense yourself. I won't debate your first point though, if you would rather stay home than breathe hot air then that's your choice. However, it may not be socially integrative to go out not wearing a mask for that reason.

"False sense of security" is literally the reason stated by Dr. Birx for why the CDC made it a recommendation and not a guideline.

> you know enough to not have that sense yourself.

That's the thing about a false sense of security - you do things subconsciously when you feel protected. You may or may not realize it, but only after you've done it.

I understand how someone who was misinformed could have a false sense of security, but is there any evidence that a person who is informed can have a false sense of security? It sounds like something that you would need to show, as opposed to being an obviously correct assumption.

I think you can name any public issue where criticism is more warranted than it is for the current health crisis. The response of every country was pretty random. I don't see any failure to be honest. Some governments took different bets, but I don't see any specific problem.

There are many disadvantages to using anger and anxiety as a method of solving problems. I think it is misleading and indicative of unclear thinking to say that being anxious and livid and "channeling anger" are "correct responses" to any situation at all.

The correctness of emotions is separate from the effectiveness of the strategy. It is perfectly reasonable to be upset if mugged by a seven foot slab of muscle - even if frontal unarmed attack back would be a bad idea.

I think this is the first time people in the US with a neutral to positive experience with its systems are seeing how bad things were all along. A growing number of the respectability politics crowd is starting to understand why people who don't know these systems as harmless or helpful were screaming and angry all along.

I've looked at a little too much news in the last few weeks, it has not been good at all for my mental health. So starting today I've stopped looking at the news, it will only matter if there is mass civil unrest/riots.

Overall I agree but I take issue with the Twitter smear.

People who were on Twitter saw this coming weeks ahead of everyone else. There is a reason Twitter the company (and square) went full remote before anyone else did and that reason is that there is data on Twitter that is immensely useful (yes there are trolls and fear mongering too) Twitter outperformed our CDC, the WHO and many others in terms of 1. Sounding the alarm 2. Promoting solutions 3. Challenging erroneous solutions/stories championed by our leaders (eg “we stopped this”) and institutions (eg “face masks don’t help”) AND it did this a full 2 weeks BEFORE mainstream media.

It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though)

Twitter can be just has “heartwarming” as other mediums and other mediums can be just as toxic. Follow smartly.

All the other mediums are based on “look at me” Twitter is based on “look at this”, its not social media. It is vital and useful news. What you will hear filtered through a biased secondary source next week on CNN/Fox (or in 2 weeks via a tertiary source on FB) you can see live on Twitter now.

While using Twitter helped a lot to anticipate the events before confinement, I find that it doesn’t help much during confinement. It is saturated with people who are looking for information, while all there is to do is wait. Since there are much fewer people working, there is much less activity/information being created. The next question that using Twitter may resolve now is where this came from, « who did this », « who didn’t order the masks » and so on, it tend to be more conspiracy estimations or yelling at government than trying to anticipate on the crisis, and in that sense it now fits the negative description/addictive-inducing behavior.

I had to make a comment because I disagree so strongly with this sentiment. I am biased of course because I do not like Twitter in the first place, but I genuinely believe Twitter has made this crisis worse than it is.

Twitter naturally "outperforms" all other agencies because it thrives on disaster and outrage porn. Of course you will encounter all kind of alarm bells because that is what gets retweeted. Constantly and year-round. A broken clock may be right twice a day.

>It continues to be a much better source of information than the vast majority of traditional media (and quite a bit better than WashPo IMO, lost a bit of respect for Cal on that one, still respect him a lot though)

I passionately disagree, Twitter is not a better source information. It is merely a firehose of information, which is largely low-grade, easily digestible news that is often incorrect or misrepresented. None of it is vital nor useful. This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source. Twitter is instant gratification for news addicts. Everyone wants to be the town herald that gets there first.

Sources on Twitter are also biased, even more so. I rather trust processed and digested news than person X that said Y and shows some shaky video of Z. Best recent example of the disastrous consequences are the comments made by a German official in the Berlin senate (hardly an important position) who went on Twitter to complain about the US holding back masks. That turned out to be incorrect but spread like wildfire and caused an international incident. The "slow" news actually investigated and called him out on it but by then the damage had been done.

Absolutely correct, thank you.

The only people on twitter who know what they’re talking about are the subset of scientific experts who happen to have a twitter account. But their papers and public press conferences are more informative than tweeting over the noise of twitter.

A really great example is the current hysteria over the “mask conspiracy theory”. A few minutes reading the WHO’s advice months ago told me more than everything people have posted since. Still, people post accusations at the WHO, apparently not even bothering to read their position.

People don’t seem to like experts, and twitter is an exaggeration of all that is irrational amongst people.

> This has nothing to do with following smartly it is about how the website is built. Even if you follow smartly, at best you get an unbiased news aggregator where you might as well go straight to the source.

Strongly disagree. From the consumer side, most non-technical people don't know how to set up "feeds" or subscribe to the topics they are interested in. Twitter allows you to do so, to pick the people that you're interested in following, and see what their thoughts are and what they want to share.

And from the publisher side, twitter has allowed various Health Care Workers to quickly get online and share what is really going on in various hospitals throughout the US. This would not have been possible with a platform that was harder to use.

Not on Twitter, quit FB in 2017, and I saw this coming months ago. Coming at this from a reasoned perspective, it is fairly easy to evaluate the wheat from the chaff were it comes to public discourse.

The social media hive-mind seems more like an out of control mob flailing about aimlessly. It's polarizing sentiment analysis stoked semi-random clubbing. But who can blame people if their leadership proves time and again to be untrustworthy and have very other priorities than preserving the public health? And no, this is not only a digg at specific 'current administrations' wherever on this planet.

One of the things most disheartening to me was to see 'scientists' putting policy before truth.

+1 on Twitter anticipating this. I'm not a regular Twitter user by any means (it really didn't catch in the parts of the world where I live) but this platform was the only one in the Western world where one could see some of the real videos coming out of Wuhan/Hubei as the virus had just began to do its thing, and those videos had some "punch in the face" effect on people like me (as in: this thing is real).

At the same time the traditional Western media was just publishing some numbers (which never tell the real story) and were insisting on the political aspect of it all.

I am a person who gives in easily to accessible compulsions. Whether it's snacks that are sitting out or picking up my phone and quickly checking twitter. I recognize these things are unhealthy, but they are so immediately available it's hard to avoid nibbling on them when they are around.

I've decided to try and disengage from Twitter by getting into mobile gacha games -- you know those games where you randomly collect stuff to play? (I chose Granblue Fantasy which is a JRPG with random characters/loot, but I've also played Puzzle and Dragons which is a match 3 with random loot).

While these games have, at best, a predatory financing model, I have noticed a significant uptick in my own mental health by replacing the casual Twitter check with the casual loot farm. I sleep better, I'm less anxious, I'm less impatient. Especially because a lot of the time I was looking at Twitter right before bed and seeing a constant stream of terrible news (and people being wrong on the internet, which must not stand.)

So, I dunno, I can't say I'd recommend getting into a grindy, random slot machine, but I can say it has been a salve for me right now.

As someone who has been really hooked into gatcha (I counted 9 hours yesterday) this is honestly true. It's very personally rewarding as compared to Twitter (if a massive time waste).

Are there many games that will let you gatcha for that long without dumping money into them?

Most gatcha want about a hour of your time to two hours a day, you can extend that to about 3-5 hours with energy packs which you can stock up on. Most free to play gatcha players also play more than one gatcha game. Personally I play F:GO and Arknights alternating primary depending on if a event is running.

"I am a person who gives in easily to accessible compulsions. "

As a person who doesn't use Twitter or any other social media myself, I ask you had this virus arrived in the days before the internet and you were similarly confined then how would you occupy yourself?

You know the scene in The Great Escape where Steve McQueen is bouncing a baseball endlessly against the wall while in solitary confinement?

> in the days before the internet and you were similarly confined then how would you occupy yourself?

Not the OP — but books and TV?

Board games, card games (in a pinch, solitaire's not just a program that ships with Windows), puzzles, puzzle books, music, radio. Writing, drawing, playing music, math. It's not like we had nothing to do before the Internet. We just couldn't watch/read/listen-to anything we wanted on a whim. It took a little planning. There was always plenty to do, you just couldn't go "I suddenly want to watch this movie I've not thought about in years, don't already own on VHS, and no-one I know has it either" then be watching it inside five minutes and without leaving the house. Or easily and quickly answer silly trivia questions ("who was the guy in that one thing?") unless you had the relevant trivia book (remember topic-specific books of trivia?) which meant you had to actually kinda care about the topic (enough to have bought the book) and couldn't just indulge every low-value "hm, I wonder".

[EDIT] oh and top-lists were less available so we were kinda happier with whatever was around, so far as media went. You had to be kind of a nerd for a topic to be exposed to much in the way of rankings or best-of lists (buy relevant magazines and books that contained them). Outside one's actual strong interests the thought "this may not be the best thing in this category I could be experiencing right now, I better go find out what that is" just never came to mind.

> We just couldn't watch/read/listen-to anything we wanted on a whim.

And that's often a good thing! I find that I read books a lot less now, because there's less motivation to invest deeply in any one book when it's almost certainly not the best one, and there's that niggling background feeling that I could go out and find something even better to read if I browsed a little more ….

Since the "lockdown" in the UK, I'm not going on social media much more than once every couple of days at most just to check up on friends. And when I do, it just reinforces why: it is full idiots. It is full of more idiots than usual.

If your national health advisor / chief medical officer / government advisor hasn't mentioned it, then it is wrong and likely will always be wrong.

But Sarah on Facebook / Mark on Twitter has an alleged top tip on COVID19, then which one should you share? It seems the general public would now prefer to take their advice from "a bloke down the pub", rather than a qualified expert in the field with 30+ years of experience.

I'm much happier without social media, not that I was on it much to start with. Silver linings and all that.

Several countries' official advice has already turned out to be wrong or misleading, resulting in sudden changes of messaging.

This is true, however governments use expert advice (or ignore it depending on your country).

Trusting advice on social media is considerably more misleading or wrong.

Really it doesn't matter if the advice is from the court jester or the viser - only the validity of the advice itself.

Between the child and the imperial tailor who do you believe is valid when one says the emperor is naked and the other insists that he is wearing opulent garments? The one whom the facts support. Telling what is the truth is easier said than done however.

The description of social media features such as heart buttons coming into being almost accidentally via some "geek" searching for efficiency is wrong. These features are very specifically designed, engineered, and tested with purpose to increase engagement, usually with input from psychologists. When the only metric is ad revenue via eyeball time and one of the best ways to increase that is outrage and anxiousness, you get increased outrage and anxiousness.

It's a complex subject, because we're now in a situation where screens are our main form of socialization. It's not necessarily good to cut yourself off entirely; a number of friends of mine have been self-organising entertainment of various forms, and it can be a good place to find some of the huge number of musician and entertainer livestreams that have sprung up. (Remember to tip your musicians who no longer have an income!)

But yes, there's a big risk of "doomscrolling". It's a good idea to quietly unfollow people who post too much doom. Or use the ability of Twitter to turn off retweets from someone. And expand your blocklist. I have blocked a few people who I _agree with_ simply because their political posting is too endlessly retweeted into my timeline.

Normal politics is suspended for the duration. See how many are dead by (US) election day and vote accordingly.

Did anyone read Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World? If so, do you recommend it?

I have and I absolutely do not! It might be worth it if it inspires you to cut back on screen time for a bit, but the book is mostly fluff, anecdotes and ridiculous predictions about the future.

Twitter could honestly solve the issue that just using the app has a seriously negative effect on the mental and therefore physical wellbeing of it's users by offering a simple "Politics" toggle switch in their preferences.

They will never do this of course because it will reduce the power and influence of their platform.

Being "political" only tells if it is contested - it says nothing about right or wrong. The implementability of it is dubious as are claims that this would help mental health.

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