What is it that attracts people to social media? Ever since facebook started it seemed full of people self-promoting which made it look sleazy . Things haven't changed since , it 's just that now it has become normalized to be sleazy. What is it that attracts people to social media?
What it’s like to have a social media detox
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#22It's great to see that some people have experienced the same thing I have.
I have deleted Facebook and Instagram 4 years ago. Best decision I ever made. As @smeej said, there's benefits to it, but there's too many downsides to it so in the end, for me, it's definitely not worth it. Have also done the same thing with mainstream media, television and streaming services (Netflix & co). Instead I focus on reading books or blogs that I am really interested in, I take time to write, take notes, think, spend time with my loved ones and pursuing hobbies.
I'm sure I do not even need to elaborate on the privacy aspect of all the (mainstream) social media apps ...
Also, I will be transitioning from Whatsapp to Threema in the next few weeks. People ask themselves "how to", when you have friends, groups or whatever in Whatsapp. At one point, you need to take a decision. Your well-being and mental health and/or privacy or being "mainstream" (or whatever term fits inside the quotes). I personally do not care (as I am a privacy advocate). I will notify everybody and then I will move on. There's still other ways they can contact me if needed and they do not want to ditch whatsapp, and tbh, I am not asking anybody to do it. I somehow think that the better way is to lead by your actions. So I will try my best.
There is a way out. I'm not saying everybody should quit, but everybody should assess the impacts all of it has in their own life. I'm also thinking it might be important for us to realize this pretty quickly, because in the end, we might create a system that resembles the one they have in China, i.e. you do everything from your smartphone and you're tracked 24/7.
For e.g. a poll in Germany found that 23% of 18-30 years think that it might be good to have a social credit system [1] (this tendency is up around 30-40% in comparison to the same poll a few years back). This is scary. And imho, social media is greatly contributing to it, because the main point in social media is to hook people, i.e. providing addictive dopamine shots.
Anyone who has dropped social media and looks around notices that most of social media users are completely addicted and zoned out of (real - [whatever this is supposed to mean]) life.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/d4i6ac/20_of_germa...
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#23I got off Instagram and Facebook about 2 years ago and never got on Tik-Tok and I can safely say it was one of the best choices I ever made. I am still on Twitter which I check about once every few days for about 10 minutes. I realized how my peers (umivesity students) are affected by social media, most of them are endlessly circling instagram and tik-tok every time there is a spare second. Once I got off I discovere…
don’t forget that you typed this message on social media
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.
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
don’t forget that you typed this message on social media
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.
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.
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#25What is it that attracts people to social media? Ever since facebook started it seemed full of people self-promoting which made it look sleazy . Things haven't changed since , it 's just that now it has become normalized to be sleazy. What is it that attracts people to social media?
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Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
don’t forget that you typed this message on social media
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 an algorithm for you in order to present you with a unique view of their data. Hacker News has none of that.
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#27This post reminded me I haven't looked at Facebook for a month or so (the frequency dropped hard after I stopped doing it every day). I saw about 5 ads in 3 min, reported 2 of them for misleading content. Nice. See you in a month or so (for some updates from my brother mostly).
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Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#28Honestly, 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.
My Instagram feed is curated because it’s entirely for cat images and cat rescues, which for better or worse, there’s an over abundance of on the internet, so Instagram will never really need to start putting random depressing stuff on my feed.
Everything else I’m off of.
A necessary first step for my social media detox was deleting the apps. I started by only accessing them through the browser, so I wasn’t fully cut off, but I also didn’t have the fully curated experience that allows the social media platforms to really take over your senses.
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#29Earlier 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.
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 sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks"
Do we agree on some points or I am totally off?
Re: What it’s like to have a social media detox
#30Earlier 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.
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 first place). There is no endless scroll. Heck, even the pagination with very limited options is almost designed to ensure you don’t go beyond a couple of pages.
And it’s obviously not social media because there is no friend/follower/connection graph