Social Media Are Driving Americans Insane (bloomberg.com)

Deena Shanker, writing for Bloomberg: If you pull out your phone to check Twitter while waiting for the light to change, or read e-mails while brushing your teeth, you might be what the American Psychological Association calls a "constant checker." And chances are, it's hurting your mental health. Last week, the APA released a study finding that Americans were experiencing the first statistically significant stress increase in the survey's 10-year history. In January, 57 percent of respondents of all political stripes said the U.S. political climate was a very or somewhat significant source of stress, up from 52 percent who said the same thing in August. On Thursday, the APA released the second part of its 1 findings, "Stress In America: Coping With Change," examining the role technology and social media play in American stress levels. [...] The highest stress levels, it should be noted, are reserved for those who constantly check their work e-mail on days off. Their average stress level is 6.0. So those of you who think it's somehow pleasant to work from home on a Saturday afternoon, you're actually fooling yourself.

Comments

Too much noise

[XxtraLarGe]

I definitely got a little burned out on Social Media since the election. I think I've used Twitter a half dozen times since then, and am only checking Facebook once or twice a day, usually to send birthday greetings. Some days I don't get on at all. It definitely lets you do more important/productive things, and you stay out of arguments with your left/right friends who are posting fallacious memes.

Re:Too much noise

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro Tips about how to give no f**ks:

Delete all social media apps, use the web ui, yeah it sucks, and thats the point, you'll use it when have to, and not much more. I check facebork every few days when I think about it, sometimes I post a photo or 3 of some things no one else cares about much, at least its original unlike the junk everyone else re-shares on there.

Twitter, unfollow everything thats useless. My Twit feed only follows the local transit agency so I can bitch at them when my train is late or delayed, I like to remind them that our taxes pay for them, as does the fare I paid, I'm both their employer and their customer at the same time, somehow that allows them to be bad at what they do. The rest of Twitter is useless garbage from people about things that don't matter.

All my iDevices go into DND mode at 5pm, and come out at 8am. When I get home my phone gets plugged into the charge in the keyrack, I dont look at it again until about 30 minutes before I leave for work the next day.

If its important enough, my boss has my land line number to call (yes I still have one, I'm sorry if you don't) if needed. In 3 years I've had one call in the evening from my boss. I goto bed at 9pm, the land line phone is too quiet for me to hear from the bedroom, leave a message if its important, I'll get back to you when I'm done being asleep. If its really important then you'll f**king well drive to my house and bang on the front door.

So far I have missed nothing important ever. I suppose I'm just old enough to remember a time before mobile internet connected phone devices, you know back when a house had one wired phone in it and that was it. Funny thing is, no one missed much then either, and you wont now.

Lastly watch TV for pleasure, not the stupid news. Sometimes I make an exception, but otherwise its just an hour 1/2 of Big Bang Theory and/or Seinfeld before I goto bed at night to unwind and laugh at something.

I cut off FB a month ago. It's been a good month.

[enjar]

I had my wife log me out of Facebook and change the password. She knows it if I ever want to get back in. It's been a month and it's been generally great. I ended up with time for stuff I "never had time for" -- Crosswords, books, movies, 8+ hours of sleep, time with the kids, home projects, etc. I'm more focused at work and sleep better. This makes me less grumpy, impresses my boss and also makes me eat better and get in regular workouts. The elimination of FB has made it easier to have a virtuous cycle that feeds on itself rather than an endless stream of crappy memes and political crap that doesn't really help my life in any appreciable way. If I ever choose to return to FB I'm going to cull the friends list tremendously, I expect it to drop precipitously to maybe 15-20 people, generally family and friends I legitimately want to keep up with.

Re:Social media?

[tlhIngan]

Because really, however bad the news was, 20 years ago you'd be waiting for the nightly news to find out about it. Several decades before that, you'd be waiting for the following day's newspaper. Now, we're getting constant updates, and those updates may be causing a device in your pocket to vibrate and make noise every time something new comes out. We know that checking all of those notifications is addictive, and not checking causes stress. However, constantly feeling the need to check also causes stress. (human nature)

It's the reason we have the term "FOMO", or Fear of Missing Out. By not being attached to our phones 24/7 we fear we're going to miss big news about something (... almost always trivial in the big scheme of things).

If you hate that term, get used to it - it's a root of the term for the phobia, and as a medical diagnosis.

Not just americans ...

[Qbertino]

I've got two spoof accounts on Facebook, one for work - we're an agency selling Social Media Marketing among other things,so it's more or less expected of me - and one I established roughly 7 years ago when i started social dancing and constantly meeting people who asked me if I was on Facebook. I looked at Twitter a few months after it came out, thought "wtf?" after 3 minutes and have used it since maybe 4 times or so. No inroads at all with instagram, whatscrap and other data hogs.

Long story short, even though I'm your Type A 80ies computerkid who has never had less than 5 email accounts in the last 2 decades and who was on Fidonet back in the day posting every day, I see a significant difference between me and many many other people. Today *I* am the one who's more away from electronic media than the average - a thing quite unthinkable back in the 90ies. Even though I haven't changed my habits that much.

Facebook I consider particularly evil, as it is a funnel of constant superficial vanity-induced anti-social behaviour that, as far as I can tell, has a significant impact on the general social skills of people growing up with it. Facebook here being a synonym for anything "social" media these days. A fascinating look into someone from this social media native generation is Essena O'Neills account on why she quit her life as an instagram "professional". Yes, you can shake your head in disbelief about the naivity and the obviousness of what she finally realised, but don't forget: these are people who grew up with this - they never knew anyhting else - which makes her account ever more honest, poignant and impressive.

Conclusion:
I see the signs left, right and center: Social media has a significant negative impact on the general publics mental health. To put it in other words: FB is not a social network, it's basically a global mental illness.

My 2 cents.

Re:Life before int4rw3bz

[demonlapin]

When I was nine, my parents gave me a house key. They told me where the spare was hidden, too. Then they told me to take my bicycle to and from school (about 1 mile, 1.6 km). If I woke up late, or it was raining, my mom would put me in the car and drop me off. If it was still raining when school let out, she would pick me up, but otherwise I would just walk home. I'm 42, so very much an 80's kid. We did all kinds of dangerous stuff. The only expectation my parents had was "be home by dinner". And that extended into my teenage years - although my curfews were ridiculously early, I could literally tell them nothing about what I was going to do, and nothing about where I was going to go, and it was cool. It sucked, because there was no flexibility, but at the same time, I could do whatever I wanted. No expectation that there would be parents present. No expectation that we would be available. Come home by X, what you do until then is your business.

Re:Social media?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've the exact opposite problem. I managed to 'train' my friends to never send me SMS messages except for emergencies. I could carry my old cell phone with me just for emergencies. Smart Phones are something else however. You are constantly updated with all kinds of notifications. Even when you turn out all notifications and want to use your smart phone you see all those numbers of missed notifications, messages or emails on your screen. That's the reason why I gave up on smart phones. I still have my iPhone 4S but it just lays on my desktop connected to my computer. I never take it with me. I've also given up on emails entirely, except at work. I don't check work email at home. I've never made profiles on any social network. I rarely watch television, only when there is a program I would like to see, after recording it of course.

I only read newspapers on the internet on a tablet or at my desktop at home (I pay for the digital edition) and I sometimes read Slashdot. I don't use internet everyday. In summer or weekends when the weather is nice I prefer to hike or bike or I go out with friends in my free time. Although I'm more disconnected than most, I still feel the pressure of the always connected people in my life.

Many people have similar opinions about some issues. I never understood why all of the sudden when we grow older most of my friends have the same opinions. When we were teenagers and in our twenties we had interesting discussions about small problems and world politics. Today they all have similar ideas. I've noticed when a friend tried to convince me, he pulled out his smartphone and showed websites that he learned through facebook. That's when I was struck. Have my friends become drones? The most frustrating part is that lately they have become anti-Trump drones. I didn't know Trump except that he was a wealthy non politician going for president, I just understood that he was hated by established media and politicians but loved by the voters. That can happen. But how can someone who isn't American become an anti-Trump drone and even start using American English slogans. I've even heard them talk about 1984. I told them that they looked more like the 1984 workers who knew the truth about some far away event from the screen then that inexperienced president who doesn't know how to talk like a politician and offends a lot of people with short tweets. When I told them they were drones of the cultural hegemony as described by Antonio Gramsci I expected an interesting discussion like in our younger years. Instead they became offended and angry and compared me with Hitler...

This happened a few weeks ago, and it is just one of the many anecdote that slowly turns me crazy. It seems that the always connected people stop thinking about the information they read. There is probably too much different information on a short time that makes it impossible to actually think things over. This makes them take over opinions from the national media without forming their own opinion. I don't know. I do know that more and more people are convinced about an opinion and don't accept a different opinion and sometimes even freak out when you say you don't agree.

Like that overweight girl that started convincing me about the fact that meat is very unhealthy and that we were not build to eat meat, while she was eating an orange carrot. I told her we were evolved to eat meat hence why we have large brains, but we are definitely not evolved to eat orange carrots because orange carrots are a result of the meat powered human brain who managed to selectively breed the woody texture out of carrots to make them edible and even managed to selectively breed the colour orange as a tribute to "Willem van Oranje". The ancestors of the carrots could only be harvested in the wild for a limited period before carrots/roots became like wood. She didn't know what to say. This was information she never heard about. Instead she started to call me names and walked away with an angry face when nobody