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Social Media 'Increases Loneliness', Says Study (bbc.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are causing more people to feel alone, according to US psychologists. A report suggests that more than two hours of social media use a day doubled the chances of a person experiencing social isolation. It claims exposure to idealised representations of other people's lives may cause feelings of envy. The study also looked at those using Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. "We do not yet know which came first - the social media use or the perceived social isolation," co-author Elizabeth Miller, professor of paediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, said. "It's possible that young adults who initially felt socially isolated turned to social media. Or it could be that their increased use of social media somehow led to feeling isolated from the real world." Theories in the report suggest the more time a person spends online, the less time they have for real-world interactions.
Back before Facebook bought out MySpace it was actually a great place to meet people with similar interests. It's the move toward user data as the product (and locking down search/browsing functionality to those already in a network) plus the attempt to monopolize a thing (Uber for driving, Facebook for sharing, OKCupid for dating, etc) that is killing the ability to actually socialize because social media platforms are only useful tools to that end when they increase actual connections rather than serve to catalog a person's connections.
Less.
But it's not a consequence of Facebook, I've never had an account. It's more likely because I managed to settle down and get married so I don't need to go out to look for that sort of companionship anymore. The friendships that I have now are stronger than those with the acquaintances within the various scenes that I participated in as well, so while I may not socialize as much, when I do I get more meaning from it as it's not mere pleasantries or superficial trappings.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Without getting into the nitty gritty I have had challenges with general anxiety disorder / agoraphobia for a while and the combination of telecommuting / computer-based hobbies I don't leave my house very often. And by "very often" I can probably count on my hands the number of hours I've been outside in the last 2-3 months.
Social media gives me a distraction I can pull up at any time and people to talk to, which is great for the ol' depression (sort of, I'll get into that later) it connects me in ways I never thought were possible before. Whether or not the kind of interactions I have are more or less healthy I can't say but I do know there are a couple things that I see in others that are damaging.
The main things I find actively damaging about having a life through social media as I see them:
1. If somebody is being a jerk you can passive-aggressively remove them from your life, I mean this happens in IRL but sometimes you can't escape people like this (work, family) so there's a tendency to craft the people you follow / interact with socially online. I think this becomes a problem because you get into a group-think type situation where you bury yourself in only one side of anything. If I ONLY loved Star Trek I wouldn't follow a Star Wars person, that makes sense, but when I bury myself solely in Star Trek people it can warp me. I try to be careful about it and ensure I have a good variety of people / communities I take part in but there are some people who are so super-focused they only expose themselves to a narrow world and it really is surprising how it changes their thinking over time.
2. Social media is gamified, that fact is NOT obvious to most people who use it. There are a lot of people who really stress about how many notes, likes, reblogs, +s, thumbs up, etc they are or aren't getting. They associate their personal value to these metrics. I'm aware of this and yet it still invades my thoughts, it's potent and it adds stress to the activity, this kind of stress leads to more depression, you have a social circle and you can now "measure yourself" by these gamified metrics. It's really bad and in general it makes depressed people even more depressed.
The good side is I feel connected and sociable the bad side is it manipulates me into using it more. I think ultimately it's bad for me because it has become a total replacement for going out, it gives me tools that make it easier to not want to go out, which is not good if you're agoraphobic.
On the flipside I have met local people online that have forced me to go out and do things I would not have done otherwise, like attending a comic convention for four days straight / going out to celebrate friends' birthdays / going out for coffee (who does that?). When things are bad though its always there for me, which I don't think is particularly healthy.
As always YMMV
crazy dynamite monkey