Frequent social media use tied to higher levels of irritability | Hacker News Reader

Frequent social media use tied to higher levels of irritability

medicalxpress.com

50 pointsJimmc41425 comments

Last November I made a commitment to myself to avoid social media and the news and I've noticed a very positive impact on my outlook and demeanor. The only social media I've consumed since then has been HN, but even then I've found myself becoming more irritable as topics I'd rather not think about have started to come in.

In fact, dang asked me to reign it back just yesterday because that irritability has started to come through in my comments here. So, now I find myself in a position where I have to start cutting back on or removing HN as well, which honestly sucks, because I want to interact with people online in a meaningful way, but I'm also having a problem not engaging on divisive topics that I feel strongly about.

Somewhat related - I was just thinking this morning how I wish I could have a phone that only did calls, text, GPS, and music without any of the other distractions. I think I would be much happier if I had something like that.

> Last November I made a commitment to myself to avoid social media and the news and I've noticed a very positive impact on my outlook and demeanor.

You and me both, life is much less stressful if you ignore all the useless theater that permeates our society now.

> I was just thinking this morning how I wish I could have a phone that only did calls, text, GPS, and music without any of the other distractions.

You should be able to do that by just uninstalling all the apps that contribute to that? If you're on an iPhone, you can disable Apple News notifications, etc. I refuse to have any Google or Meta apps installed on my phone, and it helps greatly. I use Lemmy but have a very curated list of communities I visit. Even then I have to step away sometimes and avoid the "all" feed at all costs.

> topics I'd rather not think about have started to come in.

I'm not an HN doomer, but I will say that I have distinctly noticed, in the last week or two, that some topics that would normally be flagged out have been allowed to persist and garner thousands of angry talking-past-each-other comments.

I imagine this to be a temporary experiment for extraordinary circumstances/events, which will be dialed back to normal soon.

I hope I'm right. This experiment, if it be so, has shown that we here are the same kind of lousy uncharitable communicators as the rest of the world. I miss believing otherwise.

My strategy is to avoid topics that negatively affect me at all, unless the topic at hand directly and immediately impacts me in some way. I cut off all social media except HN and don't browse anything else. (Except YT I guess, but I don't comment a lot there so I don't count it.)

Commentwise, I always ask myself if I'm about to comment because I have something meaningful to add, or if I'm commenting to argue with the parent. If it's the latter, I just close the tab. Life's too short to argue on the Internet.

It is relatable. I think we could all be more charitable when we interact with an "irritated" comment. It can be hard to express compassion in these scenarios without sounding patronizing. There can be a high difficulty when someone is wrong on the Internet. Sometimes you just have to let it pass.

You might try adding all of your problem domains to your DNS blocklist. This has helped me in the past. Not suggesting that you should leave HN if you are still enjoying it. I suspect we're all the same as you. We want to interact.

If you are music fan or listen to podcasts, you might try silence. Focusing on only one thing has been helpful for my usage. I've noticed that when I listen and code or read, I'm fine. Irritation can begin when the third item distracts me. Removing the music or podcast leaves me with my primary focus and the interloper.

There are a few phones on the market that aim at this, to varying degrees

https://www.thelightphone.com/

https://hisenseeink.com/products/hisense-a9-pro-e-ink-smartp...

It’s invite only but the Lobsters website is like what HN should be, without the totally off topic content that seems to take up a third of any given front page now here.

Yeah, I want a phone like that. There's definitely a market

I'm on the waitlist for a Minimal Phone and am hopeful that will help my phone-related compulsions.

I can doom scroll HN to the last page on my phone, but I never do that on a computer.

https://www.minimalcompany.com/

Thank you for this, I'm strongly considering adding myself to the queue.

I like memes and I tolerate everything else. So I usually use Reddit as my main source of funnyness these days. I don't know how the algorithm that puts together my feed works but it is somewhat awful. From time to time it insists on showing me things that are going to make you mad by default. Some scammers reversing into somebody's car on the road, fights, some stupid wanna be famous tiktoker doing some stupid thing for attention... And it seems to be the norm now a days in every platform. You can no longer see things that interests you, they keep feeding you stupid things. I guess that can trigger irritability

Update: typo

I believe that the algorithm of most social media platforms nowadays will try to show you things that trigger an emotional response, as this will result in more engagement from you. This is not a good thing for you mental health, but maximises time spent on the platform.

But with Reddit, there's no need to use the recommendation algorithm at all, as there is Reddit enhancement suite for the browser, and a couple of decent apps for mobile, which each support a filtered front-page with only the stuff you subscribe to.

Care to share a better app for mobile? I do like some of the recommendations, cause otherwise I wouldn't find them. I wish for recommendations that better align with things I upvote

I'm on android, so I can't help you with iOS. There's infinity and Reddit is fun which I've used and really liked. You might need to patch the latter with revanced nowadays, but being on this forum, you probably have that anyway in order to make YouTube usable on mobile.

I tend to forget that Reddit even has a feed, I just go to subreddits directly. I definitely agree that automated feeds are a huge concern, maybe the biggest downside of social media. This is why I'm currently a fan of Bluesky: chronological posts from people I follow, just what I always wanted.

Yeah, for now. Profit motive will eventually force them to enshittify. I hope I'm wrong, but history suggests otherwise.

Isn't a common symptom of mild withdraw from <something>, irritably? Quitting nicotine, alcohol, etc. people become more irritable.

This seems so obvious to me I must be missing something. The apps are designed to be literally addictive.

Is there any withdrawal going on? The study looked at people who use social media frequently, and people who don't use social media frequently. It didn't specifically look at people who recently quit using social media.

I think withdraw isn't from quitting... it's from not getting "a hit" before symptoms set in. I figured this was implied.

I guess your point is that frequent social media users are in a constant state of withdrawal because the second they stop using it, they go into withdrawal.

Is that what happens with smokers/drinkers? Are smokers/drinkers considered to be in a constant state of withdrawal? I always thought withdrawal symptoms happen when someone tries to quit. I didn't think they happen constantly.

Short answer, yes.

Disable your YouTube search and watch history. Disabling history will also disable YouTube homepage recommendations and YouTube shorts. You can watch videos by searching or videos from subscribed channels (sorted by new).

This has saved me countless hours.

I have also deleted Twitter and decided that I don't need so much news updates about things that I may or may not care.

Do the news next. The underlying cause in my experience is stupid people.

I agree here about the news.

Anecdata: my Dad, who is in his 70s, was doing an awful lot of basically doomscrolling his news feed and just reading headlines like, all day. He was cranky, irritable, and just plain getting meaner. My Mom had a talk with him and got him to dial that way back and he's definitely got a better attitude now. He's replaced that with some games and actual reading of dead trees (thanks, Bathroom Reader)

This. Social media only does make them visible.

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