Participants were measurably happier and less anxious.
But, disappointingly, not by a huge margin:
Perhaps this is due to the fact a significant number of users switched to less harmful online platforms and didn’t stop using their phones.
Or perhaps there is actually something more sinister. My real concern with this study is the involvement of Meta.
We actually have evidence that Meta halted internal research about social media:
Would you study tobacco and have tobacco companies involved?
Would you study obesity and have Coca-Cola involved?
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but could Meta actually bully/bribe Stanford in order to change the figures?
Can attest. Dropped Facebook in like 2016 and am not on anything else aside from Lemmy. I constantly felt like I wasn’t measuring up to people’s perfect family pictures and exciting vacations, even though I knew intellectually that their pictures were posed and their lives were edited for social media. The world still sucks but at least I feel less inadequate.
Lemmy is the only platform I engage with. I closed down or abandoned all other platforms around the same time you did. My quality of life has greatly improved since, though I do still miss certain aspects sometimes.
I deleted my FB, Instagram, and Twitter when I joined the fediverse in June of 2023. So far the only thing I miss are FB event invites. Now my friends have to specially message me for events they put together. Otherwise it’s been a great change.
Yeah, those are the things I miss too. It feels like being a bit outside of a bubble looking in sometimes.
And then those early days of Facebook, where it was actually useful and engaging, I miss those days too. But the world is a different place now and the slippery slope is too slippery for me to feel comfortable getting anywhere close to that slope.
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but could Meta actually bully/bribe Stanford to change the figures?
Asking questions about who’s paying for the study isn’t being a conspiracy theorist. Especially Meta, they’re evil af. They seem to be cautious as well.
This project is part of the U.S. 2020 Facebook and Instagram Election Study (Gonz´alez- Bail´on et al. 2023; Guess et al. 2023a,b; Nyhan et al. 2023; Allcott et al. 2024), a partnership between Meta researchers and unpaid independent academics. Under the terms of the collab- oration, the independent academic authors had final authority over the pre-analysis plan, data analysis, and manuscript text, and Meta could not block any results from being published. More details of this partnership are in Appendices E and F. We have posted answers to frequently asked questions online at this website.
I did that over a decade ago… Should I re-sign up and quit again?
As someone else that isn’t part of the shirts here - do you also find it jarring when suddenly all these people you meet suddenly have all the same opinion about something?
Like. Even people you’ve known for a long time. Suddenly they care about this thing, and people you know that have never met each other suddenly feel the same way.
Why wouldn’t they? We all took ourselves offline. What other content would be left for them to be exposed to?
Not engaging will also impact the algorithm since it’s feeding off attention to sell advertising. If we all refuse to engage that will weigh it heavily towards the views of people left online who are spreading a different opinion which is to spread and engage with the online world. That’s how they get their information across.
Only if you want to tell others like you to get off of it. This way people not like you have unfettered access to eyes an ears of younger generations who will eventually be in charge and have zero reference to any of the issues you care about but will know a tremendous number of views you oppose. That seems to be the pattern with a lot of us lately. Convincing each other to get offline. Big push for it. The future generation will be raised by TPUSA like we were all raised by school house rock
Yeah I got back on FB after a 10-year absence for my nonprofit, and then Insta. Went as far as downloading the apps to my phone. Within 1 week my mood and productivity had completely collapsed. I was just sitting there slumped into my chair, like I was hooked up to an IV drug or something. I used to do the same with Reddit to an extent, and being banned there was actually good for me. Now I am - well that nonprofit, I started with all the time I wasn’t wasting on Reddit. Fuck all that dopamine-addicted noise. I’m quitting weed this Christmas break, I want all my neurotransmitters back.
Damn! I’ve never had Instagram and i haven’t opened Facebook in five years. So why aren’t I happy?
I believe being on Lemmy causes unhappiness as well. We need to stop using all forms of social media. Today is my birthday and as a birthday present to myself I’m uninstalling all social media on my phone by midnight. I’m just getting my last few fixes in before I do it 😹
Happy birthday ❤️
Congratulations! I hope you never read this!
That’s me, too.
I use Facebook twice a year and I don’t have accounts anywhere else but Lemmy. I don’t think I use this as Social Media in the usual sense. I’m not following individual people because I don’t care who y’all are. Only your content. I’m not posting stuff about myself because I’m boring as heck.
Cool but are you doomscrolling on lemmy?
I sure am! Not comparing myself to anybody on here, though.
It could’ve been worse
Try going to maid cafe. It’s silly and endearing.
The problem with the tobacco analogy is that you can buy a pack of cigarettes and walk away, then study it at peace. You cannot run any kind of testing on the shithole systems of Meta without their permission and involvement. That’s how you know every such independent study will be tainted by Zuck’s dirty hands.
I’ve never had Instagram, but I noticed an improvement in my mood after dropping Facebook and Reddit.
I deleted the apps. I don’t visit those sites in alternative ways but I crave it man. I miss doom scrolling and I ended up on yt shorts. Way less of the time and my field seems to avoid viral trends so I guess it’s my nicotine patch: I still do it’s just not that harmful I guess. How are you guys dealing with it? Do you consider lemmy as addictive/harmful as the mainstream socials?
Personally I find there to be less new daily content on lemmy, so it ends up self limiting as I see the same posts again. Might just be what I’m subbed to, and or how I sort. But I do end up spending less time here than I did reddit, or I currently do on youtube.
I think it comes down to an insufficient user base than is required to get the previous fix of social media.
This was a problem in the early days of Facebook as well…
I struggle. I love social media. Lemmy adds to the depression because somehow every post is political and I get to see all the bad things the government is doing every day. I’m shutting it all down. If I need a social fix I can play an MMO lol
NGL. You had me till the last line.
Haha! That line is a special little tip only for me. I’m a hopeless EverQuest addict.
Do you consider lemmy **ass **addictive/harmful as the mainstream socials?
That’s a very funny typo. But also kinda relevant. Lemmy’s sorting “algorithm” is just a very basic sort. There’s no personal tuning, just basic “does this post have more activity than this other one” so it’s as un addictive as it can get really. Short of purposefully trying to be bad.
Yes but since its users are mostly reposting from sites trained on said algorithms. There is certainly a “trickle down” effect.
Posts that weren’t popular on Reddit, or on the news website aren’t going to be seen and then posted here…
Lol nooooooooooo I did not fckn meant to do that
But yh it’s not being algorithmic that much is pretty much the reason why I don’t open it that often
Lemmy is a lot less addictive for me than personalized algorithm-driven TikTok/Reels/Shorts type stuff and has better quality content, but there’s also a lot less content. I blocked internet access for Instagram and other apps on my phone and now I ended up on YT shorts on my computer also
Get yourself extensions to block youtube shorts and convert it to regular videos. Use phone apps to do the same, I believe revanced and grayjay both do this
I discovered this about a decade ago when I deleted all my socials. Now I only use Lemmy and follow topics I’m genuinely interested in!
Removing Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, corpo-controlled media in general from my life was so freeing. Suddenly I wasn’t comparing myself to anyone else. Their lives weren’t in my faces all the fucking time.
Social media is just ragebait for me, lol. I have a Facebook account that I haven’t used since 2015 and that’s it. 🤷
But … you’re commenting here … on a social media platform …
Nah, this is a pseudonymous discussion forum, where ideas are discussed, an online space format that predates what we know as “social media”. The mechanics and content are very different!
Clean since 2014, you betcha it’s nice
Around 2010 I realized the more I saw of my casual acquaintances the less I liked them and quit. I didn’t make many great decisions at 16 but that was one
Can confirm, social media was making me depressed
Obviously yes, because once removed from social media an individual stops being compared against and forced into FOMO.
Otherwise it takes some technical skill to curate experiences in social media, like choosing whom to actually follow and interact, keeping only truly best friends, limiting how much personal information is given to Zuck, and using plugins and scripts to control how much actual content is being shown. As someone who lived with a dumb phone for a long time until 2012, it’s disgusting but is a necessary evil I have to be on social media in some form (not using my deadname), because the majority of the clients I have to deal with are mostly on Facebook Messenger nearly all the time.
“Science once again proves common sense correct.”
