Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
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Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#2There's some real things I want to appreciate & root into here, but as a geek growing up, one of my greatest & most persistence annoyances was how easy & happy it was for so many around me to pick being so ignorant, so blind, so insular.
Heck yes ignoring the world & big matters makes you happier. Heck yes keeping blinders on & seeing less is safer, more secure, simpler.
But fuck that. Fuck ignorance. Face things, see the scope of things. I hated the choice of ignorance then. Today I can at least accept that there's validity in multiple paths. But when we dock the people opting into the world for the real emption, empathy, & pain they experiemce for trying to see more? This is a modern mind-poison. There's so little to be said for being aware, for caring, by any measurable form. But we should. Boiling everything down to what is good for the individual is insufficient to maintain a society & this view will keep going on and on and on and it's so gross, so deeply deeply inadequate & shit.
Edit: there's a lot of very very sorry followups with people with really shitty social feeds & want-anxiety. Yes, that is some people's experience. But it hasnt been what I've seen. It hasnt been what people I know experince. Some of the greater hazards I've seen have been a kind of para-societal living-in-the-event that some people have, without any real stake, but I generally dont see anywhere near the level of Fear Uncertainty or Doubt the social-network-panic comments widely want to freak us out about. There is a knowing, real, & reasonable wokeness & solidarity, and so little of the negative pressures in my feeds that others tout, the people everywhere around me from so many decades & places are so much more nuanced & in tune & multifaceted in their view of the affairs & goings on than the media. This demonization of social media is a panic I simply dont see, anywhere. I think society has warped itself into an unjustified & unreasonable frenzie against something that is far less scary than we & especially the media make it out to be.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#3There's some real things I want to appreciate & root into here, but as a geek growing up, one of my greatest & most persistence annoyances was how easy & happy it was for so many around me to pick being so ignorant, so blind, so insular. Heck yes ignoring the world & big matters makes you happier. Heck yes keeping blinders on & seeing less is safer, more secure, simpler. But fuck that. Fuck ignorance. Face things, se…
I think the nuance here might be in keeping your head still in the general news of the world but avoiding the things that cause "tribal syndrome" or anything with "keeping up with the joneses".
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#4Consume media like you consume food Don't just eat whatever tastes good.
Use self-discipline to cultivate a state of mind like you would cultivate a healthy body.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#5There's some real things I want to appreciate & root into here, but as a geek growing up, one of my greatest & most persistence annoyances was how easy & happy it was for so many around me to pick being so ignorant, so blind, so insular. Heck yes ignoring the world & big matters makes you happier. Heck yes keeping blinders on & seeing less is safer, more secure, simpler. But fuck that. Fuck ignorance. Face things, se…
Social media isn't the world, or a big matter. One can still read/engage with the news without having to deal with as many dark patterns. We don't have a public digital square, but I'm not going to help Zuckerberg et al further privatize it at my own mental expense.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#6There's some real things I want to appreciate & root into here, but as a geek growing up, one of my greatest & most persistence annoyances was how easy & happy it was for so many around me to pick being so ignorant, so blind, so insular. Heck yes ignoring the world & big matters makes you happier. Heck yes keeping blinders on & seeing less is safer, more secure, simpler. But fuck that. Fuck ignorance. Face things, se…
The issue is the knowledge of bad things you cant change and wont impact your behavior at all just makes you informed and miserable.
Being informed is not a universal good, more is not always better. Should have a personal cost/benefit calculation, “is it worth it to be this informed?” Etc.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#7Taking a break from all media makes you happier and less anxious. Especially if you are overconsuming media like many people are.
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#8There's some real things I want to appreciate & root into here, but as a geek growing up, one of my greatest & most persistence annoyances was how easy & happy it was for so many around me to pick being so ignorant, so blind, so insular. Heck yes ignoring the world & big matters makes you happier. Heck yes keeping blinders on & seeing less is safer, more secure, simpler. But fuck that. Fuck ignorance. Face things, se…
Social media isn't the world, or a big matter. One can still read/engage with the news without having to deal with as many dark patterns. We don't have a public digital square, but I'm not going to help Zuckerberg et al further privatize it at my own mental expense.
idk about that, a lot of news sources feel like they're optimizing for clicks too. where is some boring neutral news? then am i to broken to even stick with something like at this point lol maybe i need the clickbait
i agree with the main point, social media isnt the world. i think people forget that
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#9Consume media like you consume food Don't just eat whatever tastes good. Use self-discipline to cultivate a state of mind like you would cultivate a healthy body.
Junk food's a great analogy. When encountering delicious junk food we're biologically compulsed to gorge. And just like we learn to moderate our junk food intake, it's easy enough to learn the warning signs of doom scrolling and put an end to it (just takes awareness and discipline).
Side note: I do the same when I (through force of habit) start a game of bullet chess, there's about 5 seconds before the game starts - just enough time to quickly cancel! (if I play 1 bullet chess game, I'll probably play 5 more right after, so quickly escaping when I shouldn't be playing is a huge benefit).
Re: Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
#10Consume media like you consume food Don't just eat whatever tastes good. Use self-discipline to cultivate a state of mind like you would cultivate a healthy body.
A different mental model I like and use is to treat your brain as a walled garden. Be selective and picky about what you sow.