'I don't even remember what I read':
Sometimes when we are reading a good book, it's like we are transported into another world and we stop paying attention to what's around us.
Researchers at the University of Washington wondered if people enter a similar state of dissociation when surfing social media, and if that explains why users might feel out of control after spending so much time on their favorite app.
The team watched how participants interacted with a Twitter-like platform to show that some people are spacing out while they're scrolling. Researchers also designed intervention strategies that social media platforms could use to help people retain more control over their online experiences.
[...] The team designed and built an app called Chirp, which was connected to participants' Twitter accounts. Through Chirp, users' likes and tweets appear on the real social media platform, but researchers can control people's experience, adding new features or quick pop-up surveys.
[...] When internal interventions were activated, participants got a "you're all caught up!" message when they had seen all new tweets. People also had to organize the accounts they followed into lists.
For external interventions, participants had access to a page that displayed their activity on Chirp for the current session. A dialog box also popped up every 20 minutes asking users if they wanted to continue using Chirp.
In general, participants liked the changes to the app's design. The "you're all caught up!" message together with the lists allowed people to focus on what they cared about.
[...] The external interventions generated more mixed reviews.
"If people were dissociating, having a dialog box pop up helped them notice they had been scrolling mindlessly. But when they were using the app with more awareness and intention, they found that same dialog box really annoying," Hiniker said. [...]
"Taking these so-called mindless breaks can be really restorative," Baughan said. "But social media platforms are designed to keep people scrolling. When we are in a dissociative state, we have a diminished sense of agency, which makes us more vulnerable to those designs and we lose track of time. These platforms need to create an end-of-use experience, so that people can have it fit in their day with their time-management goals."
See paper_chirp.pdf [3.1Mb] for more information on Chirp.
The code for Chirp is available on Github.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @03:27PM (6 children)
'cause Runaway is mindless and zoned out for ages
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @06:29PM (5 children)
This does not appear to be a Spam comment. Has janrinok not recovered from the criticism of using Nazi sources for articles, because he is dissociated by Soylent Media?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Ironrose on Friday May 27 2022, @06:36AM (4 children)
Still Spam modded? ADMIN!!! Clean-up on aisle 14! There is no greater proof that SN has fallen to the alt-right, than for comments critical of the alt-right to be spam modded, only because they are differing opinions. Yes, many Soylentils think that Brietbarf is not a reliable source, and if there are front page articles that source from the same, then SN loses credibility. This is fact, not opinion, and spam modding anyone who points it out only reinforces the point. ADMIN!!! Rescind this spam mod! Or we will release the ARISTARCHUS! THIS IS SOYLent!
(Or, Arkansas neo-nazi site. Your choice.)
(Score: -1, Spam) by Ironrose on Saturday May 28 2022, @07:30AM (3 children)
And I am spam modded for objecting to the spam moderations. I suppose I should not be surprised, or even disappointed. I once new a community that bucked feta, that stood up for free speech and the right to criticize the alt-right, or anyone else. But it appears that this is no longer that community. First, we lost many good soylentils, from frojack to Athananius. Then, we lost our real racists when it was determined that Ethanol_funneled could be spam modded. No more disco, according to TMB. And finally, Runaway convinced the Admin that someone was out to get him, and doxxed him as Paul F. Sherman, of 148 Wallaby Road, 119 Sydney, Little River,
AustraliaArkansas. The man said so, his own self. And now he is threatening Law Enforcement Officers that come to investigate the multiple Red Flag complaints lodged against him, with firearms and loose Australian shepards. Fortunately for them, they have prepared in depth, so Runaway's paranoia will avail him nought, if you know what I mean.But the main thing is, this destructive spam modding has to stop. It is having no effect, and only suggests that there is a political bias by the admin, which undercuts the reputation of SoylentNews. It needs to stop, even if Ari is pushing as an AC for it to remain in place. Could it be, that some here are actually falling for his tricks?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:17AM (1 child)
And now double secret Spam mod probation. Well, if that is the way SN wants to play, there is no place here for anyone besides Runaway, and occasionally khallow. Please, feel free to spam mod me further, to express your rage at people with opinions that are different than yours, and better. We need a rally cry: Better BuckFeta than SoylentAltRight? No, that's no good.
You can pretend that is only blacklists, and not SN picking particular IP's for "excessive bad posting" and blocking them. My experience is that "excessive bad posting" = telling the truth. Oh, well.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday May 28 2022, @11:01AM
If your posts are being consistently down moderated then they will trigger an "excessive bad posting" block on the server. It is simple. It is how the software has worked for over 15 years. We do not do anything. It is automatic.
If you do not want to be down moderated, then play by the same rules as everyone else. Stop disrupting threads and stories. You currently have an account - go and spout whatever rubbish you wish in your journal. Complain about how the world hates you. Tell everyone that you think you are being silenced. But any more disruption from you in other stories and threads and your current account will also be disabled. You are causing all of your problems yourself. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:33AM
As far as I am aware nobody has threatened you with any LEO action, in fact your target even said that he was not interested in it. Nevertheless, you continued. It was pointed out to you that if the database is seized then everybody's data would be compromised, not just the one person whose data you wished would be compromised. The spam modding does not indicate any bias on the part of the Administration. It is not only the administrators who can moderate on this site, you know? Let's look at the comments that have been moderated as Spam. Are they on topic? No. Do they contribute to the discussion about the story? No. Are they repetitive? Yes. Are they intended to disrupt the site? Yes. Do they spoil other member's ability to have a serious discussion? Yes.
We have given you plenty of chances to restart afresh - with a clean account and to play by the same rules that everyone else has to abide by. You simply do not want to. It was always your choice, and your actions have consequences.
We have not interfered with your or anybody else's free speech. All of your comments - under any name that you have used over many months - can all be viewed if you browse at the appropriate level. It seems that lots of people don't want to see them though.
If it is having no effect then how can it be destructive? But it is having an effect - it is stopping a couple of accounts from spoiling the pleasure of many others in our community. And that is why you dislike it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Thursday May 26 2022, @03:36PM (12 children)
Our system is so broken anymore that we need papers to state the obvious. "Without evidence sir, its just an opinion."
Its like a paper I read on how to treat Orange trees in Florida to better handle the bacteria killing them all, "If you feed them more frequently with the nutrients they need, the smaller root stock doesn't matter quite as much because you're feeding the tree what it needs." Who needed a paper for that? Certainly no farmer who is trying to figure out whether to purchase a 10 million dollar irrigation system or sell the land and mostly dead trees to a developer.
If folks don't realize they are zoning out mindlessly and running their mouths incessantly on twitter and instagram and facebook and the like without reading a paper to help them realize it, we've already lost them. "You mean this isn't normal dad?!"
You know we're making progress when the nomads in Tibet are the only ones that have a grasp on reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @03:47PM (3 children)
I would bet a lot of people weren't aware of that, or how deeply they were immersed. In the article where it mentions the external intervention (the one that checks in on you every 20 minutes), most people felt that was a good idea "for other people" but didn't think it was something they needed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @04:03PM (2 children)
zoning-out = hypnotic state = suggestibility
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @05:15PM
(suck my dick, suck my dick) Yes.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by quietus on Thursday May 26 2022, @05:52PM
The mechanism is much simpler, really, and has been scientifically studied: it is, in my language, termed status angst (You could loosely translate this into English as status anxiety, but I prefer the Angst term).
Before social media existed, you only compared yourself to a limited set of people: your colleagues, relatives, friends, neighbors -- and only very occasionally e.g. when somebody you knew had bought a new car, or went on a holiday. With social media however, you're constantly being bombarded with status updates of people you've only occassionally encountered. Not only goes the frequency of status reminders go up, sky-high, but you're also supposed to be social i.e. post [status] updates about yourself.
Add that to us being kinda like chickens, always estimating our position in the group, err the pick order, and you can easily see how this drives consumption.
flashing your goods around is the default biological way of signaling status.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Thursday May 26 2022, @04:03PM (5 children)
You don't need a study to know that water is wet, but you need one to find out its salinity, acidity or alkalinity, or how contaminated it is. You say "farmers know". You can't know what you haven't learned.
Much of farming knowledge comes from thousands of years of trial and error, but in the last century they were predicting a horrible food shortage by the year 2000 where people have to eat seaweed [mcgrewbooks.com], but science and technology has prevented that.
Do you really believe that the double helix could have been discovered without studies? WTF is an anti-science guy doing here??
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday May 26 2022, @04:47PM (3 children)
More like delayed it by thirty years.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @05:17PM (1 child)
Moar humans needed for that scenario. So on we go.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 31 2022, @01:59PM
Humans have a huge advantage by having much more protein than seaweed.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday May 28 2022, @07:16PM
If there's a coming food shortage, blame Putin, not science's deficiencies. But I don't see any industrialized nations going hungry, only those torn by war, like parts of Africa.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @07:02PM
And who was predicting that? The farmers, or the scientists?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quietus on Thursday May 26 2022, @05:38PM (1 child)
This isn't something new. You might want to read Thinking, fast and slow by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahnemann. Basically, your thinking involves 2 systems: a fast, intuitive (and lazy) system, and a slow, painful, thorough system. We avoid using the second system as much as we can while being convinced that we're fully rational. As one of the other posters in this thread remarks: respondents thought that kind of stupid behaviour is limited to others, but not to them.
Anyway, I'm guilty of that same stupid behaviour -- jumping from one news site to another; then noticing that I've lost -- zero-dropped -- a few hours of my life. You might not think that reading news is zoning out, but it really is: nothing would have changed if I didn't read that other interesting piece, and than that other.
The only remedy I've found is not being connected to the Internet.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday May 26 2022, @07:22PM
Now you're speaking my language. I find digging holes while listening to birds (not 'The Birds') is a great fix for all this social media.
I might read that book. Sounds like I already agree so maybe I'll just read the cover...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday May 26 2022, @03:56PM (8 children)
Social media drives you crazy [wikipedia.org].
Now, "their favorite app"? If I need an app, I'm not on the platform. I absolutely HATE useless apps like the news apps, weather apps, Facebook app... it's sheer ignorance that Daddy Warbucks uses against the ignorant. If you can access the data without an app, installing an app to get the data is stupid.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday May 26 2022, @04:20PM
I'd be happy with namespacing, so you could have jdorsey.tech, jdorsey.baking, jdorsey.outdoors, jdorsey.parent, jdorsey.work, etc. Then you could better focus on the different areas you want to keep an eye on, rather than opening an app and having it blast information at you like a hive mind with ADHD. It would still do so, but at least you could restrict yourself to a topic at a time. Otherwise your brain will start maladapting to such a mode of "information" absorption.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday May 26 2022, @04:50PM (6 children)
There is a good reason for apps that could simply be a web site.
An app is able to capture your entire contact list on your device, and tons of other information that a mere web site cannot. That is why the most useless apps want the most permissions. Needs access to read all of your files, access your photos, camera, mic, etc.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 26 2022, @04:54PM (2 children)
Tracking your location.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 26 2022, @08:42PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @10:53AM
as long as it's "sekrits" and not "secrets", nevermind. ceiling cat gooo!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @08:53PM
Actually, I've even paid to use a DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst or German Weather Service) weather app. It gets me all the information I need and it's more efficient than looking at some websites on my phone.
Now, the funny reason why one has to pay 2€ for it -- the private companies sued the government that the app cannot be free as it competes with their ad-laden apps while just pushing DWD data. They claimed that DWD only gets tax payer money to make forecasts, not apps. Court agreed. So now they have to charge some amount, like 2€, to finance the app and not through taxes... Germany....
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday May 27 2022, @02:26AM
And more to the point, capturing all the otherwise-useless detail of your behavior, suitable for selling to marketing agencies.
Yet another reason to not install this crap.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday May 28 2022, @07:14PM
That's their only use and why I hate them.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @03:57PM
Social Media Disassociation App
Programs itself, using decentralized blockchain cloud AI and NFT rewards, to determine when you must take a break before advertisers and trackers loose you as a living host, thereby optimizing user, trackers' and advertisers' experiences.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by istartedi on Thursday May 26 2022, @08:45PM (2 children)
People that run these companies either have professional psychologists advising them, or it's equally possible that the sheer drive for money has given rise to such things.
People are subject to manipulation and always have been. It's older than the nazis. Older than politics. Older than organized religion. From the time when the earliest hairy proto-human realized he could convince other guys to go off and make stone circles while he porked their wives, this has been going on.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @01:19AM
The art of finding who these gullible souls are is known as " marketing", even have university degrees in it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday May 27 2022, @01:53AM