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Comment by mastrsushi | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty tiring to see activists and researchers targeting big bad Facebook when clearly the issue is social media as a whole.

An app where the user watches a 5 second video of some rich 18 year old from LA making smoothie bowls. Then the user swipes up to a video of some 22 year old lifting half the weight of an economy sized car. The fact that this isn't obviously depression inducing is concerning.

I know by posting on this site, I'm contributing very little. But there needs to be a campaign against social media. Something that tells the world, this is mood altering and unnaturally over-stimulating. That we weren't meant to lay down slide up at our screens like brain dead slugs watching 5 second clips for 5 hours after work.

Maybe I've become too programmer minded, but we were meant to make things, read books, listen to music, even watching TV shows is more meaningful.

View on HN

What is "social media as a whole"?

Does HN count as social media?

Where do you draw the line?

Sites where you can peek into other people's lives, or at least what you think is.

To me HN is nothing more innocent than a virtual programming club.

I sometimes spend hours after work browsing HN and reading articles about tech, trying to keep up with new frameworks or concepts. Seeing everyone understanding stuff in comments is sometimes very depressing as I feel under pressure to match up to what others seem to grok so easily.

So, it can be quite the same as Instagram. The comments on HN are often similar in nature to the Instagram posts in that they only show people at their best, in the sense that they generally wouldn't post if they didn't have something smart to add. But there are so many folks in tech that don't necessarily understand everything.

I am exaggerating a bit here for the sake of argument. There is certainly a difference, but the core reason is often identified as comparing yourself with unrealistic representations of what life, abilities, looks, etc. of others is like. And that can happen in any forum.

Driving to the rich part of town and seeing pretty people in German Luxury Vehicles cut you off could be considered depressing.

The difference between this, HN and social media is that you have an encapsulated view of what you think is someone's personal life.

Some guy on the headline of HN makes a career out of implementing Ruby interpreters. That's great, but that's his work life. He could be divorced with 4 kids. The rich guy with the hot wife that cut you off, he could be an attorney for ExxonMobil or some other miserable high paying role.

Social media is false proof that regardless of status or true well being, you have the opportunity to paint the shape of your life.

I think they have something of a point...

On HN we can look into each other's post history to profile each other which does constitute something of a peek into however much of our lives we have decided to share, and I often see people mention it when disagreeing on each other. There's upvote/downvote/flagging wars on tribally charged matters, as much as Dang does his best to moderate it. All of this has to be driving up cortisol and furthering people's fear and suspicion.

But, on the other hand, HN's design is very web 1.0, and that does curtail the effects a little. You have to click instead of infini-scrolling. If you really want to profile someone, you again have to click through many pages of their post history. I think the warring that happens is endemic to the society and any medium would carry some of it, and I've seen it spilling over into "meat space".

Is HN use V.S. some other social media stemming the tide of poor mental health? I say probably not by much, if at all. Would annihilating all "engagement optimized" social media have positive results on our mental health? I say probably a considerable amount, but not enough to fix what's already broken in too many of us. Being highly optimistic it could drive some sort of "positive feedback loop" if the mental health benefits were somehow reinvested into further healthy decisions for society, but I think a lot of people would just end up in another vice because that's part of the current human condition.

Seeing some of the cool stuff people on HN get to work on, and how much they get paid to do it, can make me quite depressed sometimes.

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