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I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me happier

• new_here 8y ago
  I find that being immersed in a challenging personal project tends to drastically lower the compulsion to fire up dopamine crutches like Instagram, Reddit and HN and also ends up being a far more rewarding experience.
• technological 8y ago
  I wanted to quit these apps then this thought comes to my mind "Is my mind weak such that something external controlling my emotions (happy or sad). Cannot I be strong enough ". How do one overcome such thought
• anonu 8y ago
  >> took a break from social media after realizing that she spent far more time on Instagram than she realized. So she ended up realizing...
• hugh4life 8y ago
  One thing I just noticed with Instagram's website is that I can't select comment text any longer... that may or may not be a new change but I never noticed it earlier and it's driving me crazy now as I frequently copy comments to put into different translators.
  • kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
    Yeah, it's super annoying. On mobile you are out of luck but on web I just manually set the -webkit-user-select and user-select CSS properties to false. Sometimes I shudder to think of a future where websites would render some server-generated image version of their website (think Flash) so that users couldn't possibly dare to change the experience of their website from the corporate-approved one.
  • juiced 8y ago
    I noticed already for a longer time how Facebook Inc. is restricting more and more what you can do with data on their websites, sharing stuff like video's and pictures outside of their domain is nearly impossible, and now you can't even select comments anymore. I suggest Facebook takes notice of the story how PayPal only started to become successful when they made it is easy for their clients to get money out of PayPal. In the early days it wasn't easy to get your money out of PayPal, PayPal thought it would be good for their financial numbers to try to keep user's money on the PayPal's bank account. But users stopped using it, because you couldn't get your money out easily. Only when PayPal decided to make it easy to get your money out, users started to come back. And guess what, users didn't take out their money en masse, it was enough to know you could get it out easily anytime you wanted to. I feel the same is with how Facebook Inc treats users data. Using Facebook's websites is like being in a prison, you can't get data out of it, it's annoying and I noticed I just stop using it more and more.
  • Flow 8y ago
    Their site is also intentionally crippled so you need the app to do some things. For example, to upload pictures, the primary function of the site... And with the app comes the tracking and stealing of personal information, often using more or less dark patterns to trick the user. From what I understand, an app that has no rights to pictures, contacts and location and so on, can still get info about the WIFI and put together a pretty good picture of your movements.
    • k_sh 8y ago
      > site is also intentionally crippled so you need the app to do some things I don't have a citation for this, but it's pretty clear that they do this to make automation harder.
    • kevinventullo 8y ago
      On Android, Location needs to be enabled for an app to access ambient wifi (scan of all nearby APs). On iOS, there is no API for ambient wifi, though their location API does use it behind the scenes. On both iOS and Android, an app can access connected wifi even with location disabled.
      • Flow 8y ago
        I was under the impression that on iOS an app without access to the location API still could get the name of the WIFI and perhaps the SSID too?
    • andyfleming 8y ago
      I actually feel like the mobile app has some limitations as well to try to keep users in the app. They limit usage of URLs and such.
  • techer 8y ago
    my note 8 does auto OCR on screenshots, vaguely effective.
• theredbox 8y ago
  I would have to leave internet and find relevant hobbies. I dont do fb or other social networks ( well i occasionally check insta but that is very minimum ). Most of my time gets thrown at rss/browser.
• stesch 8y ago
  My average time on Instagram is 14 minutes a day. I need to cut it down a bit.
  • stabbles 8y ago
    How do you measure that (so accurately)?
    • taytus 8y ago
      In "Screen Time" (IOS) you can see how long you spend on social networking apps
    • pascoej 8y ago
      Apple screen time breaks down the time you use each app very well.
    • SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      If he is using the Instagram app, and Apple screen time or similar android feature it can give you a report based on per app time.
    • stesch 8y ago
      Feature of the Instagram app. On your profile page -> hamburger menu -> the one with the clock. (I have all the texts in German. Maybe something about "activity" in the normal version?)
  • nprz 8y ago
    Just delete the app from your phone. Check the web app once or twice a week if you want. You'll probably realize there really isn't much to be gained from checking instagram everyday.
    • darpa_escapee 8y ago
      My phone's ROM has Facebook and Instagram baked in. Unless I trust some unknown person's custom ROM, I'm stuck with Facebook properties doing god knows what on my phone.
• godelski 8y ago
  I've had a pretty similar experience when quitting facebook. One think I've noticed is that it forces you to have different kinds of relationships with people. My friends that live on the other side of the country? I text them once a month or so to keep up, not just like their photos on facebook and feel like I'm still friends. I feel like social media tricks you into thinking you're building relationships. And while I see that it can help you keep in touch, it encourages relationships that aren't worthwhile. They are just surface level. Having real relationships with people takes more work and without social media you are forced to work a little harder just to maintain them. But this is worth it in my opinion.
  • joe_the_user 8y ago
    My friends that live on the other side of the country? I text them once a month or so to keep up, not just like their photos on facebook and feel like I'm still friends. I guess. Thing is that everyone has different preferred communication mediums. I've had several old friends with whom I reconnected with on Facebook. When they dropped off this, they dropped out of my life again. One tried texting with but for me, personally, texting is the least pleasant or personal medium possible, good for coordinating appointments and nothing else.
    • godelski 8y ago
      So what is more personal? Instant messaging? Video chat? Calling? Those tools exist outside of facebook. I don't understand why there's this constant belief that the only way to communicate with someone outside of facebook is text or email.
      • joe_the_user 8y ago
        So what is more personal? Instant messaging? Video chat? Calling? There are many methods. I actually think what a given person finds as the best contact method varies based on the person's experience and their personal communication style. I like voice-calls and fb book chat best to stay in contact with someone. My point is that writing off any contact method is going write off some people, including some IRL friends as well some potential contacts. I don't know if there's a solution. Some people are also going to just really dislike a given medium also so the proliferation of communication channels in ways seems to produce stratified groups no matter what one does.
• maxxxxx 8y ago
  I only wish they would remove the "Likes" counters from social media. It's so easy to get addicted to that and instead of posting stuff that interests you you start planning and posting stuff that gets most likes. For some people who make it big that way it works out but most people get into that endless cycle of chasing likes. Happens to me even on HN...
  • askafriend 8y ago
    Check out the VSCO app. It's a photography community where there's no publicly visible like/re-share counters (though the actions themselves exist). They deliberately put the entire focus on the photo and the photographer and not on the comments/likes/share, etc. It's an example of deliberate product design that ecschews the trapping of more popular social media. I know there's a couple more examples that I came across recently but I can't think of them at the moment (I think SnapChat also gets some credit here to some extent).
  • jammygit 8y ago
    I like that HN has an upvote option, but I wish the numbers were hidden from me. I get pretty distracted
    • lbotos 8y ago
      I think the difference is "content" vs. "communication". Insta and FB have become Personal PR outlets where you make content for social validation. On HN, you communicate, and karma can be a proxy for social validation, but it's to help you calibrate for communicating on the platform. Karma serves the greater community by helping you understand what the community values, whereas likes serve to validate your own brand. I think the feedback loops are similar but subtly different.
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        I agree but it's still pretty easy to get addicted to karma.
  • ddingus 8y ago
• matte_black 8y ago
  It’s a self fulfilling prophecy, quitting any social network because you think it will make you happier probably will.
  • dwaltrip 8y ago
    It very likely has a real effect for some people, beyond just placebo.
    • matte_black 8y ago
      Only way to know is to get people who are actively using social networks and aren’t thinking about quitting to just quit for no reason. Chances are you probably won’t see any change in happiness, just a change in habits.
      • im3w1l 8y ago
        That would be a fascinating experiment to perform if experimenters could get compliance.
• thinkingkong 8y ago
  I quit those tools too and realized the number of real relationships I had was dramatically lower than I would have guessed. Leading one to wonder. If the friendships or whatever feelings these tools provide are placebo vs real. If something bad happens to you in the real world are the online friends going to help? Does support extend to seeing a number with a heart next to it. Does getting 1000 hearts replace the support of close friends when you experience loss?
  • eckza 8y ago
    I found this to be the case as well. In my experience: it's allowed me to focus all of my emotional energy on the 5-8 actual close relationships that I have, rather than burning myself out living like some kind of small-time celebrity with an audience of hundreds of casual acquaintances that expect me to like posts and respond to messages at their beck and call.
    • baroffoos 8y ago
      I feel like I have fallen in to this trap. I have become fairly well known on an IM platform just by creating/running a lot of group chats and I get loads of people PMing me wanting to chat so I end up having hundreds of small conversations with people I don't know rather than spending a lot of time with a few people I care about. But I also don't want to seem rude and ignore everyone.
      • eckza 8y ago
        I was like you, once. I helped run a hobbyist group on Facebook with ~15,000 members. I made myself as available to everyone as possible, frequently ignoring my wife actual friends to help random strangers over Messenger. Hours and hours and hours of my life burnt, wasted, gone. All for the sake of "helping grow the sport". One day, I just quit. Left everyone in the lurch, with no explanation. It was a huge turning point in my personal life. My mental health improved immediately - and all of a sudden, I had so much more time and emotional energy for the things in my life that I really, truly cared about. I've kept in touch with a handful of people that I was close to. My new policy is, "if I need to hear from you, you'll know because you have my phone number". The rest of them are still there, arguing about clipless vs flat pedals, and chromoly vs carbon fiber, and everything else, as if I'd never left - or showed up in the first place. More likely than not, they'll forget about you just as casually as they came into contact with you. Ask yourself if it would REALLY bother you to never hear from them again. In my case, it didn't; and I know for a fact that it really didn't bother them to go for long periods of time without hearing from me, too. It's okay to let acquaintances be acquaintances. You owe them exactly as much as they owe you - in the case of these people, it's "pretty much nothing" - in the case of the people who are a major part of your actual life, it's "a hell of a lot".
• tomlue 8y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn't feel this way? These posts seems susceptible to positive response bias, but they also seem more common lately. If you are like me you might be happy to know that there are other people who don't care about social media (being on it or off it or anything about it).
  • bromuro 8y ago
    I use Facebook and Instagram regularly and I am very happy with it. I like to share my pictures and my thoughts there and so do my friends.
  • tayo42 8y ago
    No your not. I'm always surprised that people's moods are so affected by these sites. If facebook disappeared tomorrow I cant imagine feeling any different. Id have to find a new way to share pictures on I guess. I tried instagram, and i never got into it. maybe its more of an instagram problem, then facebook now?. i think facebook is just dieing off in general, there seems to be lower activity. If anything I feel like facebook helps me realize people aren't doing epic things everyday, otherwise there would be way more activity going on on the site. or reddit might be my real time waster and no one talks about it hah
  • chapium 8y ago
    Honestly, when I first read about the negative effects of these platforms I came to a realization that I was using them in a negative way. I abandoned the platform and I don't feel any different. I just spend my free time differently now. When I see others addicted to the approval loop, I feel a little bad for them, but there is no reason others cannot enjoy social networks positively.
  • mrweasel 8y ago
    No, but I think it has to do with how you use social media. I no longer use any type of social media, but it didn't change anything, because I rarely used Facebook for anything, nor did my circle of friends actually post anything. My wife on the other hand is a member of several Facebook groups, either support groups for one thing or another, or selling of used items and she follows several companies. The volume of absolutely garbage opinions and commentary she sifts through everyday is astonishing. I mean how the hell are people offended by an offer from the local supermarket? Reading volumes of (unjustified) negativity everyday has to affect your mind in someway.
• sandov 8y ago
  I would use some social media, but social networks don't want me to use them. The other day I decided to install Instagram on my phone, only to be unable to find a valid download link on the website, there was only a Google play URL that didn't work because I don't have Google play installed. Then, I created a Facebook account but it asked for my phone number, which I'm not willing to give them, so they just blocked the account, but provided some really creepy ways to 'authenticate myself': uploading a photo of my face, or my government issued ID card. So, in the end, fb and instagram don't want me to use them.
• lkrubner 8y ago
  All of us who have engineering talent should think about what we can do to make it easier for people to set up their own presence on an international online network such as the Internet. If that means rethinking some of the essentials of IP, TCP, DNS, HTTP or HTML then we should do it, if it makes it easier for people to get away from the walled gardens. I've had my own domains since 1999. I used to think it was easy to set up a blog. When I was young I thought it was really fun to write basic HTML. I've been online for many years. But I've come to realize that a lot of things that I found easy are a bit too much for most people. In particular, paying something like $35 a year for a domain name, and maybe $5 a month for online hosting, is way, way, way beyond the commitment most people want to make. So I wonder if there are ways this can be made simpler or cheaper? I enjoy online conversation. And comments people post to my blog. I very much enjoy having full control over my own blog: http://www.smashcompany.com/ http://www.smashcompany.com/ I'd like everyone to have the experience that I have. But we need to find a way to make it much easier, otherwise the walled gardens will still be the default even 25 years from now.
  • tammer 8y ago
    I think this is valid and needed but I often wonder if we over-focus on the open web as the alternative over the other biggest widespread open technology in the world: email. I go to a lot of art & music performances. Lately, and particularly for the last few events I’ve attended, the performer emphasized joining their (MailChimp-managed) mailing list, because they didn’t want to seem uncool by promoting Facebook. I don’t know exactly what it looks like, but I strongly suspect the social graph that disrupts Facebook gets built on email, somehow. Something like MailChimp, but without the direct marketing/conventional newsletter expectation baggage and a focus on message consumers as well as producers. The advantages of “push” style communication, flexibility in styling messages, and potential for advertising all seem to me like a revolution waiting to happen. The openness of email, combined with the fact that everyone has one (even millennials!) are icing.
    • jslabovitz 8y ago
      I just hosted a small house concert last night for about 20 people; the age range was 18-50, I reckon. I put out a sheet of paper with spaces for names & contact info, for folks who wanted to be notified for future shows, and intentionally left the contact method open -- I figured if they wanted a group text, or a FB msg, I could do that. I was surprised to find that every person who signed up wrote their email address. So you may just might be right. Granted, this is a rural area (West Virginia, US) and there's far less incessant use of smartphones and the like. So my experience might not apply to more urban places.
• maverick2007 8y ago
  The second part of the headline of the piece ("and that's a big problem for social media companies") stood out to me as super-hyperbolic. From my perspective it seems to me that me and my peer's relationship with social media is like unhealthy food. We know it's bad for us, it's just way easier to reach for it than to reach for what it's replacing or substituting for, in the social media case traditional interactions. So the headline stood out to me as hyperbolic in the sense that most people know that sugar is bad for you but I'm not worried for that industry. Of course I could just be a minority and most people don't know that quitting would make them happier in the long run.
  • rdiddly 8y ago
    The hyperbole might've been injected later by an editor or whoever optimizes cnbc.com articles for pageviews & clicks. Not sure what that person's job title would be. (Senior Outrager? Assistant Click Angler? FUDmaster General?)
• nmca 8y ago
  So I have been wondering what the world would be like if randomly selected self-report happiness was an executive-level KPI (key performance indicator) at Facebook. Perhaps a billion people might be a few percent happier?
  • avip 8y ago
    Ask someone from Bhutan :)
• medievalMoose 8y ago
  Personally, I find it is still convenient for Oauth and event planning. Not sure that justifies the $400B market cap though...
• rdiddly 8y ago
  She is still doing a lot of approval-seeking in this very article, so I'm not sure how to handicap her odds of success at staying off Instagram for example, but I wish her luck. Social media is a lot like every other popular idea that ends up being bullshit. It always ends up costing you time and money in the short-term, and of course some years often have to pass before you finally figure out it's bullshit. So, somewhat unfairly, I refer to that whole class of things as "rackets young people fall for." Like smoking. (Both.) Or drinking, or... weddings. Marriage itself (oh snap). Playing in rock bands. Bungee-jumping. Skiing? I'd better stop before I insult everyone. Get off my lawn. (Lawns also. Total racket. Fuck lawns.)
  • partisan 8y ago
    I agree that throughout the article, she continues to signal in a way that one would signal on IG or FB. It’s offputting because she seems to miss the point of why social media can be unhealthy.
    • selestify 8y ago
      I'm afraid I'm bad at reading between the lines -- what sort of signaling is she doing in the article?
      • eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
        She is signaling her virtue by leaving those platforms, just like social media promoters signal their own virtue in other ways (diet, exercise, food pictures, stories about how awesome and relaxing they are at child care, etc) on those platforms.
  • fred_is_fred 8y ago
    You had me until skiing. Skiing is awesome.
    • vonseel 8y ago
      It really is, but as someone who started skiing when I was 3-4 years old and am now closing in on 30 and am not in excellent cardio shape... wow, skiing is tough. I had no idea it would be so much harder at 25 (years ago) than it was at 16.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• admiralspoo 8y ago
  Intelligent people are quitting Reddit too, that place has become a toilet except for very niche topics.
• Yizahi 8y ago
  Stopped using FB and IG, still uses Twitter "for work", riiiight, of course...
  • interesthrow2 8y ago
    This. There is nothing worse that Twitter when it comes to social media drama, attention-seekers and outrage shit shows. At least one can use Facebook as a private network of close friends. Twitter is just cancer at this point, which demonstrates the hypocrisy of the OP. She didn't quit social media, she stayed with the worst one.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• propman 8y ago
  I deleted Instagram a few months ago and I’ve not missed it once. The people who post more take up most of my bandwidth and those people I sincerely do not care about but due to social etiquitte have to follow. As I grow older I find that I really don’t care about maintaining superficial relationships with acquaintances, many of whom I might not see ever. Other negatives- I click on one picture of a scantily clad woman and my entire search feed turns into softcore porn for a month. Culture is too vain. Selfies, blatantly showing off, spending hours on touch up apps were looked down upon in the entire history of the internet until that Ellen selfie photo that got huge. Apple, Facebook, Google, the media all advertised and made it socially accepted that the vanity is good. That had it’s pros and cons but I feel like we are crossed over on the cons side too much. The culture is too global. Everyone’s opinions/posts/comments all converge to the same dumbed down pop culture accepted norms/memes. Everyone tries to be funny in the exact same socially accepted way and there is no originality.
  • Rotdhizon 8y ago
    To your second point, I also experience this. Being completely serious, I use IG to just follow cute animal accounts, mostly birds and pigs. Every now and then some promiscuity gets included in my feed. If I dare click on one of those pictures, my feed changes and starts showing me every other wannabe model or pornstar on the app. I just want to see cute birds, not humans.
    • roel_v 8y ago
      On pinterest, I have something similar, except that I'm mostly following cooking things and some 3d art here and there, and then every few weeks they sneek in some bible verses and anti-abortion propaganda. I'm sure some algo somewhere is binning me with some of those people based on me looking at dumpling recipes, but jeez.
    • technofiend 8y ago
      Imgur front page policy is no selfies and no NSFW posts, which results in lots of comics, animals and silly gifs. Might have some of what you're looking for?
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• gamblor956 8y ago
  I started ignoring the people who talked about quitting FB and Instagram and suddenly my life was a lot better without their constant negative energy. Turns out they were the problem, not the platforms. Good riddance.
  • castis 8y ago
    No doubt you can see the irony in your comment?
    • gamblor956 8y ago
      Temporary negative energy is not a bad thing. Constant negative energy is. Surely you can understand the difference?
• jusonchan81 8y ago
  I haven’t deleted my accounts but for whatever reason I haven’t been using it at all. Now that I think about it, the last time I logged into FB was about a year ago. That too I think I was somehow tricked into doing so with really clickbaity reminder emails. Instagram, I use the app for sake of the filters but I always save the photo and will remove my post immediately. Maybe there is a better app for me to just take photos with filters. The only time I look at instagram posts are when it’s embedded in some news website talking about something interesting happening around the world.
  • johnchristopher 8y ago
    I use snapseed. It's from Google, has filters and other basic editing function (crop, resize, etc.).
• randiantech 8y ago
  I no longer use fb, instagram and twitter. Was not a premeditated decision though. Just lost interest on them. I found traditional forums like hn more enjoyable.
  • Insanity 8y ago
    I miss the more traditional forums. In the past - many groups like clans on games had their own forum with their own members. With topics like "Humour", "Game X", "Game Y", "Introductions", ... Nowadays that seems to be mostly gone - though more replaced by Discord than Reddit. However, niches just moved to Reddit and I stayed behind :) I miss those times somewhat.
• JoshMnem 8y ago
  I've had a similar experience after leaving. My in-person social life is much better too. I read more books. If you want more motivation to quit, track the amount of time you spend on social media sites. After you're done scrolling through the algorithmic feeds, write down what you've learned and compare it to what you would have learned if you read a high quality book on the same subject or learned/improved a skill. More inspiration: https://medium.com/s/story/the-simple-truth-behind-reading-200-books-a-year-1767cb03af20 https://medium.com/s/story/the-simple-truth-behind-reading-2...
  • japhyr 8y ago
    Whenever I feel too distracted, I find a half hour or so of reading a book to be really grounding. That either regrounds me for whatever I really need to be doing, or it turns into a few hours of really enjoyable, focused reading. My son is seven, and he's just becoming comfortable enough with reading to enjoy reading for hours at a time. It's such a pleasure to witness this stage of development for him. I also enjoy sharing with him the tech insiders' view of devices. It's really reassuring to him to know that most knowledgeable people are struggling with how to manage the appeal of connected devices, and that it's not just some weakness on his part.
• mabbo 8y ago
  In October, I took the month off alcohol. It was difficult sometimes due to social pressure, habit, and shitty days. But I made it the whole month and felt proud of myself. For December, I decided to take the month of social media. It's day 2 and I've already opened Facebook out of habit 4 times. It's just so deeply ingrained in my habits. I'm thinking of giving up video games in January and meat in February. I don't think either of those will be as difficult.
  • cylinder 8y ago
    Manually unfollow everyone. It takes time but worth it. I never check FB anymore (over two years) because I have no news feed. I use Messenger still, unfortunately.
    • mabbo 8y ago
      That creates an unneeded amount of work come January of re-following everyone and everything I want to follow. This is a month experiment, not a permanent life change. At least, so far that's all it is.
  • jryan49 8y ago
    Just logging out of facebook worked for me. Or uninstall app from phone if you use mobile.
  • dorchadas 8y ago
    I bit the bullet and deactivated my Facebook a few weeks ago. The first few days I found myself going to website a lot, but seeing the login screen was always enough to make me exit out of it. Now, I rarely even start to type Facebook.com in, and only end up there if following a link from elsewhere.
  • cageface 8y ago
    I found giving up meat to be a lot easier once I started cooking at home. If you eat in restaurants a lot it's more difficult, although I've found that restaurants in the U.S. and Europe are much more likely to have some non-meat options now than they were even a few years ago.
• virmundi 8y ago
  My issue is that not all social networks allow you to delete your account. They don't even allow you to suspend your account or disable it so you can't log in. Personally I can't walk away from such sites. If I couldn't login, I'd be far less likely to waste my time on worthless debates. While the commentary on such sites is helpful, for the most part enough of the conversations devolve into authoritarians demanding the rights of others in order to not feel offended, that I'd rather leave permanently. Unfortunate such sites are like a train wreck for me. I can't look away. My only hope is banning.
  • ericd 8y ago
    Try pointing them to 0.0.0.0 in your hosts file? Or changing the password to something you don't know? At least then you'll have the chance to think about it when you're about to visit them.
    • virmundi 8y ago
      I have. I have an addictive personality. It’s my fault, and I think I’ll try to give them up this month, but obviously I’m failing even now.
      • frabcus 8y ago
        One option would be to give the account password to a friend and get them to change the email and password and not record the new ones.
      • ericd 8y ago
        No need to beat yourself up, I falter on that too sometimes. I even have a script that auto-adds it back.
• cyberferret 8y ago
  I think it is all dependent on how you curate your feed. On Instagram, I only follow friends I know well in real life, and even then only about 50 or 60 of them. I am an avid guitarist, so follow a lot of guitar builders or stores that post some great shots of lovely instruments. I pretty much _never_ follow any celebrities or "influencers" at all as I don't do the whole 'fake life' thing. For that reason, Instagram is actually a happy place for me. Whenever I need a little inspirational pick me up, I fire up the app and look through pictures of beautiful guitars, chess sets, planes etc. as well as the occasional picture of friends going about their lives and I feel happy. Now if only I could reduce the number of ads in the feed... ;)
  • msds 8y ago
    Same here! Essentially everyone I follow on Instagram is an artist or skilled craftperson, with at most 1 degree of separation from someone I actually know. That means my feed is mainly people posting awesome projects they're working on - it's really nice to look at, and inspires me to make stuff. Avoiding celebrities/influencers/boring friends is key.
  • rock_hard 8y ago
    Same here. I only follow maybe 10 friends on Instagram...the rest is artist, makers, hashtags and brands I am interested in
• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  I've been doing what I call #FacebookLessFridays. Think meatless Mondays but different. Knowing that I have no "obligation" to do FB is liberating and empowering. That said, I still check HN ;)
• freyir 8y ago
  I’d be sick of all these “deleting Facebook made me happier” posts, except I deleted Facebook and it made me happier, too.
  • Micoloth 8y ago
    Yeah, great point. All these "movements" that maybe could be seen as trends always become exagerated and annoying after a while. But, I hope it doesn't happen too soon in this case.
  • cronix 8y ago
    I'm getting a bit tired of them because there's like an article a week with the same 'ol thing. At this point it's not news, and more like "duh!"
  • jsemrau 8y ago
    I did that 10 years ago, so I am at least 10 years happier than you ;-)
    • ArrayList 8y ago
      You should make a post on social media and.. oh wait.
• stevewillows 8y ago
  Social media started out as 'friends hanging out', but turned into 'friends bumping into each other at the mall while salespeople spray us with perfume'
• dathinab 8y ago
  Welcome to a new world ;=) Lets turn tech into what it was meant to be: A tool to give people a better live. </philosophy>
• partisan 8y ago
  “Everything in moderation” She wants to go from the extreme of over-participating to the extreme of not participating at all. Somewhere in the middle is a healthy balance that she isn’t considering. As humans, we have the ability to understand and improve on our failings. First you have to understand that in fact you allow yourself to reach a state of excess and then understand why. If you aren’t able to approach the true issue then you will just repeat the same cycle the next time something social shows potential for excess consumption.
  • ahallock 8y ago
    The excess creeps in over time, I think, as you develop habits. Quitting cold turkey helps reset everything. It feels liberating to completely disconnect. Once you've been off for a few weeks, a month, then you can set up some boundaries and moderate usage, or maybe you'll discover you're better off without it.
  • Gatsky 8y ago
    This argument falls down because social media companies expend a lot of effort getting you to use their platform as much as possible. Why keep a snake that’s trying to bite you in your pocket?
    • partisan 8y ago
      I have to imagine that at some point in life, we have to take responsibility for our actions. That is, regardless of how much the cigarette or liquor companies market to me, I’m not going to allow myself to become addicted to their products. I drink. I very infrequently smoke a tobacco product. I don’t consume them in excess because I know it is bad for me. I suspect that we are going to see this type of movement more and more. It’s more signaling. It says, I don’t need to have social media to have a fulfilling life. My life is fulfilling. See pictures of me in [popular vacation spot]. See pictures of me having casual fun. But again, it’s not solving the true problem. If you needed the affirmation from random strangers, that won’t change.
• elorant 8y ago
  I don't understand why there has to be this dichotomy, you're either active on social media and miserable or off of them and happy. Why can't you have just a moderate use of Facebook. I mention FB because I don't really get Instagram, it's a bunch of photos with no context. I was forced to create a FB account to monitor the social media of a company I consult and my relationship with it thus far has been smooth as silk. Apart from the tracking stuff which I try to mitigate by blocking third party JS on web sites. Other than that it's another tool to get the job done. I don't befriend everyone that makes a request and rarely ever bother to view what my friends put in their timeline. I don't feel that there's only one way to use Facebook, which is to like and watch every little shit everyone in your social circle posts. Just sort stuff out and have a very conservative use of it. A chat session every now and then with friends you can't meet as often as you'd like and a little browsing of posts of the really important ones, like family and very dear friends. Everything else is just irrelevant and you can ignore it. Simple as that. Well at least it works for me.
  • zapzupnz 8y ago
    Rather like email, you filter out the noise, you decide what you're going to consume that day, and you ignore everything else. This is how I use Facebook. I basically only use it because it's a convenient messaging service; Hell will serve chilled water before my non-tech friends and family join Yet Another Messaging Service™, so I meet them where they already are. Plus, for better or worse, I rather like the Facebook Messenger interface and app. It's not perfect, but it's nice looking and consistent across platforms. If it weren't for most people I know being on Facebook and not everybody having Apple devices, I'd probably use LINE or stick to iMessage.
  • majewsky 8y ago
    > Why can't you have just a moderate use of Facebook. Because social media apps are designed to access the same neural pathways as addictive substances. Let me rephrase your question: "why can't you just have a moderate use of alcohol?" Sure, many people can (and note how that's not newsworthy), but try suggesting to an alcoholic to just drink a little less.
    • 8y ago
• _mrmnmly 8y ago
  I think it.. depends - I use instagram as my inspiration feed - it's full of nice things, not other people's lifes - so I think it depends who are you following or what content are you interested it - most of my instagram feed contains professional lego builds, custom mechanical keyboard or bauhaus-like designed products. Same for twitter - despite the fact I'm now slowly move into joining some weekly emails about the stuff I'm intersted in I still use twitter as a my main source of news about front-end tooling / programming / entrepreneur / design stuff.
• rbreve 8y ago
  I use instagram to get inspired, I follow artists, photographers and travelers. It really depends on how you use it. I also love photography, so I will always take photos when I travel. I don't think deleting instagram will make me happier or taking less photos. Everyone is different.
  • franzwong 8y ago
    Me too. I always search how others do composition, what good photo spots are before I go to a particular place to take photo.
• dana321 8y ago
  There is a black mirror episode that shows you how ludicrous it is, posting pictures and hoping someone will like them, and becoming obsessed with your score.
• sfilargi 8y ago
  I, on the other hand, re-joined Facebook after years of absence and was really disappointed. It’s all politics and memes. Just an eponymous Reddit.
• matthewwiese 8y ago
  Journalist writes the obvious and gets credit for what the dissenters have known since the inception of "social media." Shocker. At least it's upvoted highly here on HN; gives me hope that more and more and catching on.
  • Karunamon 8y ago
    In my time on this site, I've seen a variation of the "I quit $socialnetwork and you should too" post make the front page a few times a year. It's almost to the point of a tired meme.
• moretai 8y ago
  You'll be sad soon enough.
• makecheck 8y ago
  I have drastically reduced Facebook to like once a month or less (and even then, using only "mbasic.facebook.com" because their normal site is annoying to use). It takes less than a minute of my time because I rapidly realize how little value there is in the content. At this point their value is almost entirely to act as an address book because I’m a bit too lazy to dredge up at least one alternate contact method for each friend. Still, I think my “reconstruct normal address book and delete Facebook” day is coming soon. Sadly, part of the content issue is Facebook shooting itself in the foot because they refuse to show a simple chronological list of what people have been up to. They literally already have lots of content that would be interesting and they refuse to show it, instead opting for these weird algorithmic “views” that won’t even stay consistent between the time I follow a link and go back to the previous page. No wonder I quickly lose what little interest I had. I would love if social networks were banned from search results too. I am tired of Googling things on “the Internet” and finding lots of results that are essentially “we showed this entire page to Google but all you get is a log-in page”. If your site is displayed in search results, you should be required to have at least a paragraph or two “always on” so that I see something when I click the link, instead of absolutely no content and a log-in/create-account page. If you want to hide 100% of your content, make your own damned search engine.
  • vonseel 8y ago
    Yep, I shouldn’t have to re-neg on my promise to myself to “quit Facebook” just to check some details on a public invite / event that is only posted on Facebook.
  • Phanyxx 8y ago
    That's a pet peeve of mine as well. If you see something as you're clicking away from your timeline, good luck ever finding it again. Would it kill them to let you toggle between chonological and "curated"?
• scarejunba 8y ago
  I actually like Instagram. I only got on it a year ago and it has nice features like “you’ve reached the end of your new feed” and stuff like that. Takes me 30 s to go through every day and see what my friends have posted. The stories stuff let’s me tap to move through. Overall, quite pleased.
  • einr 8y ago
    you’ve reached the end of your new feed This was actually a nice, user-friendly addition for once. But it's pretty much a cure for a disease that they invented themselves; the removal of the strictly chronological feed.
• grungydan 8y ago
  I don't get how people can let Facebook take up so much of their life/time that they have to delete it or stop using it to "get their life back." I find it ridiculous. I use Facebook basically for two purposes. Sharing and consuming denk mems, and for scheduling gatherings of friends that use Facebook (which is mostly all of them, because this is about all they use it for too). People need to stop acting like these things are somehow controlling anything you do and realize that they're just tools. Do what you want with them. If that's "not use it" for whatever reason, fine. I just wish people would stop with these nonsensical "I QUIT FACEBOOK AND NOW MY LIFE IS SO MUCH BETTERER" stories.
  • bitwize 8y ago
    Quitting Facebook is like cutting all sugar, starch, and dairy: it's anecdotally improved so many Hackernews' lives that it's foolish not to do it at this point.
    • grungydan 8y ago
      Heh. Maybe I should get some detoxifying food pads and start buying the essential oils one of my coworkers peddles, too.
  • HenryBemis 8y ago
    I think that you are missing one of the biggest points. The problem with us, "facebook haters", is not that we are incapable of managing our time, or friends. I personally quit it because they are one of the worse trackers out there. They show zero respect to privacy, and every year we learn something shady practices that overshadows the previous year's shady practices. They started as "let's connect the world", and they ended up with "let's track the world, even if they don't want to have an account with us". I got a massive HOSTS file, a very well catered Adblock+ list and NoScript, just to stay away from those scumbags.
    • grungydan 8y ago
      And you seem to be missing that that isn't what the article was about. The article was talking about the people that I find absurd: "I can't stop letting sosh meeds run my life so I have to just not use them." The issue of trading data for service isn't new and wasn't the subject of the article.
• BooneJS 8y ago
  If there were a better way than Instagram to see beautiful photography from the National Parks in the US, I’d use it. As it stands, it’s not bad but I wish they’d just let me see an actual timeline and automatically mark images seen/archived.
  • chapium 8y ago
    You could go there :)
• alexnewman 8y ago
  I never used instagram much, but i found the same to be true of facebook.
• dharma1 8y ago
  I don't use instagram or twitter much and I don't really get it. For me the best interactions on the internet have been forums, reddit and IRC back in the day
• danielor 8y ago
  This is not surprising. There are many serious people worried about the mental health aspects of being on social media for extended periods of time. As with most things in life, moderation is key. They can be useful services as long as they do not consume you.
  • adjkant 8y ago
    The key point here though is that they are explicitly designed to consume you. Notification patterns, feed organization, how the online connection between two people is displayed, what gamification factors as included, what metrics are included on each "post/event", the list goes on. In reality only a small portion of people have the knowledge and skills to actively fight against these designs, and that mental power has a cost. This is why both of these platforms at their core start from a bad seed, even if they are able to birth positive things. IMO there are many solutions, but two very basic things can fix these problems: - Make users pay to use a service so it is ad-free or ad limited so that there is not an incentive to hold a user on your platform as long as possible - Remove public facing metrics such as likes/views unless absolutely necessary. When necessary, make them a harder UX to get to so that someone without the need cannot easily access them. People keep saying the model won't work, but when you look at ARPU for many of these services, many people would gladly pay that. People always frame it at replacing ads, but I think it's much more than that - it's making the experience of using the platform itself better by removing a lot of the incentives that cause bad mental issues with social media.
• dzonga 8y ago
  Bunch of us quit that poison decades ago. and we don't make a ruse about it.
• bsvalley 8y ago
  Sharing your personal experience on CNBC is much more powerful than IG and FB. What’s the difference though? Having a need to share our opinions and personal life is the reason why social platforms exist in the first place. The real problem is us, not software companies.
• rdl 8y ago
  Instagram makes me happy: my feed is full of cats, guns, food, and travel pictures from people I know (and from a couple of famous pro shooters, famous Japanese cats, a pro cat photographer, Beth Stern who does cat rescue, and a couple of vendors I use.) I post mostly travel, food, cat, and gun/range photos, sometimes datacenters/tech and weird architecture and conference photos. I can easily curate exactly what I want. I don't feel obligated to follow anyone because of social obligations, and I don't make any effort to post certain kinds of photos (other than generally trying for technical quality and "interesting").
• obilgic 8y ago
  I just decided to do that yesterday as well and deleted Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
• beefsack 8y ago
  Using social media nowadays is like standing in a room with everyone yelling at the same time. Only the loudest people get heard, and they rarely have important / interesting / well informed things to say.
• strimp099 8y ago
  I wonder how many people are quitting it because of Screentime
• bb101 8y ago
  I use Instagram like I imagine others use Pinterest or browse lifestyle magazines. Subscribe to a few nice cooking, travel and photography feeds and open it once a week or so for inspiration. I would never consider posting my own photos on there, the same way I wouldn't consider mailing my own article to a magazine.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• rdxm 8y ago
  two words: no shit!
• rdxm 8y ago
  social media is the tobacco of the modern(sic) world. the science is clear. shit-can all of it, get outside and go "be somebody", which will never happen on FB, Instagram, etc.
• huxflux 8y ago
  How is this news? I thought this would be common knowledge in 2018.
• blhack 8y ago
  There are currently about 30 people at my house for a family dinner. We aren't an actual, blood family, but we are close friends that crisscross paths through our various jobs and life events. We keep track of each other via Facebook. We organized this event, and every other of these events (which are recurring) via Facebook. Tomorrow morning, we will comment on and share each other's photos of the event via Facebook. I get that some people don't like the service, and that's fine. I personally find it incredibly useful.
  • pcurve 8y ago
    Maybe that's what FB will eventually turn into, mostly. An evite.com
• cauldron 8y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/chinas-selfie-obsession https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/chinas-selfie-...
• stratelogical 8y ago
  Question is: would there be a lot of people willing to take these so called baby steps if they can post pics like this on the CNBC website - https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2018/11/30/105602974-1543610916557chrissy-santorini1.530x298.jpg https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/edit..., and would that make them happier? Where baby steps according to her is removing Facebook and Instagram apps off the phone, and logging out on the web “without fully disabling or deleting them”).
• mjd 8y ago
  “We have an enormous ecological disaster created by badly-designed social media now being used by people to control and exploit human beings in all sorts of ways. “That’s the consequence of social media structures which encourage people to share using centralized databases, and everything they share is held by someone who is no friend of theirs who also runs the servers and collects the logs which contain all the information about who accesses what, the consequences of which is that we are creating systems of comprehensive surveillance in which a billion people are involved and those people’s lives are being lived under a kind of scrutiny which no secret police service is the 20th century could ever have aspired to achieve. And all of that data is being collected and sold by people whose goal it is to make a profit selling the ability to control human beings by knowing more about themselves than they know.” — Eben Moglen https://web.archive.org/web/20120414150710/http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120414150710/http://www.betabe...
• perseusprime11 8y ago
  Instagram is just porn, steroids, and protein supplements.
  • yesforwhat 8y ago
    then your friends suck
• ehnto 8y ago
  Me too. Except instagram I started using afterward, and my engagement with it was much different. I just put some riding photos up from time to time and I only have good friends on there. No spam and my friends are rad so I don't get the social showboating or preaching. I reduced phone usage in general, and I would only open the app once every couple of days and that's normally to post a picture. My main change about how I use my phone is that I only touch it when I have a task to achieve, and that is frankly very infrequent. It also doesn't go everywhere with me. If I can do something on my PC later I prefer that to using the phone. Convenience is not a substitute for substance and I have found myself happier when I delay things to be done thoughtfully later rather than getting them done now.
• slics 8y ago
  Next thing on the list - when you walk in the house, turn off your phone. Only then you will feel as if you are free, and the free time it’s yours to do whatever you feel like. You soon realize that there is so much you can do without the social media in your fingertips. Enjoy it.
  • grecy 8y ago
    Currently I'm using a phone just to tether as I move around Africa. I turn it on do so some work, then turn it off and put it away. It feels extremely liberating to be free of the phone.
• LeicaLatte 8y ago
  When there is a fire your social network is likely to recommend more fuel. Not the extinguisher.
• rb666 8y ago
  Deleted my Facebook 6 years ago, feels good being a trendsetter \o/
• bitrrrate 8y ago
  Deleted Facebook and Instagram years ago. There was no point to any of it. It’s astounding that with all our tech advancements we are so good at building HA distributed systems that can allow people to over share their baby pictures or political opinions while people are still dying of cancer.
• bayesian_horse 8y ago
  I have to use facebook for a couple of specific aspects in my social life, otherwise I would probably quit it altogether. As such I would say Facebook is improving my social life, rather than depriving it. That being said, I am extremely aware of the potential negative impact.
• xte 8y ago
  I never been nor on FB nor on Instagram and never feel the need of being on. Many keep asking me for WhatsApp, Skype, Hangout, ... I polity decline saying I have mail, with a good setup not crappy webmails, and I have a VoIP {soft,desk,cordless}phone(s) with plain PSTN numbers from multiple countries so anyone can call me toll free from their PSTN/VoIP/GSM phones. The problem in that sense is that people do not know other system exists. Not only "casual people" but technician do not know them. Often I find programmers (not code monkeys, not stupid people, not "ignorant" one) that do not understand how my Emacs works, for them seems magic. Many when I say that I have RSS via mail, notes from mobile (BlitzNote) via mail, projects&c via mail they think it's impossible to handle such volume of messages, when they see a modern (ancient) MUA the seems child looking at some incredible machines. IMO the sole solution came from a state-backed action that start to limit actual IT trends for the sake of democracy, competition and national safety and empower universities and schools enough to teach basic IT concept not in term of ridiculous "coding courses" but in terms of IT freedom and dangers like democracy vs dictatorship in politics.
  • kkarakk 8y ago
    some things youre extolling will mean social ostracization. if i tell someone to email me vs whatsapping me with the phone number they already have, you know what will happen? the person will just say it's too much hassle to contact me. also rules out usecases for people who aren't actually "settled" and have to follow social norms in some areas- actually expecting a girl to contact me via phone or email before the first date, i'd be living in a fantasy land. it just won't happen
    • xte 8y ago
      If someone is not willing to contact me via classic phone, mail or SMS well... I do not need to be contacted. It's not a matter of social ostracization. Also IMO it's a lesson I give for free to my contacts because I explain why I do not use such services.
    • napban 8y ago
      This can work both ways. Yes, I have occasionally missed out on things as I don't use Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. However... I find that instant messaging enables and promotes poor organisational skills in colleagues. Rather than processing tasks in a timely and professional manner, they have a safety net of being able to send a group message at 23:30 the night before a meeting the next day. I also find that instead of a well planned, concise email, these people will spam colleagues with a string of brain-fart messages until, 60 minutes later, a consensus is reached. Funnily enough, when there is no option for this, people never have a problem contacting me in a professional way.
• nistak04 8y ago
  I’m a student and I deleted the twitter app. In my timeline, all my classmates talked about who they don’t like or so. After quitting I found myself relaxed because I don’t need to be careful about the existence of friends who are bothered by my trivial behavior. The twitter unfriend custom was awful.
• prince005 8y ago
  I too did quit facebook and instagram like 6 months ago, since then I have achieved so much. For starters I have a Job and 6 pack (abs not beer:) and not to mention my relationship with people near to me has drastically improved. I think this was one of my best decisions ever and I am really happy to see that so many people think the same way!
• sudo_rm 8y ago
  Around January of this year, I took the plunge and deleted all of my social media accounts. It's been great, and I am pleasantly surprised with how easy I was able to cut cold turkey. What I can not seem to quit, however, is excessively watching YouTube and Twitch. I spend so much of my time everyday on these platforms and I find it difficult to pull myself away from them. If anyone has any tips or advice on this, I would appreciate it.
• ttroyr 8y ago
  What would you think of a Facebook alternative that was the same, except it shows you content only based on who you're around most frequently (using GPS tracking or check-ins). That way your friends in real life (who you actually spend time with) match what you see of your friends' activity online.