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Comment by muzani | Hacker News Reader

Heh stupid teens.

upvotes article on hacker news

I agree with the sentiment, but there is a huge difference between anonymous forms for professional/hobbiest interests and platforms that breed comparisons of your real life to your peer's curated online life and have algorithms designed to keep you online at all costs.

>comparisons of your real life to your peer's curated online life

HN is like that a lot of times. Especially when it's considering salary, social welfare, health insurance etc.

Just read any topic about open source funding.

Even posts on technical topics can drive harmful comparisons.

I went through a period of social isolation and HN was an escape. OPs and commenters became the closest thing to peers that I had. Those peers were consistently perceived as smarter and more motivated than me, and my already poor self esteem continued to decline.

Now that I'm working full-time onsite again, the bar set by my physical peers is much more achievable than what folks on HN acheive.

HN might be better than tiktok, but 5 hours a day of either is bad for your soul. Physically being around and working with others is vital to most people's mental health, even introverts like me that feel like avoidance is the most appealing path.

Tangentially - if you struggle with feelings that point you in directions you know are bad, be very careful if you engage with the mental healthcare system.

I’m not sure I agree. Depends more on your relationship with the platform. If you spend many hours browsing content, and particularly consuming and engaging with content that affects your mood, that’s a sign of a poor relationship with social media; not the specifically the topic of the content

Some examples of possible offenders in HN favorite topics: discussions of inflation, discussions of housing shortage, discussions of government and their policy, discussions of big tech and the possibly harmful things big tech does, discussions of basically anything about crypto, web3, or metaverse, discussions about censorship, the list goes on

If you look in the comment threads for these topics you see the signs of unhealthy relationship with social media. Highly emotional and inflammatory arguments with total internet strangers

I can't tell if this is satire. It's certainly worded like it, but it's close enough to trigger Poe's Law.

Indeed, when I was a teenager I spent at least 5 hours a day chatting on Yahoo Chat/IRC, getting into flamewars on mailing lists, etc.

Was that any different? I'd find it hard to believe GNU/Linux vs Linux or Slackware vd Red Hat Linux was worth any more than random dancing or makeup tutorials.

As usual, depends what you did with that really - actually following up on information and learning it just arguing.

It's the same on the other side. There's a massive difference between watching a random dance and using that video to learn that dance.

I doubt many people have that view here. We fabricated their addiction

I've seen numerous active posters here criticize platforms like TikTok while engaging in all sorts of mental gymnastics about how HN is different. Someone’s doing it already in a sibling comment.

And I'm not claiming superiority; I just don't feign to be above those who spend their time on TikTok.

We didn't push it on children: that's an executive decision.

We write the code that does it.

We were just following orders!

So our managers and board members are at fault. These are also the biggest beneficiaries, so that checks out for me

It's a bit like someone working at an arms factory saying "I just built the bomb, I didn't drop it on anyone", and they're right, but they're also complicit in the overall process. Without their actions, there would be no bomb to drop.

> It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

-- Nathaniel Borenstein

It's the parents of those working for the arms factory's fault. Without their actions there wouldn't be a bomb drop.

That is of course a far stretch, but I would argue that your argument is too. Non-complicit workers might have just lost their jobs and would have been replaced with complicit ones and the bomb would still be dropped.

For this to make sense I think it's important to look at the distribution of power really. Considering the power of the people who order the bombs and factory workers not really having a leaver I don't think their actions make a difference.

If every civilian didn't pay his taxes, the bomb order couldn't be funded. Non-proximal moral causality breaks down pretty fast when there are alternate non-evil uses of resources.

I mean yeah it's ironic. But one thing I think we've barely even scratched the surface of is the cognitive effects of reading/writing vs watching/swiping.

We know that reading is correlated to all kinds of positive things. For example: success, improved brain function, memory and mood. If you read and write a lot on social media maybe you get at least some part of that benefit.

Whereas, we're pretty sure you don't get any of those benefits from swiping and watching. But we do know that social media overall is correlated to the INVERSE of a bunch of those good things. It's correlated to worse cognitive abilities, worse memory, depression and anxiety!

And the most studied of the passive watching experiences (TV) is correlated to negative stuff too.

So frankly - replacing a reading habit with Tiktok (exactly what the nation's teens have done over time) is almost certainly unhealthy.

Edit: Reading (specifically the studies I'm aware of specify reading books and possessing high reading comprehension, but maybe other forms too) is correlated to better critical thinking, too. How much of the rise of fake news is attributable to the fact that we stopped reading?

What if you replace a very passive experience (TV) with a somewhat interactive experience (social media)? Perhaps there is a net benefit.

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