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 certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
It creates a lot of anxiety that stems from a feeling like you're constantly on the verge of falling behind others.
Plenty of scholars/thinkers/philosophers have said something to the effect of focusing on just being a better version of you. Social media enables the exact opposite i.e. forcing you to constantly evaluate how you compare to others.
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 fun things they are doing. I don’t have FOMO and I’m not depressed seeing people doing something more fun than I am in that exact moment. In some cases I’m inspired to go somewhere or do something because I know my family or I would enjoy it. I rarely post myself, even if I’m doing something FOMO worthy (okay, maybe sometimes). I’ll share some photos from big occasions like birthdays or weddings since I think other people may want to see them, especially if they are in the photos.
I generally use social media when I’m waiting for a train, sitting in a doctors office, or going to the bathroom. I never itch for it during the day and rarely find myself reaching for the app robotically. One thing that’s definitely help to curb constant dopamine hits and addiction is disabling all social media notifications. I’m never pushed content, I only pull it. Actually, I’ve disabled almost every single notification on my phone with the exception of imessage, slack, citizen, and photos. My phone never buzzes from email, social media, or anything else that I find distracting.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do but never do is clean up my Facebook friend list so it’s only the people I care about. For what it’s worth Facebook seems to do a decent job of filtering it. But one day I’ll do it right.
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 vacation 'advantage' over them. You only notice the comparison when you're on the worse side of it.
I think the extreme opposite equally applies on social media, people who would moderate themselves in real life seem to let it all out on social media. So instead of pretending to be something they are not, they reveal their truest opinions and thoughts.
For example extreme political and religious opinions. I've seen long term real life friendships broken because someone said something extreme about Brexit on facebook. I have a very religious friend who berates me constantly on facebook for being an ex-Catholic, she tells me I need to save myself etc - but she would never say that to me in real life.
Social media is so good at making people say stupid things.
Curiously I don't feel that way. There's very little competition involved in the way I use social media.
On Instagram, I rarely if ever look at other people's stories or posts other than a few close friends whose happiness can make me feel happy. But I do post my own and receive psychological validation when other people react positively to them.
LinkedIn isn't even a social media for me. It's a place to dump facts about my career. I don't read the feed.
My Facebook feed is just various memes trying to be funny. I look at them and laugh occasionally.
There's just no competition aspect for me on social media.
I disagree, but that's just me and my opinion.
It probably comes down to personality type.
For me Facebook/Instagram is simply a form of communication, where am just seeing pictures of family and friends.
Again am ruthless about pruning my contacts ( will hide all the narcissistic ones).
LinkedIn - only active when am looking for a job, I'll post from time to time.
Blind is one of the worst. Useful for information, but super toxic for comparison. The problem with social media is not that it's 100% useless, it's that it's hard to walk the line. In the example of Blind, it is good to be informed, but it's bad to compare.
> Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
Interestingly, as someone who uses Twitter for a purely anonymous psychological outlet, I do not feel this at all. Instead, I find it a place of earnest concern and solidarity—when not plagued by trolls.
> On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life.
I think we can all agree, that happy people of Instagram are very very sad. Else they will be busy being happy not hunting likes.
>Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
Unless its some useful info like a new research paper or some official announcement, I would reject everything on Twitter as some ill-thought opinion.
> It creates a lot of anxiety that stems from a feeling like you're constantly on the verge of falling behind others.
Try teamblind. Worst of the worst. On a serious note, a bit of competition is not really a bad thing. So you can simply choose how anxious to feel about it.
I am sure this is true for some, but certainly not all. In a way, I am quite anxious about what I share because it’s all so... permanent... and personal. I miss a more anonymous web where impermanence _felt_ real, even if it wasn’t.
On the other hand, I do see people who are otherwise very closed using it to express themselves and grow. It’s easy to say “yes, but at what cost? That’s not ‘growth’ to me” but who am I to judge?
Some people smoke or drink to deal with their anxiety. Some people binge TV shows to avoid their problems and worries. There’s a lot of poison to be had in our world. There’s a lot of holier-than-thou attitudes about what vices are “ok”. It’s a lot of shallow moralizing in the end, IMO.
I think there is an opportunity for a new perspective here...a positive one. Once you realize that all you're seeing is a highlight real on these social platforms and move past that I think there is a great opportunity to be a good friend, family, community member. Let others you follow know you are happy for them and the things they felt were important enough to capture and share with you and their audience via their profiles/accounts. Click like and leave supportive comments and turn social media into a positive! I have found the more I celebrate with others and interact in positive ways that it is reciprocated and strengths relationships.
Yes and even if you might have made the mental leap to overcome the need to compete, you might still have some sense of desire you need to have this and that as well. Like a benchmark metric.
I've quit Facebook and I can only confirm: nothing magical happens. At least I feel a bit better and feel less social pressure to accord to certain standards/do certain things.
For a long time I thought LinkedIn is super essential and it would be complete non-sense to quit it. But I'm barely in contact with people I connected with there. Especially I rarely connect with recruiters because this would just be too much noise - of course I write them though. But now I start wondering, there are dedicated career websites and it's anyhow much better to apply for jobs one actually likes - instead of just saying yes or no to what recruiters think is the best idea.
Upvote mad on this. This is exactly what I have been saying to all of my friends who quitted social media. One of aspects was also the narrow view social media creates for bipolarizing spectrum of one's opinions using extremistic news and probably fakes news.
To be fair, I think you can get the “competition” phenomenon anywhere. I always read people’s blogs about programming and internships and feel like no matter how much I do, I’ll always be behind. So it’s possible that it’s not a social media-only thing.
Something's wrong with this era. Super subtly wrong.
Has it been the case that so many ~innovations things become quickly a problem, that you need another thing to use it safely, and when you happen to stop well, you don't miss it.
I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy.
I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me.
Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't come to a satisfactory conclusion. By being uninformed I'm somewhat unable to fight against the "wrong" opinions, but maybe if I was informed my opinions wouldn't change a thing anyway.
My mental health is better off just accepting any idiotic laws my country passes instead of trying to "protest" (in the most useless sense of the word: tweeting about it) against them, for the most part.
When I quit I ended up reading books and watching TV for entertainment. I literally read over a million words of fiction (Worm) in one month with the spare time.
It was a lot more fulfilling, and I'll remember that time. While in contrast there are few social media moments I'll miss.
I had to actually force myself to get back into social media. I'm not sure what the author here means by withdrawal; there was maybe a period of 1 week trying to get back in, but it was over quickly.
One big thing that happened was the number of consulting contracts went down significantly and never recovered. I'm quite Facebook active and used to get two interview offers a month. In fact last month I got a huge opportunity that I would have gladly accepted if I wasn't committed to anything else.
I'd be happy if social media was just wiped out and we went back to socializing on forums and IRC.
The web serial Worm is amazing. The sequel, Ward, is really far along now and is even better IMO. You can catch up on https://www.parahumans.net/
The HN crowd would probably really like Worm in general. Basically a sci-fi superhero story with realistic uses of powers and complex characters. The protagonist has the powers of insect control and scalable multitasking.
"I'm not sure what the author here means by withdrawal"
An attention-getting pull quote, I guess. I found the physical symptoms claim hilarious. "non [sic] unlike those seen in individuals quitting opiods"? Ha!
And that is the big danger: That there might be too many people not understanding what is going on and rely exclusively on (a)social media and that this destroys opportunity for the people who do not submit to FB's outrageous ways of handling personal data. Alone that people think, that anyone who is not on (a)social media, must be a recluse/oldschool/backwards and probably has some problem and is not worth talking to causes so much damage already.
This write-up really ends up understating the benefits and "magical" things that actually did happen, but I fully approve of the understated approach. Hyping everything up is part of the problem. If something is beneficial, I shouldn't need to sell you on it; I can just tell you about it, and you can decide. (In fact it's almost an intrusion into your free will when I start persuading you, and it betrays some vested interest on my part.) That's why you don't brag about quitting social media. And why you quit social media in the first place is a related example of the same thing: If I'm a worthwhile and valid human being, I shouldn't need to sell you on me, and maintain this continual online sales platform for the "me" product. You can discover it on your own and maybe reach the conclusion that I'm awesome, or maybe not, but either way it's fine. Zen, baby. (I think the meditation helped more than he realizes LOL)
Frankly I'm a little bored at these "quit social media" articles. They look sort of all the same to me. Quitting altogether is simple, because there's only one way to do it; quitting altogether. Moderation, on the other hand, is more interesting because there are a number of ways to moderate its use; not just limiting time but also limiting use cases. I'd like to know more about the latter.
I just use one platform (one where you are allowed to use a pseudonym), so that way I'm never sucked in too much, but I have some way to keep up with/contact people, so it's not annoying.
Social media is about getting attention via free, easy to use, and highly distributed platforms. It has _very little_ to do with being social or staying in touch with friends and _everything_ with being a mini media business with the goal of growing your following and influence enough to make money (somehow). Social media is simply a free performance.
Unless you're building a personal brand or selling something the work required to achieve growth it doesn't make sense for most people.
You're better off making group chats and using private iCloud Photos albums to be _social_ than posting on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
I'm using social media to build a personal brand and raise my professional profile. None of my personal life makes it into any of the channels I publish to.
I've been off Facebook for about a year now as well... Lets see the effects have been, a lot less options for dating, lost communication with a ton of various car parts companies and tuners (I was into a lot of car hobbies for a while), and overall I feel more alone then I did when I was on Facebook.
But this is an honest way to live, I used to just sit there and scroll through other peoples lives peering through them as if I was somehow a part of whatever they were doing. It was a fake reality.
As a side note, a hobby/hack I've found recently has really helped me decrease screen time.
I need to work a lot due to job circumstances, so I thought I could not afford screen off time.
But one thing I picked up is writing in a notebook. I realized that a lot of work, regardless of where you are on the totem, is planning ahead. Writing in a notebook for both work and personal introspection is very therapeutic and really helps me to focus and crystalize my thoughts. I've also bundled this with my work out sessions to pre-plan what I want to pontificate about. The general process has both helped decrease my screen time, increase my work productivity, and help me sleep better because I know that my frayed thoughts are on paper.
I think this posts discussion of “why do we take photos” is really great and deserves more consideration. I’ve not had any form of social media account for over 8 years and something I notice is that I just take waaay fewer photos than everyone else I know. A few on vacation or when I see something stupid I can turn into a pun or a joke. Seriously maybe 3-5 photos per month.
I love living this way and consider it healthy and normal for a wide variety of people in most modern life circumstances. I think the need to take dozens of photos of vacation/meal/baby/lifestyle is seriously a universally bad mental state for humans, and one that people will stubbornly try in vain to argue is somehow acceptable or ok.
If sitting is the new smoking, then social media photo sharing is the new vaping.
I did it for a year too!
deleted fb/insta/twitter accounts for a year.
a lot of good things happened.
1. Never bothered about taking photos for everyshit I did.
2. A lot of white space and time I got, to be empty. Not sure if I used them enough. But white space yes! 100%
3. I never grazed useless info off the feed.
in the middle of the year, i tried an experiment. created a twitter/fb accounts and followed some of the useful accounts. browsed for 1 hour. and then closed twitter/fb and tried to recollect all the info I gathered in this 1 hour. And trustme, it was huge. really huge.
X got married. Y had a job change. Z disappointment about something. A's vacation. B's witty remark on C.
then i immedietly deleted my account, coz none of these were useful for me. I was never interested in what other poeple's life about.
Another 6 months passed.
I realized only thing I missed was the option for events, and groups where u can post.
coz i play fifa on xbox one. to find teammates.. ofcourse the best place is on fb. To sell something. Even to reach out to somebody for help at sometime, fb is the best.
so finally after 1 year, I created twitter/fb accounts.
and I never posted any photos or my personal stuff.
Just add 30 friends in fb. the most important ones. u know.. and no more. but i can unfollow some of them. ANd posted all info in groups, and got teammates right away for Fifa.
and also, if I want to reach out someone, its just one step away.
Twitter, follow all useful ppl mostly tech/football/humor
and now i dont feel overwhelmed at all.
Everytime i open fb, i ll not get enough updates.
The key idea, how to be in it and not get overwhelmed. How to be in it an use it the way u want it.
P.S Insta -> never felt like going back. absolutely boring and useless for me personally.
I have a question for you.
When you recreated the account on facebook, did you got your old timeline back?
And if so, did they try to fill the missing year with photos you were in that were uploaded to their servers or some other information they picked on you while you were gone?
(I closed my account 7 years ago and I'm curious to know what happens)
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.)
"You know what else is exhausting? Pretending to care about people you don’t give a shit about. Maybe you’re just a better person than I am and you genuinely and deeply care about everyone you are ‘friends’ with on Facebook. I didn’t. "
I might quit soon too. To be honest - seeing my peers buying homes (with, of course, no discussion about how they made it happen), getting married, traveling a lot, enjoying nice things, and having kids is kinda putting a sour taste in my mouth. It's a very biased feed. It's basically an endless feed of the highest points of everyone in your entire social circle. I do some of it but I tend to balance it out with, "I don't think I'm ever gonna fucking make it in this area."
Social media is a bit like the news but on the opposite side of the spectrum. "Yes, yes, I get it. The world is ending." I care but I don't care to where I need to have it shoved in my face where I'm going to do things to make the world even worse. (What good is a world that survives if it is full of anxiety?)
I'm not reading the general news generally anymore when I can and maybe I'll transfer that to social media soon. (Today was a bad day - a peer of mine who is younger than me just bought a place in SF; I'm struggling to make it in a 400sqft in-law unit) I notice I feel better and it's not like anything I missed is of real substantial importance to my daily life. It's just filler. I know my core political philosophy - so it's not like it'll affect my voting decision much. Reminds me of the article someone posted in response to the 8 year old dying. Something about ignoring the bullshit in life because you don't have time for it. You don't have time for bullshit and most of social media and the news is full of bullshit. I think it could be really great but most of the time... it's just bullshit. Here it is - life is short: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
The thing I have found to be extremely helpful is to very carefully curate who who I follow - in particular I don't friend/follow anyone I have any sort of regular f2f interactions with - family, coworkers, neighbors. I use it exclusively to keep up with out-of-state friends, others involved with the same sort of niche hobbies, that sort of thing. Avoids sooo much drama.
Neat, I quit Facebook over 5 years ago and never looked back.
JOMO saved my mental health when I realized I'd never be invited to every get-together. You learn who really cares about your once you dip out of the world's easiest connectivity network... when people actually have to put in just a bit more effort to get a hold of you.
Group SMS never gets old and I don't feel like big-brother is always watching, when in reality, they very well could be but it feels far less invasive.
If this persons definition of social media is only Facebook and Instagram then I removed social media for the last 3 or more years.
Removing these (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) were nothing and easy for me. I just logged out and never bothered to log in. I haven't bothered with these in years.
Now, not visiting places like Reddit, maybe Hacker News, and consider removing other similar like internet communities for a year as well was a lot harder and still is at times. So, I have delegated to limit myself for now and not make an account. At least I try.
I found myself having trouble of finding something to read while I eat dinner every night, so I try to only limit myself to reading and browsing Reddit while I eat dinner each night for example.
Isn’t hacker news social media? Karma points are no different from retweets or likes surely? And then isn’t reading nyt’s comment section social “media” too? At what point is engaging with media that has some collaboration from peers different from the big three social sites? Should there be a case made for quitting these too?
None of the top comments respond to or discuss the actual content in the post (e.g. "my ..."), and instead focus on their own anecdotal experiences, based on the headline or social media in general.
this also is mirrors the lack of discussion and engagement often associated with social media.
[+] [-] tempsy|6 years ago|reply
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 certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
It creates a lot of anxiety that stems from a feeling like you're constantly on the verge of falling behind others.
Plenty of scholars/thinkers/philosophers have said something to the effect of focusing on just being a better version of you. Social media enables the exact opposite i.e. forcing you to constantly evaluate how you compare to others.
[+] [-] agotterer|6 years ago|reply
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 fun things they are doing. I don’t have FOMO and I’m not depressed seeing people doing something more fun than I am in that exact moment. In some cases I’m inspired to go somewhere or do something because I know my family or I would enjoy it. I rarely post myself, even if I’m doing something FOMO worthy (okay, maybe sometimes). I’ll share some photos from big occasions like birthdays or weddings since I think other people may want to see them, especially if they are in the photos.
I generally use social media when I’m waiting for a train, sitting in a doctors office, or going to the bathroom. I never itch for it during the day and rarely find myself reaching for the app robotically. One thing that’s definitely help to curb constant dopamine hits and addiction is disabling all social media notifications. I’m never pushed content, I only pull it. Actually, I’ve disabled almost every single notification on my phone with the exception of imessage, slack, citizen, and photos. My phone never buzzes from email, social media, or anything else that I find distracting.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do but never do is clean up my Facebook friend list so it’s only the people I care about. For what it’s worth Facebook seems to do a decent job of filtering it. But one day I’ll do it right.
[+] [-] scanny|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 01100011|6 years ago|reply
No, I'm laughing at memes and seeing pictures of friends that I can't be with.
> On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory.
No, I'm keeping in touch with colleagues and advertising my skills.
If you're using those services as you describe, you should stop now.
[+] [-] T-hawk|6 years ago|reply
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 vacation 'advantage' over them. You only notice the comparison when you're on the worse side of it.
[+] [-] DoubleGlazing|6 years ago|reply
For example extreme political and religious opinions. I've seen long term real life friendships broken because someone said something extreme about Brexit on facebook. I have a very religious friend who berates me constantly on facebook for being an ex-Catholic, she tells me I need to save myself etc - but she would never say that to me in real life.
Social media is so good at making people say stupid things.
[+] [-] kccqzy|6 years ago|reply
On Instagram, I rarely if ever look at other people's stories or posts other than a few close friends whose happiness can make me feel happy. But I do post my own and receive psychological validation when other people react positively to them.
LinkedIn isn't even a social media for me. It's a place to dump facts about my career. I don't read the feed.
My Facebook feed is just various memes trying to be funny. I look at them and laugh occasionally.
There's just no competition aspect for me on social media.
[+] [-] sharadov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5q9d|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pesmhey|6 years ago|reply
It seems like it’s more that social media has made the playing field 10^9 instead of 10^3.
[+] [-] sys_64738|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rexpop|6 years ago|reply
Interestingly, as someone who uses Twitter for a purely anonymous psychological outlet, I do not feel this at all. Instead, I find it a place of earnest concern and solidarity—when not plagued by trolls.
[+] [-] thecleaner|6 years ago|reply
I think we can all agree, that happy people of Instagram are very very sad. Else they will be busy being happy not hunting likes.
>Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
Unless its some useful info like a new research paper or some official announcement, I would reject everything on Twitter as some ill-thought opinion.
> It creates a lot of anxiety that stems from a feeling like you're constantly on the verge of falling behind others.
Try teamblind. Worst of the worst. On a serious note, a bit of competition is not really a bad thing. So you can simply choose how anxious to feel about it.
[+] [-] devin|6 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I do see people who are otherwise very closed using it to express themselves and grow. It’s easy to say “yes, but at what cost? That’s not ‘growth’ to me” but who am I to judge?
Some people smoke or drink to deal with their anxiety. Some people binge TV shows to avoid their problems and worries. There’s a lot of poison to be had in our world. There’s a lot of holier-than-thou attitudes about what vices are “ok”. It’s a lot of shallow moralizing in the end, IMO.
[+] [-] jamesbooth|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blablabla123|6 years ago|reply
I've quit Facebook and I can only confirm: nothing magical happens. At least I feel a bit better and feel less social pressure to accord to certain standards/do certain things.
For a long time I thought LinkedIn is super essential and it would be complete non-sense to quit it. But I'm barely in contact with people I connected with there. Especially I rarely connect with recruiters because this would just be too much noise - of course I write them though. But now I start wondering, there are dedicated career websites and it's anyhow much better to apply for jobs one actually likes - instead of just saying yes or no to what recruiters think is the best idea.
[+] [-] xbeta|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thosakwe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|6 years ago|reply
Has it been the case that so many ~innovations things become quickly a problem, that you need another thing to use it safely, and when you happen to stop well, you don't miss it.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] young_unixer|6 years ago|reply
I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me.
Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't come to a satisfactory conclusion. By being uninformed I'm somewhat unable to fight against the "wrong" opinions, but maybe if I was informed my opinions wouldn't change a thing anyway.
My mental health is better off just accepting any idiotic laws my country passes instead of trying to "protest" (in the most useless sense of the word: tweeting about it) against them, for the most part.
[+] [-] muzani|6 years ago|reply
It was a lot more fulfilling, and I'll remember that time. While in contrast there are few social media moments I'll miss.
I had to actually force myself to get back into social media. I'm not sure what the author here means by withdrawal; there was maybe a period of 1 week trying to get back in, but it was over quickly.
One big thing that happened was the number of consulting contracts went down significantly and never recovered. I'm quite Facebook active and used to get two interview offers a month. In fact last month I got a huge opportunity that I would have gladly accepted if I wasn't committed to anything else.
I'd be happy if social media was just wiped out and we went back to socializing on forums and IRC.
[+] [-] cm2012|6 years ago|reply
The HN crowd would probably really like Worm in general. Basically a sci-fi superhero story with realistic uses of powers and complex characters. The protagonist has the powers of insect control and scalable multitasking.
[+] [-] Semiapies|6 years ago|reply
An attention-getting pull quote, I guess. I found the physical symptoms claim hilarious. "non [sic] unlike those seen in individuals quitting opiods"? Ha!
[+] [-] zelphirkalt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdiddly|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] euske|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toasterlovin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eastof|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcpsimmons|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krumpet|6 years ago|reply
I would consider this magical.
[+] [-] 0xCMP|6 years ago|reply
Unless you're building a personal brand or selling something the work required to achieve growth it doesn't make sense for most people.
You're better off making group chats and using private iCloud Photos albums to be _social_ than posting on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
[+] [-] simplecto|6 years ago|reply
I'm using social media to build a personal brand and raise my professional profile. None of my personal life makes it into any of the channels I publish to.
[+] [-] Kiro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psyclobe|6 years ago|reply
But this is an honest way to live, I used to just sit there and scroll through other peoples lives peering through them as if I was somehow a part of whatever they were doing. It was a fake reality.
[+] [-] charlesju|6 years ago|reply
I need to work a lot due to job circumstances, so I thought I could not afford screen off time.
But one thing I picked up is writing in a notebook. I realized that a lot of work, regardless of where you are on the totem, is planning ahead. Writing in a notebook for both work and personal introspection is very therapeutic and really helps me to focus and crystalize my thoughts. I've also bundled this with my work out sessions to pre-plan what I want to pontificate about. The general process has both helped decrease my screen time, increase my work productivity, and help me sleep better because I know that my frayed thoughts are on paper.
[+] [-] mlthoughts2018|6 years ago|reply
I love living this way and consider it healthy and normal for a wide variety of people in most modern life circumstances. I think the need to take dozens of photos of vacation/meal/baby/lifestyle is seriously a universally bad mental state for humans, and one that people will stubbornly try in vain to argue is somehow acceptable or ok.
If sitting is the new smoking, then social media photo sharing is the new vaping.
[+] [-] vickypathi|6 years ago|reply
a lot of good things happened. 1. Never bothered about taking photos for everyshit I did. 2. A lot of white space and time I got, to be empty. Not sure if I used them enough. But white space yes! 100% 3. I never grazed useless info off the feed.
in the middle of the year, i tried an experiment. created a twitter/fb accounts and followed some of the useful accounts. browsed for 1 hour. and then closed twitter/fb and tried to recollect all the info I gathered in this 1 hour. And trustme, it was huge. really huge.
X got married. Y had a job change. Z disappointment about something. A's vacation. B's witty remark on C.
then i immedietly deleted my account, coz none of these were useful for me. I was never interested in what other poeple's life about.
Another 6 months passed. I realized only thing I missed was the option for events, and groups where u can post.
coz i play fifa on xbox one. to find teammates.. ofcourse the best place is on fb. To sell something. Even to reach out to somebody for help at sometime, fb is the best.
so finally after 1 year, I created twitter/fb accounts. and I never posted any photos or my personal stuff.
Just add 30 friends in fb. the most important ones. u know.. and no more. but i can unfollow some of them. ANd posted all info in groups, and got teammates right away for Fifa.
and also, if I want to reach out someone, its just one step away.
Twitter, follow all useful ppl mostly tech/football/humor
and now i dont feel overwhelmed at all.
Everytime i open fb, i ll not get enough updates.
The key idea, how to be in it and not get overwhelmed. How to be in it an use it the way u want it.
P.S Insta -> never felt like going back. absolutely boring and useless for me personally.
[+] [-] doubleorseven|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcpsimmons|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blahedo|6 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] bigiain|6 years ago|reply
"You know what else is exhausting? Pretending to care about people you don’t give a shit about. Maybe you’re just a better person than I am and you genuinely and deeply care about everyone you are ‘friends’ with on Facebook. I didn’t. "
[+] [-] bradlys|6 years ago|reply
Social media is a bit like the news but on the opposite side of the spectrum. "Yes, yes, I get it. The world is ending." I care but I don't care to where I need to have it shoved in my face where I'm going to do things to make the world even worse. (What good is a world that survives if it is full of anxiety?)
I'm not reading the general news generally anymore when I can and maybe I'll transfer that to social media soon. (Today was a bad day - a peer of mine who is younger than me just bought a place in SF; I'm struggling to make it in a 400sqft in-law unit) I notice I feel better and it's not like anything I missed is of real substantial importance to my daily life. It's just filler. I know my core political philosophy - so it's not like it'll affect my voting decision much. Reminds me of the article someone posted in response to the 8 year old dying. Something about ignoring the bullshit in life because you don't have time for it. You don't have time for bullshit and most of social media and the news is full of bullshit. I think it could be really great but most of the time... it's just bullshit. Here it is - life is short: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
[+] [-] TylerE|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birdfeeder210|6 years ago|reply
JOMO saved my mental health when I realized I'd never be invited to every get-together. You learn who really cares about your once you dip out of the world's easiest connectivity network... when people actually have to put in just a bit more effort to get a hold of you.
Group SMS never gets old and I don't feel like big-brother is always watching, when in reality, they very well could be but it feels far less invasive.
[+] [-] b3b0p|6 years ago|reply
Removing these (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) were nothing and easy for me. I just logged out and never bothered to log in. I haven't bothered with these in years.
Now, not visiting places like Reddit, maybe Hacker News, and consider removing other similar like internet communities for a year as well was a lot harder and still is at times. So, I have delegated to limit myself for now and not make an account. At least I try.
I found myself having trouble of finding something to read while I eat dinner every night, so I try to only limit myself to reading and browsing Reddit while I eat dinner each night for example.
However, my Hacker News addiction continues.
[+] [-] tylerl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viksit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] platz|6 years ago|reply
this also is mirrors the lack of discussion and engagement often associated with social media.
[+] [-] toasterlovin|6 years ago|reply