I’ve never been much of a social media person and I’m paranoid about online surveillance so I generally never posted much on any platform.
The only site I check regularly is tumblr for fun fanart, memes, and videos. However, I had to consciously make an effort to NOT engage for more than 10-15 minutes lest I get trapped endlessly scrolling through posts. This was a difficult habit to break until I started reading up on ethical design practices.
Once I was more conscious of how corporations profit off of our attention and how their websites and apps are intentionally designed to be malicious time sinks it was easier to make hard stops on usage.
I’ve kept twitter even though I hardly ever engage anyone on it, mostly because I feel like I’m bothering people and I rarely have anything worth adding other than an occasional joke. I also kept it because it lets me post switch screenshots online to share elsewhere. I only follow people I like, and I rarely go off into the weeds to find the bullshit.
As for facebook, I found deleting it to be very easy really. My dad and a guy I loathed in high school tried to friend me on the same day, and I noped the fuck out. I don’t even have a bad relationship with my dad either, we get along great, facebook just went from this thing I did for fun and dicked around with friends to this thing I was going to have maintain and curate because of the people watching and it very clearly became a chore instead of a toy. I never deleted it at my then fiancé now wife’s request because she wanted that status to say she was married to me, and I frankly didn’t care enough about deleting it one way or the other to have the discussion.
Different strokes for different folks, but I never really found the urge all that compelling once I was out, but I’m not a massively social person either. Just have a tight, relatively small circle of friends that you open a slack channel with and realize that you don’t really need to know that much about your extended relatives and voila! You too can be like me with no social media footprint to speak of.
I deleted Facebook entirely. I’d like to say it was an ideological decision, but honestly it was just because the only activity there was from distant acquaintances and family I didn’t care all that much about, so it was pretty easy to give up. Twitter however is my main source of news and political engagement, and IT IS HELL. Please help.
I’m with you. Instagram is a social network that is generally positive for me. I mostly follow friends and a few powerlifters, but it isn’t a time suck and it’s a good replacement for FB/Twitter for me. Follow positive people and cute animal pages!
Twitter and Facebook were both making me depressed and anxious. It wasn’t so much the news, I still pay attention to that, but it was the overwhelming volume of bad takes that really took a toll on my psyche.
Other than that, it’s just a habit you’ve gotta break. It’s not always a possibility, but I like sleeping with my phone in the next room or on my dresser not immediately next to my bed. After turning off my alarm I like showering and eating breakfast before picking up my phone. It’s not a permanent solution, but it helps me!
I only generally have Facebook for the services which use it for convenience e.g. dating apps. I never really engaged with the idea of Facebook itself. I use Instagram far more as it allows greater connectivity for engaging content.
For what it’s worth (mod hat half-on here), tarring other forums (like Giant Bomb’s) with over-broad generalisations can lead to folks who are active members in those communities feeling slighted, defensive, or frustrated. I’m aware that folks are speaking lightly and not intending to dump on anyone, but just something to be mindful about. If you’re a frustrated past member of a community, you’ve likely been in the position of being the person trying to push back and change it – there still will be people in that position trying to nudge the dial for it.
Apart from all that, I don’t want to a) give a green light to people in other communities to cherry-pick topics from here and put our users here on blast for them, and b) (as a mod) give the mods of other sites more work to do from folks drifting over (not that any of you would do that ). I’ve dropped the link out of kcin’s post (quoted here) and would discourage this sort of behaviour going forward.
Part of what makes the Waypoint community a great place to be is folks being considerate and being willing to include the extra nuance, which I’d like us to employ when talking about other social spaces too.
Hey, I found this out a month or two ago: You can delete facebook but keep your messenger account. It’s something they absolutely don’t advertise, but it was a huge weight off my shoulders when I deleted my account without losing all my fb contacts and group conversations.
I would, but too many people I follow and want to know what they’re doing post their status on Facebook. I care about these people, and I like knowing about what’s going on in their lives.
After a day and a half of me-specific depression inducing stuff on my social media just deleted Twitter and Instagram off my phone. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Yeah this is the main problem I’m having. I don’t know where to turn for news now I’ve come to the realisation that people with display names like Leon Thotsky, Anime Stalin and icum4mao have the most cogent analysis of politics.
I remember I tried various methods for quitting facebook and none of them really worked except one: Unfollow everyone so that your news feed is empty. This way even if you log onto the website there is nothing to see and all there really is to do is use Messenger. I find this a better method than deleting the app since there isn’t an easy way to re-follow everyone.
For twitter I simply deleted my account. If I want to see what someone is up to I can still see their tweets by looking them up.
I think the most effective tool social media uses to keep its users is the endless feed, always showing the user something new. The constant updates never give you the option to say “Okay, that’s enough”, it just presents the next thing to you and more often than not you’ll read it. If you get rid of these (by unfollowing everyone), the carrot on a stick disappears and there really isn’t much left to do.
I don’t really know how I stopped compulsively checking facebook and twitter. I just sort of did over a few months in 2017. It’s really made me feel better in myself basically all the time. I still log into twitter every so often to check the handful of accounts that I like (Dog Classifieds) but I’m not really checking it compulsively anymore and I almost never post.
I imagine if I ever had to deal with social media for work again I’d treat it very like work email as a thing I have to check because its my job but which I don’t obsess over all hours of the day but I could be wrong.
You can delete facebook but keep your messenger account. It’s something they absolutely don’t advertise, but it was a huge weight off my shoulders when I deleted my account without losing all my fb contacts and group conversations
Also that. Between mesenger whatsapp and telegram anyone I need/want to talk to I can speak to another way.
I’ve never really managed to walk away entirely, but I’ll tell you the one thing that really reduced my engagement with Facebook + Twitter: I stopped posting. Just being freed from the low level anxiety of having put my words out into that sphere, wondering how many reactions I’d get or whatever, was a huge weight off my mind. Now I check both infrequently, and contact people I want to give a thumbs up to outside the medium, privately. I know it basically defeats the purpose of these things, but it’s easier on me.
Personally I’ve been pretty successful in replacing the hell apps with crossword puzzles. They really benefit from being revisited every once and a while in your idle time because fresh eyes come up with fresh solutions and are super rewarding to finish! I TRY not to look at my phone idly, but when I do, that’s what I open.
). I’ve dropped the link out of kcin’s post (quoted here) and would discourage this sort of behaviour going forward.
