I quit FB and Instagram by making it very difficult to login by changing my password and not saving it.
However I still use Twitter with one useful trick: I make lists of Subjects I care about: COVID research, Real Estate, etc.
My life after quitting social media
121–130 of 172 posts
Re: My life after quitting social media
#122I stopped using FB and IG a long time ago. The "likes and followers" appeal didn't apply for me, as I rarely posted.
But I did feel the FOMO and when I closed the app, I would get this feeling that my life is boring, like a web page with the default Wordpress theme. Feeling as if nobody would be interested in clicking around and getting to know anything about me.
Yet, despite abandoning these apps, I am somehow still constantly on my phone (not during work), trying to find something new to distract me from the boredom I feel in the evenings after work. Reddit or Youtube are my biggest addictions.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#123Maybe I'm the outlier - but everybody I am "friends" with on social media I'm friends with IRL (save for Twitter, but that's more blogging than social media). We just post what we did this weekend and stuff like that. Post stuff that the kids are doing (and for some of my friends what the grandkids are doing). No one is trying to impress anyone else. People just staying in touch. Maybe we older folks have a better fe…
What makes the real difference is curating followers and avoiding mindless "reel type" scrolling. As always, it's being intentional rather than setting hard limits (e.g., being friends only in real life, limiting the number of follows after some weak sociological studies) that makes the difference in the quality of the experience.
I've learned a lot from Tiktok, Reddit, Twitter, certain corners of Facebook, etc., and met a lot of interesting people on dating apps. And I hope people have learned from me. Sure, I've wasted time too, and waited too long before I muted people who made me angry, and it took me some unnecessary time before I realized they weren't talking to me, but my world has gotten a lot bigger and more interesting and more adventurous than before.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#124I quit social media for a year and nothing magical happened to me. I think it's because I never really had a problem with it, since all my feeds were heavily curated and I didn't scroll through mountains of noise. The content I consume is always high quality, because I made social media work for me. I avoid Instagram since it's too visual and full of posers. Twitter is more real and authentic. Facebook is mostly for…
I quit Facebook about a year ago and don't miss it at all, but I think I'd really miss Instagram, because about 90% of my feed there is contemporary artists, galleries, curators and critics. At the moment there is (sadly) no other platform that lets you see the latest work by your preferred slice of the international art world -- ranging from the famous to the mostly unknown.
At least in this area, I've encountered very few posers. I don't know if there are other subjects where the same holds true on Instagram, but it seems like there probably would be.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#125I quit sometime last Spring. I don't know what happened but I finally was able to. I think I feel happier because I have lower expectations and my small successes feel big in my mind because I am not comparing to others. For example, a few minor home repairs over the weekend feels huge to me. I really feel great about them. One of my best friends is a carpenter and I know shouldn't compare.. but I think I do it uncon…
small victories, right?
:)
Re: My life after quitting social media
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
What generation do you fall into? I’ve noticed some groups of people are better than others. Most of my baby boomer relatives are really bad about social media, sharing tons of political things (often nasty and offputting) and seem to liken social media to spending time with people or catching up with them a bit inappropriately.
I'm a Gen Xer. The majority of my friends are Gen Xers and Millennials. I have a few friends who are Boomers, and a few who are Zoomers.
I think it’s wildly interesting how different generations appear to have totally different relationships with social media
Re: My life after quitting social media
#127I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…
One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental
map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headlines. “Aged news”
Re: My life after quitting social media
#128I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…
I ran into this out of touch out of place person at a party recently, good conversation, he asked if I had a business card (no), then he tried to be trendy and asked if I had a Facebook (don't have that either)
He didn't know how to find himself on LinkedIn
We aren't in touch
Re: My life after quitting social media
#129[deleted]
Re: My life after quitting social media
#130I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…
One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…
I've found myself browsing the current events page every morning and I think I would prefer your method much more. As emerging stories are verified and context is added, I've found I'm revisiting the same pages over and over.
I'm going to set up a calendar event right now. Thanks!