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Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

• andrewclunn 10y ago
  Already quit Facebook, but this article just convinced me to quit LinkedIn too.
  • cpplinuxdude 10y ago
    I just got the best gig of my life through LinkedIn. But I was abroad so not really able to physically network as such.
  • Jaruzel 10y ago
    LinkedIn works if you just treat it like an online CV; Keep your details and work history up to date, and ignore all the other social crap. My last two positions came from recruiters finding me via LinkedIn, so for some disciplines it still has merit.
  • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    I don't use it because I'm coming to the end of my working life, I don't expect to interview again. However if I was earlier on in my career I would be managing my Linkedin profile quite carefully.
  • mxschumacher 10y ago
    using the kill newsfeed extension for Linkedin makes the app bearable for me.
• deathhand 10y ago
  Extremes should always be evaluated carefully. Social media's place in the CS field has two main reasons for me. 1) To show how the mind works and to showcase it on a CV. 2) To be available to this thing called the 'internet' which is basically a giant global party where the only information that we can find out about one and another is either through what others say about us or what we say about ourselves. If I purpose a crazy solution to a problem you will most likely want to verify who I am to see if my idea has any credence. The article is right that it is a distraction but for CS minds to come together and share ideas it is almost a necessity to help drive innovation.
• thro32 10y ago
  There is also another aspect. In theory your personal life and work are separated. Your religion or political opinions should not matter at work. But many people (sadly even on HN) think it is ok to fire people, based on their opinions.
  • jamroom 10y ago
    I'm going to guess that a lot of HN does NOT think it is OK to fire people for their opinions - however if your core beliefs are out of line with a companies beliefs then it just might make you a bad FIT for the company. Not about your opinion, but about you fit with a group of people who's opinion and beliefs are opposite.
    • tdkl 10y ago
      I bet most of the people aren't completely in line of "companies beliefs", the only difference is finding this out and broadcasting publicly with modern social media and its witch hunt influence.
      • ethbro 10y ago
        I had a girlfriend at one point who used her mandatory volunteer time at her Christian company to make calls for Planned Parenthood. So proud she stuck to her beliefs despite pressure to do otherwise.
        • humanrebar 10y ago
          > mandatory volunteer time Why work at a Christian company if you find their beliefs oppressive? I say this as someone who thinks there is a thin line (a birth canal) between infanticide and a legal abortion. And there's always the option of working at common ground. Instead of picking a point of contention, serve at a food bank. Nobody objects to those.
          • maxerickson 10y ago
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• berntb 10y ago
  I get dependent already on computer games (not a bad thing for Nethack and the Dark Souls series of course). It might be easy for me to get dependent, so I avoid drugs and other dependency causing things religiously -- like social networks. But I am now a heavy FB user despite that, as an expatriate it helps a lot with keeping the fluency of my native tongue. The ease with keeping in contact is also really good for me, quite a bit away. I just wish there were fewer cat pictures. The relevance for work and career is zero, of course. But the personal value is high.
• kristianc 10y ago
  This reads more like adjusting how you use social media than quitting it altogether. The overly sensationalist headline probably obscures what the actual point of the article is. If you're trying to turn social media into your career - say, being a journalist but only tweeting about things - then, no, that's probably not going to work. This seems to be what the article is railing against. If however, you're using social media to help your work elsewhere find a wider audience, and then providing added nuggets of value on social media, then that's valuable. The era of someone producing one piece of work that defines them for the rest of their career is now probably over. Theres an expectation now that you're continually engaged.
  • carlob 10y ago
    Yeah I think the author would agree with you that moderate use of HN is probably fine, but FB, Twitter and Linkedin are probably useless and altogether harmful.
• SFJulie 10y ago
  Only in * (fear of Godwin point reference) society do you fear to have opinions.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Quit the NY Times. Your election may depend on it.
  • anondon 10y ago
    Consider reading the HN guidelines, unless you are actively trying to get hell banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • untilHellbanned 10y ago
      Please explain what guideline this comment violates. I was serious. Quitting the NY Times is the only way they will realize that they made some huge mistakes in the elections coverage. NY Times was made to look like a fool by this election. Their arrogance will be their downfall. And keep in mind I'm a hardcore liberal, and always valued sources like NY Times. Now I think they are a joke with how they didn't take Trump seriously.
      • anondon 10y ago
        >> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. >> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
        • untilHellbanned 10y ago
          It's totally on topic. The media is telling us to quit social media. Whereas I'm saying we should quit the media. It is also most definitely something new as most people aren't pointing the finger at the New York Times. Both these points should be quite obvious but they weren't as I suspected which is ironic because it led to canned, low value rebuttals.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
• xiphias 10y ago
  Social media was supposed to be about your social life and not about your career. And of course social life doesn't help in career (less time for working/studying). How a post changes someones social life (positive/negative) is a question, but I think must 16 year old teens are much better at it than the author.
• DrNuke 10y ago
  The underlying issue is that we are going to see if the coming nationalist / populist policies will break down mundialism and its pretence for the educated white-collars to live in one single, global, always connected community.
• zigzigzag 10y ago
  Good, tightly written article. I think there's another reason I was expecting to see but didn't - when people say "social media" they usually mean Twitter, and Twitter seems to be optimised for creating huge dramas and flamewars. I think it must be the character limit. You can't say anything really interesting in 140 characters, so much of what's said ends up being so compressed all nuance and explanation is lost. Also the site encourages you to just blurt out whatevers on your mind without thinking about it. It's no surprise that Donald Trump had his Twitter access taken away from him towards the end of his campaign.
  • humanrebar 10y ago
    > I think it must be the character limit. I think it's how easy it is to get the last word in and check out of the conversation without any real consequences or feedback. Everyone gets their smug win in, even the lurkers. No real understanding is promoted. The character limit is a problem, but that has simple workarounds (blogging, tweet storms, text images) if that was a real issue.
• mihau 10y ago
  Great article :). Cal Newport has some reaaaallly important ideas. I encourage you to read his book Deep Work in which he explains how to create deep, complex stuff.
  • johnorourke 10y ago
    I can't believe there are only 3 Cal Newport mentions in the comments so far!
  • swah 10y ago
    Great book - but instead of applying the ideas I'm surfing reddit, facebook and twitter even more :( Maybe I should re-read books more, and at some point the content ends up being used.
• santiagobasulto 10y ago
  I found this hard truth by myself. I noticed how my attention spans were decreasing. I've always been a really distracted person, but social media made it worst. I ended up adding Facebook, Twitter,9gag, Reddit and other sites to my /etc/hosts (0.0.0.0). Was the only way to fix it. While I work I leave my phone at a distant table, with notifications turned down. The only thing that I get are phone calls. I remember Simon Sinek saying something like: "if there's a person that the first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is drinking a glass of whiskey, you'd say he's an alcoholic". What does that make you if the first thing you do when you wake up is checking Facebook?
  • thenomad 10y ago
    I'm not a big fan of social media, but the argument here seems specious. Here's another way to put it - "If the first thing a person does when they get up is eat, you'd say they're a glutton". True? (Or indeed "if the first thing a person does when they get up is go to the toilet, you'd say they're incontinent.")
    • sixstringtheory 10y ago
      The "first thing in the morning" idea is pulled from the CAGE assessment for addiction, as the "E" which stands for "eye-opener", the others being "cut down", "annoyance" and "guilt" https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/johns_hopkins_healthcare/downloads/cage%20substance%20screening%20tool.pdf https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/johns_hopkins_healthcare/dow... You're right that this one thing alone doesn't spell addiction, but if someone talked about how they should use the bathroom less, felt bad about how many times a day they went, and annoyed everyone by the bathroom constantly being occupied and the person being absent/late due to their use, in addition to using it first thing in the morning, then... maybe they're addicted to social media and using the bathroom as a way to get their fix ;)
      • thenomad 10y ago
        Heh, well put!
      • 10y ago
• heisenbit 10y ago
  The closest comparable to journalists running their blog is hackers to run their github portfolio. There seems pressure to run one almost professionally and on the other hand there are others in the industry that are doing well without one. I like his scarcity argument there is something to it. I'm less convinced of his argument that he and Steve Martin don't need it. Yeah right - but they already got visibility. Arguing against marketing from the top of the hill may get you print in the NYT but it still feels false. There may be generational aspects to this story too.
• donatj 10y ago
  I disagree that you should quit everything entirely. You can be an occasional Facebook user. I check it a few times a week to see what friends up to and it's not a major distraction to my life. It's become a social hub, a way to organize events that not having one makes you "that guy", a pain to invite to parties, a pain to get a hold of. You can have a Facebook and use it as a tool rather than an addiction. Everything in moderation.
  • stinos 10y ago
    This. For a lot of people FB etc are treated as 'all or nothing' but it doesn't have to be like that. Just like alcohol or whatever drug you prefer doesn't have to mean getting wasted every single day. Couple of times a year is fun as well, if not more fun. Whatever the author claims about social media ('corrosion of civic life and cultural shallowness', for one) to me sounds like thinking too much like any other standard social media target but with some clicking around and reflection you can change it to work pretty well for you (at least on FB). Sure I do get some crap but most has been filtered out after a while and it now works extremely well for me: mainly for events/band info (most forums I used to frequent for e.g. the goa/squat scene only have a fraction of all parties these days but most is on FB now), news for some particular stuff I care about, group chat for setting up meetings etc. Used this way it also doesn't hurt my carreer any more than anything else on the internet: before FB I spent time frequenting many different forums and news sites and chatting on IRC during work hours. Part of that just got swapped for something else.
  • tvanantwerp 10y ago
    I keep my Facebook open for the events and messaging, but use the Newsfeed Eradicator extension to remove even the temptation to scroll endlessly. I live/work around DC, and 50% or more posts I see are political in nature. I'd lose my mind if I spent even a few minutes going through that.
    • Veen 10y ago
      I agree. You have to separate out the Newsfeed from Facebook's other features. Its messaging app is pretty good. The "networking" features that let you stay in touch with people is great. But the Newsfeed, with its constant dribble of garbage and the constant temptation to contribute, is the problem.
• guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Who the F do you think you are to order me around? That's my immediate reaction to the title. As it happens, deciding for myself is more important to me than my career assessment by other people.
• hashtagMERKY 10y ago
  This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom. I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from the real world. I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation), but rather to change the way I use them. Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them. As for Facebook, I deleted that a few months ago and my quality of life instantly increased.
  • Veen 10y ago
    > I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.
    • ythn 10y ago
      I've rationalized somehow that HN is okay because the content is relevant, insightful, etc.
    • sotojuan 10y ago
      It's not impossible. I went from a hourly checker to only checking it twice a week. You just need to practice self control and realize most tech news aren't interesting or useful to know.
      • AstroJetson 10y ago
• CydeWeys 10y ago
  I sort of agree, but at the same time, I don't use social media to advance my career. I use it to keep in touch with friends, which is important because I moved away from most of them two years ago.
  • dorfsmay 10y ago
    I agree with you but find it hard to use social media for that, because people mix personal news with politics, religion, jokes etc... The worse being twitter, a lot of people retweet so much junk. The best being reddit, because by picking subreddits you can read about specific topics with a very low noise ratio. What we need is a social media that is only about personal news.
• throwaway-hn123 10y ago
  So if your co-worker believes that, for example, black people and gays are subhuman and expresses that view you think that's ok and we should all just put up with it?
  • thro32 10y ago
    Yes, it is free country. Big part of HN believe that black people, gays and even women are "subhuman" who need special help and special protection.
    • ethanbond 10y ago
      Eh no. They think there's a long, well documented history of abuses against those people and acknowledge that those abuses didn't just fade away — stopping them has taken and will continue to take conscious directed effort against perpetrators of abuse. The crux of the problem is what it takes to become a "perpetrator of abuse," and we must all be cautious of expanding that group too aggressively.
    • selectodude 10y ago
      It's a free country insofar as the government will not put him in jail or otherwise silence him for having those views. I don't need to put up with those views. He has freedom of speech, but he does not have freedom of venue.
    • throwaway-hn123 10y ago
      Great, and as it's a free country, it's then perfectly ok to try to get this person fired for those views, right? Or is the freedom limited?
      • thro32 10y ago
        Do whatever you want, but that does not make you a "good guy", just a vindictive weasel.
  • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
• cocochanel 10y ago
  I quit Facebook for 6 months and I felt that a big burden was dropped off my shoulders. I found myself reading more books and frequenting a lot of interesting blogs and discussions. I also focused on personal projects without the need of social validation. Then I reactivated it for a week to give sign of life to my "friends", but felt a pressure to be active, to post and respond to messages. I had gone back to checking my Facebook as my first tab and felt suffocated by the need to always "keep up." I finally decided to deactivate it once for all and never looked back. I personally think that instant messaging is the sweet spot, allowing me to communicate with friends I actually care about, without the need to rack up likes and keep up with the joneses.
  • manmal 10y ago
    What about Twitter?
    • supernovae 10y ago
      I find twitter to be worse than facebook.. in facebook its more like i'm spying on my friends and they're letting me but on twitter it feels like you have to prove a point over and over and be something so people will follow you. Being a voyeur is easy, having to be a "socialite" on twitter is draining.. The people I follow that are popular are always posting.. 24x7.. its a wonder they get any work done.. but they're also people that appear to love talking on the phone and chit chatting about everything.. so if you're a socialite it may work better for you... I find both draining, but twitter more so and i'm currently takinga hiatus from FB mostly over fake news, but considering a hiatus from twitter as well.. unfortunately though twitter is the way people in my industry communicate and get news.. (devops / distributed computing)
      • kyleashipley 10y ago
        Maybe you're just using the wrong heuristic for Twitter? I never follow more than 100 people and periodically cull my list down to that if I go over. My goal is primarily to follow interesting people, especially other local programmers, people who are working on cool research topics I would otherwise miss, and friends who make me laugh. I remove anyone who is too noisy for too long, even if they are interesting. Twitter is by far my favorite social network and is generally high-signal for me. Popularity seems like an anti-goal unless you're selling something.
• oliv__ 10y ago
  God the nytimes had become so click-baity, it's sad to see this happening.
  • untilHellbanned 10y ago
    Nytimes has jumped the shark. I'm dead serious in saying its days are numbered.
• bbarn 10y ago
  I've been telling everyone I care about to follow my lead and leave facebook, twitter behind. Like the author, people seem surprised that someone in my field is against it so much, and once I explain why, they seem to understand but not want to process that understanding (like explaining to a smoker that tobacco kills).
• hmmhn 10y ago
  I have found it weird that despite the commentators here being the loudest proponent of privacy, you cannot actually delete a Hacker News account and all comments with it.
  • forgetsusername 10y ago
    This is a great point. Why not?
    • Noseshine 10y ago
      Because a comment made on a public worldwide-readable forum is not private, and you know that before you sign up with an account, so it's not like you accidentally made a public comment that was meant to be private. Protecting private communication is about just that - stuff that actually is private (to begin with). Public opinion and the law may of course change, the issue that something uttered in public, be it by voice or in writing, can be retroactively taken back and declared as "private" has only been an issue with the advent of public electronic forums. I don't think you will find a lot of people who think enabling people to change their mind after they made a public statement is a high priority, especially since it has a negative impact on everybody else: How does a forum look like when key posts are suddenly missing? And I say "key post" because if it didn't get a lot of attention to begin with it's unlikely that the poster will regret having posted it.
      • Retra 10y ago
        While I agree with your assessment, It is worth remembering that before the advent of the internet, even when speaking in public was not as widely public as it can be today.
      • forgetsusername 10y ago
        >Because a comment made on a public worldwide-readable forum is not private, and you know that before you sign up with an account, so it's not like you accidentally made a public comment that was meant to be private. Protecting private communication is about just that - stuff that actually is private (to begin with). That's an incredible strawman. Nothing you argue is a reason why we can't delete posts with our accounts. >How does a forum look like when key posts are suddenly missing? I guess that depends where your values are: privacy or making sure a forum "looks good".
• naiyt 10y ago
  Have there been any studies done that link social media and a decreased attention span?
  • tcrews 10y ago
    If MS' ad division is admitting this publicly and saying advertisers should prepare for it [0], you can be sure it's something. 0 - https://advertising.microsoft.com/en/WWDocs/User/display/cl/researchreport/31966/en/microsoft-attention-spans-research-report.pdf https://advertising.microsoft.com/en/WWDocs/User/display/cl/...
• LurkerAbove 10y ago
  I've recently started reading the dead tree version of the newspaper and I've noticed that only do I seem to retain more of what I've read vs. reading the electronic version, for me it's something along the lines of a focus exercise. It really feels like it's clearing out the cobwebs.
• pjc50 10y ago
  Rather like alcohol. Universal social lubricant. Popular even in places where it is banned. People complain about it being used noisily in public by young people, especially women, but it may be the lonely older people at home whose use is more problematic. Causes problems for people who don't indulge and feel left out. Associated with long-term health risks including suicidal ideation. You probably shouldn't indulge at work, but in some careers it may effectively be required. Most people learn moderation, but some may have to cut themselves off.
• maxt 10y ago
  This article assumes we are at the whim of social when infact many people have tamed social and, for lack of better phrasing, made social their bitch. Read The Distraction Addiction: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16131064-the-distraction-addiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16131064-the-distraction...
  • ethanbond 10y ago
    That seems like an incredibly overconfident attitude. I actually can't name a single person who uses social media in a highly productive way. Like what is even considered productive on social media? I don't mean just workplace productivity, but even conducive to personal growth or producing more empathy or more understanding of the world or deeper friendships etc. That shit doesn't happen in Facebook.
    • maxt 10y ago
      > I actually can't name a single person who uses social media in a highly productive way. I'm talking about mining, say, Twitter's firehose for nuggets of gold using, let's say, R[1] or finding other clever ways to separate the signal from the noise. It's well known that Twitter and even Facebook's firehose are a cluttered, un-curated mess which are crying out to be analyzed with things like R[1], if you are so inclined, or finding other ways to do signal analysis on other social networks like Facebook. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language)
• bhartzer 10y ago
  So does this also apply to quitting H/N ?
• cuantos 10y ago
  More importantly social media is bad for your mental health. It hits the brain in many of the same ways as the 'news' and those intentionally boring phone games. It causes dopamine dysregulation which leads to a dependency. Consider the anxiety you feel if you need to go to the bathroom and cannot find your phone. This dopamine dysregulation destroys your mood and motivation. Being social is a good thing. However companies have figured out they need addictive properties in order to be successful. I previously worked on optimizing companies for user engagement and the addictive properties naturally fall out of the process. If social media satiates your desires you will actually use them less. Think about it; why are your keys always in the last place you look? Because once you find them you stop looking. If you want to keep people on your site you hide their keys. People love a challenge and will be even happier when they find them. It's particularly bad with modern (low information) news media. I'm a compulsive news junkie* so I have to avoid the news in order to get anything done. I quit facebook and google over their insistence on pushing 'news'. It's junk food for the brain. It's low information and only gives an illusion of being informed. E.g. the recent election. * Note: I consider HN to be social 'media' news and I am aware that I'm here 'chipping'. I do so intentionally in effort to avoid fettishising vices. Plus HN is as close as I get to an online group of peers. I only use HN after self-flagellating while repeatedly muttering "the flesh is weak".
  • forgetsusername 10y ago
    >Consider the anxiety you feel if you need to go to the bathroom and cannot find your phone. Is this a real thing?
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Depends on how long I need to be in there.
    • Noseshine 10y ago
      A thread on reddit about just that very topic gained front-page visibility and a lot of "I'm actually doing this right now" comments. EDIT - I actually found it, "Reddit is probably the world's largest group of people that communicate while shitting.": https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/5dqufr/reddit_is_probably_the_worlds_largest_group_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/5dqufr/redd...
• jeremejevs 10y ago
  Why throw the baby out with the bathwater? What I did was I've unsubscribed from all people and pages on Facebook, unsubscribed from all Reddit subs, and unsubscribed from all YouTube channels. In the end, I've learned to stop visiting facebook.com, since all I was seeing was an empty page, but at the same time I avoided giving up my network, and I can still check up on people when I remember about them, I can keep using Messenger and I can keep using Facebook as an identity provider on other websites. Not to mention that this way I don't have to throw out years of stuff generated by me (which can be painful with photos, especially for a data hoarder like me). Same goes for Reddit and YouTube (I keep my comment and post history, the ability to participate in discussions, my uploaded videos, and more). For Hacker News, which is too valuable to me as a knowledge expanding tool, I did something else: I've started using the "top 10" section on hckrnews.com. I can keep checking it however many times I want, but I'll get stuck in at most 10 comment threads per day, which I consider to be a reasonable compromise (this thread being one of them </meta>). Never used Twitter, but I suppose something similar can be accomplished by muting all the accounts you're following. YMMV.
  • kilroy123 10y ago
    There's also the newsletter. I have a buddy who refuses to open hackernews on his computer. Instead he waits until Friday and reads the newsletter.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• bootload 10y ago
  "the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive." Interesting viewpoint. Does the author really follow this? Has a webpage, blog and an archive that stretches for 91 pages ~ http://calnewport.com/blog/archive/ http://calnewport.com/blog/archive/ Not a good sign if the author thinks you should quit or limit your social media contact. I don't care if the authour justifies this as necessary. It's a sign that ignoring the real problem doesn't seem to work. The Internet is addictive. In fact I've spent a bit of time writing my own tasking system to tackle this problem. In writing up an accompanying blog post on distraction and focus I found the GTD, work hard, achieve more in less time frenzy isn't new. It pre-dates the Internet by decades. Take Charles R. Schwab, owner of Bethlehem steel, someone who Thomas Edison described as a hustler. Schwa hired the best productivity guru he could. Ivy Ledbetter Lee. Lee proposed a very simple technique to focus and work on. Then charged Schwab USD$20,000 for the effort. You can read more in this article, "Ivy Ledbetter Lee" ~ http://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee http://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee Quitting social media is a temporary fix as you'll probably find other ways to distract yourself and avoid work. The deeper problem is realising the Internet is very addictive and find coping mechanisms to counter the side effects. While reading up on the problem of Internet addiction and digital works, I re-read the article pg wrote on this topic, "Distracting Distractions" I found an update on his suggestions: "The strategy described at the end of this essay didn't work. It would work for a while, and then I'd gradually find myself using the Internet on my work computer." It is a problem that could yield some interesting work.
• ausjke 10y ago
  "If you’re serious about making an impact in the world, power down your smartphone, close your browser tabs, roll up your sleeves and get to work." -- without the tabs open I hardly can work anything these days, sigh. But yes I agree that social media attention decreases my long-time-focus-capability gradually and it is terrible.
• jdmoreira 10y ago
  I've read Cal Newport's book Deep Work. I've also quit facebook almost 2 years ago and more recently twitter and instagram. I have zero regrets and overall I can say that my life improved a lot, including my professional life.
• Bahamut 10y ago
  I recommend a different approach - if one feels bound to go on social media often, take a couple of month hiatus from it. The main important thing is to be able to break the power of addiction, since it is what causes the distractions in the first place. It is not really a problem unique to social media.
• keiferski 10y ago
  I'm more than willing to delete all my social media accounts. The only problem is: I travel frequently and need a way to keep in touch with a wide variety of people. Ergo, Facebook. Any suggestions on replacing in this manner?
  • pault 10y ago
    Just stay logged into messenger and don't ever open facebook except to post a few pictures so people know you're still alive.
• spking 10y ago
  If you struggle with this, try: https://selfcontrolapp.com/ https://selfcontrolapp.com/ It's a digital nicotine patch for your bad browsing habits.
  • MehdiHK 10y ago
    I second that. Works like a charm.
• kejaed 10y ago
  I recently started and finished a side project over a week and did so on a computer that I don't normally use. I was not logged into any of my normal 'social' websites and I found my productivity was very, very high. It was quite an eye opener. This may also have something to do with the fact that this was a novel and enjoyable project (for me) with a hard deadline, but there were a couple times where my brain was trained to go open up Reddit when I was stumped on something, and I immediately caught myself since it wasn't the normal page and got back to work.
• noir-york 10y ago
  Why social media only? After being a news addict for years, I've decided to not only limit my social media posts (and reading) down to zero, but also the amount of time I spend on the daily news sites (NYT, Guardian, Politico etc). Instead I read media that operates on a longer cycles like weekly (Economist, NewYorker) and longer (Foreign Affairs, Private Eye) Its been an interesting experiment: most "news" is just content that is ultimately inconsequential, discussing ephemeral events that will be forgotten by the next news cycle. However, the weeklies and the monthlies, because they have to edit what they write about, do a great job of filtering out the fluff and giving me a better perspective of what mattered that week/month. I've found I still know what I need to know, suffer much less distractions, and more time to read books (amazing invention btw!)
  • Dragonai 10y ago
    This is a super interesting approach and I really like the sound of it. I might just try switching to it sometime! Thanks for sharing :) Side note: it sounds like adding the occasional dose of /r/tldr + /r/outoftheloop would add quite nicely to the "filtering".
    • noir-york 10y ago
      It was hard at first breaking the habit, developed over years, of opening up a few tabs with news sites each morning over breakfast. I still occasionally scan the headlines, which is enough to know what is roughly going on. News is essentially free (and commoditized). What I value is thoughtful analysis and good interviews; Andrew Marr's interview with Marine Le Pen being a recent case in point.
  • harryf 10y ago
    Very interesting. Makes me wonder if the same techniques which get people hooked to current forms of distracting social media could be used to encourage better habits, focus etc? Have see some humorous attempts such as http://www.chorewars.com/ http://www.chorewars.com/ and http://code.rpgify.com/ http://code.rpgify.com/ but usually with a focus on motivating groups of people.
• superpope99 10y ago
  Since no one's mentioned it, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr covers some of the neurological effects of constant social media/internet gratification quite well. Ironically it took me about a year to finish the book because I kept getting distracted...
• known 10y ago
  Always post anonymously on Internet. Nobody wants you to succeed.
• rajahafify 10y ago
  How can you trust someone about social media who said they never own a social media?
• gaur 10y ago
  Why was the correct punctuation of the original headline replaced with a comma splice? Can we get someone to restore the correct punctuation?
• ftrflyr 10y ago
  Beyond the "work without distractions angle" think about this: You online presence affords recruiters and hiring managers the opportunity to identify who you are before they make a determination to formally invite you to an interview (phone or in person). Even if you opt out of self identify, they can still figure it out if you have FB, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Thus, are you qualified, but didn't get a call back or request to interview email? It may be because of your race, gender, sexuality, etc.
• brudgers 10y ago
  Social media does one thing really really well. It makes the maintenance of weak social connections really really efficient. Secondarily, it makes the reestablishment of weak social connections and the establishment of new weak social connections very low cost. Facebook is full of old people because they have more weak connections, while my boy doesn't use a social media platform because in his words, "I have high school"...I'd asked him about it just this week. What social media might give the author is the ability to continue their relationship with their editor's assistant over the next twenty years as their careers progress and paths diverge and perhaps the editor's assistant becomes an editor in their own right. Sure, TANSTAAFL. But it points both ways.
  • Senji 10y ago
    It has helped me vicariously reconnect with old schoolmates.
• matwood 10y ago
  Maybe it's the discipline I've learned from years of power lifting, but I don't have any issues with social media. I'll often skip FB for days because it's not something I think about doing. I do like games though and will sometimes play one for an hour or maybe even 2 hours if it's the weekend. After that I start feeling like I need to do something productive. As far as comments, I always try to act online as I would in real life. This means I try to avoid snark online since it is so hard convey sarcasm online. I also always think about if I was having a real conversation how would I act. If you read my comment history, most (all?) are calm, and I think are how I have disagreements in real life. I try to follow the thought process that you can shear a sheep many times, but can only skin it once.
• sosuke 10y ago
  I wrote about this last year, your online persona in relation to your personal career. Quitting social media for personal usage is a pretty good idea though if you're always checking it. https://sosuke.com/creating-and-taking-ownership-of-your-personal-brand/ https://sosuke.com/creating-and-taking-ownership-of-your-per...
• dangoldin 10y ago
  On a somewhat related note I started just shutting Slack off at work when I need to get some thing done and it's been incredibly liberating.
• chrisgd 10y ago
  Quit hacker news, your career may depend on it
• overcast 10y ago
  I've written about this many times in responses here on HN. Removing myself from Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and what not, was the best thing I've ever done. For any remaining sites, I've installed comment blockers, so I don't have a chance to get sucked into negativity. Someday HN will be on the chopping block, but for now, it provides real dialogue. There really is nothing of value gained from wasting time on those sites. Now I have more time to read, hike, finish personal projects, whatever I want. Dating since Tinder has been completely ruined. Relationships are disposable, while everyone is just looking for the next big thing. I'm really looking forward to a post social network world. Though I fear something even more addictive, and destructive will come around.
• blondie9x 10y ago
  What this article doesn't mention but should very seriously be considered, recruiters often look to disqualify candidates based on controversial ideas or standpoints that might not agree with the company's cultural mindset. Definitely need to be mindful of how your views will be analyzed before you have even been considered for an interview or offered a job.
• tehabe 10y ago
  I understand the procrastination argument but if it is not some (social) website it is something else. People who tend to procrastinate will do it anyway. At least this is my personal experience.
• aikah 10y ago
  Some also people made a career and a lot of money out of saying obnoxious things on social media. I think it works both way. It can be detrimental to people who think what they say online is "private" (Justine Sacco), but plenty of attention seekers double down and take advantage of the viral effect of Twitter or Facebook to "promote their brand", whatever that means, or to make up controversy. But for these people it is also a double edged sword as the consequences of saying something on social media cannot really be controlled. But for most of us it is only a source of problems and unnecessary controversy, it is especially true on Twitter.
• blondie9x 10y ago
  You could also say reading hacker news is somewhat of an addiction as well. It's easy to become fixated on seeing what the latest trending stories, repos are. Everything in moderation.
• bogomipz 10y ago
  I agreed with everything in the article. However I have also seen no shortage of job posts for tech - backend dev, where employers asked to provide links to any social media activity. So there is a fair amount of tech jobs that seem to expect you to have cultivated an online brand. This has always made me uncomfortable because I am of the same opinion of the the author and I generally won't apply to a company when I see this being asked for in an open job post. For things like "evangelist" I understand asking for this but otherwise no.
• intopieces 10y ago
  If this topic interests you, Tim Wu's latest book, "The Attention Merchants," might also. He chronicles the rise of attention-monetizing by the media and the various rebellions against them.
• andrewvijay 10y ago
  I'm addicted to HN like that. Should I quit it then?
  • Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    In your profile you can set 'noprocrast' to allow you a max visit length and a minimum time between visits. Wean yourself off to only browse at certain times of day or week where it is convenient and useful to you (ie. news catchup hour)
    • andrewvijay 10y ago
      yo thanks fam!
• CM30 10y ago
  Of course, if you're a journalist or news reporter, then you're a bit screwed here. The stuff you need to write about is what's being posted on social media, especially when you're working for an entertainment focused media outlet. Someone working for a gaming, TV, film or music focused site or writing for a gossip mag isn't going to be able to quit Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/YouTube any time soon. Then again, maybe that's also kind of why everything's become so polarised and clickbaity in the media world now. Because the people writing for it are incapable of writing anything deeper than a 140 character soundbite.
• bogomipz 10y ago
  The author mentions: "There are many issues with social media, from its corrosion of civic life to its cultural shallowness,..." Can anyone elaborate on how it "corrodes" civic life? I am guessing this mean "civic" in the sense of civility not civic as in civic duty? Is this referring to the mean spiritedness of many people's online personas?
• chrisgd 10y ago
  A simple way to break a bad habit it, Ted Talk transcript: judson_brewer_a_simple_way_to_break_a_bad_habit
• kowdermeister 10y ago
  I've read the whole article, but this is where I should have stopped. > I’ve never had a social media account. He basically summarized that procrastination is harmful and social media is to blame. He doesn't really share anything I haven't known as a social media addict. Kinda like saying to a smoker that smoking tobacco causes cancer. I know that, what now? I tried shutting down social media sites with plugins, blocking sites in the hostfile and other slow to circumvent things. They kinda worked, sometimes never. I also noticed that if a site gets shut down, something new emerges that replace it. This is something you have to deal with, regulate it. If you find yourself constantly opening FB, Twitter or whatever your addiction is, then it signals that something you are having problems with something you should be really doing.
  • tcrews 10y ago
    Exactly. Whenever I increase my consumption of social media, it's because I'm doing something I'd rather not be doing at work. Even these little 5-10sec wait times make me open a new tab and check HN.
  • abvdasker 10y ago
    My take is that this article is also really poorly written. The overly formal tone and extended sentence structure makes it seem like the author is trying too hard to sound smart. He's doing this especially annoying type of bad writing where he thinks the tone he would use for an academic research paper read by one professor is a good fit for an opinion piece that will be seen by thousands. > There are many issues with social media, from its corrosion of civic life to its cultural shallowness, but the argument I want to make here is more pragmatic: You should quit social media because it can hurt your career." > Perhaps more important, however, than my specific objections to the idea that social media is a harmless lift to your career, is my general unease with the mind-set this belief fosters. Just talk to me like a person! Unless you're Slavoj Žižek you should probably go for something more accessible and conversational.
    • nbouscal 10y ago
      You think that sounds like a research paper? What field are you reading research papers in?! For what it's worth, the author of the article has written multiple best-selling books for popular audiences.
• jccalhoun 10y ago
  The general message is good: stop procrastinating and actually work (which is what I should be doing instead of mulling over the wording of this comment). The way it is written, however, is less than ideal because it has entirely too many unsupported claims. Without evidence it isn't a solid argument. For example: "My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom." I know it is a newspaper article and not an academic paper but I still need evidence to make me believe these claims are true. I've read people claiming that we are becoming more distracted but I haven't read that the ability to not be distracted is becoming more valuable. Similarly, while I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so.
  • harryf 10y ago
    > I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so. Recommend reading up on the "Hook Model" - http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked - or watch this video - https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM - the techniques for building addictive products are well known, with a history that goes back to Las Vegas and the gambling industry. Most social media companies - with the exception of one or two like Zynga - of course aren't overly announcing "we're building stuff to get you addicted" but their business depends on audience numbers so guess what: try searching LinkedIn jobs for "Facebook" and "psychology" and it's pretty clear
• erikbye 10y ago
  A sensationalist headline... The article actually read more like: stop wasting time. Sure, if you spend too much time on social media, reduce the time spent. As someone who, years ago, implemented a lot of change to improve my life; here are some thoughts: If you want a better, and more meaningful life, figure out what (and who) in your life is detrimental to your quality of life. Then rid yourself of those elements. Second, enumerate everything (and everyone) you spend time on that adds no value--eradicate those elements from your life. Make no mistake, these can be two very big, strenous and time-consuming tasks; which might need to be planned out in detail--as in how you will rid yourself of each element. The hardest part will usually be to "quit" detrimental people. But once you are done, boy, will your life improve. When these two steps are done, you have been rewarded more time, not simply given, but earned. In the case of social media, I think I read that the average (globally) time spent is at something like 2 hours per day! If social media is one of those things either detrimental to you, or that adds no value, and you are an average user--then you just freed 14 hours per week. Imagine if you took up a new hobby (do you even have one? many don't), something that actually improved quality of life, 14 hours a week learning a new instrument, or learning to draw, or write, or ski. That is a lot of time. Novel activities are good for your brain! Another thing I have observed, especially in the age of social media--but it's not new, just seems worse now--is that a lot of young people need to learn how to be alone. Some people are hardly never alone. They have to learn this before they can learn to concentrate. If you are like me, an introvert, you are probably alone a lot (if you are not, that can drain you of energy), but one thing you probably need to learn is to cut down on multitasking. It's not good for your brain (learning, memory) or body (stress), it's not good for productivity. Sorry for rambling. For the record: I barely use social media; I have inactive accounts here and there.
• h4nkoslo 10y ago
  The NYT is putting you on notice that any political involvement, especially outside of approved channels, may necessitate threatening your career. What you should really be doing is paying taxes and keeping your head down.
• skybrian 10y ago
  There are browser extensions to block websites, but I think a more subtle approach might help: add latency. Social networks spend a lot of time optimizing performance because they know how much it increases traffic. So it seems like a browser extension that adds a bit of latency and gradually ramps it up for the websites you choose could help to reduce the impulse to check too often.
• jtcond13 10y ago
  FWIW -- Cal Newport's books on career development ('Deep Work' and 'So Good They Can't Ignore You') are very good, quick reads for those interested.
• microcolonel 10y ago
  The way I help myself with this is I set up different profiles in Chrome. My work one disables JavaScript, Cookies, and Images by default for every site; I enable them only for sites which I need for work. This way, when the reflex to "C-t h a RET" myself to Hacker News comes, I'm instead reminded not to.
• grappler 10y ago
  I approach social media (twitter in particular) this way: “try to be a good neuron”. Meaning: social media forms a global hive mind. It determines what a lot of people see and hear about the world. Witness the flare up recently over the influence of “fake news” going viral. A neuron's role, as one tiny piece of a brain, a neural network, or, for my purposes, a hive mind, is to take in a number of inputs and filter them, firing occasionally to convey some distillation of the inputs received. Anyone who reshares highly inaccurate or incendiary content is being a bad neuron. If instead you gather a range of news and opinion from a variety of sources and then, being very selective, reshare the one or two things each day (or week) with the best combinations of reputability, newsworthiness, timeliness, importance to current problems society is facing, and exploration of new ideas, then you're being a good neuron. This in my opinion is the best use of publicly shared social media. If lots of people did this the world would be better off. There may be career risk in sharing things related to politics, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. Without the freedom to do that, I might as well be in a repressive totalitarian society, and now more than ever that is something we should fight to prevent.
• tedmiston 10y ago
  > A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive, especially for many members of my generation who were raised on this message, but it can be disastrously counterproductive. > Most social media is best described as a collection of somewhat trivial entertainment services that are currently having a good run. These networks are fun, but you’re deluding yourself if you think that Twitter messages, posts and likes are a productive use of your time. This rings of the author's experience being in academia. In the business world, good products do not sell themselves. "Most social media" is not Twitter. Twitter is a relatively unique social network.
• krishicks 10y ago
  People don't realize how negative an impact social media and its related notifications can have at work. I recently wrote a blog post about notifications at work while pairing: http://krishicks.com/post/notifications/ http://krishicks.com/post/notifications/
• vic-traill 10y ago
  In 1992, a fellow student called Usenet the 'ultimate procrastination device'. The Internet provides access to an inexhaustible supply of people, topics and thoughts (some interesting, others less so). This is still the case, except that the number of access methods and filters have increased, and many of them are with us everywhere, all the time. Our own time is indeed finite, and my experience has been that the digital world will consume as much of that limited time as you let it. Awareness is a first step, and a purposeful approach to consuming content helps keep your content consuming time balanced with, well, all the other stuff you can do in this world.
• orthoganol 10y ago
  I'm pleasantly surprised this is being discussed at the top of HN. I feel like 2 years ago people would pile on about how unusual it was to not be part of social media, how there is little argument against leaving, or how you must be seeking attention or must be anti-social. Well, as a very social 20-something, I left Facebook 3 years ago, myself a heavy user with thousand+ friends scattered around the world, and it has made zero negative impact on any aspect of my life ('invitations to events' or 'keeping contact' is the typical fear against leaving, and it continues just as seamlessly [1] - people don't stop caring, thinking, or reaching out to you just because you leave Facebook, and vis versa), and it has easily been one of the top 5 or 3 decisions I've made in these 3 years. It's the equivalent of cutting out unnecessary yet significant things, or simplifying your life so you can remain mindful of the bigger goals. This may sound like something cheesy from the 4HWW, but I nonetheless think that kind of mindset is right on. Now I see more people leaving Facebook who I wouldn't have imagined doing so a few years ago. Perceptions will remain divisive for some time, but I can see "avoiding social media" as gaining some real cachet as "I don't fuck around". Regardless of whether there is actually a correlation with avoiding social media and being a more serious, goal-oriented person, I do think mainstream perception will continue to change for the better away from the stigmatizing "Wow <person X> is not on <platform>, what's his deal?" [1] Lightweight messaging apps, especially for international contacts... certainly not the whole investment of 'social media' since it's nothing but the messaging.
• shmerl 10y ago
  It's like in that anecdote - I guess the author is not using the wrong kind of social media ;) I get a lot of useful information from diaspora* for instance. If someone builds a stereotype and then says - I don't like that. It speaks more about the stereotype, than about the real thing necessarily.
• andresgottlieb 10y ago
  If this article made sense to you, you should read the author's book on the topic. I've just finished it and really liked it. http://amzn.to/2fdEaol http://amzn.to/2fdEaol
• linuxvorpal 10y ago
  I agree with this sentiment mostly. I did delete my personal facebook. My twitter account I removed a lot of previous posts in the hopes to inactivate it without deleting it publicly.
• dep_b 10y ago
  I was the only one that laughed out loud reading the title while seeing Twitter and Facebook share buttons on top of the article?
• tomkadwill 10y ago
  The author implies that there is no value in social media. It seems to me that there is value in social media. Effective usage of social media can build networks and be an alternative to meetups. I think a valid solution is to limit social media usage to within specific windows (eg: only use social media for 1 hour per day)
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  tl;dr 'back to work peon!'
• segmondy 10y ago
  I just finished reading his book "deep work" this morning. I highly recommend it, I'm not going to give up social media but I'm not going to give in to it either.
• HeavyStorm 10y ago
  I was about to write - I'm ok, I don't have a Facebook login and my twitter is just for show... And then I realize that HN is social media, after all.
• daveheq 10y ago
  Not realistic. I've seen multiple companies build their success on social media (don't forget Pinterest) after stagnating through SEO and traditional advertising, so to say "quit it" is not only killing millions of dollars of opportunity but completely unnecessary if your point is that you as a worker waste too much of your work day on it. Do like I do and turn your phone or tablet notifications for these apps off and check them later in your free time. If you really can't handle being personally responsible in your job, then sure, quit social media, but otherwise grow up and keep your brain on.
• emodendroket 10y ago
  I gotta tell you, that has to be one of the least convincing reasons I have heard.
• JDiculous 10y ago
  Sure, quit social media if you're a robot who's sole purpose in life is to maximize your career - though I'd still argue that social media is valuable in that it enables you to expand your network and maintain/strengthen your personal connections. But even if it were the case that social media is worse for your career, a lot of us live for more than our careers. If you find yourself constantly wasting time on Facebook during work, you just lack discipline. I don't know about you guys, but my news feed is generally pretty boring, thus I don't have the urge to keep checking it. I'm not trying to claim moral superiority here, just saying that if you have an addiction problem, you need to take responsibility and hold yourself accountable rather than blaming the tool.
  • iamhamm 10y ago
    I bounce back and forth on this. I don't really feel like Facebook enriches my personal connections; it just lets me remain to a lot of people I'm not really connected to anymore. It's like having a system for maintaining lower tier friends. LinkedIn feels the same way: I have a huge network of people that are all talking, but none of it really does anything to enrich my career. I don't listen to them, they don't listen to me. When I need career advice, help with job hunts, etc. I call someone I know and trust and they do the same. I don't think we can feasibly maintain large networks.
    • kyleashipley 10y ago
      I have found a large LinkedIn network to be useful for finding customer interviews for startup ideas. There are a lot of people that I am connected to enough that an intro from them beats a cold email. I often will find a company that seems like a good fit for a problem or idea I am working on, see if I have any second-degree connections there, and ask for an intro. I really enjoyed Brad Feld's post[1] on choosing how to use each social network you sign up for. On LinkedIn, I've decided to be a public, promiscuous consumer. On Twitter, I am public, selective, and a mix of consumer/producer. Facebook is one that I probably need to cut even more than I do, since I don't have a strategy and get little value from it. Social networks can be tools, and if they are not providing value, it may mean you need to use the tool differently or get rid of it if it doesn't solve a problem you have. [1] http://www.feld.com/archives/2012/02/happy-birthday-im-unfriending-you.html http://www.feld.com/archives/2012/02/happy-birthday-im-unfri...
• dsr_ 10y ago
  I wonder if surviving Usenet Septembers prior to the Endless September conferred some immunity on the survivors?
  • Animats 10y ago
    I used to see this back when I had a catchall email address on a .com domain which was the same as a domain for a school in .uk. Every September, I'd get misaddressed student emails. I'd send them back a note, and they'd stop. By October the new students had figured out their domain name and the problem stopped. Once, though, I got a message "I am going to kill you tonight", addressed from one student to another. Ignore, reply, report to UK law enforcement? I got the headmistress of the school on the phone, in the middle of the night in the UK. After about a minute of confusion, she told me that the sender was 12 years old and the problem would be dealt with. If that had had happened in the US, it probably would have involved a SWAT team.
• natural219 10y ago
  Flagging this for obvious, one-sided political bias. The bunny trail from Trump being elected, to "fake news on Facebook" story being perpetuated in the press, to this editorial, is just straight laughable to me. Maybe I made the wrong call, but I'm happy to start flagging nytimes articles with the same judiciousness I'd flag a Breitbart article with an innocent-seeming but obviously-politically-motivated conclusion at hand.
• 98Windows 10y ago
  I found unfollowing everyone on facebook helps. I now just look at my friends list to see who has new posts a few times a month.
• shams93 10y ago
  I got into the industry working for Geocities. Back then we had no cell phones no social media it was easier to focus in a world of landline answering machines lol.
• brilliantcode 10y ago
  I've said before that Social Media is our generation's "cigarette". Very much like in the early days, people just didn't have any awareness that cigarettes were harmful. Hell, everybody was doing it (see Mad Men). I've learned from day trading and investing is how much we downplay herd psychology. Our society has geared us to beat any sense of opposition as hostile. Our evolutionary process have selected individuals based on how well they are able to blend and we feel instinctively safer in large numbers (def. mech. against predators). We are social creatures so they say. But history is filled with instances were the crowd behaves very predictably over and over because the underlying constraints of group think are there. Social media is particularly aggravating medium for which false,fake,wrong have greater mobility than facts and common sense. Besides the dissemination of false information which is harmful to our society and individual as a whole, perhaps the sheer noise and frequency of sensationalist artifacts is the biggest perpetrator of all. It's only recently that we are beginning to become aware of the what if effects of being exposed to so much "spamming with our running commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight". So far, studies have confirmed that it's negative on the individual. Having said that, there's plenty of people who don't care. They are happy uploading selfies and food they are about to digest and poop out in 12 hours. It's fleeting moments that are so ephemeral, information that otherwise would be irrelevant, insignificant noise, is being magnified through the crowd effect that social media platforms exploit and engineer to grow their user base. Our low interest money has created a whole new economy where the number of active users without any doubt, taken at it's face value rather than examining it's intrinsic worth. Just how important is it for everybody to be so connected and knowing every possible detail going on with everybody else? For me, not very, and I've for the most part (besides HN & Reddit) have embraced off the social media grid lifestyle 3 years ago and I'm fucking loving it so far. I feel happier. I'm not perfect as I use HN & Reddit. Although, I do spend less and less time on those platforms and experience more joy as well.
  • alaskamiller 10y ago
    Social media is this generation's cocaine. It's fun at parties, it's fashionable when done right, but sad when doing it by yourself.
• stevewillows 10y ago
  About five years ago I bumped into an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen since around 2005. Despite not keeping in contact physically, we both knew everything about each other's lives. It was great to reconnect, but we didn't have the typical reward that comes with the rediscovery. I knew what he was doing for work, the projects he had going on the side, etc. Tracking my friends stripped a lot of the romance, joy. and mystery out of reconnecting. Around the same time I got into a new group of friends that were all about their 'personal brand.' Every occasion was started with a good ten minutes of silence while they checked-in to Yelp, Foursquare, snapped photos of the venue / table / food, and tweeted bullshit along the lines of 'having the time of my life!' -- I spent the time looking for typos and leading errors on the menus. It was exhausting. Everybody was there, but nobody was present. Even the meal itself was dull because of the endless obsession with creating something it wasn't. I never bought into those bullshit games of 'put your phone in the middle of the table' or whatever. If you're a typical human being, my expectation is that you can silence your phone and have the slightest bit of restraint to avoid looking at it every few minutes. I understand if there's an emergency or whatever, but otherwise, keep it on vibrate and be done. Around this time I completely disabled all notifications and the phone never made a peep. A few years after that I starting tracking how many images and tweets I was reading vs enjoying. It was about one in twenty or so. Examining my own tweets and other contributions to social media had me realizing that I was as social as a guy at a party shouting opinions over the music to a room full of people doing the same. It wasn't social, and it was barely media. I decided to purge the accounts and start from scratch -- and will be doing so every year or so. Starting fresh is nice, but I find that I rarely have anything of actual value to contribute. I've avoided facebook for years and only use it for events. Instagram is all kids. Twitter is all business and 'I'm speaking at x conference --- here's a link to an instagram post of a photo of a slide in my presentation taken from the back row'. I've avoided the graphic design sites like dribbble where most 'portfolios' aren't filled with client work or art, just 99designs level work that is good, but irrelevant... and the list goes on. Social media isn't completely dead, but for me, I checked out a long time ago. I'm hoping that the next wave will be a hybrid of twitter, meetup, foursquare, and tinder --- an app where you check into a location to say 'I'm here, who wants to hang out?' and you can hang out with some strangers for a time.
  • 10y ago
• mcguire 10y ago
  "My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is common: As you become more valuable to the marketplace, good things will find you." If I didn't laugh so hard at this, I'd have to cry. Let's say my mileage has varied significantly. Diametrically. Exponentially. Hilariously. No idea whether social media has any effect on anything; I don't use it. So there's that.
• Mikho 10y ago
  Always wanted to spare some time to calculate how Facebook and other social distraction influence our productivity and income. Every single notification and distraction during work hours makes us less productive not only by taking time, but also by decreasing ability to focus. We achieve less during the day. Basically, Facebook converts time of every single user life and productivity decrease into own revenue. And it's done with very very low efficiency--for the whole year it's around $40+ per US user for Facebook. As reported average user spends 50 minutes per day on Facebook. Hence, about 7.3 full 24 hour days (if we add sleep time required to compensate being awake 7.3 x 1.4 = 10.2 days) of your life make Facebook $40+. I wonder what it means for US GDP in general should the data be run countrywide calculating distraction time and productivity decrease during the work hours.
• cbanowsky 10y ago
  ghost blog i believe has more potential
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  It was interesting that the story was about being distracted rather than having potential future employers seeing you in an earlier and perhaps less flattering context than you currently present yourself. Both are good reasons to avoid social media I suppose.
  • Anderkent 10y ago
    Yeah, I expected this to be about the small risk of devastating impact, should you make an off-colour joke or an offensive complaint on a public view and it goes viral.
• peatfreak 10y ago
  As usual, NYT is ON IT. https://twitter.com/NYTOnIt https://twitter.com/NYTOnIt
• defunctirl 10y ago
  We recently had a presentation at my University from a number of local industry leaders, and the topic of Social Media's role in the hiring process came up. I've been in the process of slowly reducing and removing social media where possible, and the reaction I got to a question regarding an individual's lack of a social media presence was quite negative. Basically the consensus was that if, during the hiring process, the managers / recruiters / HR were unable to find social media accounts (or found highly private / restricted accounts) for the applicant then they would view this as an immediate red flag and indicated that they have previously dropped candidates from consideration purely for this reason. I could have imagined this happening in isolated cases but I was surprised to hear it from 2-3 of the presenters, none of which had any relation to one another. The irony of this whole situation being that the reason they scan applicants social media in the first place was to look for red flags in the applicants behavior outside of the work place and/or to find reasons they shouldn't be considered for employment. Kind of ridiculous.
  • nether 10y ago
    What kinds of companies were these? In many industries you'd seriously compromise your hiring if you ruled out all the experienced 40+ year old candidates who don't care for FB accounts. Mechanical engineering and defense work especially.
    • defunctirl 10y ago
      There isn't a whole lot of dev. work or innovation going on in the private sector where I live. This was local Government and a couple of Software Development Consultancies (who primarily contract with local Govt.). They did give the impression that the suspicion when finding no internet presence was generally when vetting younger graduates.. ie. Millenials, and those who they felt were more likely 'trying to hide something' by not using social media..
• abhip 10y ago
  > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. I agree with this particular sentiment but I don't believe that "deep work", as Cal Newport calls it, requires us to turn off social media or other forms of less-deep work altogether. Certainly, we must balance and control our usage of social media. Certainly, we must be more than just consumers and create tweets/posts/blogs/etc. These mediums can be great ways to give back to the community.
• welly 10y ago
  I'm currently in the process of withdrawing myself from social media. I pulled the plug on Facebook and Instagram this weekend, not that I was a heavy user of Instagram anyway and Facebook a light to moderate user. (it sounds like I'm discussing a coke habit here). What I will find frustrating is that in my social group - and I'm sure I'm not alone - Facebook appears to be the central tool for organising one's life. Everything is organised on Facebook. Social events, parties, last minute "Does anyone want to go for a drink?" requests, discussions and meetup arrangements on my side hobby of homebrewing. I fear I shall become something of a social outcast, particularly as many friends I have, I don't have their mobile numbers as all contact was made through Facebook messenger. This is one part of the reason that I'm pulling away from Facebook in particular. Facebook has almost two billion users and the internet as a whole has roughly 3.5 billion users. How one corporation having that much data willingly supplied - where they live, where they work, where they've been, where they currently are, among everything else - by so many people is, frankly, a disaster waiting to happen. I want no part of it. I've given them enough data over the last couple of years. No more. And on a less tin-foil hat angle it is a huge distraction that, aside from the social life organisation aspect, serves no good purpose that can't be provided using other means (email? phone calls? meeting face to face and sharing your selfies in person?). I've also withdrawn from Instagram and plan to start developing in VueJS or EmberJS rather than React. I'm not officially boycotting Facebook, I'm just choosing not to use their products.
• ksenzee 10y ago
  This article reads very much like me, a non-drinker, telling you why you shouldn't drink. I've never tried alcohol, but I've heard plenty of bad things about it, and here's a list of them! It's addictive, you know! Messes with the dopamine system! I do consider social media addictive. But adults can usually handle addictive substances. We just have to know our limits, and cut ourselves off if needed. There's really no need for 21st-century temperance activists preaching its evils.
  • majewsky 10y ago
    The problem is that most people don't even realize that social media is an addictive substance.
    • ksenzee 10y ago
      I agree. It would be great if as a society we handled social media (and other addictive experiences) the same way we handle drugs and gambling: adults only, know your limits, here's help getting clean. Instead we have kids obsessively snapchatting and messing with their dopamine system before their brain is even finished developing.
• euske 10y ago
  "In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable. " This sounds such a short-sighted argument. Do people greet others because they expect some sort of rewards? It's a basic courtesy. Yes, some people overdo it but using a social media moderately could be a good norm. Again, the balance is the key, and we'll still need a bit more time to figure out the right amount of dose for each, but rejecting them outright is equally misguided.
• sean_patel 10y ago
  > I would take a 45 minute dump just catching up on stuff ROFL. That's 1 long helluva a Dump. Hope you don't have roommates or a large family.
  • bitwize 10y ago
    Word. Your plumber be like "she's overloaded, Captain, she cannae hold out much longer!"
    • sean_patel 10y ago
      LOL. You guys are killing me. Why all the downvotes? HN crowds seems to be a very serious lot.
      • jliptzin 10y ago
        No toilet jokes we're too high brow around here for that
    • lelawlol 10y ago
      Hating systemd is like hating Hillary Clinton at this point. It's well past time to suck it up and make peace with your next init system/President because the only viable alternative(s) are far worse. - bitwize haha she lost and so will your beloved init++
  • bbcbasic 10y ago
    Probably a dump followed by bowels being open for too long. This is bad for you I've heard. Best to dump n go... and then procrastinate elsewhere.
  • dang 10y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13002196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13002196 and marked it off-topic.
• nippoo 10y ago
  Has anyone found a reliable way of blocking websites / apps (ideally on a time-restricted basis) on iPhone? Short of routing all your traffic through a remote SOCKS proxy. I'm tempted to move to Android just to customise my /etc/hosts but I'd rather there be a simpler way...
• dvcrn 10y ago
  I'm wondering if there is a simple trick / way to keep social media around without getting too addicted too it. I can completely 100% relate to this article and am scared by it. However, I can't just shut my accounts down. The advantages they give me over a life without them are just things that I don't want to miss out. I feel "blessed" of having even the opportunity to use amazing worldwide connected tools like facebook and twitter considering the last 100 years. I get around very often and make friends and contacts almost everywhere. Some of these connections are not relevant until I am in location X again. Some are old friends in my hometown that I from time to time contact. Some are professional connections. In many cases Facebook is the only viable connection to keep contact with less-frequently contacted people. Messenger? Doesn't work. Some countries use WhatsApp, some LINE, some KakaoTalk, some Threma and some, well, facebook messenger. Replacing facebook with 6 messaging clients is just not gonna work. I am currently blocking most websites through a little snitch profile but I can feel the urge to unblock them and just... one more time... check if there is something new. I even catch myself occasionally opening facebook just to see the "connection unsuccessful" message. From my experience, Pomodoro helps a lot in staying focused. But please, if you have anything to share to get rid of this addiction, share!
  • TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    I can't just shut my accounts down. Yes, you can. When I deleted my Facebook account the first thing I noticed is that I did not die.
  • yosito 10y ago
    Flag your Facebook account for permanent deletion and then go on a two week vacation without your computer or phone. By the time you get back, you'll be over the hump of needing a social media hit, and your list of Facebook friends will be gone, which is a good barrier to re-entry. Same for Twitter. Getting rid of Reddit, HN, etc might be harder, but if your habits haven't changed after two weeks, you could also set up a hosts file to block problem sites before your vacation.
• webscalist 10y ago
  Not everyone worships their career. You can of course get rid of TV, music, theater, art, books, .. out of your life and focus only on your career skills development. Social media is young generation's way of life. It's such a valuable communication channel for teens. Embrace it. Teach them and yourself how to use it to your benefit in moderation.
• zachruss92 10y ago
  I really enjoyed this article. I initially was introduced to Cal Newport's, Deep Work book. This book is amazing and I recommend anyone to read it. Since then, it's sent me into an almost obsessive time where i'm trying to do more productive and meaningful work. I respect this article and actually am off all social media myself (unless HN counts :) ).
• wcummings 10y ago
  >I’ve never had a social media account. So why should I listen to what this guy has to say about social media?
• nimaa 10y ago
  This especially was amplified through the election season. The distraction was all the time!
• nimaa 10y ago
  This especially was amplified through the election season. The distraction was all the time!
• vesak 10y ago
  Are engineers who work at addictive software (social media apps, some type of games, etc.) actually breaking ethics? Should we defy this as a profession, not allow our skills to be used for a thing that's borderline evil? If pushing addictive narcotics is denounced as one of the moste evil deeds possible, how's this different?
• therealasdf 10y ago
  A simple fix for social media addiction is using the 'do not disturb' feature. No notifications for the next hour. Take breaks every hour to take a short walk and look at your phone. I find it to be very effective.
• Notice092 10y ago
  Concerning facebook, I got annoyed by the whole newsfeed a long time ago. So I unfollowed everyone & groups. Next was the invitation crap. End result is a near empty newsfeed. If I'm interested in some person I will go to their page myself.
• heyAaronHatch 10y ago
  As someone who's quit social media several times, I can confidently say that my life is far better with it. Saying you never post and rarely look at it is like saying 30 years ago that you hardly ever call your friends and rarely pick up your phone because it's distracting and mentally damaging. And yes, I understand that it's a flawed analogy because social media updates are far more frequent than phone calls, but the analogy is still strong. We can make excuses for why all communication platforms are bad. At the end of the day, you gotta do what you gotta do. If you have to avoid social media to stay mentally healthy and to get your work done, OK. If you can still do your work and remain mentally healthy while using social media, OK. I don't see the point in using anecdotal evidence, limited research, and popular myths to prove that social media is bad or that we should delete it. If it doesn't work for you, stop. It's like telling the world that alcohol is bad and that we're better off not doing it because you have a problem with alcohol. I'm not here to defend alcohol. I am here to suggesting considering that alcohol isn't necessarily evil. And I'm also here to say the same about social media. This idea that social media is inherently evil because of the psychological tactics used is academically interesting but practically just a way for you to get onto your soap box and sound profound. It might also be a way for you to rationalize your choice for having somewhat regretfully deleted your Facebook. I get it. I did that for a long time. I see now that my problems with social media were mostly my own issues; and I see now that I can maximize the benefit of social media without becoming mentally disturbed or financially ruined.
• pavlovs_ding 10y ago
  It would be interesting if there was a simple way to monitor dopamine release into the system, with a little bell attached. Every time you distract yourself with browsing HN or checking whether Toady One has updated Dwarf Fortress, a little ding lets you know you just satisfied an addiction. Probably turn people into bell addicts with a feedback loop.
• dakull 10y ago
  Why not to use FB in one classic line: you are the product being sold, everything else is just an illusion. Case in point: in FB. ads you can even target specific individuals. The only problem is that like every social illusion it creates a social contract which makes it hard to get out of it - mostly because it will feel like being isolated from the "world" and in losing that perfectly crafted new "self/identity" will shatter the ego (we all know the ego doesn't enjoy being messed with). Even if one is using it "just" for the messenger part, one is still part of all of this. I'm not sure why would anyone use FB. to get new opportunities, FB. et al should not be taken seriously since most create their own persona on it akin to an MMORPG where one can literally choose to act like an Apache helicopter. Moreover FB. is pure evil at its core: it's a global scale psychological experiment that future generations will refer to as: "those decades where everyone diluted their identity online, forgot about their "real" selves and thus slowly became clinically insane". Some of the other arguments in the article are so broad that one can apply them to the Internet as a whole e.g. "distraction free work: just unplug your cable or disconnect your wi-fi"
• useandthrow94 10y ago
  I created an extension to solve this problem while I was preparing for GRE and it has served me quite well since then! Here is the link in case someone would like to try: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-modifier/hbhdccjdfjcpakliojfnpincocolhcob https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-modifier/h...