Viewing others’ highlight reels on Facebook measurably degraded users’ mood and sense of meaning
Evidence
At the same time, more and more people began to complain that being on the site made them unhappy. It should have been no surprise, given what we know about human nature and the way Facebook was first conceived to play on the social dynamics of anxious adolescents, but watching the highlight reels of other people’s lives was bound to make you feel inadequate. Others found Facebook (like email) a compulsion in that same Skinneresque manner—usually disappointing, but rewarding occasionally enough to keep you hooked. A variety of studies—none entirely conclusive, to be sure—associated depressive symptoms with Facebook usage, one finding that “compared to browsing the Internet, Facebook is judged as less meaningful, less useful, and more of a waste of time, which then leads to a decrease in mood.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1012
Categorization
- XREF: Builds on the Skinnerian conditioning mechanisms described in earlier chapters about attention engineering. — connects to: Facebook’s subliminal emotional manipulation acted on hundreds of thousands of users beyond their awareness — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 944; Facebook targets vulnerable young users with advertising at emotionally weak moments — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 957; Social comparison is the dominant psychological process in the Facebook experience. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1470 (+7 more)
- ADDENDUM: Relevant to the complaint/moral-panic thread: the immodesty-style moral dissatisfaction here is about social comparison rather than dress, but the dynamic of mediated social anxiety parallels it.
Broader Connections
- Social media broadcast disciplined lifestyle routines as status-signaling bragging
#complicates(0.82) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 315