What Makes Social Networks the Worst Place to be While Depressed?
They're too fast.
Do you know how intermittent rewards work on us? That if we don't know whether we'd get a reward or not, we're more likely to perform the activity multiple times, even after we get the amount of "rewards" we need. They test it on rats with a pedal that only gives food when pressed some of the times.
It's used to explain why we keep checking our email all the time, but wouldn't if we knew it only delivered mail once an hour, or knew if we're going to get email or not. This also explains the endless cycle of shifting through sites, refreshing each, and waiting for an update. You do a lot of that when depressed, and it's not good for you. Twitter and other social media, especially ones with a lot of people, and doubly so if they post a lot (cause it's designed for frequent, short responses) give you even more of that, keeping you trapped in that cycle. The faster the social media is, the more immediate the response cycle, the worst it is, and Twitter is likely the worst.
Now, that's not too bad in and of itself, cause you'd be using multiple sites otherwise, right? But here is when it gets worse, where we use social media to validate ourselves, something that again becomes more prominent as one gets depressed. You send out messages that either in content or intent say "Notice me. Validate me."
And then because it's so quick, you sit there, waiting for responses, looking for them. It's not like a blog-post where you might accept they'd flow in 2 hours later, up to 24 hours later. You wait for them, and you get disappointed with every tweet that comes out that isn't validating you, which is drowning your plea. And you send more. And even if people send some responses back, they're hard to keep track of and return to later, and they're shorter, and sometimes, for some things, this /does/ matter. And you send more cries for validation as you don't get enough, or as the previous validation falls off due to how quickly everything moves.
Sure, to a degree it happens either way, but social medias only exacerbate it. The nature of your "closed cycles", the nature of how quickly you spiral when validation doesn't approve, and what forms of validation you can receive, and later come back to.
But everyone's on social media, so there we're pushed, but it doesn't mean it's good. Sometimes, we all end up in the worst possible place for our needs. When we're depressed, that's social media.
But let us say you are not depressed. Is this stuff still relevant to you? I'm afraid so. I referenced to it above with "closed cycles", but we all suffer from "open loops", which are things that draw on our attention. A task we hadn't completed, whether we left the door locked, that last witty retort to that bully who cut us on the road. Open loops sap our attention and stop us from being able to give our full attention to whatever it is we're supposed to be doing now, because our minds are still stuck then.
You know what's an open loop, of the same sort that I outlined in the piece above? A just-posted piece on your facebook wall, or on your blog, such as here. You make a post, you worked hard on it, and now you're going to keep refreshing to see how it does.
Unless you are fine with spending an entire day on a just released post, I recommend posting posts before you take a shower, go on a run, or even go to sleep. Keep control of your day and life, and resist open loops, or mitigate them.
Image taken from Pixabay.
This post has originally been posted on my ask.fm here, and has been reformatted and updated as needed for Steemit.
Interesting blog. I like the idea of posting before you go out to do something. That is brilliant. The constant checking and rechecking of post is something I am certainly guilty of. Great idea. Thank you. Blessings.
You know how you gain some observations by observing others, and can learn from their experiences?
Yeah, this is not such a post. This is a post born out of much anguish and many wasted hours on my end :D
And yeah, here's to hoping it helps others, so they can learn from someone else's experience.
It takes a humble soul to share their anguish, even for the sake of helping others. Thank you! We are not alone. Blessings!
This rings a serious bell with me @geekorner. I used to be an absolute addict for Facebook validation when my depression was much more serious than it is nowadays. I find myself following the age old patterns at times with steemit, but I seem able to flick the needle off the jumping record, much quicker on here. After all there is always something else to write. + I hardly ever go on Fbook anymore. Interesting article, thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
There is always something else to write or do, which is why open loops are so destructive - we've got better things to do. Always.
And while I'm getting better at it myself, every time a new media comes along, it takes a while for me to grow inured to that too. Here's to hoping the Steemit attention bug lets go in a week or so :)
It's really bad with day trading. You make a trade, and then you feel compelled to sit there and watch how it changes, even if you know it's something that is only going to give rewards in a week's time.
Yeah, I commented on this very topic in your piece on Day Trading.
I think professional day traders bypass this issue because they always have something else, the next thing to look at.
By the by, speaking of your piece from today, and I may make a similar point there, but relationships are also open loops, varying to a degree by what happened in them recently and how long you've been in them, etc. - I often say that with true friends, you can sit in companionable silence, and that's because you don't need the constant affirmation of the relationship existing. Crushes are an extreme case of open loops.
I also mentioned in said post of yours on day trading that this is why I won't come close to it. I mean, look at all the open tabs I have in my browser (currently 46) - that's a symptom of being unable to close open loops, which in turn makes it even harder to close the next one, etc.
Yes, definitely. But I enjoy relationship open loops.
I think we all do, at least to some degree, for a certain period of time per relationship.
I mean, leaving a fight unresolved is also a relationship open loop, and I know you don't like that.
But yes, we all enjoy a crush. The open loop part of the crush is what makes a crush both fun and draining :)
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Among many things, people interfere in social networks to ignore what happens in their daily lives, now when they publish their state of mind they are reservations because they undoubtedly merit attention and many assume a victim position and the worst part of the case is that they exist who reinforce it
© Guy Shalev 2015.