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7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

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Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#391

Post by LightG »

abnry wrote: post #321
LightG wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. My current move is to delete Facebook completely (well, deleted that years ago). I just didn't find as much value there as elsewhere on the internet. And the psychological cost wasn't worth the little value there was there. So, complete deletion. Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no one. I have a separate list of profiles I find interesting. I have to physically go to that list and click…

> Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no one. I have a separate list of profiles I find interesting. I have to physically go to that list and click on their profiles. Interestingly, this is the same solution I came to with Twitter, except I don't even keep a list of profiles, I just navigate based on memory and auto-complete in the address bar.

Cool. It's changed twitter completely for me.

My list is far too long to memorise, though.

And having it separate helps keep me honest (I think my memory would suffer biases) and out of my head.

Mainly though - the act of having to physically click a few times to get to the list gives me a moment of pause where I'm able to wake up and recognise whether I'm about to make good use of twitter or habitually jump into the time-worm-hole we all know.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#392

Post by lmm »

everdrive wrote: post #259
lmm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The platforms are designed to show you more of what you engage with. I can understand that for people who are addicted to outrage-bait, blocking might be the only way to break out of that, but if you engage with the parts you want to see more of and not with the parts you don't, facebook learns pretty quickly, IME.

I don't know that I agree with this, but even if we assume it's 100% true, this is still a problem given Facebook's addictive nature. Practically speaking, most people don't have the impulse control to pull themselves away from mindless, addictive content. And I don't think it's a huge surprise that a lot of the people who have gone down the Facebook rabbit hole are older. Less tech savvy, and perhaps not as sharp as…

Every hobby could be seen as a mindless addiction. Heck, talking to friends in person is much the same - people fall into the same conversation patterns, have the same arguments and reminiscences over and over, miss them if they're not having them even if they don't really take pleasure in them at the time. At some point Facebook is just life.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#393

Post by tharkun__ »

lmm wrote: post #392
everdrive wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that I agree with this, but even if we assume it's 100% true, this is still a problem given Facebook's addictive nature. Practically speaking, most people don't have the impulse control to pull themselves away from mindless, addictive content. And I don't think it's a huge surprise that a lot of the people who have gone down the Facebook rabbit hole are older. Less tech savvy, and perhaps not as sharp as…

Every hobby could be seen as a mindless addiction. Heck, talking to friends in person is much the same - people fall into the same conversation patterns, have the same arguments and reminiscences over and over, miss them if they're not having them even if they don't really take pleasure in them at the time. At some point Facebook is just life.

That is so foreign. I know what you are talking about. But it's something I utterly despise. I don't get why people do it. Sure I understand people forget or mix up who they said what to from time to time. But the same thing over and over week after week just to 'talk'? Please just shut up and let me read a book or something.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#394

Post by machello13 »

random5634 wrote: post #375
appletrotter wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no for many good reasons) It's like you've never been to a Western country`

I live in the US - and drinking with staff of different levels is tricky for a number of reasons. Inappropriate behavior broadly defined is not tolerated, and drinking is already in that category in many California and east cost areas. Public transit / jitney's etc are not great so a lot of folks drive to work and back which makes drinking harder. Your right - I should have said US (and maybe just progressive areas).

Or maybe just the particular companies you work for. At many companies I've worked for, and many others I haven't, drinking with coworkers happens often enough that many they have regular official happy hours at bars.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#395

Post by CynicusRex »

lmm wrote: post #216
dhosek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

That's like telling a gambler addict to keep going to the slot machines for the social interactions. Just like slot machines, social media are designed to increase addiction; of which “user engagement” is just a euphemism. https://www.quitfacebook.org.

If facebook, twitter, crypto“currencies” were to suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth, society would be better off significantly.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#396

Post by deepstack »

nicbou wrote: post #149
deepstack wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Local social life was fantastic- I missed nothing about the internet. In general after decades of working with Internet and technology, I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet. Of course, it is nice to have Internet to have occasional communication with friends and family not in the surrounding area.

> I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet On the other hand, life becomes utterly miserable with a little internet. It's an all-or-nothing kind of deal.

Not really. It is like an addiction, however after not being on the internet for sometime one become more appreciative of things around and local stuff. High recommend tech people try it if opportunity arises.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#397

Post by syl_sau »

kjakm wrote: post #260
syl_sau wrote: post #166

While I'd love to use the internet less, it has become clear to me, over the years, that it's an essential tool in pursuing relationship with people in their twenties. For better or worse, a lot of the social experience has been outsourced to the virtual networks: from organizing parties to sharing ideas to a friend to having fun together (nowadays done with online games), we seem to be less and less able to verbally…

>> Loneliness is a real huge problem among the youth -- without the internet it'd be unbearable. How much of that loneliness problem is caused by the internet we think is helping it? Take it away and people have to start interacting again. Without the endless streams of entertainment we have to sit in rooms together chatting or we'd go mad.

Oh I agree entirely, and that was my point: it's a vicious circle. The more we use tech, the more we rely on it for social interaction, the more we disengage from the "real" space, etc.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#398

Post by dhosek »

scottious wrote: post #325
lmm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

anecdotally, I felt like my only option was to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It was too hard to avoid the outrage. Everybody has that childhood friend who won't stop posting BS conspiracy theories or that aunt who thinks the world is ending. Do I unfollow these people? if so, what's the point of it all? I only ever posted positive things like videos of me playing piano and only tried to interact with others…

Pretty much exactly this for me. I realized that there's not really any value for me to be in touch with people from grade school/high school/college that I wouldn't otherwise interact with. I'm thinking that this will make going to reunions a bit more interesting as well since now I will genuinely not know what most of these people have been up to for the last decade and we will have that as a topic of conversation before we step out of each other's lives for the next decade.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#399

Post by dhosek »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #165
gberger wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, you mention "outrage quotient" and "measurable improvement". How do you measure outrage?

I would guess, minutes of day being outraged.

Pretty much that. Can I look back over my day and see that I spent time being angry/unhappy? It's not zero. There are other human beings on the planet with or without social media. But I have much less of the provocation-outrage-anger-depression cycle without Facebook and Twitter in my life.
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