Ask HN: 90s kids happily less connected?

I notice similar in my case and case of my friends (born between 1985-1990).

I've seen fair share of new services and social networks being branded as "Facebook killer" in last 10 years but for me group texting was the thing that replaced the main use case of Facebook and Instagram - sharing important/funny/interesting moments and stuff with friends and family.

Back in the day I could use IRC or some messengers for this, but Facebook was the first to enable this at scale. Afterwards messaging apps (Viber in case of my country but I guess Telegram/WhatsApp for the rest of the world) made this more convenient but also more intimate/rewarding.

We don't have mutes or bans in our group texts. Discussions, even political ones, don't blow up like on Twitter. There's less incentive for things to go crazy when you're exchaning intersting/important stuff with people you know and care about.

Also, before Facebook I created and administreted phpBB forum for the same group of friends. We were in late teens, early 20s at that point so the main topics were "What are you listening too?", "What are you drinking tonight?", "How was Saturday night for you" (but also topics around literature, comic books, movies, video games). I get similar vibes from our group texts that I had on that forum more than 15 years ago.

I personally think everyone including 90s kids are just burnt out by social media. It’s too much. The only ones that seem to still engage are teenagers because they are evergreen. That’s probably why Facebook tries to target teenagers.

- 10 years on LinkedIn, benefit: none

- 15 years on Reddit, there are some obscure reddits that are quite informative, but the last 5 years I saw a huge deterioration of the content, benefit: some

- 2 years on TeamBlind, good to know that layoffs are comming, otherwise no benefit

- 4chan, /diy/ made me laugh a few times, overall just waste of time

- FaceBook, never really got it, benefit: negative (annoying emails)

- HN: I would like to write something else, but the sad true is I don't see any benefit from lurking on HN for 10 years.

On the other hand time invested in reading books paid out:

- Reading investing books gave me a better financial security

- Improving my software skills by reading books about architecture etc. resulted in handsome salary increases

- Reading fitness (calisthenics) books - now I can do 10 pushups, when I started I cannot do even a single one.

- Reading in English, now my English skills are enough to get a better paying, english-only job.

Of course I also read a ton of books for pure enjoyment, that did not result in any objective gain. Of course I could watch YT to get into fitness movement, but overall there are too many distractions on YT, that make it hard to dedicate 1h of time to a single subject.

Recently I prefer to join closed, curated and non-googlable communities e.g. a slack channel/FB group for people from the same university/school or a group for people interested in investing (paid) or a club of people interested in retro computing. After seeing toxic/trolling/or just _notice me at any cost_ behaviours I no longer believe in total anonymity. Now I prefer to interact with people that I at least recognize e.g. there is a meetup and associated discord group, you can get invite only by showing up in the meeting.

I was born in the mid-70's, and my social media is fairly limited. I don't appreciate "short form" things, so Twitter and TikTok are more annoyances that I ignore. Facebook is for mostly passive consumption of my real life friends' lives, though my ability to do that depends on whether Facebook decides to go in to "suggestion mode" and fill my feed with 75% suggested content vs. things I follow. Messaging apps are where I'm active with friends and HN and Reddit are where I'm most active with strangers. Beyond that, I really don't see the need.

Any advice for finding quality Discord servers (things like ideal member count / “red flags” etc)? I feel like I have a lot of trouble finding servers that strike a good balance of being active but not impenetrable.