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I Quit Social Media for a Year

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#181

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

knzhou wrote: post #139
agotterer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like social media and I’m capable of controlling my usage. I’ve developed some ground rules to ensure a good healthy experience. To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the…

I don't know if we're in the minority, but I'm completely with you. I use social media for about 15 minutes a day and it only improves my life. I'm happy when I see my friends being happy. I think people who blame their life problems on social media have deeper underlying issues. Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent envy in 2004.

I do sometimes get FOMO - I think it's just natural, but I try and look at it as an opportunity to improve myself and practice being mindful.

Essentially I have two options if I feel a bit envious:

1) Feel envy and get depressed because I start thinking I have a worse life.

2) Share in their joy - send a like, write a positive comment or sometimes just do nothing except focus on being excited for them . By sharing in their joy, I get to experience a bit of their happiness for myself. If I write them a comment, even if it's just 'Congrats!', then there's a chance I might even make them a little happier too - which in itself makes me happier.

This did not come naturally to me at first. I've worked on cultivating this attitude for many years. It's one of the best investments I've ever made in myself.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#183

Post by nradov »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

I see no problem with informal competition on social media. The really skilled underwater photographers get way more likes on Facebook than my lame pictures do. So from that perspective I'm losing. But I've learned and improved my technique a lot from following those experts.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#185

Post by Sevrene »

knzhou wrote: post #139
agotterer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like social media and I’m capable of controlling my usage. I’ve developed some ground rules to ensure a good healthy experience. To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the…

I don't know if we're in the minority, but I'm completely with you. I use social media for about 15 minutes a day and it only improves my life. I'm happy when I see my friends being happy. I think people who blame their life problems on social media have deeper underlying issues. Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent envy in 2004.

That's still a number of days a year dedicated entirely to social media. Sure, it could be worse, but it's still (in my opinion) a significant amount of time over a year, or over your life.

The thing is I feel like maybe you get more out of those 15 minutes than me, or others who feel like it's too much time. Those telling people not to use social media are probably the ones that don't have good experiences with social media. To each their own, I suppose. It's important to remember different people are going to have different experiences and that is going to paint your feelings about it. As much as it seems that social media does have a general negative impact on people, I'm sure there are people for who it is fine. Should we chastise everyone to stop? Probably not, just let others know it could be affecting them and how to stop, etc.

It reminds me of people who get anxious on marijuana and then always go anti-drug on other people because they think "this stuff is terrible, no one should do this" yet for a lot of other people they had great experiences, and so the reverse is true "this stuff is great, everyone should try this". They're sort of both wrong there.

Either way personally, I don't get much out of social media and so I don't use it. If you feel like you're getting something out of it worth those few days a year spent on it, go for it, although just be mindful that it's something that feels good, but might not actually be good itself.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#186

Post by blahedo »

Good read, but this part seemed interestingly backward from my own experience: "You know what else is exhausting? Pretending to care about people you don’t give a shit about."

I've definitely been in situations where I had to pretend to care about people I don't give a shit about. They have been 100% in my face-to-face real life. On FB I'm perfectly allowed to care only minimally about the people I want to care minimally about, and unfriend or hide or block the people I actually don't give a shit about, and pay attention to the people I want to keep up with. At a party or an art opening or standing in line or whatever? It's harder to escape other people.

(Which is fine, of course, and good for us to sometimes engage in that way; it's just diametrically opposite from the author's pithy claim.)

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#187

Post by oceliker »

lsh wrote: post #135
oceliker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind me asking, is there a reason why it's 7 minutes and not, say, 5 or 10?

why 5 or 10 rather than 7, hm?

Fair point. I think humans having (usually) 5 fingers on each hand makes it familiar to us.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#188

Post by nradov »

T-hawk wrote: post #91
tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

The way to compensate for this is to realize the perception bias you're applying to yourself. If you have 52 friends on Facebook, and each of them takes a vacation for one week out of the year, then every week you see someone broadcasting how they're having a more awesome time than you. That doesn't mean they're doing any better than you. You just don't see the 52 reactions for the one week that you've got the vacati…

I feel happy for my friends when they take a nice vacation. But the vast majority of them are mediocre photographers at best. No matter how awesome the location is, it's hard to feel jealous when the pictures are all blurry and backlit.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#189

Post by agotterer »

oceliker wrote: post #133
agotterer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like social media and I’m capable of controlling my usage. I’ve developed some ground rules to ensure a good healthy experience. To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the…

If you don't mind me asking, is there a reason why it's 7 minutes and not, say, 5 or 10?

I actually tried both. 10 felt too long and approaching the territory of wasting more time than I wanted. 5 felt like it wasn’t long enough. I guess 7 was just right for me.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#190

Post by godelski »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #25
godelski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing magical happening is what's supposed to happen. I've seen lower stress levels simply because I'm not as connected to the news and political cycle. But that's also because I only check once a week. It's the new normal, which isn't magical, because it was also the old normal.

> I've seen lower stress levels simply because I'm not as connected to the news and political cycle. Wouldn't that qualify as something magical happening?

I'd more define it as a return to normality. It sure doesn't feel magical. There's still stress in my life, just not dumb stuff like having to listen to my cousin go on anti vax rants.
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