Facebook Admits that Some Social Media Use Can Be Harmful (axios.com)

In a new installment of its "Hard Questions" series, Facebook acknowledged on Friday that social media can have negative effects on people, depending on how they use it. From a report: This might be the first public acknowledgment from the company that its product -- and category in general -- can have detrimental effects on people. Facebook is also addressing the topic shortly after two former executives publicly criticized the company for what they described as exploiting human psychology. Passive use of social media -- reading information without interacting with others -- makes people feel worse. Clicking on more links or "liking" more posts than the average user also leads to worse mental health, according to one study.

Comments

Re:Social smoking? Smoking media? Something there

[lucasnate1]

A big part of facebook usage is following people's lives and friendship graphs. On slashdot people barely post about their lives and I have rarely seen people using friend/foe. While I do agree that commenting on slashdot is a social online activity, I think it is different from the activities I mentioned before.

Note: I also have a facebook account which I use too much.

Let's just admit it: it's just plain bad

[Rick Schumann]

Arguments that so-called 'social media' keeps people in touch with each other who are geographically too far apart to interact in person fall flat so far as I'm concerned; there's written letters, there's email, there's phone calls, there's skype, there's all sorts of ways for people who are motivated to keep in touch with each other. Otherwise 'social media' just seems to bring out the worst in people, because you're not saying anything to someones face, you're just typing on a keyboard. I've been around since the dialup BBS days and it wasn't fundamentally different with that than it is with 'social media' over the internet, but the overall effect it has on people is literally orders of magnitude worse because of the number of people involved simultaneously. Too many people on various incarnations of 'social media' over the last 20 years who are there for attention-whoring (Look at me, look at me! Pay attention to me!) or just plain running their mouths, with little or no consequences because they aren't having to face the people they're talking to or about. Worse, 'social media' on a massive scale (like Facebook and Twitter) seem to be creating an entire generation of people who will grow to adulthood with poor (or non-existent) social skills, becoming socially avoidant, because so-called 'social media' gives them an excuse to stay away from actual people instead of interacting with them in person in a healthy way. Bottom line: I think 'social media' is a cancer on our collective societies and I wish it would just go away. I can't see any way you could change it to make it healthy.