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My life after quitting social media
- durmonski 5y agoOr if I can put it in one sentence: I don't want to consume the life of others. I want to create a life worth consuming.
- eplanit 5y agoWell put. My only social media connection was via Twitter, which I quit a month ago. This states the motivation, and the resulting benefit, succinctly.
- xwdv 5y agoA life worth consuming on social media?
- NortySpock 5y agoA life worth living. It doesn't have to be Instagram worthy.
- xwdv 5y agoAren’t lives worth living a subset of Instagram worthy lives?
- cortesoft 5y agoI don't think that is the summary, because a main focus of the post is that social media makes you do things that others thing are "worth consuming", so you can post it for others to consume.
- scollet 5y agoMerzbow has an ironicly titled song name: "Become the discovered, not the discoverer"
- accraze 5y ago+1 for Merzbow
- scollet 5y agoYeah I'm still exploring the noise scene so if you have any recommends please do share. I never thought I would be able to work through the music, but damn there are some really good entries in the genre.
- Leparamour 5y agoThere goes my evening...
- scollet 5y agoHope you enjoy.
- criddell 5y agoIn this context, is consume the same thing as follow? There's something about the use of consume in this way that has always bugged me.
- brightball 5y ago> Social media is like cigarettes and alcohol. Toxic. Addictive. Yet widely accessible. I never thought I would say this...but I have to wonder if cigarettes and alcohol may be healthier options than social media, simply because they usually accompany real social lives? EDIT: To be clear, any addictive substance is a bad choice. Please entirely disregard this analogy in that sense.
- nowherebeen 5y agoIts like comparing mental health and lung cancer.
- mariodiana 5y agoI forget what magazine carried this essay, and it was from maybe about 10 years ago, but a journalist decided to take up smoking (temporarily) at the age of 30-something or 40-something, with the idea of writing a story about it. One of his takeaways was the sociability of it, especially since everyone nowadays is forced to exit the office building to have a smoke.
- DiggyJohnson 5y agoI usually pride myself on my google-fu, but this one has eluded me. I also remember this essay. Do you remember anything more about the essay that would help me find it? There is so much information and blogspam about their for the {nicotine, addiction, cigarettes, voluntary, chooses, sociability, constraints} results.
- fossuser 5y agoI also remember it - I’m pretty sure he was 42? Some other things: - might have been the Atlantic - he talked about etiquette around things like flicking ash and smoking circles - he talked about asking his doctor about starting smoking It was definitely an interesting one
- lolpython 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ArtDev 5y agoI quit sometime last Spring. I don't know what happened but I finally was able to. I think I feel happier because I have lower expectations and my small successes feel big in my mind because I am not comparing to others. For example, a few minor home repairs over the weekend feels huge to me. I really feel great about them. One of my best friends is a carpenter and I know shouldn't compare.. but I think I do it unconsciously. I still have social media accounts. I posted a last message once I knew I wasn't going back to social media.
- tfandango 5y agoI still have my accounts and browse through them once every day or two in order to see what people are up to, but I consciously made a decision to stop posting a few years ago, and then to stop commenting on contentious threads maybe a year or so ago. I agree life has been much better, there's no lingering obligation to respond to someone who disagrees with you N times/hour. I see some of my friends posting things to "make people think" or whatever but somehow the discourse is never constructive.
- unemphysbro 5y agosmall victories, right? :)
- kylegalbraith 5y agoInteresting and insightful read. But the Facebook and Twitter share buttons at the bottom were....ironic.
- Zamicol 5y agoAlso, is Hacker News social media?
- martin_a 5y agoUser generated content, comments, ratings. 3/3 would say so, yes. :-)
- Nicksil 5y ago>User generated content, comments, ratings. 3/3 would say so, yes. :-) That's not great criteria for determining if something's "social media". All those things you listed were part of websites long before social media came along.
- lapetitejort 5y agoMy litmus test for what is and is not social media depends on how many people use their real name as handles, and how actively the platform promotes real names. Facebook, nearly 100%, Twitter, less so; reddit and HN, pretty low. Real names transform the old forum/IRC chat room into social media.
- Nicksil 5y agoNo, it's a forum.
- nonameiguess 5y agoThere is no way to intentionally follow specific users or customize your view of the site depending on who is a part of your personal network. There is no personal network at all. Those seem to me to be the defining features of social media. Hacker News is just a crowd-sourced link aggregator with comments that requires persistent accounts so the links and comments can't be easily spammed. Of course, so is Reddit, but I personally don't think Reddit should be considered social media, either. You can personalize your content view there, but the personalization is based on content topics, not the following of specific users.
- aquir 5y agoI was able to dodge it. Recently, I was thinking of joining Facebook because of Groups. I don’t have friends and I’m missing to have conversations with similar minded people but I just can’t make myself doing it. The sad things is that probably there are no alternatives. All platforms are almost equally bad.
- emptyparadise 5y agoI find myself replacing it with other garbage, sadly. Bad brain...
- billfruit 5y agoSometimes I feel HN also is a similar attention sink, even Wikipedia as well. They also can draw you in for information snacking, and before you know hours have gone. Commenting and reading responses in HN is also another attention consuming loop.
- vymague 5y ago"HN comments are terrible. On any topic I’m informed about, the vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong." From https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ . I happen to agree.
- georgeecollins 5y agoAll true, but in both cases I control what I look at. I am the filter. If I waste my time or learn the wrong things, it is on me.
- city41 5y agoBut if you keep reading he then makes the argument that despite that, there's still quality content to be found and gives some nice examples.
- randomdata 5y agoStands to reason. The purpose of commenting is to be wrong, so that someone will correct you, allowing you to learn more about the subject matter. Cunningham's Law. If you are well versed in a topic there is no reason to talk about it. You are already well versed in it and gain nothing from discussing it further.
- TremendousJudge 5y agoThe Gell-Mann amnesia effect: "...In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- cortesoft 5y agoI always find these "quitting social media" blog posts a bit ironic... "social media is addictive and encourages doing and posting things just for the attention and to make other people think I am interesting... so I wrote this blog post about quitting social media, and am posting it to hacker news and other sites... I hope lots of people read it and think I am insightful"
- lrobinovitch 5y agoThe internet is for sharing. Social media is for driving engagement from users, mining their data, and encouraging unhealthy social comparison (as well as, you know, organizing events and messages and stuff). Nothing wrong with sharing a blog post on an experience you had that you think may be of value to others.
- haswell 5y agoTo dive a bit further into this, I was very socially active on the Internet 20 years ago, and it was a magical thing. I made friends that I still communicate with today, and I credit the amazing community I aligned myself with for helping me become the person I am today (in a good way). Social media today is nothing like those early communities, and I rarely participate for that reason. Some of the core motivations (e.g. desire for connection/community) exist in both places, but the similarities pretty much end there. The closest modern day equivalent (for me) is HN and some very niche subreddits.
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoDitto. The important thing about the forums of yore were that they were largely composed of users who self-selected into it, and were oriented around a particular topic. They didn't have the thing were tons of people latched on and then just hung around for no reason other than their own boredom. I think there's a fundamental difference in how forums are used vs social media. The catch-all nature of social media molds it into a device which people use to construct an idealized representation of themselves. Forums seem to head more in the direction of discussing/arguing about focused topics, rather than identity-creation.
- winternett 5y agoIt's almost impossible to promote art and music organically these days without being involved in social media. It's different than traditional sinful addictions in that way... Product designers don't realize that each user has a different purpose for using social media, and totally different goals, while the basic narrative is that all of social media is dedicated towards selling products and building online celebrity status. The real problem is that social media sites try to dominate the world without creating sub-communities for specialization, and they have also devalued and underestimated the value of being able to build followers in hopes of a focus on engagement and paid ad revenue. Social sites usually focus on one front page, and one script/method for success on them, and that's a massive failure to the different reasons users use them. Social sites start out fair, with orderly time lines and visibility of individual accounts, but as year over year profit and user base increases becomes their focus, they grow corrupt and too big to change. They stop developing useful features and turn towards profit. It's a cycle they repeat until their user base wakes up to the reality of it all and realizes all of their content will be deleted if they quit. It is a cycle of abuse and loss compounded by lost time... More like the year I spent wound up in GTA4 than like drinking Tequila and smoking Newports.
- unraveller 5y agoSocial sites were always on a quest to attract those with the greatest promotional capability, from start to finish. If the sites were about fairness they'd limit everyone/everything to not exceed the average reach. They should really be called Promotional Networks. Their incentive structure is not set up to advance any intellectual specialisation except through a lens of promotion. Consider the fact that the biggest platforms must go "external" to find fact-checker organisations, it proves my point that no great intellecting is happening within the platform. It's ironic given that fact-checking is itself employed in an act of phoney self-promotion, to not-so-subtly suggest intellectual pursuits must be occurring here, excessively so, since "corrections" are needed.
- georgeecollins 5y agoThe thing that drives me crazy is how hard it is to avoid it. I have plenty of real life friends, a busy career, a family. Still an old friend said "reach out to me on whatsapp". I can't even use the thing without agreeing to import my contacts. Or my Oculus headset-- which I really enjoy-- demands I have an account. Bummer.
- cool_scatter 5y agoI've never understood this. I think if you have a relationship with social media that elicits a desire to "quit", it's not because social media is terrible, it's because the relationship is bad. I wonder as well if there's a difference between people who use it to catch up with their real-life friends vs. people who use it to communicate with online friends. I deleted my Facebook account last year simply because I had never used it; most of my friends on there were people I was acquainted with in real life at some point but I have no desire to talk to them. I never used it so I just deleted my account. However, I use Twitter, and I'd never dream of deleting it; most of my interactions on there are between me and friends I initially met online, and social media is one of the main ways we communicate. These are real friends - I've met several of them in person now - but I'd be losing a huge channel of communication with them if I went dark on social media. Which, when worded like that, almost sounds like they're trapping me on there, but I also have no desire to quit. I've never felt Twitter negatively impacting my life. I go on it daily, I usually have it open in a tab while doing other things on my computer, but I don't spend hours just scrolling, and I don't follow people who say things that will only make my day worse. I don't see it as wasting my time any more than watching TV or doing crossword puzzles, which are also things I spend a reasonable amount of time doing. The comparison to cigarettes and alcohol is ridiculous in my opinion. I don't buy the premise that social media, by default and for most people, makes your life worse. Maybe I'm just the exception? I have no idea.
- throwdecro 5y agoIt sounds like you're basically using Twitter as something like email, which never occurred to me (my friends and I do "group comms" via actual email). Do other people use Twitter in this way? Maybe you are the exception :)
- Taylor_OD 5y agoJust taking all social media apps off your phone and having a complex password that makes it difficult to sign into their webapps are a huge step. Not having your social media of choice a finger press away helps a lot. It's easier to get off them if you start with that. I did that years ago and replaced my favorite app with the kindle app. I read a lot more (books) now and I don't get the addicted feeling.
- suketk 5y ago> You are no longer used by social media, you start to use the tool. This is the key. Either you use technology intentionally or it uses you. You don't have to quit altogether, but it's important that you use it as a tool. I wrote about this from a different angle - in my view, the problem can be isolated to feeds[0]. They encourage consumption over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO through overchoice. If you can eliminate them, these services magically become tools rather than escapes. [0] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
- prostoalex 5y agoI recommended it in a similar discussion before, but Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" offers reasonable ways to introduce intermittent fasting patterns into your social media consumption vs quitting cold turkey. Some sample strategies to adopt: 1) Mobile sites only, never apps. Always log out when done to increase the friction of subsequent logins. The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bored at the checkout line, waiting in-between meetings with nothing to do, sitting on the toilet. 2) Even better: computer access only, never mobile. Your phone is always around, unlike your PC. Set a time slot (20 min or so) when you know you're around your computer. Social networks really excel at this pattern of usage. You'll get the most important stuff, fluff relegated to the bottom of the feed, which solves the FOMO and shield you from the rest. This can be daily first and then cut down to whatever pattern you feel like (Newport himself claims he catches up on social media once a week). I am sure I am butchering some of his advice, so worth reading the book.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoWhat would Cal have us do on the can, if not doom scroll Twitter?
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoI'm not Cal, but it seems like the real fix to that isn't finding another attention-consumer, but instead fixing whatever is causing excess can time.
- jimmygrapes 5y agoThat's why Readers Digest existed
- cutthegrass2 5y agomemorise the ingredients list on the shampoo bottle, at least that's what I do when I forget to take my phone to the bathroom.
- valbaca 5y ago> The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bored at the checkout line, waiting in-between meetings with nothing to do, sitting on the toilet. Just curious, why is this considered the "most insidious"? Isn't that time wasted anyway? Before cellphones you would just stare off into space (you're not getting any deep thinking or deep work done waiting in line) or would just browse the gum or trash magazines. > computer access only, never mobile This one definitely makes sense. It was interesting time when Facebook was around but smartphones weren't fully ubiquitous. You would only see your feed on the laptop and had to text friends to stay in touch in real-time (even if async)
- luxurytent 5y agoI love Twitter but recently removed Instagram from my phone and as a result, my usage dropped to near zero. I found I was watching the same updates (here's my baby doing this fun thing!), which was nice, but I wasn't really connected to this individual, and for most of my Instagram it was old friends and colleagues who no longer live near me or share much similarities. Twitter, Instagram, Hacker News, etc. are all attention sinks but I realized I wasn't getting much value from Instagram beyond a minor wholesome feeling to see (old) friends living their life. Reels were kind of fun sometimes but mostly a waste of time, though. The joy I get from Twitter is being able to consume topics highly relevant to me, and I aggressively curate through blocking/muting, grooming followers, and interacting with very smart people in their respective fields. The pain I get from Twitter is a feeling I'm never good enough. I make a good salary which pays for my entire family of four's well-being, but ... there's always someone on there making more, or creating something cooler. During parental leave I spent more of my time with neighbours, volunteering at the community garden, and it felt more whole, but I still had a part of my brain thinking about the missed opportunities in building value / wealth. Hm.
- retro64 5y agoA couple thoughts here. I was an adult before social media was a thing, or even the web, and I sometimes wonder if I would have even attempted much of the experimentation I did - doubtful, at least at that age. Why bother when now it takes only a few minutes searching to find someone who already solved the problem, and better than you (think) you could have. But now I understand I would have missed out on so much had I not even tried. Who knows what fresh angle you’ll bring to the table? It happens. The second thought is at some point you come to terms with your own limitations (and strengths!), and you realize, yes this person is great at such and such, but am I able to do what I want in my life with my talents? Am I happy doing my thing, even if it’s not “as good” as them? Yep. So good for them. And good for you.
- hinkley 5y agoI've noticed that I did a lot more theorycrafting in games prior to the easy availability of game streams. I think I am finally coming around to the idea that these videos should inspire me to do more theorycrafting instead of letting other people do it for me, but it's been a long journey. The safety lectures in videos for some hobbies probably would have let me get farther along in them as a child, if I had bothered to participate instead of just spectate.
- aarchi 5y ago> instead of refreshing like a lunatic for new information all the time during your day. You simply search for a solution only when you are experiencing a problem. > You treat social media like any other website online. You visit it only when you need something. You don’t visit it to find something to need.
- devmor 5y agoI feel like these types of posts are only made by the socially inept, who've never managed to make a friend over the internet.
- taylodl 5y agoMaybe I'm the outlier - but everybody I am "friends" with on social media I'm friends with IRL (save for Twitter, but that's more blogging than social media). We just post what we did this weekend and stuff like that. Post stuff that the kids are doing (and for some of my friends what the grandkids are doing). No one is trying to impress anyone else. People just staying in touch. Maybe we older folks have a better feel for how to integrate technology into our everyday lives than we're given credit for.
- 8ytecoder 5y agoWho your friends with changes a lot during our younger years. School, college, job changes, neighborhood changes, …etc, all bring new friends and old friends you can’t find time for. These changes are rarely reflected in social media. In addition, younger people do follow a lot of “influencers” - the worst kinda people to follow in social media.
- mr_cyborg 5y agoWhat generation do you fall into? I’ve noticed some groups of people are better than others. Most of my baby boomer relatives are really bad about social media, sharing tons of political things (often nasty and offputting) and seem to liken social media to spending time with people or catching up with them a bit inappropriately.
- squeebie23 5y agoI agree - Instagram and Facebook I only follow / friend people that I'm actually friends with and would normally speak with. Limiting it this (1) makes it less frustrating / argumentative content, but also (2) makes it run out of content faster, which means spending less time on it. My biggest complaint about Facebook (besides the obvious shitty company stuff) is that I don't want to see what other people are sharing (meme posts, etc). I wish there was an "only show me OC" filter.
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoI think there are only three types of modern social media: Facebook, Pinterest, and then virtually everything else. (I don't consider Reddit to be in this conversation because it's a glorified forum, and those have been around since BBSes). Facebook was conceived and still largely operates as a social network in the community aspect: you are in touch with your friends and family members for the most part. Facebook has of course tried to deviate from this path in the last decade, but that's still strongly what the site is. Pinterest is probably the least interactive social media platform in terms of communication between people, but it's probably the most useful, even if it's nothing but a collection of bookmarks. All the other social media platforms are basically centered around groups of people yelling at influencers in a desperate attempt to be noticed. They are giant dopamine sinks.
- barbazoo 5y ago> I still haven’t deleted my social media accounts. I still have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I don’t need to delete them. I don’t feel that I need to delete them. I simply don’t open them because I simply unfollowed everyone there. You're not really quitting if you still keep all your accounts. It's like stopping drinking but leaving a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard just in case.
- barbazoo 5y ago> Important things – news, events, etc. – that we think we’ll miss will come to you either way. Either a friend will tell you about an upcoming concert or you’ll read it somewhere else. This is what bugs me about out current state. Sure, I ended my addiction to social media but I often still rely on my friends telling me about events that THEY saw in their feed. I wish business and artists would stop using social media as their primary platform for engagement. Use a website instead, an RSS feed or email.
- nawgz 5y ago"My life after quitting social media - I post to my private blog and share it to HN. Totally not social nor media" - durmonski
- thom 5y agoThis post is suspiciously long for someone who seems to charge money to summarise books (reading books being another unworthy use of one’s time on this planet, presumably).
- inglor_cz 5y agoI quit Facebook (2019) and Twitter (2021). My general mood has improved, those platforms really are a cesspool that promotes and rewards the most hateful people and you can't help but get dirty from them and their attacks on anything and anyone they don't like. But I am quite a bit more isolated as an individual. And I noticed that HN serves me as kind of a surrogate. We are slowly forgetting how to interact in the real world.
- ceronman 5y agoI don't use Facebook or Instagram. But I use Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and Hacker News. I used to think that this is not that bad, after all, I'm consuming actually good content, not silly stuff like in those other networks. But then I was shocked to see how much time I'm actually spending on these networks. This is easy to see in the "Digital Wellbeing" section of modern phones. It was hours, several each day. I was having trouble keeping up with my chores or exercising. I blamed work. I work the whole week and then in the weekend I want to rest, not to do chores. So I was falling behind. It took me a while to realize that the actual problem is that I'm spending so much time on social media. It's consuming all my free time. I don't watch TV anymore, I rarely watch movies or read books. Most of my free time is being devoured by social media. The key word here is "addiction". It doesn't matter if you think that the content you consume is actually valuable. These are short doses of dopamine that make you feel good for a very short time and leave you wanting more. You start with a nice video of a guy building an 8 bit computer from scratch and you end up watching a girl watching dogs. And you keep scrolling because you want more dopamine. And if there is nothing more, you switch to Twitter or Reddit. And all these sites are being constantly optimized to keep you on the dopamine rush for as long as possible. I used to think that the content I was consuming was actually good and valuable. And some of it is, but it was much less that I thought. One day I realized that I can barely remember anything that I have consumed on social media a week ago. Forget about a month ago or a year ago. It's because most of this content is so unimportant that it doesn't stick in my brain. Other slower sources of dopamine aren't like this. A good movie or book leave you with something to remember. Social media rarely does. I now understood that I have an addiction to social media. I have yet to overcome it though (after all, I'm here on HN). But at least I know that I have a problem.
- throwawawawy 5y agoThis resonates with me as I am consuming content on these four social media platforms as well with the same thinking. It's always interesting to get to know some ingenious engineering detail about constructing bridges from Youtube, or a first-hand opinion from some analyst on some niche on Twitter or like in this case a discussion about drawbacks of a certain digital lifestyle. However I also always wondered whether one of these is better than others, and how I would curate it in a better way. Is actively commenting on HN better than passively watching engineering videos? What about active engagement on YT, and passively reading on HN? Most stuff will be forgotten in a couple of days/weeks anyway as you said, but some will stick or add up to your overall knowledge/behaviour and similar to sifting mud for eventual nuggets of gold this is what keeps me doing it. I just recently read something about using your consumption time for productive work (not necessarily job-work, but hobby-work) and I'm thinking about more stuff I could create to overcome the consumption trap. Ironically however I probably read it on HN as well.
- xyzzy21 5y agoThe closest I came to "social media" was Reddit - I quit it and have never looked back nor missed it.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago"Perished on commenting under posts about social change or doing something meaningful instead of actually doing something meaningful. " You know, I think we'd all be better off if everyone took a break from that one for a year or two.
- legrande 5y agoI quit social media for a year and nothing magical happened to me. I think it's because I never really had a problem with it, since all my feeds were heavily curated and I didn't scroll through mountains of noise. The content I consume is always high quality, because I made social media work for me. I avoid Instagram since it's too visual and full of posers. Twitter is more real and authentic. Facebook is mostly for the family group chat which I enjoy more than the timeline. You have to make it work for you.
- gear54rus 5y agoHow can you call twitter more authentic when it seems pretty clear (to me ofc) that their stupid length limit is ideally cut out to stir controversy and create confrontation out of nowhere (by virtue of people assuming the worst when there's not enough info presented to them).
- cercatrova 5y agoDepends on who you follow. I follow people like patio11 or different startup founders, they have good thoughts and insights. I don't use it to follow random people who stir up drama.
- gear54rus 5y agoYou could say it depends for every platform. It's just some of them employ formats that are cancerous to begin with. Formats and patterns is pretty much the only things you can judge a social media site on since there's no real way to say that content is universally worse somewhere than other.
- Spooky23 5y agoIt’s easier to ignore bullshit on Twitter. With Facebook, unless you actively block lots of people, your high school buddy’s uncle will show up with some valuable information to share. With Twitter that crap is buried unless it hits some internet celebrity. Twitter is also less manipulative of the stream, while Facebook is focused on driving engagement. I just opened up Twitter, the top 5 items are SwiftOnSecurity, my city’s mayor chief of staff, my little league, and a post about Roman artifacts. 100% signal. Just opened up Facebook, and the top 5 are: somebody’s new curtains, a pitch to friend more people, an ad for noom, a colleague sharing his opinion about Texas abortion law, and a post from my favorite baseball team. 40% signal.
- throwaway20371 5y agoI quit most social media (I'm still here, aren't I?) and I found a lot more peace. I ended up working a lot more, which stressed me out, but I finally identified my lack of work-life balance, and now I'm back to a healthy state. No outrage at irrelevant trivia, no other people's lives being a distraction in mine. If anything I just have too much personal stuff to do now. Life feels a bit more meaningful, healthy. I recommend it.
- prox 5y agoThis discussion reminds of this brilliant quote by Strongbad (back when the internet was still a cool place to hangout): James, the Internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens. You need to take advantage of that.
- yusuke242424 5y agoI tried to quit clubhouse but couldn’t. We are suffering from loneliness in this world.
- eigengrau5150 5y agoYou're suffering. I'm fine. Stop using "we" when you mean "I". If I wanted to speak for me I'd pay you.
- karaterobot 5y agoI quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that closely following breaking news is all that useful to me, since I'm not in a position to do anything about it, and it just makes me anxious to worry about things which are out of my control. Instead, I read longform articles about major events when they get written a few weeks later, and supplement that reading with Wikipedia. This alternative seems to work well enough. If someone wants to talk to me about current events, I just ask them what their opinion is, which is usually what they want to happen anyway.
- dv35z 5y agoOne way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headlines. “Aged news”
- ourguile 5y agoI've found myself browsing the current events page every morning and I think I would prefer your method much more. As emerging stories are verified and context is added, I've found I'm revisiting the same pages over and over. I'm going to set up a calendar event right now. Thanks!
- dv35z 5y agoWhen there is breaking news, and there are not sufficient details yet, one option is to get the Wiki URL of the news event, and add that URL to your calendar’s recurring “Read the news” event’s description field. As a result, in several weeks you will have a backlog of news articles to read, and you will be confident that you’re tracking the article and that it will have more value over time. As you mentioned, if there are evergreen topics you want to keep track of, you could include those links in the calendar invite - easy to tab-open & catch up.
- walrus01 5y agoIf you're not going to go cold-turkey, the best thing you can do is turn off all notifications from apps like facebook and twitter on your phone. Android 9 and 10 provide very good features to block all notifications from any specific app. You should only see messages and notifications when you specifically choose to open the app.
- adflux 5y agoOn a similar note, I quit watching the news and reading the newspaper. It doesn't make me happy. It really doesn't make me "informed", it only makes me capable of parroting some soundbites my favorite pundit said. Lastly the news is terribly politicised nowadays and tends to focus only on the bad. Plenty of research proving the link between anxiety/depression and news consumption. What is there to gain by watching the news anyways... If I want to find out more about something, i'd rather listen to a long form podcast by a professor, than read something a journalist copypasted. Or maybe read an article here and find comments by so many people from so many different viewpoints and cultural backgrounds.
- dt3ft 5y agoWhat exactly is this Social Media the author is referring to? Does HN fit the definition? Is he only talking about Facebook and Twitter? Is there even an agreed upon definition of Social Media?
- helloguillecl 5y agoI quit FB and Instagram by making it very difficult to login by changing my password and not saving it. However I still use Twitter with one useful trick: I make lists of Subjects I care about: COVID research, Real Estate, etc.
- rchaud 5y agoI stopped using FB and IG a long time ago. The "likes and followers" appeal didn't apply for me, as I rarely posted. But I did feel the FOMO and when I closed the app, I would get this feeling that my life is boring, like a web page with the default Wordpress theme. Feeling as if nobody would be interested in clicking around and getting to know anything about me. Yet, despite abandoning these apps, I am somehow still constantly on my phone (not during work), trying to find something new to distract me from the boredom I feel in the evenings after work. Reddit or Youtube are my biggest addictions.
- roamerz 5y agoI did quit Facebook for about 6 months. What made me login after that period of inactivity was to find information on a local forest fire that was threatening my house. It was and is the best source of up to date information for that.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jcun4128 5y agoThere was a time I used to have fun just building things for myself (rc planes) then it transitioned to this thing where I had to share it (forums). Eventually I would share just concepts/drawings/ideas and not the real thing. I now try to finish something before I even mention it. There's also a flood of people's ideas/works/projects (Hackaday). I guess having personal goals is nice to pursue/not compare against. As they say talk is easy I used to be active on FB and unfortunately I started to post like crazy/cringe things on there, thankfully I became self aware/cleaned up my public trail. Now I avoid it. One main reason is I have over a hundred friend requests of random people (indirect family/acquaintances from 20 yrs ago) trying to get to know me/ask me for money (people from a third world country). I'm not completely against social media, I use Reddit to look at certain subreddits related to technology, check the news sometimes, and then for brain-dead time, look at meme sites. I have had to stop myself a few times just due to how much time... that's the thing it's captivating/paralyzing the few seconds of media constantly changing (scrolling memes). But on the days when my brain doesn't function anymore, this low effort content is nice to pass the time till I fall asleep/ready to function again. I want to get back into the groove again, isolate myself, pursue something with time. There's also that sense of being a producer vs. being an audience like the person making the videos on YT vs. the people commenting.
- shantnutiwari 5y agoIve quit FB and Twitter, never had IG. Hacker News and soemtimes Reddit is all I visit. I did feel better after quitting Twitter, seeing as what an rage fest it was
- citizenpaul 5y agoI quit all social media outside of forums about 5 years ago. I would say my life is better. I cannot think of one thing I miss from it or one benefit it provided that I would go back for.
- unsignedint 5y agoMaybe this is type of interaction involved. Formally, I was bit more active on Facebook. I still have an account (for Oculus, mostly) but I've scaled down my presence on Facebook a lot. I found signal to noise ratio not great on Facebook. There's maybe one in fifty or so post that worthwhile to look at. I'm still fairly active on Twitter and Discord -- mainly because I'm so involved in VR stuff, and that's where a lot of people socialize and coordinate projects. (at least for Japanese people that I deal with a lot.) Personally, I think this is more of the shift from contextual (WHO I am interacting with) to content based (WHAT I am interacting about), and I find latter more meaningful and productive. Last couple of years on Facebook really didn't provide much of value to my life. There are also bit of junks on Twitter, too, but they are generally short and I can skim things on Twitter and generally it's easy to pick out things that matter the most for me. This also could be coming from that I'm following a lot more strangers (that share interesting things) on Twitter -- as opposed to subset of people I know on Facebook, too. Facebook I guess allows this to certain degrees ("following" someone without friending) but I don't think this is primary use case on Facebook, making it fairly useless.