Facebook As Social Satan (Please!)
A tweet:

No matter what else Zuckerberg does for the world, the simple fact is his product makes millions of people worse off https://t.co/7xN8PRYI4x pic.twitter.com/17xBL0OFNM

— Christopher Mims (@mims) May 28, 2017

This is utterly silly. Facebook is a tool. Like a hammer, you can use it to smash yourself in the forehead or to hammer in a loose nail in the floorboards.

I write about this sort of silly thinking in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" -- in response to the also silly notion that the Internet makes people rude.

Pundits, especially, were quick to blame Scapegoat 2.0, technology: "It's all those cell phones" or "It's the Internet; it alienates people." Oh, right--when it isn't function- ing as the single most connective force in human history. And sorry, all you cell phone blamers, but iPhones don't leap out of people's pockets and purses, put themselves on speaker, and float around the grocery store barking into the ears of everybody shopping.

The WSJ link is to a Susan Pinker story, "Does Facebook Make Us Unhappy and Unhealthy? A look at new research covering thousands of adults":

A rigorous study recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests that it isn't. Researchers found that the more people use Facebook, the less healthy they are and the less satisfied with their lives. To put it baldly: The more times you click "like," the worse you feel.

The study's authors, Holly Shakya, an assistant professor of public health at the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis, the director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale University, monitored the mental health and social lives of 5,208 adults over two years. The subjects agreed to participate in national surveys collected by the Gallup organization between 2013 and 2015 and, during that time, to share information with the researchers about their health, social lives and Facebook use.

The use of the Gallup survey at three different points let the scientists take informational snapshots of the participants' health and social lives and chart how their feelings and behavior changed over the two years. The researchers also kept direct tabs on the subjects' Facebook usage: how often they clicked "like," clicked others' posts or updated their own status.

Using standardized questionnaires, the researchers also asked about participants' social lives: How often did they get together with friends and acquaintances in the real world, and how close did the participants feel to them? There were queries about life satisfaction, mental health and body weight, too.

The findings? Using Facebook was tightly linked to compromised social, physical and psychological health. For example, for each statistical jump (away from the average) in "liking" other people's posts, clicking their links or updating one's own status, there was a 5% to 8% increase in the likelihood that the person would later experience mental-health problems.

Responding to the study, Facebook cited an earlier paper by a company scientist and Carnegie Mellon University Prof. Robert Kraut. "The internet's effect on your well-being depends on how you use it," the authors wrote. Participants who received more Facebook comments than average from close friends reported a 1% to 3% uptick in satisfaction with life, mood and social support, the study reported. It also acknowledged that it's hard to measure the emotional effect of the internet.

Christakis:

The bottom line, he says, is that replacing in-person interactions with online contact can be a threat to your mental health. "What people really need is real friendships and real interactions," he adds.

I use Facebook as a sort of window to friends' lives, and especially, those I don't see so often because they're far away. There are also people whom I'm fond of but I'm not close with, and I enjoy seeing the stuff of their lives. As for me, I typically just post links to blog posts here. I really don't post about my life. That's a choice -- one I made very consciously.

I use my phone similarly -- rather than being like a mesmerized chimp. When I'm out with friends or at a party, it's in my purse. It's also in my purse (unless I'm trying to figure out whether somebody's late, etc.) when I'm just sitting at the bar somewhere. This is a choice. I choose to engage with people and just let my thoughts wander rather than having my mind chained to an electronic binkie.

There's a need for people to consider their phones and their Internet activity and figure out how they want to live. If you don't do that and you're unhappy, well, that's on you, not Mark Zuckerberg.

via @CathyReisenwitz