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I Quit Social Media for a Year

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#91

Post by T-hawk »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

The way to compensate for this is to realize the perception bias you're applying to yourself.

If you have 52 friends on Facebook, and each of them takes a vacation for one week out of the year, then every week you see someone broadcasting how they're having a more awesome time than you.

That doesn't mean they're doing any better than you. You just don't see the 52 reactions for the one week that you've got the vacation 'advantage' over them. You only notice the comparison when you're on the worse side of it.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#92

Post by SolaceQuantum »

dabbledash wrote: post #72
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m LGBTQ, and I am not a federally protected class. It is legal to fire me for my identity in many states, and the current republicans in power are continuing to make it legal and condoned to discriminate against LGBTQ people at the federal level- rolling back several policies that benefited marginalized folks along this umbrella. These changes happen with very little fanfare or any notification safe for observant r…

I find that catching up on what’s going on once every week or so provides enough information to make the decisions I can. Social media, in contrast, serves up a sub 24 hour news cycle that prevents focus and produces emotional exhaustion and constant anxiety. I’m sure there are people for whom it’s valuable (e.g. if immigration raids could affect you directly), but for members of most groups, being plugged in all tim…

And I am simply arguing that that is not always the case and the original statement, that it is a privilege to be able to unplug from news and social media, may be true given that I as an LGBTQ person often feel the need to keep abreast of new and rarely-covered updates to local and federal policy that are associated with LGBTQ issues. For example, the department of labor moving through fairly recently to make it legal for federal contractors to fire LGBTQ or unmarried pregnant women on the grounds of religious beliefs.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#93

Post by scanny »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

I feel like Hackernews is more distracting to be honest, it's like crack, I just cannot stop looking through all these interesting posts.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#94

Post by vickypathi »

I did it for a year too! deleted fb/insta/twitter accounts for a year.

a lot of good things happened. 1. Never bothered about taking photos for everyshit I did. 2. A lot of white space and time I got, to be empty. Not sure if I used them enough. But white space yes! 100% 3. I never grazed useless info off the feed.

in the middle of the year, i tried an experiment. created a twitter/fb accounts and followed some of the useful accounts. browsed for 1 hour. and then closed twitter/fb and tried to recollect all the info I gathered in this 1 hour. And trustme, it was huge. really huge.

X got married. Y had a job change. Z disappointment about something. A's vacation. B's witty remark on C.

then i immedietly deleted my account, coz none of these were useful for me. I was never interested in what other poeple's life about.

Another 6 months passed. I realized only thing I missed was the option for events, and groups where u can post.

coz i play fifa on xbox one. to find teammates.. ofcourse the best place is on fb. To sell something. Even to reach out to somebody for help at sometime, fb is the best.

so finally after 1 year, I created twitter/fb accounts. and I never posted any photos or my personal stuff.

Just add 30 friends in fb. the most important ones. u know.. and no more. but i can unfollow some of them. ANd posted all info in groups, and got teammates right away for Fifa.

and also, if I want to reach out someone, its just one step away.

Twitter, follow all useful ppl mostly tech/football/humor

and now i dont feel overwhelmed at all.

Everytime i open fb, i ll not get enough updates.

The key idea, how to be in it and not get overwhelmed. How to be in it an use it the way u want it.

P.S Insta -> never felt like going back. absolutely boring and useless for me personally.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#95

Post by _coveredInBees »

pesmhey wrote: post #78
tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

Haven’t we always done this though? It seems like it’s more that social media has made the playing field 10^9 instead of 10^3.

It's more insidious than that though. The most damaging aspect of it is that these anxieties are evoked 24/7 thanks to social media companies trying their best to get their userbase addicted to their product to maximize user engagement.

Back in the day, you might have felt those social pressures, but only in limited settings and ultimately you could control the situation by removing yourself from anxiety invoking situations. There was ample room for getting a mental break from these situations.

But social media completely destroys any respite anyone could possibly have. They exploit the FOMO feeling as best they can to essentially guilt their users to constantly "engage" on their platform, which leaves the end user pretty helpless in being able to seek respite from these negative social pressures. I'm only 35 and I haven't used social media in any meaningful way for 5+ years and it has been the best decision ever. I don't really miss out on much and I definitely am much happier than when I had to wade through all the crap people post on social media just to keep up appearances in the social media rat race.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#97

Post by dabbledash »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #92
dabbledash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that catching up on what’s going on once every week or so provides enough information to make the decisions I can. Social media, in contrast, serves up a sub 24 hour news cycle that prevents focus and produces emotional exhaustion and constant anxiety. I’m sure there are people for whom it’s valuable (e.g. if immigration raids could affect you directly), but for members of most groups, being plugged in all tim…

And I am simply arguing that that is not always the case and the original statement, that it is a privilege to be able to unplug from news and social media, may be true given that I as an LGBTQ person often feel the need to keep abreast of new and rarely-covered updates to local and federal policy that are associated with LGBTQ issues. For example, the department of labor moving through fairly recently to make it leg…

Did you change anything about your behavior immediately when you found that out?

I’m saying the high proportion of button-pushing click-bait and the low probability that I need any particular info in real time means i’ll be better off getting news through other sources.

You don’t win a war by maximizing fear, outrage, and low quality info on your own side (which, IMO, social media does).

YMMV, obviously. What do I know?

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#98

Post by joshgachnang »

scanny wrote: post #93
tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

I feel like Hackernews is more distracting to be honest, it's like crack, I just cannot stop looking through all these interesting posts.

The noprocrast setting is really helpful, personally. I wish every site had this.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#99

Post by hyperdunc »

FussyZeus wrote: post #60
Aloha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disconnecting from people trying to push a so called 'culture war' on the general populous seems like a rational choice - as a white male, social media seems to tell me emphatically that I am the problem. Similarly social media pundits from the other side are trying to blame all measure of economic and social ills on brown people/gay people/trans people. Both narratives are patently false. To touch very lightly on po…

Just as a minor correction: Nobody is telling you that you specifically are the problem. The problem is that as a white male, what is called "western society" was built with you as the presumed default, and that confers to you tons of small benefits that fall into one of two categories: 1) Unfair advantages that allow you certain freedoms other groups don't have, that one could argue no one should have 2) Advantages…

If you're going to say that Western society was built with white males as the presumed default, you might want to also mention who the builders were.

And as a broader point, it also might be worth considering how Western society stacks up against all other societies to ever exist.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#100

Post by elorant »

My main beef with social media is that you can't have a decent conversation with anyone. Partially because everyone builds a network of like minded people and has little to no tolerance at all to opposite views, and partially due to the real name policy, all conversations seem to derail quite easily. Then you have sites like LinkedIn where everyone presents himself like they invented the cure for cancer. People seem so fixated on being right and pompous to the point that there's no real fun anymore in interaction. And if I can't discuss with strangers I don't see any point of joining social media sites. For me communities is all there is on sites like that.
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