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Comment by avgDev | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, it is really hard to know if social media did in fact improved your life.

One could argue that opiates improve their life, in the short term at least. Therefore, in my opinion parent comment claimed that we will not know the effect of FB for another 10-20 years, and I agree. There is a lot more to us, than what we feel right now, our minds are very complicated. What if in 20 years you starting feeling depressed for no obvious reasons?

FB and social media will definitely have a major impact on the human mind. I am not sure if I find value in being friends with people from high school as my mindset has shifted so much I cannot stand people that used to be my friends. Seeing their children and vacation pictures adds no value to my life, it serves as a distraction and makes me want to "keep up with the Joneses"

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I can understand that feeling of "keeping up with the Joneses" but for me it's easy to ignore. For awhile I'd look at Instagram and see all the cool stuff my friends were doing and be disappointed that I wasn't doing cool stuff too.

Then I realized that my mindset was all wrong. I should be stoked for those people! I do cool stuff too, even if I'm not always doing it.

Exactly, if you use IG in an unhealthy way, don't be surprised if you feel worse after using it.

Only follow your friends and people you actually care about. Then it's a feed of interesting thing about people you actually like.

Problem solved.

Even then, some of my friends are rich buttholes who somehow manage to take many huge trips each year. International, snowboarding multiple times (denver, canada etc).

It doesnt bother me much, but I sometimes feel bad for my wife. She seems everyone doing fun shit on instagram and she is stuck at home. We cant afford to drop 10k+ a year on trips. We get one or two a year which is enough for me.

The thing is when we go on these trips, we just enjoy each other. We take pictures, but we arent fucking posing for instagram 20 times a day. We take pictures to remember the moment together, and to share them with our family in the future.

How much are your two car notes and insurance cost you per year?

If you don't have a number right away, maybe start there.

The problem starts when your friends doing 'cool' things as defined by them, then start subtly judging people who are not part of that gang. People hangout only with people who do the exact same thing otherwise there is just no point of hanging out. Instead, the truth is that our brains are quite capable of making friends with different people who do different activities and have a round robin going on. This is how we grow as a person. Human pettiness is universal and it is easy for the brain to keep noticing who is different than them, and completely missing the point.

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