Americans Agree: Social Media Is Divisive (But We Keep Using It)

54 点作者 petethomas大约 6 年前

11 条评论

everdev大约 6 年前

Most of my friends (~30s-40s) openly talk about how negative their experience was with social media (interrupting family time, seeking approval / likes, losing an hour or more to endless scrolling, having to have an opinion on everything, stirring conflict between friends and family, etc.) and how they've deleted their accounts.It was useful and novel 10+ years ago, but for traditional uses like sharing photos and messaging, SMS or Google Photos is easy enough these days.It's been widely discussed that people who consume less news are generally happier and I'm sure that's the same with social media too.

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chiefalchemist大约 6 年前

The current state of social media is a symptom; it's a mirror. To blame the mirror for who and what is staring into it doesn't help solve the problem(s). True, social media (as it stands today) is an enabler. It helps the symptoms (e.g., confirmation bias) exists and persist, but ultimately it's still not the tools' fault.In the USA, I'd be more ready to place more blame on the binary political parties, as well as the mainstream media. The internet will eventually greatly reduce the power and influence of all three of these. What we're witnessing now first-hand is these three power-holders collapsing and screaming "But...But...we're still very relevant. Look! Look!! You need us to protect you from 'them'" (with 'them' being one of the other power-losing enties). All three have become terribly efficient at using hype, hyperbole and divisiveness as means to "proving" they still matter.For more info on these concepts see "The Influential Mind" by Tali Sharot.<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Others/dp/1627792651" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...</a>While she doesn't do a direct take down of media, social media and politics, it doesn't take a genius to read between the lines a bit and extrapolate her science onto the current state of things.

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beat大约 6 年前

In March, I quit using Facebook cold turkey, for a variety of reasons. During March, I read six books. I normally read about two books a month.Was I really reading four books a month worth of Facebook? Quite possibly.I recommend reading Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism for a solid basis on how to deal with social media - where it's necessary, where it's okay, and where it's actively harmful. I also recommend reading Gary Rogowski's Handmade: Creative Focus in an Age of Distraction, which isn't so much about getting off social media as what your life can look like when you're not on it in the first place.

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nemild大约 6 年前

I loved Paul Buccheit’s (of YC) quote on social media:“[Twitter] is like a game where you get 1 point for being fair and thoughtful and 1000 points for character assassination.”<a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/paultoo/status/1100144882872532992" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/paultoo/status/110014488287253299...</a>(He said it about Twitter, but I think the spirit was about social media generally)Paul also helped brainstorm “Don’t Be Evil” at an early Google.Personally, I don’t blame the media alone (as some in this thread do). All of us are a product of the incentives we face, and feed algorithms play a huge role (including for the journalists at media outlets).And as always, I will shill my media literacy guide (there’s also a version for software engineers):<a href="https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README....</a><a href="https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/software-engineers-media-guide.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/softwar...</a>

Aloha大约 6 年前

I have Facebook and Twitter - I dont really use either, I might spend an hour a week interacting with facebook, and an hour a quarter with Twitter. Twitter is full of angry people trying to one up each other, and FB is full of falsehoods circulated like chain letters. Both have little use for me.

Nasrudith大约 6 年前

Personally I think social media is being misblamed as an easy scapegoat. It does have its problems with privacy, mob mentalities, and impulse control but it didn't start the fire or even accelerate it much - it is a preexisting condition worsening over time period.Before the misinformation there were chain letters and plenty of stupid moral panics. Division has always been with us - it just makes it more obvious.

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3xblah大约 6 年前

Imagine if in 1993 someone proposed that the majority of web usage, i.e. the hours spent, would occur on one website.Imagine no need for email; all communications could be published on and retrieved from a single website.All eyeballs on the same website, not simply as a starting point or "portal", but as a destination. Even more, the website produces no content. It is all contributed by users.

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duxup大约 6 年前

Humans are social animals. It's fun to connect with people about positive things.There was always some discussion about a "dislike" button on Facebook. That always confused me. I have NO INTEREST in what people don't like. I want to hear about what they're doing that is positive.

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ixtli大约 6 年前

Its not social media!Social media has a lot of issues that really need to be discussed in public but technology has no morals. Facebook dot com isn't divisive: its USERS are. Before social media you didn't have a deep view into their neighbors thoughts and feelings. Now, we have a slightly deeper one and (shock and surprise!) we find out that a social taboo on discussing serious issues in casual company didn't lead to those issues being resolved, we simply ignored them while people none of us like made all the decisions for us.

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tmp09211大约 6 年前

Are there any "think before you speak" browser extensions out there? Thinking of doing a hackathon project that analyzes a comment in a comment box before you post...

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papermill大约 6 年前

Americans agree politics is divisive. Americans agree news is divisive. Americans agree sports is divisive. But we all still consume it.I don't get the point of the article. People are divisive. Water is wet and anything having to do with people is divisive.How many of these "social media bad" articles are we really going to get from the news industry? It's getting to be annoying, boring and exhausting. If social media is so bad, why is the WSJ and the rest of the media trying to force their way onto social media platforms? If these journalists are right and social media is so bad, why are journalists so prominent on twitter and much of social media?If you want divisive, go check out the WSJ and NYTimes comment sections. Yet a lot of people consume products from WSJ and NYTimes.What's the answer? No media altogether or force people to think alike?

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