Doomscrolling social media does not result in brain rot

Showing all posts tagged: social media

Doomscrolling social media does not result in brain rot

12 November 2024

So say psychologists at the Sydney based University of New South Wales (UNSW):

Dr Poppy Watson, adjunct lecturer with UNSW’s School of Psychology, says while the idea warrants exploration, there is a lack of evidence showing excessive doomscrolling of social media is responsible for the mental fatigue, lack of focus, and reduced cognitive function often attributed to ‘brain rot’.

Doomscrolling is hardly a harmless undertaking either, but the UNSW researchers attribute so-called brain rot, particularly among teenagers, more to poverty, socioeconomic status, and poor diet. Brain rot does not, for instance, seem to have impacted IQ scores, which continue to rise:

If intense, prolonged digital consumption were stultifying young people’s minds, then we could expect to see a drop in average IQ scores between pre- and post-digital generations. But as Dr Watson points out, average IQ scores have risen from the start of the 20th century and into the 21st, known as the Flynn Effect.

This as the Australian government proposal to ban social media access to people under the age of sixteen, has been attracting criticism.

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psychology, social media, trends

One personal website is enough for me

15 October 2024

I’m not sure disassociated always rates as a personal website, with its informational content style. But it’s owned personally by me, and I personally write the content, so on that basis it’s a personal website. A lot of what I post are my thoughts on the many and various things happening online and in the world, so much of what appears here is my personal perspective.

I think I’ve said it a few times before, writing diary-like posts here seems pointless. I’m not sure what interest the ins and outs of my day-to-day life would be to anyone else. But writing diary-like posts is the precise definition of a personal website for some people. I’ve always seen the web as self-publishing platform: a platform to publish whatever you want. So if that’s informational content, or diary-like posts, that’s all fine.

A website whether you consider it personal or otherwise, is yours to do with as you please. Within reason. In that context, one personal website has always been enough for me. But a post by Kev Quirk, about bloggers who have multiple personal websites and blogs, has struck a chord with a few of the people whose RSS feeds I read. For some of us, it seems, one personal website is not enough.

Well, this is the web, and that’s an individual’s call to make. But to my mind, even two personal websites is one too many. Why, I wonder, do some bloggers feel the need to split their web presence? Maybe it’s a throwback to the idea supposedly propagated by Google that we should only be publishing niche blogs? That is, blogs focussed — mainly — on a single topic. In addition to being useful for readers looking for information on a particular subject, niche blogs enjoyed better SERPs placement, or something. Or so the story went.

Mind you, I’m not even sure Google actually said that. Maybe the notion was simply picked up by the people who blogged about blogging, and ended up being bandied ceaselessly around the blogosphere. A lot of my traffic comes in through Google, so clearly they’ve never been bothered by my non-niche blogging style.

But when it comes to having multiple blogs, it’s possible some bloggers want to separate different types of content, or feel not everything they write is suited to a particular blog. That I get, because I post a bit of what I call off-topic content to social media. Back in the day that was Twitter, which made for a great “side-dish” to a blogger’s main website. I don’t use Twitter/X anymore, but still post the same sort of content to the socials I have today, albeit at a greatly reduced rate.

Not everyone wants to post content on social media though. In that case then, I can see the point of something like Micro.blog. I don’t know a whole lot about the platform, but it seems similar to the likes of Mastodon, Threads, or Bluesky: it’s basically for micro-blogging. But even with something like Micro.blog, you still come back to the problem of content ownership, and the concern such platforms, like the social media channels, could close-down just like that.

It’s probably not likely to happen, especially to the established platforms, but it could be a problem if it did. That’s what I like about a single website. Even if my website host closed down overnight, I have the database and other content (e.g. photos) backed-up (in one place, well, more), and ready to potentially transfer elsewhere. Very little, hopefully, would be lost. Trying to recover years’ worth of posts from a closed social media channel might be another matter.

The blogging CMS I use lets me — if I chose — hide selected categories from the main feed/stream (or at least there is a way to make that happen because I did it before), in addition to serving up a separate RSS feed for each post category. If using social media becomes untenable, for whatever reason, in the future, I could always setup a separate off-topic content stream that would only be visible on certain parts of this website.

That seems to me to be the way to go. Everything on your own, single, self-hosted, website. And all in the true spirit of IndieWeb, or whatever you like to call it.

All IndieWeb participants need to be vocal, not just developers

5 October 2024

Evan Sheehan, writing at The Darth Mall:

I think Jeremy Keith is right, that all that really matters is having your own website. However big or small, however you make it, whatever you choose to put on it. I just don’t think that this is what the IndieWeb is actually focused on. The IndieWeb feels like it’s something by developers, for developers, because it focuses so much on implementing certain features.

My take here, is that it’s the people developing and implementing the microformats, the webmentions, what have you (sorry, a lot of this stuff is over my head), who seem to be the most vocal in the conversation. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but you’d be forgiven for sometimes thinking IndieWeb was the exclusive domain of developers. But I’m not having a go at developers here, because, you know, if there were no developers, there’d be no web/internet.

Instead, the discussion needs more input from others in the IndieWeb community. The creatives, the writers, the artists, the photographers. The other people doing their thing on the non-corporate web. There are already such people doing that, but more need to weigh in. The topic brings to mind something American author Edgar Allen-Poe once wrote:

Shadows of Shadows passing… It is now 1831… and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.

It’s all very deep. But the point is that different ideas complement each other. IndieWeb, the web, needs the technical infrastructure, but then alongside that, there needs to be something else. An idea, a thought, content. Something to engage with.

It’s my roundabout way of saying IndieWeb isn’t just for the technical people, it’s for anyone who wants to be involved. And in this case, the more the merrier. Let’s hear it then, from the other IndieWeb participants.

Independent websites: vital for the survival of the hyperlink

3 October 2024

This Halifax Examiner article, by Philip Moscovitch, which features a number of quotes by Matt Pearce, a Los Angeles Times journalist, recorded on a recent episode of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, has been doing the rounds. The upshot being hyperlinks, links from one webpage to another, are in danger of becoming obsolete. Extinct. Quite unsurprisingly, social media, and some search engines, are among the culprits intent on “degrading” hyperlinks:

There is a real bias against hyperlinking that has developed on platforms and apps over the last five years in particular. It’s something that’s kind of operating hand-in-hand with the rise of algorithmic recommendations. You see this on Elon Musk’s version of Twitter, where posts with hyperlinks are degraded. Facebook itself has decided to detach itself from displaying a lot of links. That’s why you get so much AI scum on Facebook these days. Instagram itself has always been kind of hostile to linking. TikTok as well…

Threads, Meta’s micro-blogging platform, allows hyperlinks to be included in posts at the moment. Whether though they “degrade” them, in X/Twitter style, down the line, remains to be seen. Instagram has never been hyperlink friendly, but remember it started out as a platform for sharing photos, not links.

Not long after I started making websites in the late 1990’s, I read an article about Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web in 1991. The piece is long gone now, but as I recall it, Berners-Lee said when he devised HTML, the markup language used to build websites, he made it intentionally simple to use (though maybe hard to master…). This so information could be shared easily:

However, in 1991 the internet changed again. That year, a computer programmer working at the CERN research center on the Swiss-French border named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web: an internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of linked information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.

Here we are, all these years later, where some people would like to do away with one of the web’s building blocks, which made everything we have today possible in the first place. Go figure. Well, link-haters are gonna hate, and do their best rid their web of hyperlinks, I guess. What this does though is underline the importance of an independent web, and websites that are interlinked by hyperlinks. Continue freely and abundantly sharing those links everyone.

When is the social web not the social web? When it is THE social web

27 September 2024

A few days ago, a group called the Social Web Foundation was launched. A coming together of “leaders of the open social networking movement“, the foundation aims to make “connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.” Rather than me reinventing the wheel, here’s the Wikipedia definition of ActivityPub:

ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server (shortened to C2S) API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

In short, ActivityPub allows individual, separate, decentralised social networking platforms, to “talk” to each other. Therefore someone on, say, Threads can (in theory) interact with another person on Mastodon. Threads and Mastodon are two different entities. The ActivityPub protocol means the Threads member does not need a Mastodon account, and vice versa. The Threads member will be able to interact with the Mastodon member, almost as if they were on the same platform.

Here’s the Social Web Foundation’s wording of what I just said:

The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”, is a network of independent social platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network.

The foundation, in the same sentence, is also proposing that the fediverse, the current conglomeration of independent social platforms, be referred to as the social web. Perhaps by now you’re saying to yourself: “remind me again; who are these Social Web Foundation people?”

You wouldn’t be the only one. When I first heard about the foundation, it reminded me of a group (I think) of people calling themselves fediverse.info. About a month ago, they proposed the use of a typographic symbol, an asterism, as a symbol of none other than the fediverse. I had no problems with the suggestion, but I wondered what sort of mandate they had to make such a proposal.

As I wrote then, there was very little information on the fediverse.info website as to who they were, and why they thought they were in a position to make the suggestion in the first place. The fediverse.info group may be made up of some of the most respected people in the fediverse, but you’d never know that from their webpage.

The foundation, on the other hand, is a little more transparent. At least in terms of membership. Their team page identifies Evan Prodromou, Mallory Knodel, and Tom Coates, as core members. What’s not so clear, is why they think they’re in a position to suggest the fediverse be renamed the social web. Unless you accept this rather dubious, and astonishing claim, about Prodromou:

Evan [Prodromou] made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008.

Prodromou’s background is impressive. Not only did he co-write the ActivityPub protocol, he once worked for Microsoft, and in 2003 founded Wikitravel, a now defunct a web-based collaborative travel guide. He’s doubtless scored a few firsts during his career, but the first-ever social web post claim is problematic. Twitter, for instance, was founded two years earlier in 2006. If Twitter then is not a social web platform, what is?

Actually, there are a number of answers to that question, says fLaMEd, webmaster (a title often used in the nineties, by people who operated and published websites, in the absence of the yet to be devised term blogger) and writer, at fLaMEd fury:

Have you heard of blogs, guestbooks, forums, instant messaging, email?

Email has been around since the early 1970’s. Almost forty years before 2008. And if having a social exchange via email isn’t an instance of the social web, what is? Of course, email isn’t social in the same way that, say, a public, there for all to see, Twitter/X feed is.

Enter then some of the earliest websites, of which fLaMEd fury, online since 1996, is among. And this website, disassociated, online since 1997. I’ve written about my own experiences of this social web.

During the late 1990’s, I made the acquaintance of numerous webmasters, designers, and writers. Some were overseas, but many were in Australia. We communicated in a number of ways. Through the online journals of our personal websites, where we referenced each other, in true IndieWeb style. Or by writing in each other’s guestbooks.

Before long, about eight of us had established an email group, and in 1999, our “social web” interactions culminated in the establishment of the (now off-line) Australian Infront, a group of web creatives working to elevate the perception of Australian web design. Through the Infront’s discussion forums, and face-to-face social gatherings, we brought potentially thousands of local, and international, designers together. Try telling anyone involved that wasn’t social web, because something called ActivityPub didn’t then exist.

There’s nothing new about the social web, it’s been there almost as long as the internet has. But I suspect the Social Web Foundation is going to stay the course, and press ahead with its efforts to rename the fediverse the social web.

But Prodromou has one other claim to fame. In 2007, he founded a company called Control Yourself, which developed Identi.ca, a Twitter/X like microblogging platform. I was an Identi.ca member for a short time in 2008. Was Identi.ca, I wonder, the “social web” platform that Prodromou made this purported “first-ever” post from?

If so, then I think clarification is in order. Instead of saying “Evan made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008”, perhaps it is more accurate to say he “made the first-ever post on the Identi.ca platform in 2008.”

Sweden wants to curb screen time for children under two

19 September 2024

Amelia Nierenberg, writing for The New York Times:

The intention of Sweden’s policy — and others like it — is to cut down on distractions, promote healthy development and help preserve the innocence of childhood. But some experts wonder if the guidance — however well-intentioned — may be too unrealistic and too judgmental to stick.

These are guidelines, not dictates, or bans, and Swedish health authorities are aiming for zero hours screen time for children under two years of age. I’m not sure what value, say, a one-year old child derives from any screen time at all, but the perspective of a parent of a child close to two years of age, may be different. Being able to temporarily distract a child with a game or cartoon show, may be a boon for any time-poor parent.

Meta Teen Accounts limit Instagram use for teenagers under sixteen

18 September 2024

Instagram (IG) owner Meta is moving to make the social media platform safer for users under the age of sixteen, and introducing a host of new parental controls:

Today, we’re introducing Instagram Teen Accounts, a new experience for teens, guided by parents. Teen Accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact them and the content they see, and also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests. We’ll automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.

Among a raft of measures, teen accounts will be set to private by default (meaning only followers can view the account owner’s content), direct messages can only be sent by followers of a user, and content deemed sensitive will be blocked by default. Parents will have the facility to adjust numerous settings, and also place limits on how many hours a day their children can access IG. All teen accounts will be subject to a sleep-mode for eight hours overnight.

In addition, teen account holders will be required to verify their age. Meta says tools that can help identify incorrectly entered date of birth information will be rolled out in 2025. Where it is determined a user under the age of sixteen has supplied an “adult birthday”, their account will automatically be converted to a teen account.

Meta’s initiative is in response to growing concerns about the amount of time people under the age of sixteen are spending on social media, and the nature of their interactions and activities while using such platforms. Last week, the federal government announced it was considering banning social media access to Australians under the age of sixteen.

Should the Australian government ban social media access to young Australians?

16 September 2024

Last week the Australian federal government announced its intention to restrict access to social media platforms to younger Australians. For now details remain scant. The government is yet to specify an exact age at which young Australians would be able to begin using social media. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, however has indicated somewhere between ages fourteen to sixteen was being considered.

Also unclear is how an age threshold would be enforced. Would this be the responsibility of a child’s parents or guardians? Would it be up to the social media companies? Would the so-called gatekeepers, companies including Apple and Google, who distribute social media apps through their app stores, also have a part to play? Should there even be any sort of ban in the first place?

This is a convoluted issue to say the least.

There are plenty of reasons to restrict social media access to younger Australians. Social media channels are rife with bullying, harassment, and all manner of what can be called inappropriate content. There are also concerns about the amount of time children spend looking at the screens of smartphones and other devices.

Yet parents have been providing their children with mobile/smartphones for decades, for safety and security reasons. Would any ban mean parents are required to take back their children’s smartphones, and replace them with so-called “dumbphones”, capable only of calls and messaging?

Would a ban, were one introduced, be phased in? That is, would young Australians, who have been using social media, and the smartphones they use for access, be told they can no longer do so, because they have suddenly become the wrong age? Imposing an age restriction on the use of social media is truly a significant step.

Gaining access to social media would become a rite of passage for young Australians. Akin to holding a drivers license, being able to vote, or buy alcoholic beverages. But are we looking at the matter the right way? A ban is a quick, easy, fix. If there’s a problem with over exposure to social media, imposing a ban is no better than sweeping the issue under the carpet. Besides, people find ways to circumvent bans and restrictions. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone who was once a teenager.

Like it or not, smartphones and social media are deeply enmeshed in our way of life. They’re not toys and petty distractions. Despite the high noise to signal ratio, they’re tools we use to interact and engage with the world around us. Some Australians make their living solely through social media. Restricting access to younger Australians may be detrimental to their education and even well-being.

Australian Greens party senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, describes the proposed ban as a “knee-jerk” reaction, and says it is the social media companies who should be subject to regulation, not young Australians. Hanson-Young also points out some social media channels are vital for some teenagers:

“We don’t ban kids from going to the beach — we teach them how to swim and make sure they swim between the flags. There are safety measures put in place to keep them safe — flags, lifeguards, adult supervision and swimming lessons. We need to teach children how to use social media and understand there are many positive benefits, particularly for marginalised kids, to being online.”

Given the number of adults in Australia who devote, as if addicted, unhealthy amount of times to phones and social media, some sort of minimum age access seems reasonable. After all, do we really want kids who haven’t even started high-school, spending their days gazing at smartphone screens?

The South Australian state government may be treading a somewhat sensible middle-ground. And middle-ground is what needs to be found here. They propose banning access to social media to children aged under fourteen. Those aged between fourteen and fifteen would require approval from parents or guardians to access social media. Is there merit in this proposal, or not?

It is obvious there is no one, straightforward solution, that will please everyone. As Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister, says:

We know that it’s not simple and it’s not easy. Otherwise, governments would have responded before.

The asterism: the proposed new symbol for the fediverse. So say we

26 August 2024

The asterism, ⁂, a typographic symbol made up three stars, is being proposed as the new symbol for the fediverse. If the fediverse needs a symbol, it’s not half bad. Does the web have a symbol? I’m not even sure. But for those who came in late, the fediverse can be defined thusly:

The fediverse (commonly abbreviated to fedi) is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”.

If you have either a Masterdon account, a Threads page, or maybe a WordPress blog, then you’re part of the fediverse. Or, as Manton Reece prefers: the social web. To me though, the fediverse is really just a specific part of the web you can choose to go.

An asterism, as you can see in the first sentence, is actually three asterisks. In astronomy, asterisms are groupings of stars. Asterisms should not be confused with constellations though. Not a half bad representation of the fediverse then:

We suggest that it’s a very fitting symbol for the fediverse, a galaxy of interconnected spaces which is decentralised and has an astronomically-themed name. It represents several stars coming together, connecting but each their own, without a centre.

The asterism is not the first symbol for the fediverse though. That was a rainbow coloured pentagram, designed in 2018. An asterism, being a typographic symbol, is certainly easier to make use of. And if you are a Threads member, you may have seen Meta’s fediverse symbol. It is made up of a small inner circle, with a broken outer circle and two dots, placed opposite each other. When seen with a Threads post, it denotes that the same post has been shared to the fediverse.

But Meta’s use of this symbol has raised the ire of the fediverse.info crew:

This other icon was created by Meta in 2024 to represent the fediverse within their product Threads. It incorrectly depicts a centralised network, with a big planet in the middle and the rest around it. We also don’t believe that a large corporation that is joining in as late should be the one defining the iconography for the fediverse.

I’m not a fan of big corporates such as Meta attempting to impose their will upon the rest of us. But I also wonder whether these fediverse.info people — or “we”— as they often refer to themselves, are likewise placed to do the same. The about page at fediverse.info offers next to no information as to who they are, certainly nothing in-depth, and really only states their objective.

Their fediverse symbol proposal seems to have been, from what I can see, well received though.

New Threads micro-blogging features, badge number Easter egg

19 August 2024

Coming soon to Threads on the website: the facility to save post drafts, and schedule posts. Post insights, similar I imagine, to those on Instagram, are also on the way, according to a recent thread by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Scheduling posts and saving drafts — at least if using Threads through the website — is going to be a bonus, especially for those who prefer to use the micro-blogging platform as their main web presence. I found the option useful when I used to be more active on X/Twitter.

And for those who like such things, there’s also a fun Easter-egg feature to check out, on the app, which I’ve seen a few people writing about. Tap on the name of a Threads member on their bio, and a popup will appear at the bottom of the screen.

This shows the member’s join date, and Threads badge number. Tap again near the bottom of that, and a full screen animation will appear, displaying the same information.

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