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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

#331

Post by dominotw »

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…

> forcing you to constantly evaluate how you compare to others.

Doesn't that start with schooling very early in life though. What does that specifically do with social media. Maybe schools are different in America.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#332

Post by acolumb »

woutr_be wrote: post #149
bitL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's better to read real-time Reddit threads when something is happening; it's usually unfiltered and you can get raw data, not the curated ones from mainstream news once propagandists from all sides plug in and offer only selective evidence.

I would argue against this, especially if you're in specific subreddits, it's usually heavily biased. Even if you're reading articles from /r/worldnews or /r/news, there's usually a general sentiment, and popular opinions that validate those sentiments get upvoted. I personally can't stand reading the comments, since every comment is either a meme or something irrelevant.

Redit live threads on major world events aren't tied to a subreddit. They report developing stories from many sources.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#333

Post by Chazprime »

jimsug wrote: post #284
knzhou wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if we're in the minority, but I'm completely with you. I use social media for about 15 minutes a day and it only improves my life. I'm happy when I see my friends being happy. I think people who blame their life problems on social media have deeper underlying issues. Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent envy in 2004.

I don't know if we're in the minority, but I agree. Facebook has just become the defacto shared calendar for me and my friends, so I spend less than a few minutes on it on average a day. Just checked and I spent 7 minutes on it on Sunday, nothing since, and the most I've used it in a day in the last three weeks is 5 minutes, at least on my phone. Similar for Twitter but with a peak at 40 minutes a couple weeks ago (h…

I don’t think Reddit fits the criteria of “social media” as most users don’t know the people they interact with in real life. I think of it more as a news aggregator as it’s easy to get current events linked from different sources in a single UI.

I routinely bounce back and forth between Reddit & CNN to get updates.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#334

Post by batuhanicoz »

nooyurrsdey wrote: post #308
agotterer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like social media and I’m capable of controlling my usage. I’ve developed some ground rules to ensure a good healthy experience. To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the…

> To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I'm glad you enjoy the experience and are able to control it, but isn't it telling that you have to put a timer on it to prevent it from being a negative experience? It's like a drug you have to heavily regulate so you don't OD.

Not OP but I also have a timer for certain social media apps, including Facebook.

For me, the timer is just there to remind me X minutes have passed. Losing track of time while doing something, anything feels natural to me. It happens in real life when I stumble upon a friend on the street and we start chatting and it happens in social media when I scroll too much.

If I'm reading something and my time is up, I just extend that and able to close the app afterward.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#335

Post by COGlory »

maximente wrote: post #152
agotterer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like social media and I’m capable of controlling my usage. I’ve developed some ground rules to ensure a good healthy experience. To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the…

nice setup. personally i've moved to a two device solution in two physical different places, where the "serious" device has /etc/hosts black holing of addictive domains + social media; were i able to consume it in a healthy manner on a mobile device, the iOS rule would be great.

That's the number one reason I root my phone. Not to block ads, just to block Reddit.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#336

Post by F-0X »

Beldin wrote: post #235
scanny wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

HN is a form of social media, though: users submit content, comment on content and each other, and can upvote content and comments.

I disagree on the basis that a hacker news account has no intrinsic ties with a personal identity.

It also has no notion of relationships between users.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#337

Post by newshorts »

Quite Facebook back in the early days once I realized it was making me hate my own life.

Haven’t looked back and I’d like to think I’ve spent that time doing something better.

In reality I probably just filled that time with Netflix...

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#338

Post by balfirevic »

pikzel wrote: post #299
viksit wrote: post #272

Isn’t hacker news social media? Karma points are no different from retweets or likes surely? And then isn’t reading nyt’s comment section social “media” too? At what point is engaging with media that has some collaboration from peers different from the big three social sites? Should there be a case made for quitting these too?

It's an unpopular opinion here, but you are absolutely right.

It's perplexing to me. I view HN as obviously being a social media, and (for me) the most time consuming one of them all.

Edit: Now that I think about it, HN is the only social media that I don't find it delivers enough value compared to my time spent on it (it does deliver value - it's just that it's a big time sink). I'm pretty happy with the time/value ratio of Facebook and (more recently) Twitter. It's probably because the ability to carefully curate what you see on FB and Twitter.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#339

Post by diminoten »

gamblor956 wrote: post #24
diminoten wrote: post #5

I quit Facebook for a few years, it didn't do anything to my life one way or another, except maybe put me in a group of people others had to reach out "out of band" to invite to things, which practically meant I had to hear about events second hand or not go to things. The emotional vitriol inspired by social media is completely unfounded. You can make it whatever experience you want; people just like to complain. Th…

Agreed and pretty accurate way to describe all the people I know who quit Facebook. The rest of us use Facebook or Messenger to organize events because there's a lot of us and it's the most convenient mechanism for organizing group activities. If people choose to opt out, it's up to the organizer whether they want to go through the additional mental effort of communicating everything to the Luddites through whatever…

Yeah the folks who are up in arms about Facebook can't really argue with the incredible utility of finally having everyone on a single platform. It's so easy to schedule things!

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#340

Post by satvikpendem »

bjornjaja wrote: post #146
scanny wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Question: how many of the articles do you read in their entirety? Do you spend 1 or 5 or 20 minutes thinking about the content? I’d like a comparison between, say, a library where you can find a nice book and sit-and-read for a good 2 hours. I think HN is more of a news aggregator with comments than social media platform. But it has the same problem as anything compared with “crack” and that’s a quick information fix…

I only read the comments 99% of the time. This is usually because there are more interesting insights in the comments than in the post itself, and usually at least one person finds a mistake that renders the entire post nullified in its teachings. This may be a methodological error in a research article, a financial error in a business article, and so on.

In the off chance that commentors say it's good enough to read, I skim it, and very rarely, I will read it in depth.

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