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.
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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.
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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.
Not gonna lie, it’ll be rough, and it won’t get much better with time.
I got off Facebook during the election and haven’t looked back.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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