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What it’s like to have a social media detox

theguardian.com

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Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#31

Post by JustHiThere »

Freak_NL wrote: post #26
JustHiThere wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate ? This has imho nothing to do with social media. I check hackernews daily, I pick articles (or discover new tools ...) that spark my curiosity and I read them, period. Sometimes I engage and exchange with other people, leave my opinion etc ... This is nothing close to what Facebook, Instagram and co are up to ... Please explain.

Indeed. Most of the time I don't even bother to read the usernames of people I'm interacting with — or just glance at them briefly to separate the voices in any given thread. The comments here, for me, are about their content and their place within the context of the article linked and the following discussion, not who wrote them. Social media is all about following people or interests and having the platform tailor…

I agree with what you just said. One cannot compare HN with Facebook for instance. Even though I understand what others are saying. We need a better definition for "social media" I guess. Or we might need a new definition to target specifically those you mentioned.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#32

Post by paulcole »

JustHiThere wrote: post #29
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that complicated. If you like it (HN for example), then it’s not social media. I mean just look at what you just typed. You talk about a site you check daily for new content and interact with other people on. That’s social media — which in this case you just happen to like.

You're correct in some sense. But the kind of "social media" we're actually talking about is the one that tries to hook you up and manipulate you. I mean, this is what I am talking about here. In that sense, everything is social media. A blog post is social media, because the strict definition of social media is something like that : "Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sh…

> Do we agree on some points or I am totally off?

Yes.

> In that sense, everything is social media

Correct.

> But the kind of "social media" we're actually talking about

There are social media that you think are good and social media that you think are bad. Both both are still social media.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#33

Post by paulcole »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #30
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that complicated. If you like it (HN for example), then it’s not social media. I mean just look at what you just typed. You talk about a site you check daily for new content and interact with other people on. That’s social media — which in this case you just happen to like.

Social media’s addictive nature is driven by a personalized feed using every trick in the book to maximize the time you spend there. Nothing about HN falls into that category. The UI is as unaddictive as it can get. The feed is not personalized. There are restrictions on how much you can post. You cannot follow anything. You cannot express interests (beyond the broad interest you’ve expressed by visiting HN in the fi…

You’ve just made up your own definition of ‘social media’ that conveniently excludes HN — much as I made up my own definition that includes HN.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#34

Post by rhaway84773 »

olivermarks wrote: post #3

It's a good idea to give up the Grauniad too for better health https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

It’s interesting that most of the issues described there are specific to the online version of news. Breaking news updates, hyperlinks, etc.

I’ve been seriously considering going back to what my dad used to do and I did when I was young, and having a physical newspaper delivered to read for 15-30 mins in the morning, and then cutting off all online news.

This article (although unfortunately it’s largely unsupported by evidence, but I have indeed been feeling some of these effects personally) is a pointer in that direction.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#35

Post by rhaway84773 »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #30
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that complicated. If you like it (HN for example), then it’s not social media. I mean just look at what you just typed. You talk about a site you check daily for new content and interact with other people on. That’s social media — which in this case you just happen to like.

Social media’s addictive nature is driven by a personalized feed using every trick in the book to maximize the time you spend there. Nothing about HN falls into that category. The UI is as unaddictive as it can get. The feed is not personalized. There are restrictions on how much you can post. You cannot follow anything. You cannot express interests (beyond the broad interest you’ve expressed by visiting HN in the fi…

No. I’ve done 2 things.

1. I’ve described the factors that make social media especially addictive.

2. I’ve defined social media.

So your criticism, however accurate, applies only to the single sentence at the end of my comment.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#36

Post by contravariant »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #15
dijit wrote: post #4

Honestly, it's very difficult to cut social media. We like to tell ourselves that those who managed to quit (and are informing us of how bad it is) are being snobs or acting superior: but the truth is unfortunately that we are just feeling defensive of our inability cut the habit. I managed to get off of facebook and my mental health improved greatly, enough that I actually notice it. However, that was insanely hard…

As a sibling said, I'm not sure WhatsApp is "social media". To me (a very occasional user), it's just a messenger (which may come with strings attached since it belongs to facebook, but still). Am I missing something? Other than that, on what do you think you'll miss out, especially since whatever you're looking at leaves you angry? As someone who never really got hooked into facebook nor twitter [0], I don't get the…

There's probably some linguistic confusion surrounding the word 'media'.

WhatsApp is without a doubt a medium for social activity, in the same way that telephone lines and the postal service are.

However 'media' has kind of stopped being the plural for 'medium' and is now a term on its own. This means you can interpret also social media to mean the social exchange of information media, though perhaps it is more accurate to consider them an extension of the other broadcast media as social media seem to be increasingly in the grips of media magnates who fill it with advertising.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#37

Post by ryanjshaw »

KyeRussell wrote: post #19
dijit wrote: post #4

Honestly, it's very difficult to cut social media. We like to tell ourselves that those who managed to quit (and are informing us of how bad it is) are being snobs or acting superior: but the truth is unfortunately that we are just feeling defensive of our inability cut the habit. I managed to get off of facebook and my mental health improved greatly, enough that I actually notice it. However, that was insanely hard…

Yep. “You’re not curating your feed” is nonsense in 2022, and it has been for years. The only platform I’ve gotten close to this on is Instagram. Facebook and Twitter both exhibit the literally cancerous property of showing you what your contacts are engaging with. Once a social network does that, it’s basically game over unless you only connect with people who are similarly disciplined, which is just…untenable.

I don't follow this argument. If you are following people whose engagements are triggering for you, surely that is on you? I follow ~300 people on Twitter and I only see content from them, or things they like.

I have no issues unfollowing overly political/negative/complaining people on Twitter (including what they 'like'), and my Twitter feed is full of people doing interesting things in the fields I'm interested in. Yes, sometimes this means you will need to stop following otherwise interesting people if they are net negative -- but I already do that IRL, so I don't see the issue.

I don't have any other social media, so I don't know how their algorithms fare, but Twitter can definitely be curated with little to no effort.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#38

Post by twblalock »

Some people have real problems, like PTSD from wars where real people really die.

Anyone who equates social media to that is being either weak, or unserious, or simply incapable of dealing with life. People need to get a grip.

Remember that anything you feel from a social media interaction is self-inflicted -- it is your own reaction to what you saw.

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#39

Post by JustHiThere »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #30
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that complicated. If you like it (HN for example), then it’s not social media. I mean just look at what you just typed. You talk about a site you check daily for new content and interact with other people on. That’s social media — which in this case you just happen to like.

Social media’s addictive nature is driven by a personalized feed using every trick in the book to maximize the time you spend there. Nothing about HN falls into that category. The UI is as unaddictive as it can get. The feed is not personalized. There are restrictions on how much you can post. You cannot follow anything. You cannot express interests (beyond the broad interest you’ve expressed by visiting HN in the fi…

I think we're all correct in some sense. The thing is @paulcole is taking "social media" in the strict definition of the term, when most of the people here are talking specifically about a bunch of social media.

Which makes sense to me. Because ask someone on the street to provide the names of 3 social media platforms, they'll in 99% of the cases mention Facebook, Instagram etc ... And none of them knows that a blog post is social media ...

Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox

#40

Post by mudrockbestgirl »

dijit wrote: post #4

Honestly, it's very difficult to cut social media. We like to tell ourselves that those who managed to quit (and are informing us of how bad it is) are being snobs or acting superior: but the truth is unfortunately that we are just feeling defensive of our inability cut the habit. I managed to get off of facebook and my mental health improved greatly, enough that I actually notice it. However, that was insanely hard…

I successfully quit Twitter. I used to be on it ~2 hours a day, now I haven't opened in for almost a year. Unfortunately that habit has been replaced by others and I still have FOMO from not being on Twitter when I see colleagues sharing Twitter links.

It's incredibly hard. The only thing that seems to work for me is to create a system to convince myself that I'm not missing out. For example, set aside a fixed 30 minutes a day, or 2 hours on a weekend, to go through the top links of your favorite social media state to satisfy the craving (I use RSS for that). That way at you can at least stop wasting time becoming distracted at random times during the day. Treat it like a cheat meal.

Another thing that has helped me cut some habits are reviews. After you spend a fixed hour on Twitter, ask yourself: What did I get out of this? Was it worth it? How did I feel before and after? Write it down in your journal. If you read your old entries week after week and they're all saying "I spent an hour on Twitter but I didn't feel like I got anything out of it" it makes it easier to quit.

Still, I can't help but feel that optimized social media feeds are the worst thing that has happened to our society in the last 10 years. Our brains haven't evolved to deal with this. And I don't think people have realized just how bad it is. Sure, we see news that social media is bad every day, but I don't think we as a society have truly understood the full implications. I think it's much worse than most think it is.

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