4 ms·

This is very true. However it is certainly the subset I find myself on the most, ha. I think also for a lot of people, social media is the internet and almost i

This is very true. However it is certainly the subset I find myself on the most, ha. I think also for a lot of people, social media is the internet and almost inextricably so. How often do we see on this very site people bemoaning only visiting the same N websites when there's more websites than ever? I think maybe perhaps for me a "read-only" internet would be useful, like a feature phone in a way. Might have to go and update my /etc/hosts now...

emodendroket 6y ago
I stopped using Twitter for Lent a couple years ago. After the first few days I stopped thinking to look.
- dominotw 6y ago
  same. added reddit, twitter and fb to me /ect/hosts on my laptop, stopped looking after a while. I never go to those sites on my new laptop even though i can.
hunter-gatherer 6y ago
> I think also for a lot of people, social media is the internet and almost inextricably so. I'm glad you've posted this. I've been observing this for a long while, and it drives me crazy. My spouse (30) is actually a good example of this. For most people smart phones and tablets aren't the "super computers in people's pockets" often touted on forums like these. They are really simply just gateways to social media. I'm on mobile so this will be short, but it seems there are consequences of this: it seems like most people aren't actually good at finding information on there internet. Many no longer seem to have a concept of physical data storage. Many still struggle with understanding the very basics of internet security, or passwords. It also seems like so much more work has just been offloaded to the individual under the guise of "you can do this from the comfort of your own home". Or maybe it's just me...
- noir_lord 6y ago
  Not you, I have the same problem with my mum - to her at this point Facebook and YouTube are the internet. She is entirely almost a passive consumer of what they algorithmically feed her - it also shapes her worldview in some weird ways - some of her personality change is just part of getting older I'm sure but you can almost spot the change when she starts discussing something that she saw on Facebook.
noir_lord 6y ago
There are two distinct groups with some overlap. There is the "social media is the internet" group and the "social media is part of the internet" group. I'm in the latter and happier for it, I have a facebook account (because of Oculus gah!) with no friends, no activity and I never check it and I have a twitter account which follows a handful of programmers and a lot of project accounts. It's strange because my mum is heavily in the former group so when we talk her worldview is shaped by Facebook to an uncanny degree - it's worrying how much so.

emodendroket 6y ago

I stopped using Twitter for Lent a couple years ago. After the first few days I stopped thinking to look.

dominotw 6y ago
same. added reddit, twitter and fb to me /ect/hosts on my laptop, stopped looking after a while. I never go to those sites on my new laptop even though i can.

hunter-gatherer 6y ago

> I think also for a lot of people, social media is the internet and almost inextricably so. I'm glad you've posted this. I've been observing this for a long while, and it drives me crazy. My spouse (30) is actually a good example of this. For most people smart phones and tablets aren't the "super computers in people's pockets" often touted on forums like these. They are really simply just gateways to social media. I'm on mobile so this will be short, but it seems there are consequences of this: it seems like most people aren't actually good at finding information on there internet. Many no longer seem to have a concept of physical data storage. Many still struggle with understanding the very basics of internet security, or passwords. It also seems like so much more work has just been offloaded to the individual under the guise of "you can do this from the comfort of your own home". Or maybe it's just me...

noir_lord 6y ago
Not you, I have the same problem with my mum - to her at this point Facebook and YouTube are the internet. She is entirely almost a passive consumer of what they algorithmically feed her - it also shapes her worldview in some weird ways - some of her personality change is just part of getting older I'm sure but you can almost spot the change when she starts discussing something that she saw on Facebook.

noir_lord 6y ago

There are two distinct groups with some overlap. There is the "social media is the internet" group and the "social media is part of the internet" group. I'm in the latter and happier for it, I have a facebook account (because of Oculus gah!) with no friends, no activity and I never check it and I have a twitter account which follows a handful of programmers and a lot of project accounts. It's strange because my mum is heavily in the former group so when we talk her worldview is shaped by Facebook to an uncanny degree - it's worrying how much so.