> We estimate that users in the Facebook deactivation group reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, anxiety, and depression, relative to control users. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p < 0.01 level, both when considered individually and after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the full set of political outcomes considered in Allcott et al. (2024). Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Facebook on people over 35, undecided voters, and people without a college degree.

> We estimate that users in the Instagram deactivation group reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement in the emotional state index relative to control. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p = 0.016 level when considered individually, and at the p = 0.14 level after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the outcomes in Allcott et al. (2024). The latter estimate does not meet our pre-registered p = 0.05 significance threshold. Substitution analyses imply this improvement is achieved without shifts to offline activities. Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Instagram on women aged 1824.

Of course, this study only considered normative people, not marginalized or those who were experiencing active harm from exposure to social media - your personal results may vary and it's important to remember that science is imperfect and social sciences are doubly so.

If going off Facebook improves your life - you do you.

Alternatively, you'll want to grasp the meaning of "standard deviation" (you're right that you can't multiply all standard deviations by a number and get a percentage - and a percentage of what?), and then find the "index of happiness, depression, and anxiety" they use and grasp its meaning.

Like have one nice meal or a one walk in the woods 2 months ago and rate your mood today kind of effect size.

0.06 std deviation is not anything to write home about and really doubtfully real, given the general quality of psychological science.

Perhaps, how much better of a day would you have if you found a dollar on the ground.

True. I've experienced it too

Politics, relationships, those are not things to talk about. But being able to respond to major FOSS contributors, that I'll do.

And I would have these disputes, of course, over utterly trivial things, like how to spell something or where to place the apostrophe, or some manual-of-style nitpick in an infobox. And the disputes would drag on for weeks and we could utterly stall the editing process by disputing on talk pages. And yet we could edit-war over it, usually in slow-motion. And often the dispute would be couched in quite polite language but I would hate the guys' guts.

And the tipping point came when I began to have dreams about Wikipedia, and I would wake up angry. I would wake up fighting. I would wake up and immediately tear into the web browser and catch-up on the discussion, or not, just to post my next riposte, because I'd composed it in my sleep, in my dreamless dreams.

And I woke up angry more often than waking up in any other mood. And I was telling my psychiatrist this, and she said I should probably stop looking at blue light before bedtime. And I was incredulous that she would think if I turned my arguments red-hued that they would anger me less, or cause me to wake up happy and agreeable or something?

And I know I wasn't taking enough medication to make anyone happy, but these guys on Wikipedia really knew how to piss me off, and if you've ever heard of "brinkers" it's a certain type of troll who will play by the rules, and basically trigger anyone with a hot temper, and that triggered person would forget their ethics and commit a fatal error, and get banned, and the brinker would go on to live another day and cause others to fall into similar traps. And many of us do that, if we have the volatile temperament. I lasted about 17 years on Wikipedia without a single block and with some low-grade warnings, but generally a clean discipline record, but finally it got to me.

And a lot of time on Wikipedia I had spent fighting trolls and vandals and very disruptive editors. And I made sure a lot of them were banned. I filed a lot of reports. I was a petty bureaucrat there, filing reports and compiling evidence and arguing cases. There was no shortage of "wikilawyering". From the very beginning I was finding disputes and diving into them. Especially when they didn't concern me, didn't concern any topic I cared about. Just to have the disputes.

And I kept waking up angry. And finally I got control of that. Nowadays I wake up frightened. I wake up traumatized. I wake up scared of something I dreamed about. It's spiritual torment, and it's attributable to nothing I did the night before. Perhaps the F.U.D. of Hacker News gets to me. But not on that level. At least I don't go on crusades or jihads against Wikipedia editors anymore.

You know it is not good for you but your executive function and ability to plan long term are compromised (whether chronically or acutely), so you do it anyway, and regret it later.

Over and over the most stressed out anxious people I meet are the underemployed/nonworking spouse in very wealthy couples. Especially the childless ones.

Social media only seems to have psychological side effects which aren't as openly visible to our eyes.

In the meantime, maybe I should just share more photos in the group chat instead...

https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr

This sort of longing for a cozy social media circles exists a lot in tech adjacent circles. However, unless you can align the needs of users with the revenue goals of the company, which in other words simply means that users pay for the pay for the product, this is not gonna happen. While you may be willing to do so, I'm sure many people would simply stop communicating with you because of the additional friction caused, especially when a free alternative exists.

Additionally, the "viral content" you speak of exists for two reasons, which I'm not sure it could be entirely solved even if you had users pay for the product.

Most people (me included) have very little intellectual capacity after work and other responsibilities, and need some easily absorbed "slop" to kill their time. I've personally tried engaging in more creative pursuits, but I can't do a good job at it at with all my energy sapped. This is where viral content, such as posts from politicians and celebrities, gain their initial spread.

I would also like to note that someone may want to follow a politician or celebrity because they think what they're doing is generally useful or entertaining, respectively.

This leads me to my second point, where even if you self-opted to not interact with viral content, I'm not sure your social circles would also follow through with the same choice. This ultimately means the platform has to take specific measures to suppress some posts based on its content or not show any of your friends' activity, both of which has disadvantages. Further, the former is in itself controversial depending upon which politician is in power and the current Overton window[1].

(Re downvotes: I'd like to know what part of all of this people disagree with.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window#

Instead of pausing social media altogether, I recently took some time off from the endless scrolling feeds only. When returning it's so apparent how everything is bait for engagement.

The feed hijacks the human attention process on a visceral level. Either with visual stimulus that's extremely intriguing for evolved apes like us (cutting a cake that looks like a dog), or by activating an emotional response from a tribal species like us (stupid takes on politics, in- and out-group stuff).

The rest of most social media apps is fine and offers much of what you are asking for.

Group chats are basically the Circles that Google+ saw the need for but could never get fully set up. A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances.

Meanwhile Instagram and Facebook keep evolving. Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Instagram is turning into a hipper LinkedIn, where artists, musicians, and local businesses share career and business updates and advertise their wares.

A social network is no better than the sum of its parts, and to create something really worthwhile, you have to limit what people are allowed to post (original content only, for example).

Doing that at scale I think is very hard.

Any marketplace that is privately owned, is not a free market place. And, the elephant in the room, these social media marketplaces are owned by parties with very particular interests. As long as don't recognise that, we will let ourselves be distracted by details that are always the result of this private control.

Something social must be public, or it isn't social, and it isn't what you and I really want.

Unfortunately, some of my family post insane political views, usually about now in the early AM. Being told that a King of the USA and the elimination of due process are good things doesn't help my mental health.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

You want nourishment instead of toxins! ^_^

The thing called "social media" is mostly a US export. It craves monetisation — at the expense of all else, including factual information.

What it has done to US society and public discourse is plain to see.

I’ve stopped using FB regularly, because I don’t like their feed algorithm. I don’t like the ads or the content, and I had curated it by joining local groups and BOFS. The only thing that brings me back now is the _possibility_ of a friends update.

That said, the _frequency_ of updates from friends and family will be vastly different for different people. The feed (if it speaks to you) works to regularize or smooth the frequency. I see FB’s problem and I don’t envy them. The vitality of the platform becomes precarious, and can be supplanted by some other platform with better engagement (ie TickTock).

I’m not a designer or researcher of Social Media, but I’m an emigre of sorts and not many people have that experience. The only platform all of my friends and family use are group private messages using our phones, and the most engaging chats we have are few and far between.

I think that’s the tough reality—over time, people gradually become accustomed to consuming random content from random accounts or pages, to the point where the original idea of interacting with friends and family on social media starts to fade away. That said, messaging apps might still bridge that gap through groups.

This is what Facebook was when we all signed up almost two decades ago. No one ever wanted a feed of people they didn't know. Free social media is inherently corrupt as they chase profits abusing the user base.

Of course there are other Chinese apps that operate entirely based on feeds. What I found interesting is that on Rednote it tried to suppress your posts from what it infers to be your friends in real life.

I think it is a great approach. There are sometimes I just want to see updates from friends and family. There are other times when I only want to see something interesting to me without necessarily telling all my friends what I'm interested in. These are two entirely different categories of social media and it is a good thing to require users to switch apps.

And it doesn't scroll endlessly. It will display this at the bottom of the page:

> You're all caught up on Most Recent posts

> Check back later for more updates

I think this goes beyond social media to all kinds of media.

elswhr.app

Would love to hear your feedback and any feature requests you might have.

Personally I’ve been mentally in a better place since getting rid of my social media accounts during COVID, but it does cause problems because Facebook has become a utility as well (schools and real-life social groups use it for co-ordinating activities).

It would follow logically that whatever kind of brain rot social media causes, would affect 1% of the population very dramatically, another 9% somewhat more noticeably, and then there would be this vast ocean of people who are only marginally aware/affected. From the perspective of online activity they appear to not even exist.

This always seems counterintuitive to the 9% or the 1% (and just by commenting we're already in one of those demogs). But there's lots of data out there supporting these skewed distributions in online activity.

But perhaps the study shows that the effect works in the right direction even if small and even when replaced by any other behaviours that cause unhappiness, depression and anxiety.

If a significant part of someone's Social life is run through Facebook, it's surprising that there's even a net positive in the end.

If you were depressed because of divisive politics on social media, then you leave social media during elections where divisive politics is everywhere in the real world anyway.. self-reported depression seems like it would not change much. So the results might make sense as long as they are targeting people that are old enough to be depressed by politics in the first place, and assuming politics rather than body-image issues etc is the main driver.

Some follow up questions.. does social media make divisive political issues in the real world worse? Seems like it! How old is old enough to be depressed by politics? Probably everyone now, which phenomenon is also likely caused by social media. Honestly regardless of elections, you can't actually leave social media by leaving social media anymore, it's kinda in the very fabric of things.

> my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")

Same, I mean this seems to be going against most of the other research on this. For what it's worth, here's a paper with some of the same authors on digital addiction ( https://www.nber.org/papers/w28936 ). Abstract states that

> Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use.

So.. not necessarily painting social media as wonderful. Social media companies would be interested in research about social media addiction for obvious reasons, but probably do not in general want that research public. Unless of course it hurts competitors more than it hurts them, and this paper is in the middle of drama about a tiktok ban. Maybe the authors just say what people in power want to hear at the time?

The self selection bias in these ad based invitation studies is just out of whack.

I suspect that those who participate were already considering quitting.

It also took a lot more than 6 weeks to get acclimated to it. You get psychological withdrawal. It took months for it to feel normal. My income went up a lot in the years after as well (in part due to more time to focus on finding a new job), so that also contributed to my happiness.

Page 7 of the PDF shows the following:

"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 collaboration, 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."

For example, if you deactivate Facebook but still doom scroll the NY Times et al homepages. Your happiness wouldn’t necessarily change because almost ALL media has adopted the addictive techniques of social media.

I think the only way out is cold turkey. The number of conversations my wife starts with telling me about some distant acquaintances recent vacation (as seen thru IG) is distressing.

My "social" internet use is more hobby based - forum/reddit hobby focussed content.

In this study, they paid people $25 to not use it for a week. I wonder if your wife would agree to that. It seems like for most people who are addicted, you need to go "sober" and not use it all.

Never engaged with the political stuff.

This has been my experience as well. I was a heavy lurker during peak Twitter phase, but I still got lots of value from it.

I tried posting about tech and stuff and there’s absolute silence. No one cares anymore as if there are only tumbleweeds out there.

I logged out of all my social media accounts (except HN) and moved them to hidden apps category. As a result I managed to read 3 lovely books and finished my side project ever since.

people move to new platform that is nice for socializing. The cycle begins anew.

I for one dont have the energy for it anymore. Im done. Im burnt out. If it isnt a real human in front of me it can fuck off and burn in hell. I make an exception for hacker news, because it doesnt seem trashed to shit by bots astroturfing just about every post to sway public opinion, but the moment it starts I will unplug from the public net for good, and nothing of value will be lost.

It functions more as a platform for blogs, but if you use the app there are blog-specific group chats, you can follow people, and the home page contains 'notes' that are pretty tweet-like in format. Once you have a collection of say 15-20 blogs that your subscribed to I found that the notes I got recommended were quite good and could spark some interesting conversations.

A few tech related ones I like are The Pragmatic Engineer, ByteByteGo, Bad Software Advice, and Exponential View.

I think that's an issue. I totally see why you were negatively impacted but I think we tend to forget it is not real life and in 99% of cases not important conversations/debates we are having with random people on the internet - they could be fun to have (or not) but important they are not. We treat social media popularity as if it is part of our identity, as if its almost as important as actual family and friends - and it really isn't.

What do you mean? Aren't you looking at it right now?

I've been on Bluesky for a few months.

Around 300 followers, mostly generic female names being caricatures of progressive or traditional values, often "looking for true love".

I can post almost anything I want and no one reacts.

So, you miss having access to experts in fields you’re a layman to. That makes sense.

I wonder though if the experts miss your random guesses about their work? If they miss the compulsion to correct your assumptions before misinformation takes hold?

We didn’t need social media, we had everything we needed with the old PHP forums

PixelFed reminds me a bit of the old Instagram. Not many users, but people are there to post their pictures. You kinda have to rely on tags and trending content to find accounts/content, but that's not always a bad thing.

If you hate Instagram and the anxiety it gives you, the people you meet on there will never be really on your level, or you on theirs. You will waste your time and effort on shallower relationships that can't get deep because you want to engage with life differently and not be on social media.

Dig deep into the hobbies that give you joy, and go to as many meetups and social occasions around them as you can. Leverage your friend and family network - the people who know you, and get you - and build on it.

You could offer to help the people who do all that posting to get it onto an email list or some other platform away from Facebook. A small indie website somewhere, even a blog.

I know this sounds like work, and you just want to enjoy your running club, but if it gets sticky, the people who are currently posting everything on FB will eventually realise there's value elsewhere and they'll keep it ticking over.

I went and found forums for the hobbies I'm into, rather than social media groups. Thankfully, most of the underground music I'm into also maintain their own websites, while some of the more hush-hush groups maintain members-only email lists. If they don't do either? Well, nearly all of them sell tickets online via mainstream ticket vendors regardless of how underground they try to be, so I'll see the info eventually (and, hell - I know the event's coming up and I've put it on my calendar, I don't need to see an IG story about it every single day for two months reminding me). For backpacking, forums are fantastic compared to the oft-repeated and overrun social media groups.

For restaurants? Meh. So what if I show up and a place is closed on short notice? Worse things can happen than wasting a little bit of time. Do they only share their menu on social media but my friends swear it's amazing? Fine, I'll experience it O'Reilly-style ("We'll do it live! Fuck it!").

I don't need to know everything all the time, that's part of the adventure! And if I really do need to know something about a place that only posts on social media, I've found that I can usually find that info elsewhere if I dig hard enough.

I don't know where you're based, but in general these days at least one "chat app" of some kind is the de facto standard in most countries. For a lot of the world, that's WhatsApp.

The US is an outlier in still relying majorly on SMS as the communications platform.

As for the really attention grabbing social media like Instagram and TikTok, if your kids want to get on there I'd say provide a good alternative. Something they can use or open if boredom strikes, because there definitely are those moments when that happens and one just grabs the phone. For me it's mostly been HN and books, some YouTube channels with NewPipe and some podcasts.

No smartphones allowed at school, strict usage limits for older kids at home, etc.

Taking part in group events also becomes a headache if you don't join the related WhatsApp group.

I find it appalling that basic features of human social functions are subject to the whims and profiteering of a quasi-monopolist company. There should be heavy regulations, at the very least.

That is by design. To privatize public spaces and control what is said in that spaces to monetize it is the goal. No individual parent can fight the power of the corporations that push us in that direction.

The public discourse of TV and other media is dying, while the private echo chambers owned by corporations are increasing. That is not good either.

What I think the study is missing is the impact of social media on society, and impact on society on individuals wellbeing. I see an increase in paranoia, extremism, pessimism, etc. caused directly by that closed communities that spin out of control and create the perfect dish plate to grow the most paranoid people. For kids and teenagers it will be worse, as they are still growing and learning.

Even the device platform you choose segregates you. There are a few neighbor families our family is close to. They(neighbors and my family) all talk on iMessage. I've got an Android/eOS device so I am excluded from the chats. At least my wife shares them with me.

There was a time that people set standards for (landline) telephone communications for the sake of interoperability. We need the same for other technologies. I'm sick of trying to be social in corporate controlled gated communities surrounded by impassible walls.

We don't need to be reminded of acquaintances lives - what people I barely know do in their free time has zero bearing on my life. They're acquaintances, not friends, so their actual importance/impact to my life is next to nil.

I never smoked but often hung out with smokers outside on their lunch breaks. If an acquaintance is truly important to us, we can be reminded of our acquaintances lives by making an effort to turn them into real friendships that interact with each other in meatspace.