>>chango+2g
Most in-person social activity is good for your mental health. Studies show this includes church: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776270553/hidden-brain-does-g...

Facebook is singled out because they are the largest practitioner of surveillance capitalism. The entire idea of “optimizing for engagement,” where Facebook has been a pioneer and the largest player, is increasingly being shown to be a primary driver of political polarization, anxiety, bigotry, and hate crimes.

Thus Facebook is the new Big Tobacco.

>>chango+2g
https://medium.com/catholic-way-home/the-only-group-to-see-m...

Heh. The religious were the only group to see improved mental health during 2020.

Also, you are right that it should be social media. Nothing special about Facebook.

>>burles+Bg
It never occurred to me before, but the Roman Catholic Church, with confession[0], is surely the largest historical "surveillance capitalism" out there. I wonder if Facebook has hockey-sticked them yet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)#Catholic...

>>gergov+lr
Facebook brought us in with the promise of keeping in touch with friends, but the incentives are to "engagement at all costs". I'm hoping that if we can offer an alternative that lets people keep up with their friends without the engagememt incentive then we could greatly improve societal mental health. Thats why I build Haven[1] as open source and self hosted, along with several 3rd party hosting providers. No central entity means no "engagement at all costs".

[1] https://havenweb.org

>>sbf501+qh
You've reminded me of a very good Norm bit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ktWtIDQQQ

>>andrew+171
I hate that I was baited into taking a closer look at this rather than just sticking with my trite dismissal. I did locate a preprint of the paper [1], but have not yet looked at it to determine if any of my above criticisms hold water.

Nonetheless I remain blithely confident that this study is not going to be the one to break the mold.

[1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/1801812535....

>>andrew+I71
Hmm, yes I read that but it seemed so basic that I assumed it couldn't be considered "novel." Also it would appear to establish correlation but not causation.

I assume to do that you have to establish the complete pathway and mechanism from someone using facebook to an increase in depression, like showing observations of changes in neurotransmitters or brain structure that have been proven to cause changes in mental health, and then proving that facebook caused the changes in those levels. (FWIW I assume this could be done and that we may see those kinds of results if it were done, but I haven't actually seen a study like that. I also assume the hypothesis in general.)

For instance, using the example of smoking from another commenter, from the CDC website [0]:

> - Poisons in cigarette smoke can weaken the body’s immune system, making it harder to kill cancer cells. When this happens, cancer cells keep growing without being stopped.

> - Poisons in tobacco smoke can damage or change a cell’s DNA. DNA is the cell’s “instruction manual” that controls a cell’s normal growth and function. When DNA is damaged, a cell can begin growing out of control and create a cancer tumor.

These seem more like things that can be tested in laboratory settings that are easily reproducible and rely on more objective observations than self-reporting.

I'm neither a neuroscientist or social scientist so I'm just trying to understand, not saying they're wrong or that the research is even flawed.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/diseases/cancer.ht...

>>jrochk+aH
Yes, the study design is able to tell which way the causality points. Not all colleges got access to Facebook at the same time (back before it was open to the general public) so this is sort of a natural experiment: you can look at the colleges that had Facebook access and compare them to the ones that didn't, assuming that they're probably pretty similar in all other confounding variables, and that people don't choose their college based on whether or not it has Facebook access. For more information on this type of design, the phrase to google is "difference in differences".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences

>>advant+lg1
One can trace that lineage in conservative thought back to the John Birch Society.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

>>andrew+171
It is a working paper and you can find the whole paper here:

https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787

>>giulio+(OP)
Link to the working paper is here:

https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/256787

>>lavven+II1
That depends on the video game:

https://www.verywellmind.com/video-games-could-treat-mental-...

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-benefits-o...

https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpo...

EDIT: formatting

>>matai_+1n
I use this link, it's just what you liked in reverse chronological order woth some ads: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

I unfriend and unsubscribe from everything/anyone annoying.

>>giulio+(OP)
We have been collecting such articles since 2010: https://qbix.com/investors/articles

You can see a lot of information

>>rconti+gw1
You are right, and Facebook's roll-out is discussed in Section 2.2 of the paper.[1] The data sources are discussed in Section 3.1. They use the National College Health Assessment which surveyed students each semester.

[1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256787/1/1801812535....

>>themit+E11
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5067824/

>>classi+p41
Since about 1840 it seems: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Enragement&yea...

>>maxbon+Bk2
I dunno, I guess we just disagree. By the time I made my comment, we had this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32942901 I think neither that comment, nor the commenter's self-reply should be considered lacking effort. (Arguably the attitude that comes across when they complain about being "baited" isn't great, but their intended meaning seems fine.)

I do not take offense to the response calling out OP's first comment as low-effort and shallow because it was both of those things. I just can't see the comment I responded to as defensible with such a strong combination of irony and infelicity.