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It's very odd, I use to use Instagram and it would make me depressed. IDK how to explain, I don't even have any friends on there I follow. Just something about

It's very odd, I use to use Instagram and it would make me depressed. IDK how to explain, I don't even have any friends on there I follow. Just something about seeing everyone at their best 100% of the time, doing amazing things 100% of the time, never facing adversity 100% of the time. I know it's not realistic but it still gets to your head. I uninstalled it from my phone I feel better about myself after a few weeks. I'm guessing most of, if not all, social media is the same. I'm slowly trying to ween myself off but it is so meticulously addictive.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> IDK how to explain, I don't even have any friends on there I follow. Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. If you're just browsing popular photos from people you don't know, it's basically an interactive and targeted version of watching TV. We all grew up understanding that endless TV consumption is an unhealthy activity that we should minimize, but it has taken a while for the same sentiment to be applied to social media. I don't bother with the discover tab in Instagram and I mostly follow people I know. I can usually catch up on everything in 5-10 minutes per day at most, including some comments on friends' photos. > I'm slowly trying to ween myself off but it is so meticulously addictive. Being addicted to anything is a massive trigger for depression, especially when it displaces productive activities and replaces them with sedentary consumption. If you can't use something without becoming addicted, it's best to not use it at all.
- sildur 5y ago
  > Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. Not even that... Facebook can show you the worst of your friends and family. Doesn't feel healthy.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Instagram is making this style of usage more and more difficult, most recently by burying seen posts behind a link and feeding you discovery crap after that
- azemetre 5y ago
  > Being addicted to anything is a massive trigger for depression, especially when it displaces productive activities and replaces them with sedentary consumption. If you can't use something without becoming addicted, it's best to not use it at all. I know it sounds trite but I feel like social media today (or maybe all forms of media honestly) makes the barrier to ill-will extremely easy. If you were a young adult (at least from what I'm told) in the 50s/60s/70s it was hard to be addicted to TV because it would literally go off the air at 11 pm (or midnight?). What happens after I watch a show on Netflix? It immediately plays the next one. You couldn't get lost in extreme opinions because in order to see those extreme opinions you've had to of met an extreme person (on a soapbox with xeroxes so I've been told), you wouldn't run into 100s of them as you do when going onto FB, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, tik tok, etc. How can I as an individual compete with billion dollar companies that literally hire neuroscientists/psychologists to make something as addictive as possible?
  - minikites 5y ago
    >How can I as an individual compete with billion dollar companies that literally hire neuroscientists/psychologists to make something as addictive as possible? You can't, which is the reason we need government regulation. This clearly isn't self-regulating (like most things) and the purpose of government is to act in these matters on behalf of society.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      I quit. I self regulated. I don't like these companies, and I think they're evil. I still don't think it's the government's job.
      - cycomanic 5y ago
        Do you believe the government should regulate if alcohol should be sold (and advertised) to children/teenagers? What about other drugs?
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > How can I as an individual compete with billion dollar companies that literally hire neuroscientists/psychologists to make something as addictive as possible? If someone can't moderate their own consumption of something despite their best efforts, abstinence works. Similar story with alcohol: Plenty of people have no problem moderating their consumption, but a small percentage of people really struggle with limiting their intake. For the latter group, not drinking any alcohol at all is a great solution. I think this defeatist concept that social media is too addictive to resist sets a lot of people up for failure. It's not only possible to use social media without getting addicted, but it's the norm for the vast majority of people who use social media. If you're in the minority of people who can't moderate your own usage, then abstaining completely might be the best choice. But don't assume that addiction or uncontrolled doom-scrolling is inevitable.
- teclordphrack2 5y ago
  > Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. None fake friends and family. Got a handful of fam that are so fake with what they post. Act like they do it all and now one helps them. Turns out they are narcissistic users.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    Question: what does "fake" mean here? I've seen it a lot, and it's clearly negative, but I don't know exactly what makes somebody "fake". Is it that they tell a lot of lies? Or that they're not trustworthy friends? Or just that they're not very good people?
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  > Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. And we already had a good solution for that: email.
loceng 5y ago
Part of it is the incongruence of your present moment environment doesn't match what your eyes are telling you, causing a cognitive dissonance or confusion of sorts - even if merely feeling based; I imagine people who are mostly in their head, their mind strongly always on, perhaps used as a coping mechanism, are more likely to be less negatively influenced by that incongruence as they may not be as connected to and therefore as influenced by their body, the feelings of body to contrast with mind.
standardUser 5y ago
That was not Instagram but rather the set of accounts you chose to follow on Instagram. Choose to follow all dumb meme accounts and you would never have had that experience. Choose to follow all stand-up comedy accounts (or nature or music or comic books) and you would again have an entirely different experience. It's not social media that is creating those problems, it's the way users choose to use social media. Though I'd readily admit that the proprietors do everything they can to make the initial experience as painfully addictive as possible.
- conradev 5y ago
  Even for something as subtle as following a nature account – chances are that when you see it, you'll be in bed or on the toilet or at work and not in nature. You could still feel like you're missing out :(
mumblemumble 5y ago
It's admittedly an extreme case, but I've been seeing Instagram fairly directly harm a friend's mental health. She is repeatedly seeing people on Instagram doing elaborate things - decoration, cooking, parenting, etc., and it's giving her unrealistic expectations about what standards she should be upholding in everything she does, be it cooking or crafting or interior décor or parenting or whatever. She isn't just trying to keep up with the Joneses, she's trying to keep up with the Joneses and the Nguyens and the Singhs and the Smiths and the Telliers all at the same time. The extreme impossibility of anyone actually doing this has more or less turned her life into (in her estimation) an endless stream of failure, and it's really wearing her down. The craziest thing is, it happened so quickly. On year she was doing her own thing and loving it. Then her mom got her onto Instagram, and a year later she was trying to do everyone else's thing and chronically burnt out. I'm not sure it's entirely Instagram's fault, though. A while back I decided to stop renewing my Make Magazine subscription for more or less the same reason.
- ShroudedNight 5y ago
  > ...it's giving her unrealistic expectations about what standards she should be upholding in everything she does... It sounds like Instagram is essentially the generalization of pornography.
- bronco21016 5y ago
  This is a huge issue with social media and Instagram in particular. I see it a lot on YouTube as well. It’s like the Joneses suddenly became EVEN further ahead of everyone because the internet has such wide reach and only selects for the best of the best. It destroyed my marriage personally. My ex became obsessed with being the “BEST”. Went as far as creating multiple accounts in Instagram to highlight achievements in multiple areas. The obsession resulted in us no longer knowing each other. We spent essentially no time together and time spent together was spent obsessing over one of the accounts. When I noticed how it was changing us I deleted it. I hope my ex finds happiness in some way some day. For me, I know I’m a much happier person not being wrapped up in that constant game of comparison against people I simply cannot compare to because my life situation is different.
- 5y ago
f430 5y ago
You are using it wrong. I use it to scout models and vulnerable insecure girls
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 55555 5y ago
  just checked your bio. at least you're using their preferred pronouns.
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, that's enough. Since we've asked you repeatedly to stop posting flamebait and you haven't, I've banned the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sriku 5y ago
The self doubt it can sow is horrible, but the way out is to realise you're in the matrix and it isn't real. For the younger populace, this is more dangerous because they haven't had much time (relatively) to experience the reality of life outside of the coloured glasses that social media offers. I hadn't used my FB account in about 8 years but hadn't deleted it. Just did that a few days ago and the sense of closure was awesome! In India, there is a psychological tendency to blame the person rather than the tool, so I'm even more afraid for people here.I mean a case like the suit against McDonald for hot coffee spilled on lap would be laughed at here. i.e. I'm expecting that "you're feeling depressed due to social media, you're the problem" kind of statements might actually fly with the people. I also see this changing for the better, so .. hopeful.
- tapland 5y ago
  I keep my account, but use Facebook as a tool, not as entertainment. I use it to search for items I need on the marketplace. I use it to join group chats for small events and organization since it would be a hassle to get neighbors and their friends to ditch it for my sake. I haven't opened instagram in ages, but keep it around for the very odd link to a post on it, and the same with Twitter. It has absolutely improved my mood. Even cutting down on HN is good, and cutting reddit from my life was the biggest relief I've experienced.
anonu 5y ago
I've stopped using Facebook, IG, etc.. What worked for me is to not completely disconnect. Instead, remove the apps from your phone and turn off all forms of notifications. These apps want your attention. But you should only give it to them when you want. Not when they tell you.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
  Yeah exactly. I had been noticing Reddit was really depressing and aggravating me; there was stuff on there that I would see and get angry about it, and the anger was what kept me coming back. When I realized that I uninstalled my reddit app from my phone that very night. It was a fantastic decision. I still have my account, but I only engage with it when I'm sitting at a desktop computer and have a specific community I'm engaging with. I'm a huge Formula 1 fan so on a race weekend, I'll check out some of the posts on /r/formula1, for instance. But no more /all, and most importantly, no more scrolling endlessly for hours. It's been a really great change.
Forge36 5y ago
I had to unfollow a couple of people. There's "having a good time" and there's "constant idyllic life". If you aren't careful it turns from "keeping up with x" to "comparing against x".
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  That's actually an issue with e.g. Facebook as well that goes back for as long as it's been around - people only post the good stuff, like vacations, parties, etc. Even if they're not intentionally trying to sell this lifestyle that a lot of Instagram influencers do, they are inadvertently causing the same problem. And on the receiving end, the reader of those wants to post those fun things as well, making it a self-reinforcing cycle.
  - Forge36 5y ago
    It's an issue with most curated sites, I unfollowed everyone on Facebook. For me, it comes down to "who do i talk to" if I'm not taking to someone I try to unfollow.
wcunning 5y ago
I have a very different experience with Instagram in particular. I have a very tightly controlled machinist and woodworker account that has taught me innumerable little things, connected me with people who have helped on all kinds of problems and only given me positive reinforcement. There are other communities I've dipped a toe in that are far more toxic, but I have made the choice to stop engaging in those communities as a result. On the other end of the spectrum, Facebook used to be a cesspool for me, since I didn't like the amount of politics and high school classmates I didn't like in high school in my feed. Then, I unfollowed everyone that posted any politics of any kind, unfriended people I intended to never see again, and now my feed is only a handful of groups that are incredibly friendly and helpful communities around overly obsessive coffee culture. Otherwise, I now use Marketplace pretty heavily since it seems to have largely replaced Craigslist in my area with better targeting that actually regularly gets my interests right. Now that I have made the choices to use the tool well, it's really really helpful. You have to take some responsibility for the bad experience you have on these platforms -- they only push you content you engage with, so you can choose to stop seeing that crap if you want to.
- bronco21016 5y ago
  I tried unfollowing everyone who posted politics back in 2016. I ended up with an empty news feed. I simply had unfollowed every active person in my friends list. Eventually that was the catalyst for me deleting my Facebook account. I do see value in things like marketplace but my experience when I left was so negative that I find it difficult to go back.
nlh 5y ago
My experience and $0.02: If you use Instagram the way "normal" people do, it's a path to sadness. Selfies, one-upmanship, parties, perfect cakes, perfect gardens, exotic vacations, etc. All the badness. It's just human nature and it's what the platform has become. Bleh. If, however, you go into Instagram and aggressively curate your feed to be hyper-specific to a (visual) niche you're interested in, it can be really, really great. I have 3 Instagram accounts - my "main" one (in which I follow friends), and that's become a hellscape of all of the above. I just don't use it anymore. My other 2 are hyper-specific: One follows pets (parrots, specifically), the other is all about coin collecting (@numismattack ahem shameless plug). Absolutely zero variation from those themes. And you know what? It's a really fun way to immerse yourself in those respective worlds! All interesting niche content, all the time. I suggest you (and others) give that a try. Ps - no matter what your main feed is, stay far far away from the "Explore" tab. That is brain poison. It's like pure algorithmic dopamine generation and it's the root of all evil on that platform.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Ps - no matter what your main feed is, stay far far away from the "Explore" tab. That is brain poison. It's like pure algorithmic dopamine generation and it's the root of all evil on that platform. Makes sense that an app built pretty much entirely around this feature is the hottest new thing in social media in 2020s.
- paganel 5y ago
  > you go into Instagram and aggressively curate your feed to be hyper-specific to a (visual) niche you're interested in, it can be really, really great. I can attest to that. From the beginning I didn't intend my IG to be some personal thing (there's no photo of me in there or details about my private life), just following some artsy subjects I was interested in back in the day. In the meantime is has changed into a feed of modernist and brutalist architecture (I really like that subject) and there's some really neat things I saw in there. My SO uses IG very similarly, her feed is now filled up by pets, mostly border collies (we have one at home).
ekianjo 5y ago
> I uninstalled it from my phone I feel better about myself after a few weeks. Next step: stop watching the news and feel even better
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
The charts in the article go until 2019, consider that teenagers have suffered an enormous amount of stress during the last year because of remote learning and lack of real social contacts, poor teenagers are much less equipped to cope with social media induced shame and guilt. It might be that these sad figures will go through the roof in the very near future. I think parents really need to take measures in order to cut social media consumption of their kids, if states are unable to influence the addictiveness of these platforms (how could one regulate something like this?)
8note 5y ago
You should follow my Instagram. Its horribly taken pictures of kinda boring moments
croh 5y ago
Sadly this is true for HN also, atleast for me.
kuu 5y ago
I have the same feeling, and even here in HN, where people makes such amazing things and I'm just here lurking
baby 5y ago
Try watching tv all the time and you’ll feel the same. Now a bit of tv to relax from times to times is probably good for you.
skc 5y ago
Heh, it helps if you're cynical by nature. From the very beginning I always sort of "known" that social media gave a very idealized view of people's lives. I remember once, I was sat outside at a burger joint watching a lady take literally 5 whole minutes taking pictures of her food at a specific table, while another gentleman (who was NOT with her) patiently stood waiting with a plate of his own food in his hands. Turns out the light hit that specific table so perfectly that these people were ok with letting their food get cold to get the perfect shot before they ate it. Of course, they could have been food writers but I've seen this type of scenario play out often enough that I tend to look at a lot of social media as a parody of real life.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I've been a frequent and undiscriminating Reddit user, and while the "idyllic life" / showing off posts make up a nontrivial portion of its content, there's a lot of things to offset it as well. Depression memes, deep fried ridiculous humor, cute animals, car accidents, the adventures of Florida Man, world news, etc. They used to have a lot more - "punching down" content, porn - but they've cleaned the site up over the years to appeal to a wider audience / advertisers / investors.
RikNieu 5y ago
Insta is the only social media app that consistently brightens my day. My secret? Follow topics, not people. My feed is filled with galaxies, animals, art... cool, interesting, inspiring stuff.
tiborsaas 5y ago
Besides people I know, I follow my interests on Instagram: generative art, architecture, interior design, music gear and some other niche stuff. I did the same on Twitter years ago, before that it didn't really resonate with me.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> IDK how to explain, I don't even have any friends on there I follow. Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. If you're just browsing popular photos from people you don't know, it's basically an interactive and targeted version of watching TV. We all grew up understanding that endless TV consumption is an unhealthy activity that we should minimize, but it has taken a while for the same sentiment to be applied to social media. I don't bother with the discover tab in Instagram and I mostly follow people I know. I can usually catch up on everything in 5-10 minutes per day at most, including some comments on friends' photos. > I'm slowly trying to ween myself off but it is so meticulously addictive. Being addicted to anything is a massive trigger for depression, especially when it displaces productive activities and replaces them with sedentary consumption. If you can't use something without becoming addicted, it's best to not use it at all.

sildur 5y ago
> Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. Not even that... Facebook can show you the worst of your friends and family. Doesn't feel healthy.
tomc1985 5y ago
Instagram is making this style of usage more and more difficult, most recently by burying seen posts behind a link and feeding you discovery crap after that
azemetre 5y ago
> Being addicted to anything is a massive trigger for depression, especially when it displaces productive activities and replaces them with sedentary consumption. If you can't use something without becoming addicted, it's best to not use it at all. I know it sounds trite but I feel like social media today (or maybe all forms of media honestly) makes the barrier to ill-will extremely easy. If you were a young adult (at least from what I'm told) in the 50s/60s/70s it was hard to be addicted to TV because it would literally go off the air at 11 pm (or midnight?). What happens after I watch a show on Netflix? It immediately plays the next one. You couldn't get lost in extreme opinions because in order to see those extreme opinions you've had to of met an extreme person (on a soapbox with xeroxes so I've been told), you wouldn't run into 100s of them as you do when going onto FB, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, tik tok, etc. How can I as an individual compete with billion dollar companies that literally hire neuroscientists/psychologists to make something as addictive as possible?
- minikites 5y ago
  >How can I as an individual compete with billion dollar companies that literally hire neuroscientists/psychologists to make something as addictive as possible? You can't, which is the reason we need government regulation. This clearly isn't self-regulating (like most things) and the purpose of government is to act in these matters on behalf of society.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    I quit. I self regulated. I don't like these companies, and I think they're evil. I still don't think it's the government's job.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      Do you believe the government should regulate if alcohol should be sold (and advertised) to children/teenagers? What about other drugs?
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > How can I as an individual compete with billion dollar companies that literally hire neuroscientists/psychologists to make something as addictive as possible? If someone can't moderate their own consumption of something despite their best efforts, abstinence works. Similar story with alcohol: Plenty of people have no problem moderating their consumption, but a small percentage of people really struggle with limiting their intake. For the latter group, not drinking any alcohol at all is a great solution. I think this defeatist concept that social media is too addictive to resist sets a lot of people up for failure. It's not only possible to use social media without getting addicted, but it's the norm for the vast majority of people who use social media. If you're in the minority of people who can't moderate your own usage, then abstaining completely might be the best choice. But don't assume that addiction or uncontrolled doom-scrolling is inevitable.
teclordphrack2 5y ago
> Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. None fake friends and family. Got a handful of fam that are so fake with what they post. Act like they do it all and now one helps them. Turns out they are narcissistic users.
- jfengel 5y ago
  Question: what does "fake" mean here? I've seen it a lot, and it's clearly negative, but I don't know exactly what makes somebody "fake". Is it that they tell a lot of lies? Or that they're not trustworthy friends? Or just that they're not very good people?
throwawayboise 5y ago
> Social media is best used for keeping in touch with friends and family. And we already had a good solution for that: email.

loceng 5y ago

Part of it is the incongruence of your present moment environment doesn't match what your eyes are telling you, causing a cognitive dissonance or confusion of sorts - even if merely feeling based; I imagine people who are mostly in their head, their mind strongly always on, perhaps used as a coping mechanism, are more likely to be less negatively influenced by that incongruence as they may not be as connected to and therefore as influenced by their body, the feelings of body to contrast with mind.

standardUser 5y ago

That was not Instagram but rather the set of accounts you chose to follow on Instagram. Choose to follow all dumb meme accounts and you would never have had that experience. Choose to follow all stand-up comedy accounts (or nature or music or comic books) and you would again have an entirely different experience. It's not social media that is creating those problems, it's the way users choose to use social media. Though I'd readily admit that the proprietors do everything they can to make the initial experience as painfully addictive as possible.

conradev 5y ago
Even for something as subtle as following a nature account – chances are that when you see it, you'll be in bed or on the toilet or at work and not in nature. You could still feel like you're missing out :(

mumblemumble 5y ago

It's admittedly an extreme case, but I've been seeing Instagram fairly directly harm a friend's mental health. She is repeatedly seeing people on Instagram doing elaborate things - decoration, cooking, parenting, etc., and it's giving her unrealistic expectations about what standards she should be upholding in everything she does, be it cooking or crafting or interior décor or parenting or whatever. She isn't just trying to keep up with the Joneses, she's trying to keep up with the Joneses and the Nguyens and the Singhs and the Smiths and the Telliers all at the same time. The extreme impossibility of anyone actually doing this has more or less turned her life into (in her estimation) an endless stream of failure, and it's really wearing her down. The craziest thing is, it happened so quickly. On year she was doing her own thing and loving it. Then her mom got her onto Instagram, and a year later she was trying to do everyone else's thing and chronically burnt out. I'm not sure it's entirely Instagram's fault, though. A while back I decided to stop renewing my Make Magazine subscription for more or less the same reason.

ShroudedNight 5y ago
> ...it's giving her unrealistic expectations about what standards she should be upholding in everything she does... It sounds like Instagram is essentially the generalization of pornography.
bronco21016 5y ago
This is a huge issue with social media and Instagram in particular. I see it a lot on YouTube as well. It’s like the Joneses suddenly became EVEN further ahead of everyone because the internet has such wide reach and only selects for the best of the best. It destroyed my marriage personally. My ex became obsessed with being the “BEST”. Went as far as creating multiple accounts in Instagram to highlight achievements in multiple areas. The obsession resulted in us no longer knowing each other. We spent essentially no time together and time spent together was spent obsessing over one of the accounts. When I noticed how it was changing us I deleted it. I hope my ex finds happiness in some way some day. For me, I know I’m a much happier person not being wrapped up in that constant game of comparison against people I simply cannot compare to because my life situation is different.
5y ago

f430 5y ago

You are using it wrong. I use it to scout models and vulnerable insecure girls

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
55555 5y ago
just checked your bio. at least you're using their preferred pronouns.
dang 5y ago
Ok, that's enough. Since we've asked you repeatedly to stop posting flamebait and you haven't, I've banned the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sriku 5y ago

The self doubt it can sow is horrible, but the way out is to realise you're in the matrix and it isn't real. For the younger populace, this is more dangerous because they haven't had much time (relatively) to experience the reality of life outside of the coloured glasses that social media offers. I hadn't used my FB account in about 8 years but hadn't deleted it. Just did that a few days ago and the sense of closure was awesome! In India, there is a psychological tendency to blame the person rather than the tool, so I'm even more afraid for people here.I mean a case like the suit against McDonald for hot coffee spilled on lap would be laughed at here. i.e. I'm expecting that "you're feeling depressed due to social media, you're the problem" kind of statements might actually fly with the people. I also see this changing for the better, so .. hopeful.

tapland 5y ago
I keep my account, but use Facebook as a tool, not as entertainment. I use it to search for items I need on the marketplace. I use it to join group chats for small events and organization since it would be a hassle to get neighbors and their friends to ditch it for my sake. I haven't opened instagram in ages, but keep it around for the very odd link to a post on it, and the same with Twitter. It has absolutely improved my mood. Even cutting down on HN is good, and cutting reddit from my life was the biggest relief I've experienced.

anonu 5y ago

I've stopped using Facebook, IG, etc.. What worked for me is to not completely disconnect. Instead, remove the apps from your phone and turn off all forms of notifications. These apps want your attention. But you should only give it to them when you want. Not when they tell you.

Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
Yeah exactly. I had been noticing Reddit was really depressing and aggravating me; there was stuff on there that I would see and get angry about it, and the anger was what kept me coming back. When I realized that I uninstalled my reddit app from my phone that very night. It was a fantastic decision. I still have my account, but I only engage with it when I'm sitting at a desktop computer and have a specific community I'm engaging with. I'm a huge Formula 1 fan so on a race weekend, I'll check out some of the posts on /r/formula1, for instance. But no more /all, and most importantly, no more scrolling endlessly for hours. It's been a really great change.

Forge36 5y ago

I had to unfollow a couple of people. There's "having a good time" and there's "constant idyllic life". If you aren't careful it turns from "keeping up with x" to "comparing against x".

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
That's actually an issue with e.g. Facebook as well that goes back for as long as it's been around - people only post the good stuff, like vacations, parties, etc. Even if they're not intentionally trying to sell this lifestyle that a lot of Instagram influencers do, they are inadvertently causing the same problem. And on the receiving end, the reader of those wants to post those fun things as well, making it a self-reinforcing cycle.
- Forge36 5y ago
  It's an issue with most curated sites, I unfollowed everyone on Facebook. For me, it comes down to "who do i talk to" if I'm not taking to someone I try to unfollow.

wcunning 5y ago

I have a very different experience with Instagram in particular. I have a very tightly controlled machinist and woodworker account that has taught me innumerable little things, connected me with people who have helped on all kinds of problems and only given me positive reinforcement. There are other communities I've dipped a toe in that are far more toxic, but I have made the choice to stop engaging in those communities as a result. On the other end of the spectrum, Facebook used to be a cesspool for me, since I didn't like the amount of politics and high school classmates I didn't like in high school in my feed. Then, I unfollowed everyone that posted any politics of any kind, unfriended people I intended to never see again, and now my feed is only a handful of groups that are incredibly friendly and helpful communities around overly obsessive coffee culture. Otherwise, I now use Marketplace pretty heavily since it seems to have largely replaced Craigslist in my area with better targeting that actually regularly gets my interests right. Now that I have made the choices to use the tool well, it's really really helpful. You have to take some responsibility for the bad experience you have on these platforms -- they only push you content you engage with, so you can choose to stop seeing that crap if you want to.

bronco21016 5y ago
I tried unfollowing everyone who posted politics back in 2016. I ended up with an empty news feed. I simply had unfollowed every active person in my friends list. Eventually that was the catalyst for me deleting my Facebook account. I do see value in things like marketplace but my experience when I left was so negative that I find it difficult to go back.

nlh 5y ago

My experience and $0.02: If you use Instagram the way "normal" people do, it's a path to sadness. Selfies, one-upmanship, parties, perfect cakes, perfect gardens, exotic vacations, etc. All the badness. It's just human nature and it's what the platform has become. Bleh. If, however, you go into Instagram and aggressively curate your feed to be hyper-specific to a (visual) niche you're interested in, it can be really, really great. I have 3 Instagram accounts - my "main" one (in which I follow friends), and that's become a hellscape of all of the above. I just don't use it anymore. My other 2 are hyper-specific: One follows pets (parrots, specifically), the other is all about coin collecting (@numismattack ahem shameless plug). Absolutely zero variation from those themes. And you know what? It's a really fun way to immerse yourself in those respective worlds! All interesting niche content, all the time. I suggest you (and others) give that a try. Ps - no matter what your main feed is, stay far far away from the "Explore" tab. That is brain poison. It's like pure algorithmic dopamine generation and it's the root of all evil on that platform.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Ps - no matter what your main feed is, stay far far away from the "Explore" tab. That is brain poison. It's like pure algorithmic dopamine generation and it's the root of all evil on that platform. Makes sense that an app built pretty much entirely around this feature is the hottest new thing in social media in 2020s.
paganel 5y ago
> you go into Instagram and aggressively curate your feed to be hyper-specific to a (visual) niche you're interested in, it can be really, really great. I can attest to that. From the beginning I didn't intend my IG to be some personal thing (there's no photo of me in there or details about my private life), just following some artsy subjects I was interested in back in the day. In the meantime is has changed into a feed of modernist and brutalist architecture (I really like that subject) and there's some really neat things I saw in there. My SO uses IG very similarly, her feed is now filled up by pets, mostly border collies (we have one at home).

ekianjo 5y ago

> I uninstalled it from my phone I feel better about myself after a few weeks. Next step: stop watching the news and feel even better

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

The charts in the article go until 2019, consider that teenagers have suffered an enormous amount of stress during the last year because of remote learning and lack of real social contacts, poor teenagers are much less equipped to cope with social media induced shame and guilt. It might be that these sad figures will go through the roof in the very near future. I think parents really need to take measures in order to cut social media consumption of their kids, if states are unable to influence the addictiveness of these platforms (how could one regulate something like this?)

8note 5y ago

You should follow my Instagram. Its horribly taken pictures of kinda boring moments

croh 5y ago

Sadly this is true for HN also, atleast for me.

kuu 5y ago

I have the same feeling, and even here in HN, where people makes such amazing things and I'm just here lurking

baby 5y ago

Try watching tv all the time and you’ll feel the same. Now a bit of tv to relax from times to times is probably good for you.

skc 5y ago

Heh, it helps if you're cynical by nature. From the very beginning I always sort of "known" that social media gave a very idealized view of people's lives. I remember once, I was sat outside at a burger joint watching a lady take literally 5 whole minutes taking pictures of her food at a specific table, while another gentleman (who was NOT with her) patiently stood waiting with a plate of his own food in his hands. Turns out the light hit that specific table so perfectly that these people were ok with letting their food get cold to get the perfect shot before they ate it. Of course, they could have been food writers but I've seen this type of scenario play out often enough that I tend to look at a lot of social media as a parody of real life.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I've been a frequent and undiscriminating Reddit user, and while the "idyllic life" / showing off posts make up a nontrivial portion of its content, there's a lot of things to offset it as well. Depression memes, deep fried ridiculous humor, cute animals, car accidents, the adventures of Florida Man, world news, etc. They used to have a lot more - "punching down" content, porn - but they've cleaned the site up over the years to appeal to a wider audience / advertisers / investors.

RikNieu 5y ago

Insta is the only social media app that consistently brightens my day. My secret? Follow topics, not people. My feed is filled with galaxies, animals, art... cool, interesting, inspiring stuff.

tiborsaas 5y ago

Besides people I know, I follow my interests on Instagram: generative art, architecture, interior design, music gear and some other niche stuff. I did the same on Twitter years ago, before that it didn't really resonate with me.