Does anyone else spend like 20 seconds 5 times a day on Facebook or are we all really only capable of none or 3 hours a day?
How 30 days without social media changed my life
41–50 of 111 posts
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#42This essay could also be called, "Life in the 80s (and early 90s) for most people." Back then, you had to be relatively informed to have access to "social media" (i.e. Usenet, gopher, BBS). It's amazing how much productivity has been disrupted by social media. There are of course huge upsides as well, but sometimes I wonder if the full downside is recognized. A lot of people I know do very little work in the workplac…
Of course, if these people really like it, there are social media evangelist jobs.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#43I'm not sure which corporate internet filter application our building uses (I think Sophos?) or if they use their own custom rules or subscribe else where but, steve corona, your entire site is blocked to me as: Access to the web page you were trying to visit has been blocked in accordance with company policy. Please contact your system administrator if you believe this is in error. URL: stevecorona.com/how-30-days-w…
Corona being a type of beer categorizes it as "adult" perhaps? Unfortunate.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#44I stopped using Facebook last November. It's been a fantastic experience. Whether you realize it or not, FB changes your emotional health. FB used to make me oddly depressed. Its like sitting in front of the TV and feasting on Sour Patch Kids for two hours. I would sit there staring at how awesome people's lives were and wonder why I wasn't doing such awesome things myself. I heard about the passing of family members…
I don't understand this at all.
FB (and social media in general) is the only thing I've found that enables me to organize going out for drinks with more than 2 people at once.
Also the only thing that lets me post "Hey, anyone wanna go out for ice cream tomorrow evening?" and actually having 5 people come. Three of which are completely new outside twitter/facebook.
It's really quite awesome.
Hell, I have very scatterbrained friends who are always busy with something. Without twitter, facebook and irc I'd never get to talk to them at all. Let alone be able to see them almost every other day like I do now.
And that's not even accounting for the fact that some of us tend to leave the country for months at a time, but still wanting to keep in touch.
Seriously though, how do you usefully and efficiently keep in touch with more than 1 person via telephone? I can't even imagine it working.
Oh and, word of advice from a "silly 24 year old". If looking at other people's lives makes you depressed, lead an awesomer life. Friends being better than you should be an encouragement to do better, not a depressor.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#45Meanwhile, in the real world, millions of people use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, share photos, and set up events, in addition to meeting in person.
Defining yourself by not using something is no better than defining yourself by using it. Just let go and accept that it's a useful tool, nothing more, nothing less.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#46I stopped using Facebook last November. It's been a fantastic experience. Whether you realize it or not, FB changes your emotional health. FB used to make me oddly depressed. Its like sitting in front of the TV and feasting on Sour Patch Kids for two hours. I would sit there staring at how awesome people's lives were and wonder why I wasn't doing such awesome things myself. I heard about the passing of family members…
> I would sit there staring at how awesome people's lives were and wonder why I wasn't doing such awesome things myself.
I felt this way with Facebook, but then worked out what was going on. It's a multiple-endpoints situation. The status updates you read aren't coming from a random distribution of your friends. They come from a self-selected population that is doing something interesting at that particular time. People (mostly) don't post status updates about an average workday or lazy weekend.
If you have 52 friends, who each go on vacation one week out of the year, then every week Facebook will be showing you somebody's awesome vacation updates. That doesn't mean that your own life is worse or less interesting for not being on vacation that particular week.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#47I agree short breaks are good ideas: they can give you time to mull over the things you've learned and seen, for ideas to finally sprout, etc. But to extend this to any broader theses like 'you should quit social media' is unwarranted; for a counter anecdote, I'm reminded of Hamming's You and Your Research http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
> Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#48Paul Miller, one of The Verge's editors, is taking one year off from the Internet. He's blogging about it (via a USB stick that someone else publishes from) https://www.theverge.com/label/offline It's very interesting, especially "Ghost Limbs" and "Ignorance".
I've been following this, there is a hacker news thread about it, and The Verge have published a P.O. box for Mr Miller. I'm hacking out a letter over the weekend (typed, on onionskin paper, on my uncle's Olivetti).
I use Miller's page with teenagers (I'm a teacher); and the article here will be added to my collection. The pitch is 'control and focus your attention'.
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#49when you will discover the warm water, write a blog post and you will win the Pulitzer prize
Re: How 30 days without social media changed my life
#50It's funny how he couldn't do any of these things before while using social media. This is BS. I knew even before clicking the link exactly what it would say. Incredibly cliche. Someone should write an article - Moderation. How does it work?