幾年前，Facebook的一組研究人員發(fā)現，用戶在不停瀏覽Facebook的動態(tài)推送后自我感覺會更糟。于是他們決定做點什么。

他們研究了Facebook用戶使用社交網絡時的情緒反應。相關成果推動Facebook做出了迄今為止最大的改變之一：更多地向用戶顯示來自于朋友和家人的動態(tài)，而不是企業(yè)動態(tài)。

目的是為了增加用戶間的評論點贊等互動。研究發(fā)現，人們互動越多，感覺就越好。

這項變革的背后是Facebook鮮為人知的幸福團隊，除此之外，他們還在多個領域里進行了探索。Facebook在現代生活中幾乎無處不在，該團隊的使命是減少Facebook可能對用戶造成的任何不良影響。

“我加入Facebook，是因為我想讓我的研究在日常應用中產生更多的影響?！毙腋F隊的研究經理詹妮弗·瓜達尼奧說，“我希望我的學術研究能夠直接對人們產生影響，但似乎還未達到目標?！?/p>

Facebook和其他社交媒體服務面臨著激烈的批評，稱它們強化了成癮行為，造成了用戶的自卑感和孤獨感等，這項研究變得越來越重要。此外，還有聲音批評社交媒體上的霸凌行為，加強監(jiān)管的呼聲不斷高漲。

該團隊的目標是解決科技行業(yè)日益嚴峻的難題——如何積極影響用戶的生活，眼前卻面臨重大挑戰(zhàn)。多年來，各項獨立研究均表明，使用Facebook會增加抑郁，讓用戶對自己的生活更不滿意。

今年早些時候，外部研究人員的一項研究發(fā)現，在停用Facebook賬戶后，人們更快樂、更滿足，焦慮和抑郁也減少了。這與Facebook的首席執(zhí)行官馬克·扎克伯格的說法形成了鮮明對比，他經常吹噓Facebook是連接世界的關鍵工具。

“研究明確表明，確實存在問題?！彼固垢４髮W的教授馬修·根茨科說，他與其他三位教授共同開展了這項研究。

同樣，耶魯大學和加州大學圣迭戈分校的研究人員2017年在《美國流行病學雜志》（American Journal of Epidemiology）上發(fā)表的一項研究表明，用戶對Facebook的使用越多，心理健康和個人滿意度就越差。

雖然這些批評聽起來很刺耳，但Facebook的研究人員表示，他們能夠理解。

“批評者和我們一樣，都十分關注人們的幸福感。”主攻Facebook社會科學研究的研究科學家莫伊拉·伯克說，“我們追求的是同樣的東西?！?/p>

除了推動Facebook去年改變了推送動態(tài)的算法，該小組還助力Facebook開發(fā)了其他新功能，其中一項是為用戶設立專門頁面紀念所愛之人，另一個允許用戶暫時隱藏特定好友的帖子,這樣他們就無需看到前任的更新，諸如此類。

該團隊還在探索，如何讓Facebook幫助最近搬到某一個新城市的人結識新朋友，探索新社區(qū)。研究人員還在尋找有效的方法，避免用戶在和朋友們經常發(fā)布的理想生活——滿面笑容的嬰兒、充滿異域風情的假期——進行比較后，自我感覺更糟。

該團隊向Facebook管理層提出的任何建議都只不過是建議。后者對采取什么措施擁有最終決定權。

雪城大學研究社交媒體內容監(jiān)管問題的助理教授詹妮弗·格里吉爾表示，這就是問題所在。仇恨言論、暴力內容和騷擾如此普遍，Facebook已經跟不上了。雖然用戶可能會抱怨，但沒有任何規(guī)定要求Facebook做出改變，解決這些問題或其他任何問題。

“他們都是公司，對股東和利潤負責?！备窭锛獱栒f，“他們說想幫助我們，說他們正在采取恰當措施保護我們，但他們沒有做到，也沒有足夠的資源做到。”

格里吉爾說，Facebook內部研究存在的問題可以歸結為：“只要馬克·扎克伯格還是公司的大股東，就沒有什么能夠真正獨立?！?/p>

幸福小組希望通過將學術標準應用到工作中來改變人們的這種觀點，比如通過在權威的同行評審期刊上發(fā)表論文。最終，研究人員表示，他們正以他們知道的唯一方式解決Facebook的問題：學術渠道。

該研究小組的成立大致可以追溯到2009年，當時伯克以研究員的身份加入了Facebook，開始研究Facebook對用戶幸福感的影響。該公司稱，這個團隊目前已經增長為“幾十人”。

許多團隊成員都有多年學術背景。例如，瓜達尼奧擁有杜克大學的心理學博士學位，她的專業(yè)是正念對幸福感的影響；伯克是卡內基梅隆大學的人機交互學博士。

Facebook的研究人員將“幸福感”定義為“人們如何看待自己的生活”。在這個范圍內，他們主要關注三個特定的領域：用戶花在Facebook上的不健康時間、孤獨感、與他人對比后導致自我評價降低。

Facebook的瓜達尼奧說：“這些問題對人們的生活產生了深遠影響，已經在Facebook上充分顯現?！?/p>

該團隊利用之前發(fā)表的學術研究作為輔助研究工具，已經根據針對Facebook的研究發(fā)表了10多篇論文。他們還依靠Facebook用戶作為其研究對象，有時長達數個月。

一項研究表明，人們并不是因為使用Facebook而感到孤獨；他們只是在感到孤獨時使用Facebook。他們的研究結果表明，Facebook是解決方案，而不是問題所在。

這些研究人員還經常與來自大學、非營利組織和其他組織的專家合作。在某些情況下，這些局外人的加入提供了一個獨立的視角。

但考慮到社交媒體的長期影響尚不清楚，這項研究仍然不算完整。畢竟，Facebook面世才15年。隨著Facebook的研究人員了解的更多，他們認為公司將根據新的研究成果進一步調整其產品。

“在Facebook，我們一直專注于深入理解社交媒體和技術改善或貶低人們生活的方式，并隨著我們了解的深入不斷對產品做出改變?！敝鞴苎芯康母笨偛么骶S·金斯伯格說，“我們的目標——所做研究和所開發(fā)產品的目標，都是為了確保人們在該平臺上花費的時間是有意義的?！?/p>

這似乎與公司高層產生了共鳴。

去年12月，扎克伯格強調，公司十分重視對用戶整體幸福感產生的影響?？梢哉f，這是他首次公開承認Facebook對該問題的關注。

“2018年，就我個人而言，面臨的挑戰(zhàn)在于解決Facebook社區(qū)面臨的一些最重要的問題——包括防止干預選舉，停止仇恨言論和虛假消息的傳播，確保用戶對自己的信息擁有管控權，確保我們的服務有助于提升幸福感?！彼贔acebook上的一篇文章中說。

在去年的年報中，幸福感也被加入到公司面臨的風險因素中。Facebook表示，如果用戶覺得社交網絡對他們的幸福感產生了負面影響，整體業(yè)務都可能受到損害。

“公司一直很關注幸福感。”Facebook的幸福產品經理錢德拉·莫漢·亞納基拉曼說道，“不同的是，我們對公司產品影響的認識發(fā)生了改變?！保ㄘ敻恢形木W）

譯者：Agatha

A couple of years ago, a group of researchers at Facebook realized that users felt worse about themselves after incessantly scrolling through their news feeds. The researchers decided to do something about it.

They surveyed Facebook users about their emotional reactions to using the social network. Those findings helped drive one of the biggest changes Facebook has made to date: Showing users more posts from friends and family rather than businesses.

The point was to increase interaction between users, whether commenting or liking posts. The more that people did so, the better they felt, the research found.

The change pushed by Facebook’s little-known well-being team is just one of many issues the group has explored. Its mission is to reduce any negative effects associated with using Facebook, a nearly ubiquitous presence in modern life.

“I came to Facebook because I wanted to have more applied impact with my research,” said Jennifer Guadagno, a research manager for the well-being team. “I felt that my academic research was a few steps more removed from directly impacting people than I personally desired.”

The research is becoming increasingly important as Facebook along with other social media services face intense criticism for exacerbating behavior like addiction and contributing to low self-esteem and loneliness. Those critiques, among a host of others like bullying on the service, are helping fuel calls for more oversight.

The team has a major challenge ahead as it aims to solve a growing conundrum within the tech industry: How to positively impact users’ lives. And over the years, various independent studies have shown that using Facebook can increase depression and make users feel less satisfied with their lives.

A study earlier this year by researchers unaffiliated with Facebook found that people who deactivated their Facebook accounts were happier and more satisfied and felt less anxious and depressed. It was in sharp contrast to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who often brags about Facebook being a critical tool for connecting the world.

“It certainly says there’s an issue there that needs to be addressed, ” said Matthew Gentzkow, a professor at Stanford University who authored the study along with three other professors.

Similarly, a study by researchers at Yale and the University of California at San Diego published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2017 suggested that the more people used Facebook, the worse their mental health and personal satisfaction.

While the criticism may be painful to hear, Facebook’s researchers said they understand it.

“The people who are critical about well-being care very much, just as we do,” said Moira Burke, research scientist who focuses on Facebook’s social science research. “We all want the same thing.”

In addition to championing the change to Facebook’s news feed algorithm last year, the team has also helped Facebook create a feature for users to honor loved ones with memorial pages and another that lets users temporarily hide specific friends’ posts so they don’t have to see updates from an ex-spouse, for example.

The team is also exploring how Facebook can help people who recently moved to a new city find new friends or to explore their new community. And researchers want to find ways to help people avoid feeling worse about themselves after comparing their lives to the often idealized ones of smiling babies and exotic vacations that friends invariably post.

Any suggestion the team makes to Facebook’s management is only that—a suggestion. Facebook’s leaders get the ultimate say about what should be adopted.

And that’s the problem, suggests Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University assistant professor who has studied the problem of policing social media content. Hate speech, violent content, and harassment have become so widespread that Facebook can’t keep up. And while users may complain, Facebook is under no requirement to make any changes to address those problems or any others.

“These are corporate entities, and they’re accountable to their shareholders and their profits,” Grygiel said. “They say that they want to help us—that they are putting processes in place to protect us—but they aren’t and don’t have the resources in place to do that.”

The problem with Facebook’s internal research boils down to one thing, says Grygiel: “Nothing can truly be independent when Mark Zuckerberg is the majority shareholder of the company.”

The well-being team hopes it can change that impression by applying academic standards to their work, like publishing papers in well-respected peer-reviewed journals. Ultimately, the researchers say they are approaching Facebook’s problems the only way they know how: as scholars.

The team loosely dates back to 2009, when Burke, who joined Facebook that year as a researcher, began exploring Facebook’s effects on its users’ well-being. Since then, the team has grown to a “few dozen people,” according to the company.

Many of its members have lengthy academic backgrounds. For example, Guadagno has a Ph.D. in psychology from Duke, where she studied the effect of mindfulness on well-being; Burke received her Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from Carnie Mellon University.

Facebook’s researchers define the term “well-being” as “how people perceive their lives.” Within that scope, they focus on three specific areas: unhealthy amounts of time spent on Facebook, loneliness, and declines in self-worth related to users comparing themselves to others.

“These issues are things that have a deep impact on people lives and have played out on Facebook,” Facebook’s Guadagno said.

The team uses previously published academic research to aid it in its studies and has published more than 10 of its own papers based on research conducted at Facebook. The team also relies on Facebook users to serve as subjects for its studies, in some cases for months.

One study showed that people weren’t lonely because they used Facebook; rather they used Facebook when they were feeling lonely. In their findings, Facebook was a solution, not the problem.

The researchers also often team up with experts from universities, nonprofits, and other organizations. In some cases, those outsiders have embedded within Facebook to provide an independent perspective.

But the research is still incomplete considering that the long-term impact of social media is unknown. After all, Facebook has only been around for 15 years. As Facebook’s researchers learn more, they expect that company will tweak its products some more, based on new findings.

“At Facebook, we have been focused on deeply understanding the ways in which social media and technology can both improve and detract from people’s lives, and making product changes as we learn more,” said David Ginsberg, vice president of research. “Our goal, both with the research we do and the products we build, is to make sure that the quality of time people spend on the platform is meaningful.”

That message seems to have resonated with the company’s top executives.

In December, Zuckerberg highlighted the importance of the company’s effects on users’ overall well-being. Last year was arguably the first time he publicly acknowledged Facebook’s focus on the matter.

“For 2018, my personal challenge has been to focus on addressing some of the most important issues facing our community -- whether that’s preventing election interference, stopping the spread of hate speech and misinformation, making sure people have control of their information, and ensuring our services improve people’s well-being,” he said in a post on Facebook.

Well-being also shows up in one of the company’s risk factors in last year’s annual report. Facebook said that its overall business could be harmed if users felt that the social network was negatively affecting their well-being.

“The company has always cared about well-being,” said Chandra Mohan Janakiraman, Facebook’s well-being product manager. “What’s changed is our understanding in terms of the impact our product has had.”