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posted by mrpg on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-not-lurking-it's-gathering-intel dept.

Excessive Facebook browsing at Christmas, and seeing "perfect" family photos posted by others, is more likely to make you miserable, reports the BBC on a paper recently published by a graduate at the University of Copenhagen. The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being.

Researchers warn of envy and a "deterioration of mood" from spending too long looking at other people's social media stories, induced by "unrealistic social comparisons".

Actively engaging in conversation and connecting with people on social media seems to be a much more positive experience, suggests the study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking.

This seems to be much less gloomy than "passive" users who spend too long "lurking" on social networking websites without getting involved.

The study also suggests benefits from stopping using social media altogether for a week.

You may not be surprised to learn that similar studies have been published in the past. (No reports yet from the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious.)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:59AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:59AM (#445374) Homepage

    I've been saying this forever, because I learned all those lessons back in the MySpace days and Tom was even a lot more likeable than Zuckerburg.

    It reminds me of Thrasher magazine's poseur shot of the month, where skaters would take photos of themselves doing rad-looking tricks (that they wouldn't land and used off-camera assistance to perform) except that on social media, every shot is a poseur shot. You don't see all the fights and arguments that "happy couple" are having, or how fat they are thanks to creative angles, or bragging about how so-totally-deep-and-existentialist they are just because they read Metamorphosis or The Stranger. Oh, and then there's the data collection, social engineering, political media manipulation, and all that other bad shit going on behind the scenes. No thanks -- especially now, where simply having an opinion about anything can get you demonized when traced back to your identity.

    It's all a load of fake-ass bullshit. Back in my pre-ban Slashdot days I'd show one of my good friends my troll posts, and explain the art of trolling, which he did not "get" at the time. The funny thing is, after refusing for so long, he finally got on Facebook and discovered how awesome trolling is, and thanks me for it.

    Of course, it helps to have my kind of mentality with regard to friends, family, and acquaintances: If you're too lazy to call, text, e-mail, IM, or write me snail-mail; then you are not worth worrying about. I have a small but fierce circle of friends I've known for many years and am fine with that, but that kind of situation doesn't work for all personality types.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:08AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:08AM (#445377) Journal

    or bragging about how so-totally-deep-and-existentialist they are just because they read Metamorphosis or The Stranger.

    Eth knows about Kafka and Camus? Color me amazed. Merry XxXX Feliz Navidad!

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:18AM (#445380)

      Merry Christmas jackass. Hope that yule log doesn't get stuck up your ass like last year.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:34AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:34AM (#445390) Journal

        I was struck, many years ago, attending a Catholic Mass, and hearing the Opus Dei priest intone "and Peace on Earth, to those who agree with us." Actually had to go look up the original Greek, which runs, "καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη, ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία." That's ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία, or people of good opinion (εὐ- "good", or "well", as in eulogy, and δοκία, or δόξα, "opinion" from δοκεῖν, to think.") So I guess that those who agree with us would be the ones with good opinions, right-thinking folks, as Americans might say. So Merry Solstice to you, AC, and may the coming year improve your online manners and reasoning abilities in general.

    • (Score: 1) by barbara hudson on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:27PM

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:27PM (#445584) Journal
      You know if you do it right you get tons of karma :-)
      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:45AM (#445413)

    Back in my pre-ban Slashdot days

    I've been thrown out of better sites than this!