time well spent? almost never on Facebook

Does the time spent on Facebook qualify as Time Well Spent? Ever?
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Mark Zuckerberg announced a major overhaul of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm that would prioritize “meaningful social interactions” over “relevant content” one week after he pledged to spend 2018 “making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent”.
Which led me to the Q ‘when does the time spent on FB Facebook qualify as Time Well Spent?

In seeking to deliberate this question, I went back to my roots is Psychology. And while it is common knowledge that  Freud is the Father of Psychology, it is a lesser known fact that Martin Seligman, is the father of Positive Psychology - the branch of Psychology that concerns itself with science of strengths, fulfilment and happiness. A central element of Positive Psychology is the idea of Signature Strengths - the character strengths that are most essential to who we are. Expressing these Signature Strengths in the canvass of the everyday, is seen to be the source of Authentic Happiness.  

Here is an excerpt from https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/learn/wellbeing
“The theory in Authentic Happiness is that happiness could be analyzed into three different elements positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. 
- The Pleasant life.  Positive emotion is all about what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort etc. An entire life led successfully around this element, could be called a “pleasant life.”
- The Good Life. Deep Engagement is the key element here & this is all about being in FLOW ; being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity. Life lived with these aims is described as the “engaged life.” Engagement is different, even opposite, from positive emotion; for if you ask people who are in flow what they are thinking and feeling, they usually say, “nothing.” In flow we merge with the object. There are no shortcuts to flow. On the contrary, you need to deploy your highest strengths and talents to meet the world in flow. There are effortless shortcuts to feeling positive emotion, which is another difference between engagement and positive emotion. You can masturbate, go shopping, take drugs, or watch television. Hence, the importance of identifying your highest strengths and learning to use them more often in order to go into flow. 
​-The Meaningful Life. There is yet a third element of happiness, which is meaning. Human beings, ineluctably, want meaning and purpose in life. The Meaningful Life consists in belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self, and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being Green, the Boy Scouts, or the family”

Can FB aid in living a pleasant life? 
Sure. Seeing your family & friends have a great time might certainly fill you with positive feelings. Seeing all the likes that your pictures gets can also make you feel loved & celebrated. Watching the misfortune of others can help you feel gratitude towards your own blessings.Helping promote your friend’s new business on FB might make you feel warm & fuzzy. Marking oneself safe - and seeing the way people react to it all - might help your feel loved & secure. All of these can contribute to positive emotion and help one in leading a pleasant life. But these are limited in their meaning and certainly limited in their ability to enable genuine interaction.
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Can FB aid in living a life of Engagement & FLOW?  
Most likely, not. To experience FLOW, the situation has to be sufficiently complex to activate a high challenge - high skill condition. There is no challenge or skill or complexity involved in consuming or adding to the FB feed for it to enable deep engagement – a condition necessary for FLOW. Instagram where people tend to follow the ‘experts’ or where ‘experts’ or ‘connoisseurs’ display their skill or moments surrounding their skill set, could potentially offer a higher probability of engagement. But without a strong focus on 'doing', FB doesn’t offer much opportunities for engagement & FLOW. 
To enter and maintain a state of flow, it’s required that:
- The task is challenging and requires skill 
- We concentrate 
- There are clear goals
- We get immediate feedback 
- We have deep, effortless involvement
- There is a sense of control (we’re relaxed, not worrisome)
- Our sense of self vanishes 
- Time stops & we are one with the activity

Can FB aid in living a life of Meaning? 
A life of meaning is about attaching your signature strengths to something higher and larger, in order to forward knowledge, power, or goodness in the world. Facebook, has given people the delusion of having promoted a cause & a false sense of belonging to a cause bigger than oneself by simply consuming related content. Examples like the Ice Bucket challenge that raised awareness of ALS and money for the cause abound, but these don’t aid in helping people live a life of meaning. They don’t encourage a habit of giving back (through money or talent or time etc.) A life of meaning is a deep social endeavor requiring placing oneself in the thick of humanity & its conditions. Echo chambers, arm chair activism, reading about HONY don’t necessarily qualify.

Zuckerberg’s ambition of wanting to leave behind a better world that his children would be proud of is a worthwhile ambition.  The goal can be reached better if he, and all the talent that he has access to, can think of how FB can aid not just in the life of pleasure , but use it to make a habit of leading a Good Life and a life of Meaning. 

References:
http://aimhappy.com/paths-authentic-happiness/
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/learn/wellbeing
https://www.viacharacter.org
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/11/facebook-news-feed-algorithm-overhaul-mark-zuckerberg
https://www.ft.com/content/f9b60c64-f7bc-11e7-8715-e94187b3017e
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571