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When we consider how much time young people spend on social media, negative news content may have a bad impact. And those already psychologically vulnerable may be particularly susceptible to the ill effects of a constant stream of negative news. This is because stress responses are often accentuated in those already suffering from symptoms of anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses.
So, it is encouraging to see some technology companies proactively showing concern about their users' mental health. For example, Twitter is teaming up with the youth mental health organisation ReachOut to provide resources to help young people learn about the possible negative impacts of social media, so they won't be overly consumed by it and know how to cope if they are.
This is a good start – Twitter is making more information available. But it can do more, and Twitter shouldn't be the only one doing it.
Yes, I'm certain this is exactly what is needed. Much better idea than shutting your Twitter app.
Source: The Conversation
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday June 02 2017, @04:43PM (10 children)
This is a good start – Twitter is making more information available.
I can think of a better start: stop using Twitter. There is nothing good about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @10:07PM (9 children)
There are 320+ million people [statista.com] who do get value from twitter.
Your failure to use twitter effectively does not mean there is no good about it. Only that you can't figure it out.
Whinges like yours about twitter, facebook, instagram, etc are the modern version of old people with their VCRs perma-blinking 12:00.
Social media has plenty of problems, but to proclaim it has no value is just virtue signaling of the lamest kind.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday June 02 2017, @10:16PM (6 children)
Or if you're too weak to survive real news then maybe shutting it down rather than screwing it up for everyone is the best solution. Some people just can't handle real life, that doesn't mean real life needs to change to suit them.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 02 2017, @11:14PM (3 children)
Well, to be fair, there's nothing but bad news everywhere.
Can't we see more human-interest stories about fund-raisers saving the kitten-orphanage?
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:05AM
Good point. Or categorize things such that if you want to read about happy things you only get happy things. If you select "What's going on in my area" and awful things happen to be going on...caveat emptor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:51AM
"Well, to be fair, there's nothing but bad news everywhere.
Can't we see more human-interest stories about fund-raisers saving the kitten-orphanage?"
.
.
.
Surely you are aware that "bad news" is artificially emphasized by the news outlets BECAUSE THEY ARE TRYING TO INCREASE THEIR RATINGS.
This is an old phenomenon but is no less true because it is old.
There's plenty of good in the world -- but you have to look for it instead of expecting to be spoon-fed such happy news, because news outlets
thrive on bad news.
In fact I really DID save a kitten today. I am not joking. I found a stray kitten in my back yard and I took it to a vet and paid for all the necessary
initial medical care and set up a plan for adoption for the kitten with zero risk of euthanasia in the event it takes a while for adoption.
I can tell you without getting sentimental that it felt pretty damned good to help a somewhat helpless animal make progress toward what
I hope is a happy life. In a manner of speaking, I "created" my own "good news" by doing this. I submit that doing nice things is something
which is within reach for nearly all people. You just have to look for opportunities and then take action.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @12:16AM
I go to a local news site to read those. It does tend to restore a little bit of faith in humanity for me.
In general, though, I've taken the approach suggested above. I no longer read political or most news nearly as much as I used to. If it's about Trump I don't read it at all. Soylent is probably the only news site I visit on a daily basis.
I've learned I have absolutely no say in what politicians do. I now understand why people don't vote. So I don't see any reason to subject myself to something that's only going to cause me emotional distress.
At first I was worried because it's still real whether I know about it or not. However, if anything is going to happen that might affect me personally, and so much of it just simply doesn't, I'll find out about it without the media's help. It's not like giving the media my eyeballs was giving me a say in anything anyway.
It's still weird to me that I don't think I'm going to vote in 2018. I used to be very enthusiastic about voting. I'd nag everyone I knew who wasn't going to vote and if they didn't have a car offer them rides to their polling station. But really when was the last time somebody I thought was the best person for any office got elected and especially for a reason that was even close to my reasoning? All the Green and Libertarian candidates I've voted for just simply can't get in. The system is rigged. So there's absolutely no point in participating in it or even hearing about it.
I do still like science news, and I'm encouraged that we've gotten a lot more science submissions it seems in the past week or two. Learning more about this universe is fascinating to me. I just so have no more interest in what the dominant lifeform on this planet is failing at today or what new cruelty they've decided to subject themselves or other life forms they share this planet with to today.
If there's a decent candidate in 2018 or 2020, I might bother with voting, but only for them. I'll be leaving the rest of the ballot blank. Whether the asshole who gets in has an R or a D after their name just so does not matter to me. An R or D will get in, and a G or L doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell except for maybe city offices or a state office here or there. If both the R and D suck, I leave the decision about the kind of suck-a-tude we have to live with for their term up to others. It will suck no matter what. The D team will do things to try to make life easier for my demographic, and the R team will overreact every single time and make things worse for my demographic, almost as though that had been the plan all along.
I wish my demographic were more understood, but the older I get the more I realize that the only way to understand my demographic is to be forced into it by fate. I used to think that things about my demographic could be explained and understood. But it can't, and it never will. My demographic is only 0.01% of the population, and there is no force on earth that can make the other 99.99% of humanity even try to understand it. That's how powerful the shared experience of 99.99% of humanity is. I can wish that I could force people into this demographic even if temporarily so they understand on a visceral level that they're wrong, but that's a bunch of wishing when I still don't know where I may find a genie.
Even if I could find a genie, it would be a far better wish to grant the experience of 99.99% of the planet to the 0.01% in this demographic, no matter how cynical and vindictive I may feel in the moment that I rub the magic lamp and out comes a genie to give me 3 chances to change something that I'm otherwise powerless to change. But that's bargaining, one of the stages of grief about this I experience too often. There are no genies, at least that I may find, and this can never change.
I should probably add that in my precinct, voting takes literally 10 minutes from the time I pull into a parking spot at the high school down the road to the time I'm heading back home. I realize I'm being selfish since it's not like I live in a big city where I'll be in line for hours. I've simply decided that even those 10 minutes aren't worth wasting since no matter what I do the end result is just going to suck.
This comment gets too long, but I just wanted to say that even if I'm the men and angels AC, my debate opponent of choice does have very good points about the futility of living in a "violently imposed monopoly." I simply don't think his solution is an improvement, but I absolutely think he's hitting the nail on the head about the problems with living under a "violently imposed monopoly." I see no reason why I should go to the polls in 2018 and once again lend my acceptance and give any further legitimacy to the violent imposition. There is certainly no reason for me to waste my time on news about things that I have no say in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @11:54PM (1 child)
There is HUGE irony in your post. Apparently you are too weak to survive real news, since the article only proposes giving users better tools to control their own newsfeeds.
What's the matter, RTFA too hard for your fragile snowflake brain? Does it give you the bad feefees? Awww, that's OK. You go ahead and stay in your safe space where facts can't hurt you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:42AM
No, you are!
Check, and mate.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 03 2017, @01:53PM
There are 320+ million people [statista.com] who do get value from twitter.
There's millions of people who watch Honey Boo Boo too, but that doesn't mean there's anything valuable about that show.
Your failure to use twitter effectively does not mean there is no good about it. Only that you can't figure it out.
No, it means that, unlike morons like yourself, I can actually read and understand literary texts longer than 140 characters without losing my concentration. Apparently people like you can't and need everything in short, vapid little sound-bites.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 05 2017, @01:58PM
No, there are 320+ million people who tried it at least once. That's the only thing those numbers show. They say nothing about those people receiving any value from it. I have personally been in the position of being a monthly active user of the service while simultaneously considering it to be totally and completely worthless, so don't try to pretend that category doesn't exist.