> “Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction,” said Turner. Orben’s team and others argue that this is likely to be oversimplistic and are investigating whether the teenagers cluster into groups whose behaviour can be predicted by other personality traits.
> It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behavioural addiction, but for others their use could be driven by compulsive checking, others may be relying on it to cope with negative life experiences, and others may simply be responding to negative social perceptions about “wasting time” on social media.
Finally! I feel less smart for not having thought of this myself!
I was unable to meaningfully change my own phone habits (despite serious effort and roadblocks) until it clicked that I was coping for something. What that was and what I was doing to cope highlighted parts of my life like nothing else. Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities that benefited the withered branches of my life. Old habits still die hard, but knowing that I'm coping as I'm coping helped me separate the good social media use from the bad.
This is the solution for a lot of behavioral problems. The instinct is to do the bad behavior less, but the solution may instead be to do something else more.
"The Myth of Normal" by Mate Gabor is a great place for people to
start this work.
Later it dawns on you that sure, like everybody else you have
weaknesses and traumas that you've learned to cope with, but that
doesn't excuse some people deliberately designing and pushing a
product to specifically exploit that. That should give you dose of
healthy positive anger of the kind that is transformative when acted
upon.
> Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities
My relationship with social media, even HackerNews, really clicked when a meme (oh irony) said: ”You’re like a tiger in a cage. You know how they pace in circles when their enclosures lack enrichment? That’s you bouncing around apps on your phone”
Haven’t quite figured out how to reliably stop that, but it’s true that when there’s enough enrichment, I can go days forgetting that my phone and the internet even exist.
I used my phone as a way to withdraw and escape. Even the most mundane situations warranted some degree of escape. Very stressful times would boost my screen time dramatically.
It seemed painfully simple in retrospect. Like any behavioural addiction, though, I had an endless supply of reasons to be on a screen at any given time. Scary stuff. I don't think I'm the kind of person people would think behaves that way, nor did I necessarily. But we're all human, and this is a very human thing. It sneaks into your life in such an insidious way, and does so much damage before you can consciously see it or feel it.
I think this is an unfortunately not enough discussed topic. As sciences are young (as psychology relatively is) you work on broader problems and much more aggregated results. You make naive assumptions like everything exists in normal distributions or data is i.i.d. So you get results that are big generalizations and sometimes not even reliable. But then as a field advances, it naturally shifts into requiring more and more nuance and specificity. Where you have to start considering multivariate solutions (even if that's a mixture of gaussians, which, awesome tool btw) because you approach a natural wall at the explainability of your data with naive methods. And let's be clear, if we wanted to really rigorously study psychology -- at the same level as, say, physics -- then there would need to be a lot of crazy math invented and we'd probably still end up needing to do unethical things because holy fuck how do you control all those variables. (definitely warrants being open about error and unknowns)
There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think it's wrong that we're not open about it, in so much that it isn't even always explicitly stated during a science education. We might say something like "all models are wrong" but I don't think that solidifies this thinking enough for novices and can create experts who still don't get it. Wherein it becomes a classic clique, where everyone knows the phrase but doesn't understand or practice the lesson.
There's some noticeable downsides too. If you're constantly not reiterating what your base assumptions are and acknowledging the limitation of those assumptions, you forget they exist. It also becomes hard to communicate the significance of your work to the public and I think in some cases is often why the public ends up calling (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not) bullshit. I think there's also a major advantage to science, in being open about these helps newcomers (such as those entering graduate school) more readily understand the limitations of the field and what work needs to be done. But I think some incentive structures we have in place don't encourage great scientific behavior in this way. Speaking of which, other metrics can even end up making bridging this multivariate gap more difficult. Such as the all too well known p-value weirdness, you may end up rejecting works making progress towards this bridging by having these arbitrary requirements rather than evaluating works with more nuance, which can even then discourage attempting to build such bridges. I guess coming full circle to: it's complicated? Like everything else lol
It would be more productive to stop prodding at the symptoms and instead consider looking into potential root causes like car dependency and commercialization or erosion of third places.
Kids aren't just staring at a glowing rectangle due to some unexplainable pharmacological effect it may possess, they just crave human connection and sense of belonging just like everyone else. Using medical terms to dehumanize them is not productive at all.
The root cause is that social media apps are designed to be addictive whereas other software is not. This was encouraged by all the SV cheerleaders (remember Nir Eyal's "Hooked" being a must-read for all product bros?), before it was clear that Facebook and others conduct significant levels of experimentation to extend screen use time.
Places with far weaker car culture and world class mass transit and which have stronger "third places" culture are still phone and social media addicted. See Singapore, Japan, or South Korea as an example of this.
>‘We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,’ said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis
Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"?
I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findings, and there's obviously a social stigma that exists around admitting to gambling addiction that doesn't seem to exist for social media addiction, but still; it strikes me as unusual to be so openly questioning people about whether or not their perceived addictions are real.
It is both fairly common to say you're addicted to something as a way of saying you're really into something as well as to indicate actual addiction, and you can't expect people asked a question like that without detailed additional guidance to be able to give a clinical assessment of whether they are in fact suffering from an addiction.
Unless you probe what the respondents mean by addiction, or provide them a clear definition before asking, there's very little reason to assume they will be using a definition of addiction that justifies assuming anything approaching a clinical definition, or even anything negative.
My opinion goes in other direction: I think even with that caveat, what she went on to say suggests she's making assumptions about what people meant - especially given the age of the respondents - that I don't there's basis for unless the survey provided a lot more context than just the question given in the article.
Seems reasonable to separate self-identification from a diagnosis. Flip the logic: if someone says they aren't addicted to something, does that make it true?
Well, yes if the suggestion is some sort of intervention. There are large groups of people that will say they are addicted to coffee, TV, video games, etc. Not a lot of them will meet the medical definition of addiction.
Social media addiction is a meme (in the technical, mind virus sense), gambling addiction isn't.
I don't know if this is what the study authors were thinking, but I see it as a bit like not taking people's word for it that they're gluten intolerant. It is a real thing and people do know that they have it, but also it's a trendy thing and there are a lot of people trying to convince you that you have it when actually you're perfectly normal.
Repost because of HN’s over-aggressive censorship (m-bation is abbreviated no-no word):
Social media is just psychological m-bation via marketing tactics. Maybe if we called it m-bation people would stop aggressively ignoring the negative effects from habitual use. On the other hand no one openly discusses physical m-bation, just as no one discusses their online identity they’ve cultivated.
Get a hobby, gain a skill.
Would this be the same 8 hours for everyone worldwide, would it be by the user's timezone, or would we get to choose our own 8 hours?
This question was brought to you by memories of not being able to set the timezone of my tamagotchi and it subsequently dying because it was awake when I was asleep.
I just don't want legislation telling competent people what to do here. I want the legislation to be more analogous to child protective services.
I feel that a guardian should have a choice up until they are negligent or inhibiting (however a society deems it - specifically left as this definition).
If said guardian is able to raise a kid in a healthy environment, with a healthy relationship to technology, then I do not want to step on their toes.
I think we need to 'reverse Chesterton's fence'(?) our liberty here, let's not lose our freedom and build a restrictive fence or Berlin wall.
I know many people disagree with me, but the fact that there isn't consensus here means we should tread carefully lest break some cotton mills.
I would miss it. I would also make it a matter of principle to refuse if someone tried to force a shutdown on us - I've got my Mastodon and Lemmy instances, and if we were to have to go underground, we'd go underground.
Nah bro. What about, for example, people who happen to be busy during all but the hours you select for the shutdown. Since it’s forced, they effectively just don’t get to use it at all. In my opinion though, social media can be used in a productive way in moderation, like how a lot of people use it to keep up with the news or stay in touch with family.
The first region to somehow effectively ban any access to Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and social media for people under the age of 21 will raise the first generation of young people to rule over the rest of the world's social media addicted hoi polloi.
Having a permanent public visual record of "growing up" isn't going to help people as much as their parents seem to think it will and the only viable leaders, politicians, Justices, etc. will come from this hypothetical region.
Once again, social media is 21st century cigarettes. Legions of brilliant scientists and engineers have spent cumulative millennia optimizing these products to be as addictive as possible, while simultaneously compiling and burying evidence of the deleterious effects their products have on their customers.
When did we lose the moral authority to make things illegal for minors? I believe in 50-100 years it will be a worldwide scandal that these skinner boxes were ever given to children let alone adults. AI optimised attention slideshow that likely drains you neurochemically and disrupts your reward circuitry the same way heroin or ecstasy does? On paper this shit should clearly be regulated.
One contributing factor is the surprisingly recent meme that corporations exist solely for the benefit of their shareholders. It’s a totally ahistoric and obviously antisocial meme that gets repeated like it’s gospel, even by otherwise intelligent people. This perspective should be literally laughed at and made fun of as a moral system suitable only for the greediest and most myopic among us.
(When doing "X let alone Y" the more outrageous thing goes in Y.)
I strongly agree with your point, it should be possible to ban this stuff for minors at least. Under 13s are already effectively banned but banning all minors altogether would be much more effective.
[EDIT: I'd love to hear what those who've downvoted actually disagree with. The question as stated in the article objectively does not ask whether they see this as a problem or not, nor does it justify why they believe they can assume how respondents have interpreted the question; I very intentionally caveated this to point out that I don't have a problem with the notion that many of them probably did mean it was problematic to them, but if that was not appropriately contextualised to the respondents it is not clear how many did or did not interpret it the same way the researchers do - maybe they did include additional context; if so it's The Guardian leaving out important context. Either way, from this article we can't tell]
Overegging the results.
This is the statement they were asked to agree or disagree with according to the article.
> “I think I am addicted to social media”
Note that it does not ask them to answer whether they think they have a problematic relationship with social media. Using the term "addicted" to refer to something you spend a lot of time with is common whether you're happy or unhappy about it. Unless there is significant context around the question that the article left out but that were presented to respondents, making the assumptions they seem to be making in the article seems problematic at best.
E.g. if asked if I was dedicated to chocolate, or pistachio ice cream, I'd say yes. If I was asked if I had a problem with it, I'd say no - I enjoy those "addictions". I also enjoy my HN "addiction".
I'm sure a portion of those who strongly agreed that they feel addicted also do consider it a negative and maybe a serious problem in some cases, but the question reported on did not ask about that, so all we really know is the upper bound on the subset that may or may not consider their social media use a problem.
Maybe it is a genuinely big problem, or maybe it isn't. This data won't tell us.
What is worrying, though, is that even though the grad student leading the analysis downplays the "addiction part" (“We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,”) she goes on to overinterpret the data ("But it’s not a nice feeling to feel you don’t have agency over your own behaviour. It’s quite striking that so many people feel like that and it can’t it be that good") - nothing about the question asked about whether people feel they have agency, or that it "can't be that good". Maybe they all meant that, but assuming they all meant that when it was not what they were asked is unprofessional.
cigarette consumption is way, wayyyyyyy down, and is effectively gone in the first world outside of small pockets. compare to the 1950s where everyone smoked, all the time.
or think about asbestos, or lead. we figured out those are bad and made drastic changes to start removing those -- and did.
nature is a little harder, esp. given that the largest corps in the world + plenty of soverign wealth funds, are trying their hardest to keep people from thinking about it as it collapses.
It is troubling just how many intelligent, educated parents I see are perfectly happy to give children and babies a tablet or phone to placate them.
On the other hand, have you thought about the difficulties of handling this as a principled parent?
You can either turn your child into a social pariah during key developmental years, or spend hours of your and their lives trying to regulate a device that is designed to capture and waste your attention (something I personally rejected as an equal waste of my time and effort, when I took my journey to no smartphone), or do what almost every other parent does, and just give your kids a smartphone.
Colour me surprised. And quite some of you friggen' softies and app devs are resposible for this, this output of yours which is way worse than the perceived impact of carbon dioxide, travel, cars, etc.
Fuck you social media devs.
[+] [-] ImAnAmateur|2 years ago|reply
> It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behavioural addiction, but for others their use could be driven by compulsive checking, others may be relying on it to cope with negative life experiences, and others may simply be responding to negative social perceptions about “wasting time” on social media.
Finally! I feel less smart for not having thought of this myself!
I was unable to meaningfully change my own phone habits (despite serious effort and roadblocks) until it clicked that I was coping for something. What that was and what I was doing to cope highlighted parts of my life like nothing else. Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities that benefited the withered branches of my life. Old habits still die hard, but knowing that I'm coping as I'm coping helped me separate the good social media use from the bad.
[+] [-] nonethewiser|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|2 years ago|reply
Later it dawns on you that sure, like everybody else you have weaknesses and traumas that you've learned to cope with, but that doesn't excuse some people deliberately designing and pushing a product to specifically exploit that. That should give you dose of healthy positive anger of the kind that is transformative when acted upon.
[+] [-] Swizec|2 years ago|reply
My relationship with social media, even HackerNews, really clicked when a meme (oh irony) said: ”You’re like a tiger in a cage. You know how they pace in circles when their enclosures lack enrichment? That’s you bouncing around apps on your phone”
Haven’t quite figured out how to reliably stop that, but it’s true that when there’s enough enrichment, I can go days forgetting that my phone and the internet even exist.
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|2 years ago|reply
I used my phone as a way to withdraw and escape. Even the most mundane situations warranted some degree of escape. Very stressful times would boost my screen time dramatically.
It seemed painfully simple in retrospect. Like any behavioural addiction, though, I had an endless supply of reasons to be on a screen at any given time. Scary stuff. I don't think I'm the kind of person people would think behaves that way, nor did I necessarily. But we're all human, and this is a very human thing. It sneaks into your life in such an insidious way, and does so much damage before you can consciously see it or feel it.
[+] [-] johndhi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apwell23|2 years ago|reply
1. Helps my eyes by letting them see things at a distance. staring far into mountains on the lift ect.
2. Keeps me away from internet. I have dumb phone and a whistle with me in my pocket.
3. Helps me reconnect with my body and rediscover what it can do.
4. Mountain air seems to clear up my sinuses
5. And ofcourse benefits of physical excerscise.
6. I just feel very fulfilled at the end of day a stark contrast to depression of day filled with daze of the internet.
7. This is bit of bro science but seems to improve my digestion. Being in internet daze all day seems to put a pause on my digestion.
[+] [-] godelski|2 years ago|reply
There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think it's wrong that we're not open about it, in so much that it isn't even always explicitly stated during a science education. We might say something like "all models are wrong" but I don't think that solidifies this thinking enough for novices and can create experts who still don't get it. Wherein it becomes a classic clique, where everyone knows the phrase but doesn't understand or practice the lesson.
There's some noticeable downsides too. If you're constantly not reiterating what your base assumptions are and acknowledging the limitation of those assumptions, you forget they exist. It also becomes hard to communicate the significance of your work to the public and I think in some cases is often why the public ends up calling (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not) bullshit. I think there's also a major advantage to science, in being open about these helps newcomers (such as those entering graduate school) more readily understand the limitations of the field and what work needs to be done. But I think some incentive structures we have in place don't encourage great scientific behavior in this way. Speaking of which, other metrics can even end up making bridging this multivariate gap more difficult. Such as the all too well known p-value weirdness, you may end up rejecting works making progress towards this bridging by having these arbitrary requirements rather than evaluating works with more nuance, which can even then discourage attempting to build such bridges. I guess coming full circle to: it's complicated? Like everything else lol
[+] [-] maven29|2 years ago|reply
Kids aren't just staring at a glowing rectangle due to some unexplainable pharmacological effect it may possess, they just crave human connection and sense of belonging just like everyone else. Using medical terms to dehumanize them is not productive at all.
[+] [-] rchaud|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Der_Einzige|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rthkljlkrj|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] i_am_jl|2 years ago|reply
Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"?
I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findings, and there's obviously a social stigma that exists around admitting to gambling addiction that doesn't seem to exist for social media addiction, but still; it strikes me as unusual to be so openly questioning people about whether or not their perceived addictions are real.
[+] [-] vidarh|2 years ago|reply
Unless you probe what the respondents mean by addiction, or provide them a clear definition before asking, there's very little reason to assume they will be using a definition of addiction that justifies assuming anything approaching a clinical definition, or even anything negative.
My opinion goes in other direction: I think even with that caveat, what she went on to say suggests she's making assumptions about what people meant - especially given the age of the respondents - that I don't there's basis for unless the survey provided a lot more context than just the question given in the article.
[+] [-] karaterobot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megaman821|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amenhotep|2 years ago|reply
I don't know if this is what the study authors were thinking, but I see it as a bit like not taking people's word for it that they're gluten intolerant. It is a real thing and people do know that they have it, but also it's a trendy thing and there are a lot of people trying to convince you that you have it when actually you're perfectly normal.
[+] [-] righthand|2 years ago|reply
Social media is just psychological m-bation via marketing tactics. Maybe if we called it m-bation people would stop aggressively ignoring the negative effects from habitual use. On the other hand no one openly discusses physical m-bation, just as no one discusses their online identity they’ve cultivated. Get a hobby, gain a skill.
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|2 years ago|reply
How many of us read + communicate on this as well as Reddit as well as... Telegram/WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/etc.
[+] [-] andy_ppp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twiclo|2 years ago|reply
https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title13/Chapter63/13-63-S105.html?...
[+] [-] cjs_ac|2 years ago|reply
This question was brought to you by memories of not being able to set the timezone of my tamagotchi and it subsequently dying because it was awake when I was asleep.
[+] [-] SirMaster|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris-orgmenta|2 years ago|reply
I feel that a guardian should have a choice up until they are negligent or inhibiting (however a society deems it - specifically left as this definition).
If said guardian is able to raise a kid in a healthy environment, with a healthy relationship to technology, then I do not want to step on their toes.
I think we need to 'reverse Chesterton's fence'(?) our liberty here, let's not lose our freedom and build a restrictive fence or Berlin wall. I know many people disagree with me, but the fact that there isn't consensus here means we should tread carefully lest break some cotton mills.
[+] [-] vidarh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempest_|2 years ago|reply
We can close social media on Sundays and reopen monday morning aha
[+] [-] lawlessone|2 years ago|reply
i feel like that would just be convenient for work and nobody else.
[+] [-] adhesive_wombat|2 years ago|reply
Delete the apps, use the websites.
[+] [-] BriggyDwiggs42|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beenBoutIT|2 years ago|reply
Having a permanent public visual record of "growing up" isn't going to help people as much as their parents seem to think it will and the only viable leaders, politicians, Justices, etc. will come from this hypothetical region.
[+] [-] jgliajwelirt4j|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reedf1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethanbond|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hindsightbias|2 years ago|reply
Even the kids used to go out until the RAVE Act.
[+] [-] lupusreal|2 years ago|reply
I strongly agree with your point, it should be possible to ban this stuff for minors at least. Under 13s are already effectively banned but banning all minors altogether would be much more effective.
[+] [-] tenebrisalietum|2 years ago|reply
Engaging in moral panics, on the other hand, seems to provide a high to some individuals just like heroin or ecstasy. Let's regulate them instead.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] brohoolio|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vidarh|2 years ago|reply
Overegging the results.
This is the statement they were asked to agree or disagree with according to the article.
> “I think I am addicted to social media”
Note that it does not ask them to answer whether they think they have a problematic relationship with social media. Using the term "addicted" to refer to something you spend a lot of time with is common whether you're happy or unhappy about it. Unless there is significant context around the question that the article left out but that were presented to respondents, making the assumptions they seem to be making in the article seems problematic at best.
E.g. if asked if I was dedicated to chocolate, or pistachio ice cream, I'd say yes. If I was asked if I had a problem with it, I'd say no - I enjoy those "addictions". I also enjoy my HN "addiction".
I'm sure a portion of those who strongly agreed that they feel addicted also do consider it a negative and maybe a serious problem in some cases, but the question reported on did not ask about that, so all we really know is the upper bound on the subset that may or may not consider their social media use a problem.
Maybe it is a genuinely big problem, or maybe it isn't. This data won't tell us.
What is worrying, though, is that even though the grad student leading the analysis downplays the "addiction part" (“We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,”) she goes on to overinterpret the data ("But it’s not a nice feeling to feel you don’t have agency over your own behaviour. It’s quite striking that so many people feel like that and it can’t it be that good") - nothing about the question asked about whether people feel they have agency, or that it "can't be that good". Maybe they all meant that, but assuming they all meant that when it was not what they were asked is unprofessional.
[+] [-] itslennysfault|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaaarrgh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LesZedCB|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|2 years ago|reply
I just hope they do better than we did with cigarettes, and the boomers did with nature.
[+] [-] red-iron-pine|2 years ago|reply
cigarette consumption is way, wayyyyyyy down, and is effectively gone in the first world outside of small pockets. compare to the 1950s where everyone smoked, all the time.
or think about asbestos, or lead. we figured out those are bad and made drastic changes to start removing those -- and did.
nature is a little harder, esp. given that the largest corps in the world + plenty of soverign wealth funds, are trying their hardest to keep people from thinking about it as it collapses.
[+] [-] aeraea|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] flfdslkfdsla|2 years ago|reply
On the other hand, have you thought about the difficulties of handling this as a principled parent?
You can either turn your child into a social pariah during key developmental years, or spend hours of your and their lives trying to regulate a device that is designed to capture and waste your attention (something I personally rejected as an equal waste of my time and effort, when I took my journey to no smartphone), or do what almost every other parent does, and just give your kids a smartphone.
[+] [-] righthand|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] palemoonale|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CatWChainsaw|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justrealist|2 years ago|reply