The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

Weird. There is little that depresses me more than watching my wife sit at the table for hours a day slowly scrolling Facebook while ignoring me and the kids. We have talked about it and she's tried to reduce it to no avail.

There's something about the social media influencer industrial complex that short circuits women's brains worse, as far as I can tell. Most of my friends quit social media years to a decade ago but our wives are all on it. Men seem to get sucked into Youtube wormholes instead.

I think the only way out is cold turkey. The number of conversations my wife starts with telling me about some distant acquaintances recent vacation (as seen thru IG) is distressing.

My "social" internet use is more hobby based - forum/reddit hobby focussed content.

If she tried to reduce it she wouldn't do it. Nobody is holding a gun to her head. She does it because she wants to do it. Until she takes responsibility for her actions she will not change.

"Why don't people just stop taking heroin"

You're enabling it by being kind. Stop being so nice.

Hey, you just solved drug dependency issues all over the world. Just stop doing it!

Well yes, the essential working part of all interventions and therapies is to help the client understand how they can take responsibility and what control they have, and to believe in it. They aren’t pure victims, no one is.

Yeah this is how all therapy works. It’s about learning what change you can make and taking responsibility and making that change. Not sure why you’re being downvoted but likely because there’s an idea floating around now that all such issues are purely externally imposed by a defect in society, and that it has nothing to do with the actions of the individual who is portrayed as helpless. I think that is a deeply depressing and disturbing trend. I’ve literally seen communities of people telling others they should kill themselves because it’s impossible to be happy under capitalism…

Semantic point: nice and kind are not the same thing.

The nice thing to do when somebody is behaving poorly, is to ignore it until it becomes untenable (firing them, leaving them, and so on). The kind thing is to address it and let them change their ways.

Wanting to be nice is baked into our social structures - nobody wants to be seen as the un-nice person - but being kind is where relationships and interactions get strong. You just need to do it with empathy.

It is anecdotal but eg. me and my brother and some of my male friends "burned out" on silly meme feeds on sites like Memebase and what not before there was any very addictive feeds. Maybe fewer women was full of it by the time Instagram came?

Take a photo of her and send it while on a walk with your kids.

When my girlfriend told me on our first date that she doesn't use social media, I nearly proposed on the spot.

And even she does some doom-scrolling though news sites. She claims to know it's mostly nonsense, and then says she has to do it to know what's going on. I try not to point out the contradiction too much, because she does limit it pretty well.

Because wanting to change is the first step.

If there is no external stimuli to push a desire to change it is unlikely a person will even want to change in the first place.

Hence the other comments, well done you just solved all drug dependency, just stop doing drugs.

Therapy isn't just about how to take responsibility and making changes. It's about learning how to build a support network and the mental resolve to actually go through with the change in the long term.

Blaming the person in addiction doesn't help much without actually taking steps to improve. But it's all too common to believe you have brought an issue to an addicts attention but it didn't quite sink in to them.

Sometimes a phrase like "this is a problem and if you don't seek help I am going to have to take action by doing x" can be a decent wake up call. But if it comes over as aggressive or happens during a fight of some sort you will still not get the response you were looking for.

Inter personal relationships are hard, sometimes it is beneficial for the person's effected be someone else addiction to seek therapy at the same time or even before the addict seeks therapy.

In this case it's even more true, a long term relationship with children is the one place you really do want all the support you can get to ensure the person that needs help gets it and the family as a whole doesn't suffer more than needed.

It's an addiction and really hard to stop. Facebook spends billions designing it to be as addictive as possible.

In this study, they paid people $25 to not use it for a week. I wonder if your wife would agree to that. It seems like for most people who are addicted, you need to go "sober" and not use it all.

Indeed. Take the kids out to do something active or just kick a ball or look at the squirrels.

There may be an apparent contradiction but I think she's right. You want to know the gist of whats being reported so that you know directionally what is going on / what other people may be talking about.

That is - you don't need to read 18 different articles about how Pete the drunk defense secretary (and probable assaulter/abuser) likes to text on his personal phone about war plans (including to non-govt officials), but when you see the article pop up in enough of the less biased news places you browse, you get the idea that it's true & bad.

Generally I find business news like FT/Bloomberg/CNBC and (if you ignore the opinion section) WSJ are best for the less-biased news sourcing.

I also browse a bit of known-biased news on each side to understand what each side is going to talk about (and makes it clearer what each side may be BSing about). This is helpful so I don't get jumped by some of my more left/right wing nut social circle when discussing a topic with a known-false partisan argument (as 99% of people just repeat what they see in their-sides news).

This worked for me in a similar situation, and you gotta do the same: Make 2 or 3 rules and remind each other of them.

No phones in the bedroom. No phones at meals. No phones at the park. (Something like that)

Or even a "let's go out for dinner without our phones!"

I also made a little "Phone jail." It is essentially a shoebox on top of the fridge. I announce when I am putting my phone in "jail" as a way to show my kids that I am trying to have a healthy relationship with screens.

My wife and I have both reduced our screen time (though ew aren't perfect.)

That's miles different from what GP said. Dependency issues are a complicated matter, and for sure the affected person needs to be interested in changing and willing to do the needed steps. But to do that, to SEE that, you need external help and support, otherwise inertia and the dependency issue itself will keep you in the same circle forever.