Community Discussions
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Anyone Else Over Social Media?
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Once I got in my 30s, I stopped posting things on my Facebook or Instagram.
I wasn't purposely setting out to do so. I just found it to be boring and repetitive.
Like it's nice to see what people are up to. At the same time, I maybe have 10 people who I consider close friends.
It feels weird exposing my life to people I haven't seen in 10 plus years.
It's also weird that if you don't post on Instagram constantly, people think you're either dead or have no life.
As I got older, I just see it for what it is. An ego booster.
I'd rather just be in the moment without having to validate everything I do.
After A while, I noticed being off it actually improved my relationships with people.
I was actually paying more attention to the ones I see everyday, instead of people I knew 5 years ago.
Anyone else have a similar experience?
Top Comment: This is the first step of enlightenment and I think everyone needs to do this in life. I deleted insta, ticktok and Snapchat and I don’t have this pressure to show people I’m alive and living and happy. Also ticktok is the worst with doom scrolling, you get invested and thrown into peoples lives who you’ve never met and you compare snd analyse and it’s so negative. But once you get rid of it all you start to live for yourself and no one else. One minute your a player watching peoples lives go up and down and the next you detach yourself from that reality and realise how precious your life is, what you need to work on. What you want to gain in life. It’s honestly the best feeling in the world. I encourage everyone to do this around me!!
Social media is coming to an end
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Social apps changed from their essence and many of them are becoming advertising apps filled with influencers drama or repeating the same polarizing discussions instead of actually socializing and they are not as entertaining as they used to be. Many people are using them out of habit/addiction or because there is nothing better to do. Besides tt and yt since these two have a variety of uses i don’t think social media in (the sense we know right now) will survive for a long time once something new comes in everyone will shift into it.
Top Comment: I deleted both my Facebook and Instagram last year and have no intentions of returning. I have replaced the screen time with meaningful pursuits both of my passions and creating actual community.
What even is the point of social media?
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Three months ago, I decided to deactivate every single one of my social media accounts.
Instagram. Snapchat. Facebook. Discord. Even Reddit. Literally everything.
I got rid of everything after pondering the decision for a long while. Only keeping messaging apps that I needed to communicate with my family.
As for my friends? I made sure to get their phone numbers before I went ahead and deleted everything.
When I was still using social media, I had what could only be called an addiction. And an extremely exhausting one at that.
First thing I did in the morning after waking up? Check social media.
The one thing I'd do with every single second of free time I had after studying? Check social media.
Last thing I did before calling it a day and sleeping? Check social media.
In the beginning it was half an hour a day at worst. That half an hour turned into an hour, and that hour into two hours, and these two hours soon turned into several hours. Sometimes in the weekend, when I would have absoloutely nothing on my schedule, I'd find myself on social media for seven hours.
Seven. Hours. Of my day. Spent scrolling. Can you imagine?
I spent all of that time scrolling, hopping from one app to the other, looking at what?
People making fools of themselves just to get others to laugh, pulling pranks, cutting people's headphones just to give them new expensive ones. Yeah, imagine if those cheap ass headphones were a gift from a close friend? Or a loved one that passed out recently?
People pretending to be kind to homeless people, paying for strangers' groceries and ending it all with the happy tears and sweet warm hug. And throughout all of it, not a single soul catches sight of the camera RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES! Yeah, who are you fooling?
Political GET OWNED videos that make you mad about problems you never cared about, red-pill shit from self-help gurus that just want us to pay for their LIFE-SAVING programs that we know won't teach us anything we don't already know.
And you know what's funny?
Five minutes later I wouldn't remember a single thing of the shit I spent half of my day watching.
And let's not talk about the tens of people whom I had no connection with whatsoever, aside from sending memes and reels back and forth to each other. Many of them I haven't had a real conversation with in months, many others I wasn't even a friend with anymore. They were just numbers on my followers' list. I was a number on their following list.
And that's supposed to be social media?
Looking back at it all, I just can't help but ask myself.
What was the point of it all?
Why did I even feel the need to check my phone every five minutes and use apps that gave me so little value? Heck on most days, I would be feeling bored and shitty so I would use social media, and end up feeling EVEN MORE bored and shitty!
I know many of you people reading this have the same problem. I know many of you are struggling with social media addiction. I was there, I felt that.
And I want to tell you today that it is possible to quit. If not quit completely, then at least be in control of your social media use instead of your social media use controlling you.
Your mental health gets better, your physical health gets better. You will feel an inner peace that you have never felt anything like before.
All the constant DMs, notifications and new posts you had to catch up with? All of that stress and anxiety will become a thing of the past within a week or two :)
We only get 24 hours in one day. Every second, every minute, and every hour that we waste vanishes and never comes back. It's about time we stop wasting time.
Top Comment: The point is to make you miserable, but my humble opinion is that people use it to run away from their problems. It's like a maladaptive daydreaming, only with aimless scrolling. And it's very addictive because it's comfortable. Why would you have to change something about your life if you can be just miserable?
Thoughts on social media?
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I feel like ever since the widespread of the influx of social media, I have progressively regressed cognitively in some ways. Social media is a wonderful platform to promote and share content but at the same time, it can cause lack of a better term cause “brain rot”.
I want to reduce my social media usage and some ways I have but also part of my job revolves around it and I feel like I can at times get stuck. I want to completely go off the social media grid one day. Thoughts on it?
Top Comment: I feel like early on, social media was a lot more fun. Around 2014-2016 things went downhill with monetization, ads, influencer culture. Despite this, I mainly use social media to learn and educate myself, and for funny stuff as well.
Is Reddit considered social media?
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What about Pinterest? And YouTube? Who defines what social media is and entails? We get into muddy waters when trying to classify things by saying “if you can comment and reply then it’s social media because what you’re doing is a social activity requiring two or more people.”
But then does that make iMessage social media? Or blog posts and articles where people can leave a comment below? Or emails?
My people, how do we make sense of this and settle it once for all?
Top Comment: Depends on how technical you want to be. I would say it's an anonymous comment/message board. You really don't add in personal details, life stories, or accrue and message followers in the same way as Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. I mean, some Redditors do, but I think they're more the exception than the rule
Does anyone think reddit is better than other social media?
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I have been using Instagram for scrolling reels and YouTube for shorts I use what's app too frequently but reddit is the only platform I find most interesting does anyone else feel that way?
Top Comment: Very small, niche/hobby subreddits that feel like 2012 reddit or 2000’s era message boards (and where bots and astroturfers really have no incentive to go) are still the best form of social media. The larger subreddits or anything that can even remotely be looked at politically are as toxic as any social media that exists.
Is Reddit your only social media like app you use or do you use the others as well and why?
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Since the beginning of the year I decided to have only Reddit. Decided to get rid of Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram etc. was wondering if there is anybody else like me as well?. My reason is all the others feel so ad pushy and toxic. Reddit for sure had it moments but makes me feel much better not using all those others.
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3 years without social media - my experience
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Some of you may remember me posting here after 6 months, 1 year and 2 years... Well, guess what, it’s been another year!
I’ve tried to take on comments from the previous years and format it a bit friendlier (I’ll even include a TLDR for you lazy lazy boys)
From a high level, here’s what’s changed in the 3 years since deleting:
- I found a quiet ability to simply do the work.
- I can commit to long term goals and not get swept up in trends or new ideas.
- My ability to connect with people and foster relationships is the best it’s ever been.
- My attention span (both long-term and short-term) has improved 10 fold.
- I’m more confident in myself and less needing of validation
These positive changes has lead to these tangible results:
- I retrained from a youth worker to a marketer and have now became a marketing manager (more than doubling my yearly salary and found career satisfaction)
- I ran a marathon!
- I started a youtube channel and got monetised.
- I’m about to start a business and launch a product - a guided social media detox journal.
- I’ve read countless books (ok maybe I could count if I really wanted to).
- I spent 6 months travelling the world with my girlfriend.
Why did you delete social media?
Short story: I was completely addicted and not where I wanted to be in life.
Long story: I grew up a quiet kid and then at the age of around 13 became popular. This shift meant I was never quite comfortable with the people I was hanging around with on a day to day basis. Social media became a way for me to be outgoing and confident with a layer of protection. It also allowed me to get instant feedback and validation and for someone who never quite felt like he fit in, this was like a drug to me.
Overtime, my addiction to social media grew and grew and before long I was wasting hours and hours everyday just scrolling.
I think it’s perfectly ok to have vices; small things that make day to day life more bearable. But I wasn’t achieving even the bare minimum of what I wanted to. I couldn’t allow myself to keep using such an addictive vice when my life was staying still.
So, 3 years ago on my birthday, I deleted my social media.
What’s been the biggest changes?
Definitely my focus. I was always that person that’d have a new hobby every couple of months along with a new life ambition twice a year. I thought this could be ADHD (and heck it still might be), but ultimately what I’ve found is that by reducing my social media content, I’m better able to sit and focus and I get less swept up in latest trends and new passions. This has allowed me to pick goals and accomplish them, rather than pick goals, lose interest and pick new goals.
But you’re on Reddit and Youtube, aren’t they social media?
When I first got rid of social media, I deleted everything including reddit and youtube. I made the choice to come back to youtube pretty quickly after the first 30 days or so as it’s never felt quite right categorising that as social media. To me, it’s just like netflix or TV, it’s media. That being said, I have an addictive personality so I have to be damn careful. I set daily time limits (25 mins) on my phone for youtube. I allow myself longer if it’s on the Playstation because like I said, i see very little difference between that and tv.
I originally allowed myself back on Reddit to share a youtube video I made (and then later these posts), and never felt like my usage got out of hand enough to merit deleting again. Again, I’m very strict on how i use it; I do not have reddit on my phone, and luckily I’ve never been too drawn to the web version. But reddit has some decent uses for finding genuinely good advice (and a ton of horrendous advice), so it’s a handy resource to have (or check for football transfer news...COYS).
What about your relationships? Did you fall off the face of the earth?
The hard truth of this is that I have lost contact with quite a few people. It’s hard to know how much of that is a consequence of simply growing over 3 years and how much is due to social media. There are some people that I used to be quite close to that I genuinely don’t know what they’re doing now which if I still had instagram I’d be able to be updated with and show support etc. Although this seems kinda sad, clearly neither me or them are bothered enough to message each other so it’s probably a blessing and frees up energy for those I am in contact with. And who knows, maybe
For everyone else my relationships have improved. I’m better able to give more attention to people and the fact that I’m not constantly seeing their life unfold through timeline means we always have interesting things to catchup on.
As for meeting new people, that can be a struggle. The first 6 months or so I found myself genuinely craving social interaction and I actually felt quite lonely.
Overtime though I’ve become much more social and better at meeting people and forming relationships. I think I used to satisfy this craving for social interaction with online likes. Now I need to find that in the real world and it’s made me a more approachable, less awkward person because of it.
Advice to others?
Over 3 years, my life has been transformed. I always think, why didn’t I delete sooner? Imagine how much further along in my journey I could be if I deleted earlier. That’s just something I have to live with. But if you’re reading this, wondering if you should delete or not, take this as your sign to delete your social media. Don’t be here next year wondering how much progress you could have made if you started now, just start now.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
TLDR: Social media did a great job of distracting me from the real problems in my life. By deleting it I was able to tackle these problems, find focus and carve out a life path for myself that I love. Great decision, 10/10 would recommend.
Top Comment: This was very insightful. I’ve been off socials for around a year and I am struggling with feeling lonelier than before. My irl relationships are better than ever though. After reading this, I think I can keep going.