I quit social media ( Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok ) all at once. I replaced everything with reading books. I downloaded Apple Books, started reading and never looked back. Occasionally I read some news articles here and there but that's about it. Never felt better and more clear. Everything feels better and more interesting. Even the awkward moments feel nice. Previously I was just opening my phone to scroll, but now I can't an am forced to interact with people. I am more social now than all of the social medias in the world.
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Completely quitting social media gets lonely.
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People I know in IG tend to do it quite a bit. Then again, the audience is people that they know, so I'm not surprised
Welcome to the "New", Sarah.
Enjoy the silence, clouds, bird song, and getting your laundry folded
I know people who are on it but never have any activity. I also know people who have never been on social media and those that have stopped using it, and like to tell everyone they have, like they know something everybody else doesn’t or is naive to. It takes all sorts I say, and we all have a choice.
Is this the way for me to become more sociable? Possibly... I would need to try it out for awhile and see. That'd be interesting.
But again, I don't think I have an addiction. I'm not trying to defend myself in any way, I'm just stating the truth. I find plenty of other things to do that don't involve social media. I think things would be almost the same (lifestyle-wise) if I didn't have social media as if I did. That's why I think it's largely irrelevant, because I DO NOT spend hours scrolling through Instagram, or hours on Discord, or hours on MacRumors, or hours on Facebook...
Well actually, referencing the thread title, for me, I don't think completely quitting social media would get lonely. I'm not lonely right now, nor would I be without it. I don't need (or want) lots of friends.
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In my opinion no, if someone wants to become more sociable quitting social media is not enough.
The internet makes us less sociable.
Let's say someone quits social media, which is good for our overall mental health, but keeps using the internet for everything else, you still won't be sociable.
Let me explain. If someone keeps, for example, doing all their shopping on the internet, you still won't be sociable, you have to force yourself to go out and visit shops, interact with other people, maybe join clubs or groups; and let me tell you that is not easy, because if you've been using the internet for all, or most, of your needs for a long time, then you'll have to forcibly rewire your brain. Humans, when used to a certain type of behavior, tend to resist change, and changing our behaviors is not easy, it requires a great deal of effort, commitment and consistency.
I see "being sociable" as a skill that you can develop, the more you try, the more interactions you have, the better you will become at it. It's difficult to be sociable if you never interact with other humans face to face.
Of course, your location is very important, if someone lives in a rural area then it's harder than for someone who lives in a town.
Also, and please don't take this negatively, but I do worry about those people, who most of the time are older, who are so attached to Facebook that they post things literally every half hour. I think the same can be said for people of my generation with Instagram or TikTok, but we also grew up with the internet, so...
As a Facebook person who dropped it years ago as a place to talk to friends and family, I picked up Mastodon this year after all the negative X vibes (I never was on Twitter) and so far am enjoying it, not being consumed by it, and overall it, at least the corner I find myself in, leans liberal which suits me just fine.
Welcome back to some sort of social media then! Still, better than the three examples you listed in my opinion
Think back to all of those friends you had on social media. With those in mind, how many of those people would invite you into their home if you became homeless? How many of those people would help you with money to pay your bills if you lost your job? How many of those people would take time out of their day to help you mow your lawn or help you paint your house? How many of those people are willing to tolerate long periods of inconvenience to help someone else? Can we really call these people "friends"?
Social media is an illusion; it allows a person to voice their opinion in the hopes of gaining a following, while at the same time being able to block/ignore those with opposing views. Not exactly a healthy mental state. The value of a human being has nothing to do with the opinions of other human beings.
I would tolerate inconvenience for the sake of others, and I know quite a few people on social media who would, too. In fact, I've done it before, and I've seen others do it, too.
So yes, you can call those people - and ONLY those people - "friends."
Just like in real life, not everyone will go out of their way, but people who know you and support you, will.
This is true. To me though, "followers" are irrelevant. On a forum, post count is irrelevant. Reaction score is irrelevant. The number of people you add on Discord, Facebook, etc. is irrelevant. Who you are as a person is irrelevant (there's an obvious asterisk to that, but you get my point). What matters is that you are producing/posting true, thoughtful, fulfilling, and of course sensible, material.
Of course I get friend requests on Facebook from complete whackjobs (the only reason I'm even on Facebook is because I am a musician). Of course I get DMs from people who are trying to scam me. Well y'know what? You are in complete control of how you appear online, and what you choose to do online. The excuse of, "Well, someone asked me to do X, so I felt obligated" is not valid.
A valid excuse would be a real, profound, and genuine threat, or any other form of cyberbullying.
You are a rare case, and I applaud you for that. I was on social media for a couple of years, and most of what I saw was misinformation and people allowing fear to control their words.
It's likely because I'm careful with what pages I visit and who I follow. That's not to say you're not careful, because I'm sure you are, but I generally only follow people who I know in real life.
I don't see how anyone could fail to see that unbridled "Social Media" would only grow sociopathic. As with regular human society, the nutjobs, crooks, scalawags and ad agencies (NJCSAA) overpower normal decent folk (NDF). And the effect is concentrated, amplified, in social media. How is this possible when the majority of humans are NDF? Simple: The NJCSAA have the TIME, because NDF don't want them around. And the NJCSAA are angry and hurt and vengeful, which we now know is the primary motivation to join all social media.
Most students of "Social Media" as a sub-topic Sociology and the Humanities seem to consider it a new thing. Admittedly, the tech that allows social media saturation throughout so many segments of society is newish these last 20 years or so. But the trend was obvious in the proceeding 30 years, through early text bulletin board systems, Compuserve, AOL (iWorld included) and sometime later, MySpace... Perfect preview for what happened to FaceBook and Twitter now further degenerated at X. Private topical forums with steadfast moderation, such as MR, here, are the only functional bastions of social media.
I have never been active in broader "Social Media", merely dabbling in all the majors to secure my handle "ipaqrat". Growing up a ugly puny misfit techie dweeb (UPMTD) in the late 70s thru early 90s, I had the ingrained understanding that anyone who came around me, did so only to cheat or ridicule me. But I'm not a depressive personality type, so I eventually grew a spine, pushed my envelope, and mixed in best I could. Karma did throw me a curveball, putting me in the path of my lovely wife, who apparently fetishizes UPMTDs. My rescue horses like me, too. And this one deer with a gimpy leg comes around and eats cherry tomatoes out of my hand. I like my '80 mixtapes on a walkman I just repaired. I wrench on my own Porsches. I practice my archery and target shooting. I still work in cybersecurity, with a team of wildly amusing engineers. And I don't blog on about it outside of MR forums, here. You're welcome.
I don't have time for social media because I'm too busy being not lonely.
Most students of "Social Media" as a sub-topic Sociology and the Humanities seem to consider it a new thing. Admittedly, the tech that allows social media saturation throughout so many segments of society is newish these last 20 years or so. But the trend was obvious in the proceeding 30 years, through early text bulletin board systems, Compuserve, AOL (iWorld included) and sometime later, MySpace... Perfect preview for what happened to FaceBook and Twitter now further degenerated at X. Private topical forums with steadfast moderation, such as MR, here, are the only functional bastions of social media.
I have never been active in broader "Social Media", merely dabbling in all the majors to secure my handle "ipaqrat". Growing up a ugly puny misfit techie dweeb (UPMTD) in the late 70s thru early 90s, I had the ingrained understanding that anyone who came around me, did so only to cheat or ridicule me. But I'm not a depressive personality type, so I eventually grew a spine, pushed my envelope, and mixed in best I could. Karma did throw me a curveball, putting me in the path of my lovely wife, who apparently fetishizes UPMTDs. My rescue horses like me, too. And this one deer with a gimpy leg comes around and eats cherry tomatoes out of my hand. I like my '80 mixtapes on a walkman I just repaired. I wrench on my own Porsches. I practice my archery and target shooting. I still work in cybersecurity, with a team of wildly amusing engineers. And I don't blog on about it outside of MR forums, here. You're welcome.
I don't have time for social media because I'm too busy being not lonely.
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Agree, and social media became unsocial media. Why i keep seeing people list "miss amazing, on the main" in their bio. On a contrary to many false belief's, it the people that you know are more likely to cause issues and crimes. Not total stranger.
This is what turned me off on social media. Those are the people that makes social media bad not for the good. I feel bad for today's society that cannot move on.
MySpace was always been the best social media of all time. Unrestricted freedom is what made social media great at the beginning.
I'm afraid I don't really understand this post, but I've tried to respond from my interpretation of it.
- What do you mean by "people that you know are more likely to cause issues?" Can you provide an example? I've certainly never experienced this...
- "Today's society that cannot move on"—from what? What do we need to move on from?
- "Unrestricted social media." You mean 4Chan? You mean all the places where people are treated horribly? Where they are discriminated? Where you as the consumer of such media subject yourself to peer pressure and start "believing" that, and subsequently posting it?
I recommend everyone to have a look at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
There are also social networks recommended, but without surveillance capitalism
There are also social networks recommended, but without surveillance capitalism
Remind me again how your post refers to the topic other than also containing the word social network?