Geoffrey MillerVerified account

I wonder if the impact of FOMO outweighs abstinence

Many fun/potential confounds: novelty of only 4-week abstention period; premorbid mental health conditions/concerns; social media use motives (e.g., to enhance positive affect vs. to cope with negative affect); personality traits (particularly neuroticism in big 5 model); etc.

I’m always confused about this kind of stuff, because anyone who does this anecdotally will say it was great for them, but studies of this kind seem to always say no effect. Makes me wonder about how they attempt to measure wellbeing

I give it up for Lent every year and I do notice that I am legitimately less irritable.

Probably people's natural negativity bias to anything new, similar to TV when it first came in

I suspect that people who find negativity on social media, will find negativity in any human interaction.

Perhaps the conventional wisdom is due to selection effects. That is, neurotic people both use social media more and report lower wellbeing. Both effects share a common cause. One does not cause the other.

cause they're looking at it backwards. broken people are drawn to social media like moths are to a flame