Psychology @lemmy.ml subhomesickalien @lemmy.eco.br 2w ago

What would you suggest if you were helping design a healthier social network?

For example, would removing infinite scrolling help make it less addictive? Would you keep the upvote/downvote system, remove it, or classify posts differently to foster better discussions? How about adding a countdown timer to log the user out after a certain number of hours of use?

If psychological research can be used to keep users engaged on a social network for as long as possible, I believe it can also be applied to help prevent excessive use, improve the quality of discussions, and create a more empathetic environment. That’s why I’d love to hear suggestions from those in the field.

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So you're saying it's nice? I get that it's impractical but that only hinges on popularity.
- Of course it's nice, in general, you're picturing a place where everyone gets along and tries to be thoughtful with no exceptions, but that's just wishful thinking and some kind of utopia thinking.
  
  Yep, i thought they were asking for ideas for better social media. The reality is that this will never happen. Humanity is terrible. I'm not joking. I was just trying to think about what might help. Noone would stay though, they'd find their safe space and eat their brand of shit.
  
  I think the most practical way of something like this is the Fediverse, it can be helpful to make this kind of thing you want, because I think one of the worst issues would be moderation. My thoughts: chunk of small social medias defederating from and to anywhere else but federate to each other, maybe like per neighborhood, so they could moderate in small communities better and properly distributed. Although then it'd maybe now a closed platform? Yeah... it's not really practical.
  
  To clarify: by small community I mean a community under 100 members so it's easier to be moderated and faster to react throughout.
  
  Getting humans to play nice is not practical, that's the bottom line. Getting humans to be logical and compassionate is also not practical. The whole notion of non toxic social media is a fools errand. We're vicious and selfish and you can't nudge that out of existence.
  
  We're product of past generations and acting like we're like 100 generations ahead where people might live closer to an utopia and knows better is just unrealistic. Misanthropy is not the answer nor helps.
  
  You have an answer? Im pretty set on misanthropy. I thimk people do know better but they just don't care. We all know about the holocaust but most people are fine with doing this to non jewish people. People aren't going to change in 100 generations. We need to evolve into non humans and that would take many more than 100 generations.
  
  I don't, maybe it's the question for another that we will get to 42?
  
  I think there probably is no straight solution to this other than heavy funding in academics (including social studies - which is undervalued in most places) so we can have more questions to possible answers that will lead us to more questions.
  
  What if we knew how to solve it? Do you think every country would suddenly pledge peace and chip in to participate in such transition? That's why I think it's far in the future if that ever happens because it certainly sounds insanely crazy to say that would happen in this century.
  
  The top issues right now is misinformation and weaponizing it to make people make terrible political choices for their country (if it's a democracy) and if not, it'll just weaponize the hate against opposition. We are capable of bring rational but we are also capable of being emotional, how do we reconcile the two? One without the other won't be healthy and I doubt most people can think of an answer to that in the tip of their tongue.
  
  I think the demonisation of emption is wrong. We all want emotions: happiness, love, joy, excitement, fullfilment, etc. This is what we live for but emotions are denigrated constantly. There is a huge dissonance here in society where emotions are made illegitimate and worthless whilst being the experience we strive toward.
  
  I wonder if this is part of the anti intellectualism, especially the humanities, if they are viewed as less pragmatic and more about curiosity and emotion. Everything is economic these days.
  
  Funding is necessary because academics people are just people as anyone else living under a system where people need money to afford to have things and have a place where they can feel secure and so on. As I said, being emotional and rational needs to be reconciled, that doesn't mean you have no right to be emotional, by your response I just notice you don't know how either, and it's okay. Therapy could help if you can afford to.
  
  I have no idea where you got the idea of emotion being demonised, and maybe that's why you feel set on being misanthropic.

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