Social Media and Loneliness Video

[Chae]

What do you think?

Too pessimistic, accurate, worrying, unsurprising, debatable...?


It doesn't explicitly cover Facebook as in the title but anyway, social media as a broader topic is probably better to apply here.

[Resonare]

The ratio between friends and acquaintances has for sure shifted towards the latter now, but I think he is being a little pessimistic. The people who use social media to "connect" with their favorite celebrities, follow their favorite Instagram models who they will never touch, and post their life on twitter to a bunch of people who don't actually care will for sure fall victim to what he's talking about because they aren't forging any real connection with these people. But still there are people who use it to hop onto meetup.com or partake in a niche hobby like myself who will say otherwise. I've personally made some great friends through it

Though I was recently thinking about something similar to this and I reckon the people most at risk are actually content creators not viewers...

Btw @Chae, do you watch BBC Question time? You seem like you'd really enjoy it.

[Chae]

Btw @Chae, do you watch BBC Question time? You seem like you'd really enjoy it.

Thanks for the rec! I can only access certain channels here. Do they have a YouTube section?

[Pallas]

Thanks for the rec! I can only access certain channels here. Do they have a YouTube section?

Use a VPN and set your location to the U.K.

[Chae]

Use a VPN and set your location to the U.K.

Ok need to research this, cool <3

[Pallas]

Ok need to research this, cool <3

You're welcome.

[Chae]

You're welcome.

Are there any other programmes to recommend? Also, @Resonare <3
For some cultural exchange if you will

[Pallas]

Are there any other programmes to recommend? Also, @Resonare <3
For some cultural exchange if you will

I don't really watch programs like that at all so no. I just know how to use VPNs.

[Resonare]

Are there any other programmes to recommend? Also, @Resonare <3
For some cultural exchange if you will

Actually this is my bad, I meant The Big Questions not BBC Question Time. My brother watches it so I overhear some of the topics and debates that go on. For example...

[Computer Loser]

Instead of putting in the work to maintain your relationships via real life, facebook/social media gives people a false sense of connection with others.

Back in the day you had to actually call/knock on your friend's door/send letters across the world and shit etc lol but now with social media face to face communication/human interaction is taken for granted. Before social media you actually had to invest yourself to make relationships work. Now you can just click/receive "likes". Over time the value from a constant stream of validation via social media deflates.

You can almost look at it like inflation; money over time slowly loses its value as it becomes more abundant. Attention/validation via social media works the same way. After more and more "likes"/validation you need more and more because it's so abundant and you build a tolerance around it. It's like taking a strong drug for the first time; you feel high and euphoric at first, but over time you need more and more to feel the same, and other measly drugs do nothing for you so you disregard them.

The average cute 21 year old girl is waking up to 10 text messages, 100 likes on Instagram, 12 private facebook messages, etc. Maybe she scrolls through her instagram and sees pics of some rich prince from Dubai with a six pack and custom-fitted Armani suit sailing on a boat, as he looks across the horizon with sun glasses and a drink in his hand. He then sends her a direct message ("DM") offering to fly her over on his private jet for free. Well guess what? Joe from her math class isn't going to have much of an impact lol. When Joe tries talking to her she will probably be looking down at her phone, seeing Chris Hemsworth retweeting her tweet about how math class sucked, along with getting distracted by the dozens of notifications constantly blowing up her phone. After all this, the attention she gets via real life isn't going hit as hard.

Additionally, she's not gonna want to visit her uncle Bob as much after she constantly sees his pics on her facebook wall everyday, his status messages about how he hates work along with ranting and raving about politics and liking her social media posts when she posts that pic on instagram of her eating that chocolate chip cake with the cool caption. Maybe later she feels like making a YouTube video of herself eating that chocolate chip cake in yoga pants doing yoga poses, and now she feels like a celebrity when she sees that her video got a million views, along with all the dudes commenting how clever and beautiful she is and you go girrrrrl! And all she had to do was sit in her bedroom and post to get that validation fix.

What about Joe's friends from college? Joe won't hear from his friends as much, since in their minds they already saw Joe's snapchat/facebook/Instagram post where Joe has the giant beard looking like a badass hipster lumbar jack as he cuts down the tree with his ax etc. The friends leave some comments, "Awesome!!!" "LIT!!" And in their logical minds they're thinking, "We're keeping in touch!! SEE!? We don't HAVE to actually maintain a REAL relationship with Joe!!" Then they just slink back into the shadows without ever contacting Joe. And maybe Joe runs into some of them in person at a wedding once a year, where he tries telling them some things that happened in his life, but then they respond, "Yeah we know, we saw on facebook."

No effort required.

But who needs all this effort when we're all "connected" right lol

[The Reality Denialist]

It's pretty weird that when people meet they want to share their photos and spend time looking for feedback. That's disconnecting.

We had great time while waiting for responses.


**social media hermit – no reality based Facebook account ever, some fakes ones **

Few years back I saw an article where they claimed that people who do not have Facebook account are more likely to be psychopaths. So you better start. I didn't. Now it is moved on content analysis.

150 people is bit too much for my F IEs.

[Chae]

Peter made a good argument, it's effortless and pretty much based on adrenaline boosts for one's self-esteem. Facebook has a broad scope of sharing things to thousands of people so it's tempting to keep in touch. I always imagine if people on facebook said posts to each other IRL, that exposes the ridiculousness of it. But this is the new world, no turning back Except going facebook-free which can make people a social outcast offline as well, it's already interwoven that's the irony.

So, you can get abandoned offline when you're lonely or connected online, no difference. That's extremely concerning.

[silke]

Ironically that video has been propagating on Facebook where people have been sharing it in groups and on their timelines inviting their virtual friends to like it.

I've tested various forms of online interaction over the years, such as these forums, text and voice chats, multiplayer games, Facebook and other social media. After all this experimentation I can say that yes, online interaction is incredibly unsatisfying, and the reason that I started to almost instinctively avoid it. What's more, I do believe the few studies that have shown this relationship is casual i.e. spending time mingling online actually causes people to feel more depressed and unhappy with their lives, rather than attracting people who were already feeling down and using internet as a distraction. I've seen people invest and commit a lot of time to virtual environments, particularly in multiplayer games, and it's like they would slowly start to disintegrate and become if not psychotic then closely resembling it.

However, this happens if, and only if, a person uses the internet to fill their need for personal connection and spends too much time at it. This doesn't apply to everyone who uses social media, since it has many other diverse uses, like sharing information and light networking, for which it's working as intended. There are also people who turn their virtual acquaintances into real life friends, by spending the time and effort to go out and meet them in real life, as well as people who have found their significant others and spouses through social media. It all depends on how you use it really.

The demographic that I can't really relate to and don't get are a few people who act like they are at the mercy of Facebook and other social media sites, like FB is this menacing site that is out to ruin their happiness, isolate them into this bubble of loneliness and echo chamber cliques, while they are powerless to do anything about it - essentially, that how they approach and use social media is not up to them to take a charge of and define. With any form of social media site you can shape the experience to meet your needs, and if it doesn't then pass it by.

There are also large scale themes at play here, some of which were mentioned in that video i.e. that socialization in Western affluent societies is missing some a kind of deep personal component which at a root level makes people feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled even by their actual relationships, for which they try to compensate online. This is actually recognizable to those who have traveled abroad and experienced other cultures. It forms a significant relational barrier between people who were brought up in Russia and other Eastern European countries for example vs. United States and Western Europe, and has even been the cause for some Eastern Europeans to return back to their countries - the affluence and comfort, the rabid individualism, and the social pressure to work almost like a horse to attain and live up to these values have been having an undermining influence on family and personal relationships and they feel that they cannot live in an environment like this.

The other theme is of course that we aren't evolutionary prepared to socialize in the ways that the internet has opened up to us, and this issue imo goes deeper than simply the Dunbar's number. The conditions for an average person's life and the choices and opportunities open to them have changed dramatically over the past century that's beginning to diverge to a significant extent from what we're "hardwired" for, which is going to create sources of stress and selective pressures that haven't even been imagined.

[Muddy]

I've seen people invest and commit a lot of time to virtual environments, particularly in multiplayer games, and it's like they would slowly start to disintegrate and become if not psychotic then closely resembling it.

Agree, I definitely need to wean myself off of these ultra competitive E-sports games where people point out and bash you for every mistake. I often feel like a worthless turd after a long succession in games like League and Dota.

[Tigerfadder]

So I heard this story that long time ago it was common that houses was few miles away. If someone was lonely they could visit their neighbour and just sit in the kitchen for a few hours and than leave. Without pretty much any conversation.

Also, it sucks that people are experiencing loneliness, especially when there are people around. It is more that our presence is not noticed by other.

[Chae]

So I heard this story that long time ago it was common that houses was few miles away. If someone was lonely they could visit their neighbour and just sit in the kitchen for a few hours and than leave. Without pretty much any conversation.

Also, it sucks that people are experiencing loneliness, especially when there are people around. It is more that our presence is not noticed by other.

I guess we transferred our IRL bonding skills to picking the best emojis instead.

[Chae]

This article also states it's not only causing loneliness but also increases envy (unsurprisingly)

"Too much time on sites like Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit and Tumblr “may elicit feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier and more successful lives”"