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This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media.

This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it.

mastazi 2y ago
In general I agree with you that there are some tradeoffs to make. IME it's still worth it. For example, my mental wellness has improved immensely. Also, I tend to use my time in more purposeful ways instead of wasting it doomscrolling. Regarding life events: I quit all social media about 5 years ago[1]. People I care about know about that, and if they want to tell me about life events they do it with other means. Those who don't, they weren't really friends, just acquaintances. I am OK with that. [1] with the exception of Linkedin, which I hate and never use, but I have been asked by people in my company to keep a profile for PR-related reasons.
parsimo2010 2y ago
The messages about going cold turkey are popular, but you do miss out on a lot. I deleted all my social media in 2015, and didn’t mind too much, but years later when I met my wife (and there was more pressure to be social) I made accounts again so people could message me and I’ve been able to hold back from spending all my time doomscrolling. I think the social part of social media can be good for us, and we have to figure out a way to avoid the toxicity. I’d like to see more posts about how to bend the algorithm to show you less toxicity- at least on Instagram I’ve managed to use the “not interested/relevant” button enough and turned on content filtering that it mostly shows me wholesome content. I don’t know if everyone realizes that if you hate-watch a video or hate-read a post then the algorithm sees that as engagement and will show you more. You have to nope yourself out of the dark corners as fast as you realize where you are.
- paganel 2y ago
  > algorithm to show you less toxicity- at least on Instagram In the case of IG what worked for me, without me even trying to be explicit about it, was to like and watch lots of photos/reels involving dogs and dog-ownership and right now my IG feed is 90% full with dog-related posts, and that’s the way I like it. Maybe it works the same way if one were to adopt similar strategies for other subjects of interest, such as cats, owning cars etc., the thing is that there’s almost no political/societal info on my feed anymore.
- aembleton 2y ago
  FB Purity plugin helps. It removes all the suggested posts, advert and other junk. Unfortunately, it only works on desktop: https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ I can scroll through Facebook now on my laptop, and it means I stop doing so on my phone. I have the phone app just to post updates or to quickly check the location of an event or something.
devvvvvvv 2y ago
It's how humans lived for all of history before the Internet. Seems healthier to me. If you're not close enough to someone for them to want to share updates with you specifically, or to see them and catch up, why do you need to know every update on their life? Tbf I'm in a family group WhatsApp chat, which I guess fulfills the "life updates" part for my family. But no public social media, don't see the need
2024user 2y ago
Losing touch with old acquaintances is just part of getting older. fwiw, my experience is that I stayed on social media (although I don't post anything, I just keep the account) and still missed huge life updates. I reckon about 80-90% of my FB friends don't post to FB or Insta anymore. They just don't post anywhere.
- Over2Chars 2y ago
  I'm sure the new FB AI will generate synthetic life updates that will seem just as convincing.
  - maigret 2y ago
    One more reason to leave
macagain 2y ago
I totally understand you. What find is that when I need to get into touch with old acquaintances an call or email seems to do just fine. It is a bit more inconvenient. Another reason to not use big social media is that I would rather not have my network to be exploited by some big corp for who knows what they do with that info.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Because the reasons to quit social media aren't that it isn't useful and that, absent the market conditions it exists within that denotes it's ability to continue existing, it isn't a good product. People love the stuff, it's why it's been the primary use case of the internet, arguably since it's inception depending on whether you consider early stuff like BBSes and news groups/email newsletters to be social media. We had early prototype social media functionality online before we had commerce. The problem is that these platforms aren't satisfied merely providing a third place within which we can find and build communities, speak with and learn from others with similar interests, and otherwise, be human. Instead we each become a hamster locked in our own little cage, and the principle reason we're there is to sit on our wheel and run, and while we run we're shown a handful of things from people we actually want to hear from and see, and interspersed with those few things are a ton advertisements for products we don't want and aren't interested in, a few we might be, AI generated nonsense that prompts us to engage with the platform to bump metrics up, the dipshit of the day who's said something infuriating that makes us click into the comments and make sure they're getting dunked on (and possibly join!) appropriately that the social media site dug up from obscurity and is now parading to the entire world, and of course, the same posts again. Genuinely, the way people talk about going back in time to kill baby Hitler, if I had a time machine, I would spend the rest of my days sabotaging whatever countless number of people invented or would invent the Curated Fucking Timeline, on however many platforms it was invented, by however many data scientists. I would argue it is the single most destructive thing Silicon Valley has ever turned out.
bee_rider 2y ago
People drift apart over time sometimes. I’m on Facebook still (TBH it is hard to see much by my friends, between all the algorithmic stuff). Despite being on there, there are some folks I’ve just kind of… lost contact with. Maybe have a text chain for your friends or something? The folks I really expect to know things about… they’d tell me while we were interacting.
- kristianc 2y ago
  > People drift apart over time sometimes. It's admittedly a little easier to drift apart though when you deliberately delete your access to the place where they post all the shit that's happening in their lives...
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    That seems intuitive, but most of the people who I’ve stayed in touch with aren’t really active on Facebook anymore or don’t even have accounts. I wouldn’t be surprised if social media following people provided something like disincentive to actually stay in touch for real. No need to perform the checks that maintain the relationship if the info is all posted right there. But that’s also a guess. I suspect neither of us have any data to back up our guesses.
DougN7 2y ago
I just deleted my FB account yesterday. Believe or not, your experience makes me feel OK about it because even with FB, I’ve drifted apart from all but a few close friends. That makes me think it’s the norm and social media doesn’t do nearly as much to keep us connected as it would like us to believe.
- noman-land 2y ago
  Unfriending specific people in a huge cull of otherwise nice and well meaning people you no longer care about but are chained to by inertia is torturous. Much less psychologically burdensome to unfriend everyone by nuking the account and start over with a clean slate somewhere less corporate and shitty.
hypeatei 2y ago
> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post blasted to hundreds (or thousands) of people. Or, to put it another way: if you mattered, you would've gotten a direct message or call from them. I'd argue that social media has normalized keeping up with people who aren't supposed to be part of your life forever. But, we should take a step back and realize that not everything should or will last forever. If you cross paths again then you can catch up, but having life updates constantly? No thanks.
- standardUser 2y ago
  > This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post The landscape of human relationships is deep and broad an varied, and if making bold assumptions about what other people should value is your starting point, you're liable to miss a lot of potential connections.
  - hypeatei 2y ago
    Maybe I could've worded that better, but I was just providing perspective on the obsessive nature that we have on social media now. IMO, it's not "normal" to keep up with acquaintances and people from past times. They're no longer part of your life and you need to let go. If others find the life updates useful and beneficial to them, then so be it. I don't care either way.
    - zapzupnz 2y ago
      > IMO, it's not "normal" to keep up with acquaintances and people from past times. Fully recognising that you said "IMO", I'll say that keeping up with acquaintances and people from the past is normal in my culture. Social media helps to make that more direct and easier to manage than the gossipy grapevine of yore. What's normal depends on your culture and context, of course, and I suspect that's not true in yours — but it is in mine, so ditching something like Facebook is just out of the question for me and many people whose cultures place a heavy emphasis on those connections between people. The middle ground for me has been to check Facebook less and less, accelerated by the algorithm delivering me fewer life updates and more slop reposted from reddit.
coffeefirst 2y ago
I quit on and off and came to the opposite conclusion. The acquaintances I never heard from, we weren’t really in touch in any way, seeing their posts had just tricked me into thinking we were. And that’s okay. It means 5 years later when we cross paths for real there’s lots to catch up on.
suzzer99 2y ago
Yes, everyone uses social media differently and gets different things out of it. I've got my Facebook feed so well-curated that it rarely causes me distress. And like you, I like keeping up with old acquaintances, seeing their kids' milestones, etc. I get real enjoyment out of that. Instagram I post pics when I travel and otherwise ignore it. Twitter OTOH is probably a net negative for me. I still keep it around to follow sports pundits during games, and I usually only follow my sports list. But I do check in on my main feed during major events, and then inevitably end up doomscrolling. For example, the LA fires hashtags are so far beyond toxic - nothing but engagement farming, malicious misinfo, political nonsense, etc. Amidst all that crap, maybe 1 in 10 tweets has good info, but I have to destroy my psyche to find it.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. TBH I have no idea where or if my friend post stuff on social media anymore. I know maybe 1 person that posted updates often on Facebook, and that was pre-pandemic. Some post more business stuff on twitter. But overall I just kind of accept that sometimes I'll meet up with someone after a few years and realize "oh yeah, they're married now, took a trip to Japan for 6 months, and is getting some local attention from their band they made a few years ago" Of course, the first thing men will say after that meeting is simply "I've been fine, can't complain. How about you?". Maybe they'll mention their new job, but the rest will come after some 15-30 minutes of observation and chatting about the newest media. >but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. likewise, but I'm not sure if social media would have saved that for me. It's definitely a cultural issue, especially with men.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Problem is facebook decides what you want to see unless you go to the feed which they make hard. Even then the vast majoritiy of what you see is garbage they share instead of life updates that you want. I wish there was a better way but life updates still a posted there only. Facebook is the only one that has a concept of this is a for my friends only.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Yeah, I couldn't put it into words on why "Facebook got worse over the years". But that was definitely one of the keys shifts (outside of my friends leaving). I was getting less updates from people I know and more "news that will make you angry" kind of stuff. I probably really "left" around 2017. But 2020 is when I finally got around to freezing the account.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Realistically everything my several hundred friends have to share with me takes maybe 5 minutes a day to go through (close friends of course would call about things that are too personal for facebook so this is about things more distance friends would care about) . There is a lot more money in the handful of people who are scrolling through, finding, and sharing various memes and news that will make you angry (though this is fun if you - like most people - have friends on both the right and the left doing this and so you can see the bias each side is taking) than there is in friends sharing their life which is not lived on facebook (unless your a physically disabled and so you can only live vicariously through others)
jjulius 2y ago
This is just said from my perspective and I understand that others might not share it - Fine with me. They're acquaintances. Nobody has 200+ "friends", we have a handful of them. Is it nice to know that someone I hung out with a handful of times twenty years ago but otherwise don't really know and haven't said a word to in a decade made a big life change? Sure, I guess, but for the most part it has absolutely no bearing or impact on my day-to-day life nor the lives of those most important to me, and that's where I'm putting my energy.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  I was applying for a job once and recruiter told me I need to have at least 100 Facebook friends to be hired. Played Mafia for a couple of days and got 400 "friends". Was hired and HR presented me at the company meeting as a social media star)
  - jader201 2y ago
    This sounds made up. I’m not saying it is, just that it’s so bizarre, it’s literally unbelievable. Like something The Onion would write.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
      That's true and happened in 2011. Social media was AI of the day.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    If I'd been talking to that recruiter I would have politely declined to continue the interview process. Unless the job itself was directly related to interacting with people on Facebook, the number of Facebook "friends" you have has nothing to do with your ability to do the job.
oysterville 2y ago
Heck, I missed huge announcements when I was on social media because social media thought that the stuff they had to show me was more important.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Fnoord 2y ago
I've quit social media (only use Signal and SMS/telephone/email). My wife functions as my secretary in this. I get the perks without the BS. Win-win. Only thing to remember is SMS/telephone/email aren't secure.
ozim 2y ago
I cannot say much as I don’t know the people. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media My impression is „how can one be so self centered” to imagine everyone HAS to know about their big event if they were not part of it and were not invited directly. Is that person Kardashian family or something ;). Even if it was a wedding and they posted photos. I wouldn’t remember a week later - if it is a person I see once in 5 years face to face and I was not invited. There are many big life events of such people.
incoming1211 2y ago
I think if people want to 'quit' social media, then just use it to keep up to date with friends/family. You follow ONLY friends/family, and limit consumption to only that, don't consume content outside of that circle. These full fledged 'quit' posts are nothing more than an attempt at a political statement that falls on deaf ears.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Does that really work? I haven't used one of these for a while but if I recall they're quite keen to take content that your friends/family have engaged with and ram it down your throat in hopes that you will too. It seems like you'd need all of your friends/family to do the same thing.
  - incoming1211 2y ago
    So I only use facebook on desktop, I don't have it installed on my phone. When I go to the website, at the top of the page is 'feeds' and on the left is 'friends' filter. I just bookmark that page and only view that. https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
noman-land 2y ago
If neither you nor they bothered reaching out, did either of you actually care? It might be a good time to reevaluate the nature of your relationships and start maintaining the ones you actively (instead of passively) care about outside of corporate shopping mall websites.
aaarrm 2y ago
I think it's perfectly fine to learn about huge life updates from people the next time you actually speak with them. That seems normal. Seeing people's updates on a wall isn't truly keeping up with friends. Keeping up and staying in touch requires consistent deliberate effort from both parties, via phone calls, messaging, and seeing each other in person. If you're not doing that with someone, then yeah, learning about life updates when you actually chat and catch up just makes sense to me.
- jjulius 2y ago
  Plus it's a lot more personal and meaningful when you can discuss the changes directly rather than on an impersonal "public" forum.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Right, and when I meet up with a friend in person to catch up (whether it's a close friend who I see weekly or a less-close friend who I see once or twice a year), we both give each other those life updates in a personally-tailored manner that perfectly fits the nature of our relationship with each other. That's how I want my interactions with people to be.
- AOsborn 2y ago
  No, I disagree. This is about lifestyle ergonomics and your community. Like it or not, social media has significantly reshaped the world. Issues aside, it has brought people together and made communication significantly easier than in the past. There is a reason 1/3 of the world is on Facebook. So, my point is that if you're choosing to be difficult, that is fine but you need to accept the burden falls on you. This is similar to adopting a vegan diet - your body your choice, but don't be intentionally difficult at dinner parties. Personal example here: I've cut down social media significantly, in my case all notifications are off even if the apps are installed. So you're not bombarded and can engage on a cadence that makes sense to you. That said, I need to dedicate time to checking up on extended family, friends etc - as otherwise you do miss announcements and major events.
motohagiography 2y ago
also eschewed social media. it's a different way of relating. normal people now react the way minor celebrities used to react when I'd meet them and not know anything about them, either insulted or very relieved. I think it has made me a better friend in some ways, as I'm a respite from the narratives they sustain, but to others, also a kind of legacy friend who may be an attachment to an old life, and who isn't part of their present. there's an aspect where watching their social media would be to participate in the change in their lives, and separating from it (perhaps selfishly) preserves things that might be left behind. but on the other hand, I'm interested in relating in one way too. social media profiles are strange because they say, "see, I am all these things now!" and in not seeing them, it declines to recognize those, like an old uncle you're always going to be a kid to because that's how you always were. I have more old friends than most, and I often think about whether there is an essential self we see in each other, like a character that all these stories happen around where we can peer across them to one another, protagonist to protagonist, as companions in the real. or are the relationships artifacts of the stories, and when they change, we do? it's prob a mix, but I don't think those essential(ist) aspects of friendship survive being mediated by the churn of updates and the curation of a public persona. anyway, being outside social media is a very different way to relate and not everything survives.
llm_nerd 2y ago
Lots of other replies already so apologies for adding to the clutter, but this sort of message always appears and it feels super dated. Like, 2003-era sentiment about the Facebook heyday. Facebook is like a ghost town now from the "social" and family perspective. I imagine some circles might be strong on it, but from every time this comes up it's clear that the vast majority of normal people have largely abandoned it. They didn't delete their accounts, but updates are incredibly infrequent. The vast majority of Facebook activity seems to be people who don't really know each other in various conspiracy-oriented or political groups, sports arguments, etc. As to huge life events you missed out on, even in 2003 if you only knew about something because of a Facebook post, you aren't very close. And the old acquaintances thing grows super old super quick. Everyone joined a bunch of graduating class groups, connected with old coworkers, and then... eh, turns out there was a reason we all lost contact. In 2025 people use social media overwhelmingly to interact with strangers, not friends or family. Largely to argue and get angry and try to convince and coerce and convert. I mean, HN fits the bill in a microcosm. Social media is a cancer on society. It has made everything much, much worse. It lets the ill-informed and unintelligent find each other and pump each other up. It monetizes and profits off of the absolute worst human traits. If Meta collapsed into a blackhole, Xitter disappeared, and so on, the world would be a much better place.
- yakshaving_jgt 2y ago
  Facebook didn’t exist in 2003.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    I was being facetious that Facemash was started in 2003, for the Harvard homies. The point being simply that Facebook as a social connections property hasn't been a thing for years.
- TheCapeGreek 2y ago
  You can easily replace FB with Instagram in this context. Nobody I know personally posts very much on Facebook, but they do post their updates on Instagram stories. Facebook's last hook on me is groups - small town community groups especially. If you live in an area with its own group, there's a high likelihood that it's going to be on Facebook. I don't really have the time to campaign to non tech-savvy retiring gen Xers and their parents that I don't want to use Facebook to know what's happening in my area, find services, etc.
tialaramex 2y ago
I would distinguish somewhere my friends post stuff for "friends" from social media. Lets take my friend Em as our example. If the typical message from Em says "Where are you? What time did we say we'll meet" that's a messenger app, that's definitely not Social Media. It might be a fucking SMS, but if it's a WhatsApp or a Signal. it's all the same for this purpose and that's definitely not Social Media. If the typical message from Em says "They don't know about my trees" and involves an in-joke reference to a movie that six people saw with her in 2008, that's maybe some sort of "social" experience but it's clearly not public. We have a Slack like this, created under pandemic conditions and named "Cabin Fever Mitigation". If the typical message says "Aw! Piggy" and has a picture of a guinea pig, that is now shading into Social Media. Probably some of the people "following" this feed don't know who she is but they like guinea pigs, or they like her art, or something similar. And yes obviously if the typical message is a reply to Elon Musk then it's social media and it can fuck off. But hopefully your friends aren't making crucial life updates as a public address to any watching fascists ?
JALTU 2y ago
Me too! It's okay, you can't do everything and people "should" appreciate others who don't do social.
itbeho 2y ago
You could just call the people most important in your life and speak and hear their updates. It would mean more to them than a comment on FB or whatever other social they are on.
jader201 2y ago
> I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely I think that’s a feature, not a bug. Most of the life updates people post on social media are the best of the best, which is what triggers so much fomo and trying to measure up. That’s why social media makes most people feel worse about their own lives. (Not to mention all of the other garbage these platforms try to push on you that you didn’t even ask for.) If these people are really important to us, then we’d find other means of staying in touch: text them, call them, invite them over (if that’s feasible). And if enough people get off social media, everyone else might also realize they need to make an effort to stay in touch with others, instead of the lazy post of glamour shots for the purpose of internet likes and feeding the dopamine addiction.
- nradov 2y ago
  I don't know about other people but social media doesn't make me feel worse about my life. There's no fomo when my 2nd cousin in another state posts about having a baby. She's important to me, and I don't expect her to waste time emailing me directly when the rest of the extended family is all on social media.
  - jader201 2y ago
    Sure, events/posts like that are the main upside to social media. Unfortunately, that makes up a tiny fraction of most feeds.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    It didn't make me feel worse but it did bring out the worst in me. It's too easy to slip into bragging about your life and how well it's going.
    - Karrot_Kream 2y ago
      Pretty mugh all my friends stopped doing that after their mid 20s. Eventually everyone figures out that social media status games give little.
    - 2y ago
WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago
I quit social media 12 years ago and it's been an amazing boost to my personal psychology and productivity. My life is 10x better without it. I've forgotten many acquaintances and gained many more, and forgotten them again. Life is like that, but the core group of people is there, and I'm happy with that.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I did the same thing. Now all I have is github, stackoverflow, and HN. I end up missing out on all sorts of things that I'd like to have been along for. I'm not about to go back, I think that being at the business end of somebody's propaganda machine was even worse for me, but it's still a significant sacrifice. Which is why I don't think the way forward is for everybody to leave social media. It's just not going to happen en masse, that's asking too much. We need to build media which can't be owned. If we ask people to sacrifice something, it should be an extra few cents on their electric bill and yesteryear's phone plugged in somewhere and hosting their share of it. I've only been exploring it for a few days now, but nostr seems promising for this kind of thing. The content is awful, just coin bro stuff, but as something to plug into and build apps for... seems legit.
- kelnos 2y ago
  For me (been off social media since 2019 or so), the solution has been smaller, targeted groups of friends, as well as making one-on-one effort. I have quite a few group chats with no more than a dozen people in each one, with many that have only 3 or 4 people. And I make a point to message people one-on-one to keep in touch, and set up time to meet in person for people who are local to where I live. For people who aren't local, we make a point to meet up in some city somewhere once a year or so, depending on the closeness of the friendships in the group. It requires more work than scrolling a Facebook feed and commenting on people's posts, but it's orders of magnitude more rewarding. And I don't miss the other hundreds of people on Facebook who I don't hear about at all now.
jmspring 2y ago
It’s funny, a few groups I belong to solely use FB. One group is for the preservation of weatern history and a friend digitizes and uploads thousands of pictures (if not 10s of rhoughsands) yearly. The only actual digital copies are on FB. It bugs me that he won’t archive elsewhere. The reason is fb is a commons and an additional backup would be a magnitude more work. I’ve offered to buy hard drives.
- nradov 2y ago
  You can download the pictures and archive them yourself.
  - jmspring 2y ago
    There are thousands of pictures across hundreds of albums. So it’ll need to be scraped. Something might exist, no time to write such.
- coldpepper 2y ago
  Why not upload to archive.org?
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  But Facebook is almost, but not quite entirely unlike commons...
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago
If someone relies on broadcast notifications to communicate, whether it be by snail mail, SMS, email, megaphone, or otherwise, maybe it is not really worth hearing? To me, it seems like if someone has so many friends or is so busy that they need to manage their life using this strategy, you probably aren't going to have much of a connection anyway.
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  Let us just say that not all friendships, even the ones that start out strong, end up having the same depth to them because of the loss of shared context (e.g. moving out of the same city for jobs, new responsibilities caused by marriage etc.) In such cases, there's still some reason for the two people involved to at least have a general idea of what's going on in other people's lives, and even reach out should there be something significant, such as a birth of a child or a loss in their families, etc. Without the broadcast aspect, once communication has ceased for some amount of time, it is very difficult to restart it, at any level. As an introvert, I still find broadcasts weird, because there's that tingling notion that people wouldn't care anyway; and was one of the reasons I ceased to be on social media many years ago. However, I understand why some people choose to do things differently. (There are similar anecdotes throughout this thread, I'd encourage you to read it for perspectives on this matter.)
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    I find it weird that after scrolling through hundreds of messages here nobody mentioned blogs. You would think that this one place where you would specifically find out about huge life events like deaths / births ?!
    - supriyo-biswas 2y ago
      Most people do not have a unified workflow for reading multiple blogs (RSS etc.) and replying to them, and they also lack the privacy control that is available in social media. It's a little unreasonable to expect people to put in that effort.
benjaminwootton 2y ago
I do think this trade off is real. I came off most of social media for a few years and was the happiest I’ve been in a long time. It is however a bit isolating. I stayed in touch with friends, but lots of acquaintances slipped away without an easy way to keep in touch.
Semaphor 2y ago
> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I wish I would still see those. While I have an account, I rarely use FB nowadays, because the algorithm thinks I’ll be more interested in stuff I don’t care about. So when I go to FB I tend to close the tab again a few seconds later…
- brightball 2y ago
  I just started aggressively unfollowing and hiding stuff I really didn’t want to see. I used to hate the idea of doing that, but I realized if not doing it was making me want to cut off everybody then I was probably better off just filtering aggressively. Now my feed is very pleasant. Family updates, sports news, friends vacation pictures and jokes.
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    I only follow stuff I want to see. But facebook shows me a ton of other things. Reels every few posts are usually sexily dressed Asian women, or more normally dressed White women, with some kind of clickbait text overlaid. I think I maybe clicked on a reel once or twice ever. Then my feed is full of suggested content. Which I also don’t want to see. From metal bands I don’t care about and festivals I don’t wanna go to, to offensive content. And finally: Ordering. Non-chronological ordering makes no sense, because everything is random (probably not, somehow maximizes engagement for users very different from me, I guess). So I can’t even scroll for the stuff I want to see.
    - pickledoyster 2y ago
      >And finally: Ordering. Non-chronological ordering makes no sense, because everything is random (probably not, somehow maximizes engagement for users very different from me, I guess). So I can’t even scroll for the stuff I want to see. Does https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr not work anymore? It should surface the chronological feed without reels and other recommended slop.
ofcourseyoudo 2y ago
Thinking you can blast something on social media and your friends and family will see it is an old mentality. Even non super tech-savvy people know now what the algorithms are, and they know that everyone regularly misses updates from everyone else. And that light connection to people through social media wasn't a thing that created "close friends" anyway. It add to those weak connections that do have value but I doubt many people create intimate friend relationships solely through social media.
- ncr100 2y ago
  Nice. Maybe part of the seeming increasing anxiety of society is that we don't have friends in the correct sense and instead we have "friends" in the "just another user ID attached to a database query for your user ID" sense.
- tomlockwood 2y ago
  Yeah! Facebook is too busy showing me content farm AI slop to show me my cousin's baby photos.
shaky-carrousel 2y ago
If your acquaintances didn't take the time to update you directly, then maybe either the updates or the acquaintances themselves aren't really relevant for you. And that's ok.
fakedang 2y ago
This is my experience too. While I do maintain some accounts, I don't check them much anymore except for updating my statuses and life events, and even then I haven't done those in a while now. The advice to "quit social media" , "get a FairPhone", " get an FTP account and mount it with curlftps... " is often tossed around HN a lot, but real life flies in the diametrically opposite direction. While I'm not largely affected by it, I still feel a twinge of disappointment not finding out when an old friend has had a major life event.
huijzer 2y ago
> I have a few close friends and that’s it. Sounds perfect. I rather have a few close friends than two dozen semi-friends.
Refusing23 2y ago
yep i deleted fb 10ish years ago. and since then every family event that had been planned, was done on fb (just like before) and i find out about it by a text from my sister. the trick is to not give a shit. Coz they don't.
larodi 2y ago
Dropped FB for HN in 2017... and eventually I find myself now again on X for some #genaury stuff which is basically nowhere else to find. Happily most reasonable tech stuff lists on HN, some interesting stuff on MR, both being more-or-less a social network (of sorts) in a 90s disguise. Conventional media can be ok for casual reading/scrolling, but feels increasingly out-of-touch. Interestingly these days cnn, bbc, dw, en, and aj list different headlines, which is not what it was 15 y.ago. Still I'd strongly advise against all push media, and in particular Meta's products which pose a very high-risk of (screen) addiction thanks to hundreds of hidden retention mechanisms.
- joostdecock 2y ago
  > some interesting stuff on MR I'm drawing a blank for MR. What does it stand for?
veunes 2y ago
I guess it comes down to weighing the value of those connections against the downsides of staying on the platforms
kelnos 2y ago
> Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it. I think that's the key point. I realized that ultimately I didn't actually care about those huge life updates if they concerned people who I'm not in somewhat-regular contact with. Like, if my Facebook friend John Smith (let's say he's an old high-school friend I haven't seen since high school) posts about his marriage, or new job, or new child, and I don't actually chat with John anymore and don't know anything about his life outside of what I read on Facebook, why do I even care to know this stuff at all? And it turns out the answer is that... I don't! And there's nothing wrong with that. It's not rude or mean; some people are the closest of friends, and some people barely even warrant the "acquaintance" tag -- and everything in between -- and there's nothing wrong with any of that. And yes, I've missed social media posts about big-life stuff from closer friends who I do care about, but that's fine! I chat with those people via some avenue (email, text, messaging group, real-life, whatever) often enough that I still get those big-life updates, and usually it's in a more personalized manner, that gets me details that are tailored to the level of closeness of our friendship. For people who I'm not super close with, but still maintain a relationship with, maybe I get that update about their life 6 months later, when we are next in contact. That's also fine! If we were closer friends, we'd chat more often, and I'd hear about it earlier. But we're not, and I don't, and there's nothing wrong with that. > a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. That's more your choice than anything else. You always have the option to text or email someone directly to say hello and see how they're doing, or to set up a time to meet in person to catch up. Even if they're perhaps not the one-on-one type of friends, you can start a group chat with that person and other mutual friends who might enjoy keeping in touch that way. There are so so so many options for communication these days that it's almost overwhelming! But it certainly need not be a binary between "social media firehose of every person I've ever met" and "I only hear about the lives of few people". Is it important to you to be in touch with those old acquaintances? If so, reach out to them! If not, then it sounds like quitting social media was fine for you.
monssooon 2y ago
I also quit social media . I did not have this experience. I had no problem following what went on with friends and acquaintances?! I don't know why you had this experience. I'm sorry you felt like that. but for me the info that is important always gets to me. And I enjoy emailing and using the phone and meeting people for social events in stead. And when I miss some post on face I always hear it from someone else....
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  It’s a matter of perspective and trade offs. If you are a person who experiences anxiety from missing things (FOMO) you are much more likely to notice this. I know since deleting my social media accounts I have missed out on a lot, only because my wife keeps up with stuff, but I cannot say how much I have missed because I really don’t care. The other side to this is how aggressively a person is willing to take deliberate action to maintain personal relationships in the absence of social media automation. If you are that social butterfly who really owns that aspect of life you are likely to never miss any aspect of social media. Most people aren’t that good at taking dedicated action regularly reach out to people outside their most immediate circle though.
bugtodiffer 2y ago
> I have a few close friends and that’s it. That's enough :)
lm28469 2y ago
If they're close enough they'll tell you irl, if they don't tell you they're not that close and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things Even with close friends who live far away, I prefer catching up once a year around a beer and some food than get a week by week journal of their lives on social media, it makes you feel like you're connected but you really aren't
stiray 2y ago
I never had any social media account. Never. When Facebook was still in diapers I have predicted what will happen (while what really happened was far worse) and distance myself from it and warned all the others who, normally, didn't listen. Dont have FB, twitter, reddit, linkedin, tiktok, not even google account... none of that crap. I am successfully avoiding getting my name anywhere on the internet, I am not posting my photos, videos,... I have 7 friends I meet regularly, I have friends where our life separated years back and we meet once or twice per year and I have phone with 473 phone numbers of various contacts, from former colleges to dishwasher repair technician, etc. And guess what, people call me, sms me (oh yes, it works so much better than having 20 various clients installed for different groups of people) or send me email if something important has happened and I am actually physically invited to birthdays, "i got son" celebrations, notified about death (luckily only one, former schoolmate). When we meet, in person (i hate long phone calls), we have a quality chat as I dont know anything about their ingrown hair on the tip of their toe and they don't know anything about me changing job or having knot on hair in my beard. For anyone else, I dont care. I dont disillusion myself how I have 473 good friends on some stupid online platform who need to share every intimate detail with me. I cant even handle so many people. So maybe those tradeoffs are not really the real tradeoffs but rather self deception, how much you matter to the people and to how many people. I can count them using my fingers. Which is perfectly fine.
- abc123abc123 2y ago
  Amen! Same situation, same preferences, same values, same result. Only difference is I have about 70 phone nrs on my dumbphone, I don't own a smart phone, and my vices are this site, usenet and mastodon.
worthless-trash 2y ago
If they don't talk to you personally, you have overestimated your value in the relationship.
richrichardsson 2y ago
> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I had the same thing happen, but both they and I were Facebook users, it's just the algorithm decided I don't need to see posts from my friends and it's better that I see adverts (I can live with that, I don't pay to use the platform after all) and hundreds of random pages/groups that I have zero interest in following. This 2nd "feature" is slowly driving me towards the point where the FOMO of no longer passively interacting with my friends may longer keep me on there.
KronisLV 2y ago
> I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. I feel like that's the downside of social media in general, like the network effect - since most people are on social media, that's the place where people will post life updates, as opposed to talking to others about that stuff directly as much. Maybe there could be a healthy way to use social media: to catch up with the people in your social circle, maybe look at a few cute pictures of animals or memes, but don't obsessively doomscroll or compare yourself to the highlights of others' lives.
- noufalibrahim 2y ago
  I think some way of batching information from the people/sources that you're interested in (and then perhaps running an LLM over it to surface the most important information) which is then emailed or texted to one might be a solution.
herbst 2y ago
What are you even talking about when you meet them? Are you reiterating each others Facebook posts together? Not having seen a friend for a longer time and talking about all the things that happened is the one thing that friendship is about IMO.
pino82 2y ago
Also good to consider for that tradeoff: Those people are completely fine to ignore you without some Zuck accounts. Bring that together with your idea about friendship before you run behind them. Maybe it's fine for you. Maybe your conclusion is that it's not worth the thing. It's not a new topic. For me, iit was around 15 years ago. I never had FB or WA. Not even for a day. And that brought a lot of friendships to an end. Most of my friendships in fact. And that was sad!! But well, no other way would even be an option, admittedly! It's sad, but it was the best I could do.
Dharmakirti 2y ago
Touché. Such radical takes are always a hit on HN because they are essentially playing to the gallery. Leaving social media is futile if you don't take efforts to maintain contacts with your friends and families in other ways.
pmontra 2y ago
I recently learned that the daughter of a friend of mine got married and had two children. That happened in the last 5 years, when I actually didn't hear from that friend of mine. Given that we didn't feel the need to send messages to each other for 5 years, are we really friends or only acquaintances? In the latter case it's OK not to be informed about what is going on. My social media are WhatsApp and Telegram. I get in touch there with people I care about and I don't get streams of useless information like I would if I'd be on FB, X, Instagram or TikTok. I do look for videos on YouTube when I want to learn something for which watching is better that reading.
deleted 2y ago
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renegade-otter 2y ago
Maybe that was possible with Facebook from 2009. Right now, to have any friend updates, you first you need to scroll through a firehose of bots, AI schlock, and ads. Then risk getting pulled into it and wasting valuable hours of your life. The only winning move is not to play. I just got together with two friends in RL. One I have not seen for 10 years. There were a lot of missed news we all had to catch up on. This is how it's always been, and it's completely normal. Even the olden Facebook way of being so plugged in into your friends' lives was very unhealthy. If you HAVE to know something, life will find a way of letting you know.
jacooper 2y ago
I agree completely, I did the same thing and now I've been going back gradually. Staying in contact passively makes starting conversations much easier, commenting on their stories, them reacting to a big event, etc. It keeps people in contact, because nobody reaches out of the blue now. Losing such a network of people is costly, socially and from an opportunity perspective. Still trying to not click anything not related to people I follow, the algorithms on meta apps are just insane.

mastazi 2y ago

In general I agree with you that there are some tradeoffs to make. IME it's still worth it. For example, my mental wellness has improved immensely. Also, I tend to use my time in more purposeful ways instead of wasting it doomscrolling. Regarding life events: I quit all social media about 5 years ago[1]. People I care about know about that, and if they want to tell me about life events they do it with other means. Those who don't, they weren't really friends, just acquaintances. I am OK with that. [1] with the exception of Linkedin, which I hate and never use, but I have been asked by people in my company to keep a profile for PR-related reasons.

parsimo2010 2y ago

The messages about going cold turkey are popular, but you do miss out on a lot. I deleted all my social media in 2015, and didn’t mind too much, but years later when I met my wife (and there was more pressure to be social) I made accounts again so people could message me and I’ve been able to hold back from spending all my time doomscrolling. I think the social part of social media can be good for us, and we have to figure out a way to avoid the toxicity. I’d like to see more posts about how to bend the algorithm to show you less toxicity- at least on Instagram I’ve managed to use the “not interested/relevant” button enough and turned on content filtering that it mostly shows me wholesome content. I don’t know if everyone realizes that if you hate-watch a video or hate-read a post then the algorithm sees that as engagement and will show you more. You have to nope yourself out of the dark corners as fast as you realize where you are.

paganel 2y ago
> algorithm to show you less toxicity- at least on Instagram In the case of IG what worked for me, without me even trying to be explicit about it, was to like and watch lots of photos/reels involving dogs and dog-ownership and right now my IG feed is 90% full with dog-related posts, and that’s the way I like it. Maybe it works the same way if one were to adopt similar strategies for other subjects of interest, such as cats, owning cars etc., the thing is that there’s almost no political/societal info on my feed anymore.
aembleton 2y ago
FB Purity plugin helps. It removes all the suggested posts, advert and other junk. Unfortunately, it only works on desktop: https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ I can scroll through Facebook now on my laptop, and it means I stop doing so on my phone. I have the phone app just to post updates or to quickly check the location of an event or something.

devvvvvvv 2y ago

It's how humans lived for all of history before the Internet. Seems healthier to me. If you're not close enough to someone for them to want to share updates with you specifically, or to see them and catch up, why do you need to know every update on their life? Tbf I'm in a family group WhatsApp chat, which I guess fulfills the "life updates" part for my family. But no public social media, don't see the need

2024user 2y ago

Losing touch with old acquaintances is just part of getting older. fwiw, my experience is that I stayed on social media (although I don't post anything, I just keep the account) and still missed huge life updates. I reckon about 80-90% of my FB friends don't post to FB or Insta anymore. They just don't post anywhere.

Over2Chars 2y ago
I'm sure the new FB AI will generate synthetic life updates that will seem just as convincing.
- maigret 2y ago
  One more reason to leave

macagain 2y ago

I totally understand you. What find is that when I need to get into touch with old acquaintances an call or email seems to do just fine. It is a bit more inconvenient. Another reason to not use big social media is that I would rather not have my network to be exploited by some big corp for who knows what they do with that info.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

Because the reasons to quit social media aren't that it isn't useful and that, absent the market conditions it exists within that denotes it's ability to continue existing, it isn't a good product. People love the stuff, it's why it's been the primary use case of the internet, arguably since it's inception depending on whether you consider early stuff like BBSes and news groups/email newsletters to be social media. We had early prototype social media functionality online before we had commerce. The problem is that these platforms aren't satisfied merely providing a third place within which we can find and build communities, speak with and learn from others with similar interests, and otherwise, be human. Instead we each become a hamster locked in our own little cage, and the principle reason we're there is to sit on our wheel and run, and while we run we're shown a handful of things from people we actually want to hear from and see, and interspersed with those few things are a ton advertisements for products we don't want and aren't interested in, a few we might be, AI generated nonsense that prompts us to engage with the platform to bump metrics up, the dipshit of the day who's said something infuriating that makes us click into the comments and make sure they're getting dunked on (and possibly join!) appropriately that the social media site dug up from obscurity and is now parading to the entire world, and of course, the same posts again. Genuinely, the way people talk about going back in time to kill baby Hitler, if I had a time machine, I would spend the rest of my days sabotaging whatever countless number of people invented or would invent the Curated Fucking Timeline, on however many platforms it was invented, by however many data scientists. I would argue it is the single most destructive thing Silicon Valley has ever turned out.

bee_rider 2y ago

People drift apart over time sometimes. I’m on Facebook still (TBH it is hard to see much by my friends, between all the algorithmic stuff). Despite being on there, there are some folks I’ve just kind of… lost contact with. Maybe have a text chain for your friends or something? The folks I really expect to know things about… they’d tell me while we were interacting.

kristianc 2y ago
> People drift apart over time sometimes. It's admittedly a little easier to drift apart though when you deliberately delete your access to the place where they post all the shit that's happening in their lives...
- bee_rider 2y ago
  That seems intuitive, but most of the people who I’ve stayed in touch with aren’t really active on Facebook anymore or don’t even have accounts. I wouldn’t be surprised if social media following people provided something like disincentive to actually stay in touch for real. No need to perform the checks that maintain the relationship if the info is all posted right there. But that’s also a guess. I suspect neither of us have any data to back up our guesses.

DougN7 2y ago

I just deleted my FB account yesterday. Believe or not, your experience makes me feel OK about it because even with FB, I’ve drifted apart from all but a few close friends. That makes me think it’s the norm and social media doesn’t do nearly as much to keep us connected as it would like us to believe.

noman-land 2y ago
Unfriending specific people in a huge cull of otherwise nice and well meaning people you no longer care about but are chained to by inertia is torturous. Much less psychologically burdensome to unfriend everyone by nuking the account and start over with a clean slate somewhere less corporate and shitty.

hypeatei 2y ago

> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post blasted to hundreds (or thousands) of people. Or, to put it another way: if you mattered, you would've gotten a direct message or call from them. I'd argue that social media has normalized keeping up with people who aren't supposed to be part of your life forever. But, we should take a step back and realize that not everything should or will last forever. If you cross paths again then you can catch up, but having life updates constantly? No thanks.

standardUser 2y ago
> This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post The landscape of human relationships is deep and broad an varied, and if making bold assumptions about what other people should value is your starting point, you're liable to miss a lot of potential connections.
- hypeatei 2y ago
  Maybe I could've worded that better, but I was just providing perspective on the obsessive nature that we have on social media now. IMO, it's not "normal" to keep up with acquaintances and people from past times. They're no longer part of your life and you need to let go. If others find the life updates useful and beneficial to them, then so be it. I don't care either way.
  - zapzupnz 2y ago
    > IMO, it's not "normal" to keep up with acquaintances and people from past times. Fully recognising that you said "IMO", I'll say that keeping up with acquaintances and people from the past is normal in my culture. Social media helps to make that more direct and easier to manage than the gossipy grapevine of yore. What's normal depends on your culture and context, of course, and I suspect that's not true in yours — but it is in mine, so ditching something like Facebook is just out of the question for me and many people whose cultures place a heavy emphasis on those connections between people. The middle ground for me has been to check Facebook less and less, accelerated by the algorithm delivering me fewer life updates and more slop reposted from reddit.

coffeefirst 2y ago

I quit on and off and came to the opposite conclusion. The acquaintances I never heard from, we weren’t really in touch in any way, seeing their posts had just tricked me into thinking we were. And that’s okay. It means 5 years later when we cross paths for real there’s lots to catch up on.

suzzer99 2y ago

Yes, everyone uses social media differently and gets different things out of it. I've got my Facebook feed so well-curated that it rarely causes me distress. And like you, I like keeping up with old acquaintances, seeing their kids' milestones, etc. I get real enjoyment out of that. Instagram I post pics when I travel and otherwise ignore it. Twitter OTOH is probably a net negative for me. I still keep it around to follow sports pundits during games, and I usually only follow my sports list. But I do check in on my main feed during major events, and then inevitably end up doomscrolling. For example, the LA fires hashtags are so far beyond toxic - nothing but engagement farming, malicious misinfo, political nonsense, etc. Amidst all that crap, maybe 1 in 10 tweets has good info, but I have to destroy my psyche to find it.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. TBH I have no idea where or if my friend post stuff on social media anymore. I know maybe 1 person that posted updates often on Facebook, and that was pre-pandemic. Some post more business stuff on twitter. But overall I just kind of accept that sometimes I'll meet up with someone after a few years and realize "oh yeah, they're married now, took a trip to Japan for 6 months, and is getting some local attention from their band they made a few years ago" Of course, the first thing men will say after that meeting is simply "I've been fine, can't complain. How about you?". Maybe they'll mention their new job, but the rest will come after some 15-30 minutes of observation and chatting about the newest media. >but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. likewise, but I'm not sure if social media would have saved that for me. It's definitely a cultural issue, especially with men.

bluGill 2y ago
Problem is facebook decides what you want to see unless you go to the feed which they make hard. Even then the vast majoritiy of what you see is garbage they share instead of life updates that you want. I wish there was a better way but life updates still a posted there only. Facebook is the only one that has a concept of this is a for my friends only.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Yeah, I couldn't put it into words on why "Facebook got worse over the years". But that was definitely one of the keys shifts (outside of my friends leaving). I was getting less updates from people I know and more "news that will make you angry" kind of stuff. I probably really "left" around 2017. But 2020 is when I finally got around to freezing the account.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Realistically everything my several hundred friends have to share with me takes maybe 5 minutes a day to go through (close friends of course would call about things that are too personal for facebook so this is about things more distance friends would care about) . There is a lot more money in the handful of people who are scrolling through, finding, and sharing various memes and news that will make you angry (though this is fun if you - like most people - have friends on both the right and the left doing this and so you can see the bias each side is taking) than there is in friends sharing their life which is not lived on facebook (unless your a physically disabled and so you can only live vicariously through others)

jjulius 2y ago

This is just said from my perspective and I understand that others might not share it - Fine with me. They're acquaintances. Nobody has 200+ "friends", we have a handful of them. Is it nice to know that someone I hung out with a handful of times twenty years ago but otherwise don't really know and haven't said a word to in a decade made a big life change? Sure, I guess, but for the most part it has absolutely no bearing or impact on my day-to-day life nor the lives of those most important to me, and that's where I'm putting my energy.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
I was applying for a job once and recruiter told me I need to have at least 100 Facebook friends to be hired. Played Mafia for a couple of days and got 400 "friends". Was hired and HR presented me at the company meeting as a social media star)
- jader201 2y ago
  This sounds made up. I’m not saying it is, just that it’s so bizarre, it’s literally unbelievable. Like something The Onion would write.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    That's true and happened in 2011. Social media was AI of the day.
- kelnos 2y ago
  If I'd been talking to that recruiter I would have politely declined to continue the interview process. Unless the job itself was directly related to interacting with people on Facebook, the number of Facebook "friends" you have has nothing to do with your ability to do the job.

oysterville 2y ago

Heck, I missed huge announcements when I was on social media because social media thought that the stuff they had to show me was more important.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Fnoord 2y ago

I've quit social media (only use Signal and SMS/telephone/email). My wife functions as my secretary in this. I get the perks without the BS. Win-win. Only thing to remember is SMS/telephone/email aren't secure.

ozim 2y ago

I cannot say much as I don’t know the people. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media My impression is „how can one be so self centered” to imagine everyone HAS to know about their big event if they were not part of it and were not invited directly. Is that person Kardashian family or something ;). Even if it was a wedding and they posted photos. I wouldn’t remember a week later - if it is a person I see once in 5 years face to face and I was not invited. There are many big life events of such people.

incoming1211 2y ago

I think if people want to 'quit' social media, then just use it to keep up to date with friends/family. You follow ONLY friends/family, and limit consumption to only that, don't consume content outside of that circle. These full fledged 'quit' posts are nothing more than an attempt at a political statement that falls on deaf ears.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Does that really work? I haven't used one of these for a while but if I recall they're quite keen to take content that your friends/family have engaged with and ram it down your throat in hopes that you will too. It seems like you'd need all of your friends/family to do the same thing.
- incoming1211 2y ago
  So I only use facebook on desktop, I don't have it installed on my phone. When I go to the website, at the top of the page is 'feeds' and on the left is 'friends' filter. I just bookmark that page and only view that. https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr

noman-land 2y ago

If neither you nor they bothered reaching out, did either of you actually care? It might be a good time to reevaluate the nature of your relationships and start maintaining the ones you actively (instead of passively) care about outside of corporate shopping mall websites.

aaarrm 2y ago

I think it's perfectly fine to learn about huge life updates from people the next time you actually speak with them. That seems normal. Seeing people's updates on a wall isn't truly keeping up with friends. Keeping up and staying in touch requires consistent deliberate effort from both parties, via phone calls, messaging, and seeing each other in person. If you're not doing that with someone, then yeah, learning about life updates when you actually chat and catch up just makes sense to me.

jjulius 2y ago
Plus it's a lot more personal and meaningful when you can discuss the changes directly rather than on an impersonal "public" forum.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Right, and when I meet up with a friend in person to catch up (whether it's a close friend who I see weekly or a less-close friend who I see once or twice a year), we both give each other those life updates in a personally-tailored manner that perfectly fits the nature of our relationship with each other. That's how I want my interactions with people to be.
AOsborn 2y ago
No, I disagree. This is about lifestyle ergonomics and your community. Like it or not, social media has significantly reshaped the world. Issues aside, it has brought people together and made communication significantly easier than in the past. There is a reason 1/3 of the world is on Facebook. So, my point is that if you're choosing to be difficult, that is fine but you need to accept the burden falls on you. This is similar to adopting a vegan diet - your body your choice, but don't be intentionally difficult at dinner parties. Personal example here: I've cut down social media significantly, in my case all notifications are off even if the apps are installed. So you're not bombarded and can engage on a cadence that makes sense to you. That said, I need to dedicate time to checking up on extended family, friends etc - as otherwise you do miss announcements and major events.

motohagiography 2y ago

also eschewed social media. it's a different way of relating. normal people now react the way minor celebrities used to react when I'd meet them and not know anything about them, either insulted or very relieved. I think it has made me a better friend in some ways, as I'm a respite from the narratives they sustain, but to others, also a kind of legacy friend who may be an attachment to an old life, and who isn't part of their present. there's an aspect where watching their social media would be to participate in the change in their lives, and separating from it (perhaps selfishly) preserves things that might be left behind. but on the other hand, I'm interested in relating in one way too. social media profiles are strange because they say, "see, I am all these things now!" and in not seeing them, it declines to recognize those, like an old uncle you're always going to be a kid to because that's how you always were. I have more old friends than most, and I often think about whether there is an essential self we see in each other, like a character that all these stories happen around where we can peer across them to one another, protagonist to protagonist, as companions in the real. or are the relationships artifacts of the stories, and when they change, we do? it's prob a mix, but I don't think those essential(ist) aspects of friendship survive being mediated by the churn of updates and the curation of a public persona. anyway, being outside social media is a very different way to relate and not everything survives.

llm_nerd 2y ago

Lots of other replies already so apologies for adding to the clutter, but this sort of message always appears and it feels super dated. Like, 2003-era sentiment about the Facebook heyday. Facebook is like a ghost town now from the "social" and family perspective. I imagine some circles might be strong on it, but from every time this comes up it's clear that the vast majority of normal people have largely abandoned it. They didn't delete their accounts, but updates are incredibly infrequent. The vast majority of Facebook activity seems to be people who don't really know each other in various conspiracy-oriented or political groups, sports arguments, etc. As to huge life events you missed out on, even in 2003 if you only knew about something because of a Facebook post, you aren't very close. And the old acquaintances thing grows super old super quick. Everyone joined a bunch of graduating class groups, connected with old coworkers, and then... eh, turns out there was a reason we all lost contact. In 2025 people use social media overwhelmingly to interact with strangers, not friends or family. Largely to argue and get angry and try to convince and coerce and convert. I mean, HN fits the bill in a microcosm. Social media is a cancer on society. It has made everything much, much worse. It lets the ill-informed and unintelligent find each other and pump each other up. It monetizes and profits off of the absolute worst human traits. If Meta collapsed into a blackhole, Xitter disappeared, and so on, the world would be a much better place.

yakshaving_jgt 2y ago
Facebook didn’t exist in 2003.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  I was being facetious that Facemash was started in 2003, for the Harvard homies. The point being simply that Facebook as a social connections property hasn't been a thing for years.
TheCapeGreek 2y ago
You can easily replace FB with Instagram in this context. Nobody I know personally posts very much on Facebook, but they do post their updates on Instagram stories. Facebook's last hook on me is groups - small town community groups especially. If you live in an area with its own group, there's a high likelihood that it's going to be on Facebook. I don't really have the time to campaign to non tech-savvy retiring gen Xers and their parents that I don't want to use Facebook to know what's happening in my area, find services, etc.

tialaramex 2y ago

I would distinguish somewhere my friends post stuff for "friends" from social media. Lets take my friend Em as our example. If the typical message from Em says "Where are you? What time did we say we'll meet" that's a messenger app, that's definitely not Social Media. It might be a fucking SMS, but if it's a WhatsApp or a Signal. it's all the same for this purpose and that's definitely not Social Media. If the typical message from Em says "They don't know about my trees" and involves an in-joke reference to a movie that six people saw with her in 2008, that's maybe some sort of "social" experience but it's clearly not public. We have a Slack like this, created under pandemic conditions and named "Cabin Fever Mitigation". If the typical message says "Aw! Piggy" and has a picture of a guinea pig, that is now shading into Social Media. Probably some of the people "following" this feed don't know who she is but they like guinea pigs, or they like her art, or something similar. And yes obviously if the typical message is a reply to Elon Musk then it's social media and it can fuck off. But hopefully your friends aren't making crucial life updates as a public address to any watching fascists ?

JALTU 2y ago

Me too! It's okay, you can't do everything and people "should" appreciate others who don't do social.

itbeho 2y ago

You could just call the people most important in your life and speak and hear their updates. It would mean more to them than a comment on FB or whatever other social they are on.

jader201 2y ago

> I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely I think that’s a feature, not a bug. Most of the life updates people post on social media are the best of the best, which is what triggers so much fomo and trying to measure up. That’s why social media makes most people feel worse about their own lives. (Not to mention all of the other garbage these platforms try to push on you that you didn’t even ask for.) If these people are really important to us, then we’d find other means of staying in touch: text them, call them, invite them over (if that’s feasible). And if enough people get off social media, everyone else might also realize they need to make an effort to stay in touch with others, instead of the lazy post of glamour shots for the purpose of internet likes and feeding the dopamine addiction.

nradov 2y ago
I don't know about other people but social media doesn't make me feel worse about my life. There's no fomo when my 2nd cousin in another state posts about having a baby. She's important to me, and I don't expect her to waste time emailing me directly when the rest of the extended family is all on social media.
- jader201 2y ago
  Sure, events/posts like that are the main upside to social media. Unfortunately, that makes up a tiny fraction of most feeds.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  It didn't make me feel worse but it did bring out the worst in me. It's too easy to slip into bragging about your life and how well it's going.
  - Karrot_Kream 2y ago
    Pretty mugh all my friends stopped doing that after their mid 20s. Eventually everyone figures out that social media status games give little.
  - 2y ago

WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago

I quit social media 12 years ago and it's been an amazing boost to my personal psychology and productivity. My life is 10x better without it. I've forgotten many acquaintances and gained many more, and forgotten them again. Life is like that, but the core group of people is there, and I'm happy with that.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

I did the same thing. Now all I have is github, stackoverflow, and HN. I end up missing out on all sorts of things that I'd like to have been along for. I'm not about to go back, I think that being at the business end of somebody's propaganda machine was even worse for me, but it's still a significant sacrifice. Which is why I don't think the way forward is for everybody to leave social media. It's just not going to happen en masse, that's asking too much. We need to build media which can't be owned. If we ask people to sacrifice something, it should be an extra few cents on their electric bill and yesteryear's phone plugged in somewhere and hosting their share of it. I've only been exploring it for a few days now, but nostr seems promising for this kind of thing. The content is awful, just coin bro stuff, but as something to plug into and build apps for... seems legit.

kelnos 2y ago
For me (been off social media since 2019 or so), the solution has been smaller, targeted groups of friends, as well as making one-on-one effort. I have quite a few group chats with no more than a dozen people in each one, with many that have only 3 or 4 people. And I make a point to message people one-on-one to keep in touch, and set up time to meet in person for people who are local to where I live. For people who aren't local, we make a point to meet up in some city somewhere once a year or so, depending on the closeness of the friendships in the group. It requires more work than scrolling a Facebook feed and commenting on people's posts, but it's orders of magnitude more rewarding. And I don't miss the other hundreds of people on Facebook who I don't hear about at all now.

jmspring 2y ago

It’s funny, a few groups I belong to solely use FB. One group is for the preservation of weatern history and a friend digitizes and uploads thousands of pictures (if not 10s of rhoughsands) yearly. The only actual digital copies are on FB. It bugs me that he won’t archive elsewhere. The reason is fb is a commons and an additional backup would be a magnitude more work. I’ve offered to buy hard drives.

nradov 2y ago
You can download the pictures and archive them yourself.
- jmspring 2y ago
  There are thousands of pictures across hundreds of albums. So it’ll need to be scraped. Something might exist, no time to write such.
coldpepper 2y ago
Why not upload to archive.org?
BlueTemplar 2y ago
But Facebook is almost, but not quite entirely unlike commons...

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago

If someone relies on broadcast notifications to communicate, whether it be by snail mail, SMS, email, megaphone, or otherwise, maybe it is not really worth hearing? To me, it seems like if someone has so many friends or is so busy that they need to manage their life using this strategy, you probably aren't going to have much of a connection anyway.

supriyo-biswas 2y ago
Let us just say that not all friendships, even the ones that start out strong, end up having the same depth to them because of the loss of shared context (e.g. moving out of the same city for jobs, new responsibilities caused by marriage etc.) In such cases, there's still some reason for the two people involved to at least have a general idea of what's going on in other people's lives, and even reach out should there be something significant, such as a birth of a child or a loss in their families, etc. Without the broadcast aspect, once communication has ceased for some amount of time, it is very difficult to restart it, at any level. As an introvert, I still find broadcasts weird, because there's that tingling notion that people wouldn't care anyway; and was one of the reasons I ceased to be on social media many years ago. However, I understand why some people choose to do things differently. (There are similar anecdotes throughout this thread, I'd encourage you to read it for perspectives on this matter.)
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  I find it weird that after scrolling through hundreds of messages here nobody mentioned blogs. You would think that this one place where you would specifically find out about huge life events like deaths / births ?!
  - supriyo-biswas 2y ago
    Most people do not have a unified workflow for reading multiple blogs (RSS etc.) and replying to them, and they also lack the privacy control that is available in social media. It's a little unreasonable to expect people to put in that effort.

benjaminwootton 2y ago

I do think this trade off is real. I came off most of social media for a few years and was the happiest I’ve been in a long time. It is however a bit isolating. I stayed in touch with friends, but lots of acquaintances slipped away without an easy way to keep in touch.

Semaphor 2y ago

> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I wish I would still see those. While I have an account, I rarely use FB nowadays, because the algorithm thinks I’ll be more interested in stuff I don’t care about. So when I go to FB I tend to close the tab again a few seconds later…

brightball 2y ago
I just started aggressively unfollowing and hiding stuff I really didn’t want to see. I used to hate the idea of doing that, but I realized if not doing it was making me want to cut off everybody then I was probably better off just filtering aggressively. Now my feed is very pleasant. Family updates, sports news, friends vacation pictures and jokes.
- Semaphor 2y ago
  I only follow stuff I want to see. But facebook shows me a ton of other things. Reels every few posts are usually sexily dressed Asian women, or more normally dressed White women, with some kind of clickbait text overlaid. I think I maybe clicked on a reel once or twice ever. Then my feed is full of suggested content. Which I also don’t want to see. From metal bands I don’t care about and festivals I don’t wanna go to, to offensive content. And finally: Ordering. Non-chronological ordering makes no sense, because everything is random (probably not, somehow maximizes engagement for users very different from me, I guess). So I can’t even scroll for the stuff I want to see.
  - pickledoyster 2y ago
    >And finally: Ordering. Non-chronological ordering makes no sense, because everything is random (probably not, somehow maximizes engagement for users very different from me, I guess). So I can’t even scroll for the stuff I want to see. Does https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr not work anymore? It should surface the chronological feed without reels and other recommended slop.

ofcourseyoudo 2y ago

Thinking you can blast something on social media and your friends and family will see it is an old mentality. Even non super tech-savvy people know now what the algorithms are, and they know that everyone regularly misses updates from everyone else. And that light connection to people through social media wasn't a thing that created "close friends" anyway. It add to those weak connections that do have value but I doubt many people create intimate friend relationships solely through social media.

ncr100 2y ago
Nice. Maybe part of the seeming increasing anxiety of society is that we don't have friends in the correct sense and instead we have "friends" in the "just another user ID attached to a database query for your user ID" sense.
tomlockwood 2y ago
Yeah! Facebook is too busy showing me content farm AI slop to show me my cousin's baby photos.

shaky-carrousel 2y ago

If your acquaintances didn't take the time to update you directly, then maybe either the updates or the acquaintances themselves aren't really relevant for you. And that's ok.

fakedang 2y ago

This is my experience too. While I do maintain some accounts, I don't check them much anymore except for updating my statuses and life events, and even then I haven't done those in a while now. The advice to "quit social media" , "get a FairPhone", " get an FTP account and mount it with curlftps... " is often tossed around HN a lot, but real life flies in the diametrically opposite direction. While I'm not largely affected by it, I still feel a twinge of disappointment not finding out when an old friend has had a major life event.

huijzer 2y ago

> I have a few close friends and that’s it. Sounds perfect. I rather have a few close friends than two dozen semi-friends.

Refusing23 2y ago

yep i deleted fb 10ish years ago. and since then every family event that had been planned, was done on fb (just like before) and i find out about it by a text from my sister. the trick is to not give a shit. Coz they don't.

larodi 2y ago

Dropped FB for HN in 2017... and eventually I find myself now again on X for some #genaury stuff which is basically nowhere else to find. Happily most reasonable tech stuff lists on HN, some interesting stuff on MR, both being more-or-less a social network (of sorts) in a 90s disguise. Conventional media can be ok for casual reading/scrolling, but feels increasingly out-of-touch. Interestingly these days cnn, bbc, dw, en, and aj list different headlines, which is not what it was 15 y.ago. Still I'd strongly advise against all push media, and in particular Meta's products which pose a very high-risk of (screen) addiction thanks to hundreds of hidden retention mechanisms.

joostdecock 2y ago
> some interesting stuff on MR I'm drawing a blank for MR. What does it stand for?

veunes 2y ago

I guess it comes down to weighing the value of those connections against the downsides of staying on the platforms

kelnos 2y ago

> Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it. I think that's the key point. I realized that ultimately I didn't actually care about those huge life updates if they concerned people who I'm not in somewhat-regular contact with. Like, if my Facebook friend John Smith (let's say he's an old high-school friend I haven't seen since high school) posts about his marriage, or new job, or new child, and I don't actually chat with John anymore and don't know anything about his life outside of what I read on Facebook, why do I even care to know this stuff at all? And it turns out the answer is that... I don't! And there's nothing wrong with that. It's not rude or mean; some people are the closest of friends, and some people barely even warrant the "acquaintance" tag -- and everything in between -- and there's nothing wrong with any of that. And yes, I've missed social media posts about big-life stuff from closer friends who I do care about, but that's fine! I chat with those people via some avenue (email, text, messaging group, real-life, whatever) often enough that I still get those big-life updates, and usually it's in a more personalized manner, that gets me details that are tailored to the level of closeness of our friendship. For people who I'm not super close with, but still maintain a relationship with, maybe I get that update about their life 6 months later, when we are next in contact. That's also fine! If we were closer friends, we'd chat more often, and I'd hear about it earlier. But we're not, and I don't, and there's nothing wrong with that. > a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. That's more your choice than anything else. You always have the option to text or email someone directly to say hello and see how they're doing, or to set up a time to meet in person to catch up. Even if they're perhaps not the one-on-one type of friends, you can start a group chat with that person and other mutual friends who might enjoy keeping in touch that way. There are so so so many options for communication these days that it's almost overwhelming! But it certainly need not be a binary between "social media firehose of every person I've ever met" and "I only hear about the lives of few people". Is it important to you to be in touch with those old acquaintances? If so, reach out to them! If not, then it sounds like quitting social media was fine for you.

monssooon 2y ago

I also quit social media . I did not have this experience. I had no problem following what went on with friends and acquaintances?! I don't know why you had this experience. I'm sorry you felt like that. but for me the info that is important always gets to me. And I enjoy emailing and using the phone and meeting people for social events in stead. And when I miss some post on face I always hear it from someone else....

austin-cheney 2y ago
It’s a matter of perspective and trade offs. If you are a person who experiences anxiety from missing things (FOMO) you are much more likely to notice this. I know since deleting my social media accounts I have missed out on a lot, only because my wife keeps up with stuff, but I cannot say how much I have missed because I really don’t care. The other side to this is how aggressively a person is willing to take deliberate action to maintain personal relationships in the absence of social media automation. If you are that social butterfly who really owns that aspect of life you are likely to never miss any aspect of social media. Most people aren’t that good at taking dedicated action regularly reach out to people outside their most immediate circle though.

bugtodiffer 2y ago

> I have a few close friends and that’s it. That's enough :)

lm28469 2y ago

If they're close enough they'll tell you irl, if they don't tell you they're not that close and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things Even with close friends who live far away, I prefer catching up once a year around a beer and some food than get a week by week journal of their lives on social media, it makes you feel like you're connected but you really aren't

stiray 2y ago

I never had any social media account. Never. When Facebook was still in diapers I have predicted what will happen (while what really happened was far worse) and distance myself from it and warned all the others who, normally, didn't listen. Dont have FB, twitter, reddit, linkedin, tiktok, not even google account... none of that crap. I am successfully avoiding getting my name anywhere on the internet, I am not posting my photos, videos,... I have 7 friends I meet regularly, I have friends where our life separated years back and we meet once or twice per year and I have phone with 473 phone numbers of various contacts, from former colleges to dishwasher repair technician, etc. And guess what, people call me, sms me (oh yes, it works so much better than having 20 various clients installed for different groups of people) or send me email if something important has happened and I am actually physically invited to birthdays, "i got son" celebrations, notified about death (luckily only one, former schoolmate). When we meet, in person (i hate long phone calls), we have a quality chat as I dont know anything about their ingrown hair on the tip of their toe and they don't know anything about me changing job or having knot on hair in my beard. For anyone else, I dont care. I dont disillusion myself how I have 473 good friends on some stupid online platform who need to share every intimate detail with me. I cant even handle so many people. So maybe those tradeoffs are not really the real tradeoffs but rather self deception, how much you matter to the people and to how many people. I can count them using my fingers. Which is perfectly fine.

abc123abc123 2y ago
Amen! Same situation, same preferences, same values, same result. Only difference is I have about 70 phone nrs on my dumbphone, I don't own a smart phone, and my vices are this site, usenet and mastodon.

worthless-trash 2y ago

If they don't talk to you personally, you have overestimated your value in the relationship.

richrichardsson 2y ago

> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I had the same thing happen, but both they and I were Facebook users, it's just the algorithm decided I don't need to see posts from my friends and it's better that I see adverts (I can live with that, I don't pay to use the platform after all) and hundreds of random pages/groups that I have zero interest in following. This 2nd "feature" is slowly driving me towards the point where the FOMO of no longer passively interacting with my friends may longer keep me on there.

KronisLV 2y ago

> I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it. I feel like that's the downside of social media in general, like the network effect - since most people are on social media, that's the place where people will post life updates, as opposed to talking to others about that stuff directly as much. Maybe there could be a healthy way to use social media: to catch up with the people in your social circle, maybe look at a few cute pictures of animals or memes, but don't obsessively doomscroll or compare yourself to the highlights of others' lives.

noufalibrahim 2y ago
I think some way of batching information from the people/sources that you're interested in (and then perhaps running an LLM over it to surface the most important information) which is then emailed or texted to one might be a solution.

herbst 2y ago

What are you even talking about when you meet them? Are you reiterating each others Facebook posts together? Not having seen a friend for a longer time and talking about all the things that happened is the one thing that friendship is about IMO.

pino82 2y ago

Also good to consider for that tradeoff: Those people are completely fine to ignore you without some Zuck accounts. Bring that together with your idea about friendship before you run behind them. Maybe it's fine for you. Maybe your conclusion is that it's not worth the thing. It's not a new topic. For me, iit was around 15 years ago. I never had FB or WA. Not even for a day. And that brought a lot of friendships to an end. Most of my friendships in fact. And that was sad!! But well, no other way would even be an option, admittedly! It's sad, but it was the best I could do.

Dharmakirti 2y ago

Touché. Such radical takes are always a hit on HN because they are essentially playing to the gallery. Leaving social media is futile if you don't take efforts to maintain contacts with your friends and families in other ways.

pmontra 2y ago

I recently learned that the daughter of a friend of mine got married and had two children. That happened in the last 5 years, when I actually didn't hear from that friend of mine. Given that we didn't feel the need to send messages to each other for 5 years, are we really friends or only acquaintances? In the latter case it's OK not to be informed about what is going on. My social media are WhatsApp and Telegram. I get in touch there with people I care about and I don't get streams of useless information like I would if I'd be on FB, X, Instagram or TikTok. I do look for videos on YouTube when I want to learn something for which watching is better that reading.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

renegade-otter 2y ago

Maybe that was possible with Facebook from 2009. Right now, to have any friend updates, you first you need to scroll through a firehose of bots, AI schlock, and ads. Then risk getting pulled into it and wasting valuable hours of your life. The only winning move is not to play. I just got together with two friends in RL. One I have not seen for 10 years. There were a lot of missed news we all had to catch up on. This is how it's always been, and it's completely normal. Even the olden Facebook way of being so plugged in into your friends' lives was very unhealthy. If you HAVE to know something, life will find a way of letting you know.

jacooper 2y ago

I agree completely, I did the same thing and now I've been going back gradually. Staying in contact passively makes starting conversations much easier, commenting on their stories, them reacting to a big event, etc. It keeps people in contact, because nobody reaches out of the blue now. Losing such a network of people is costly, socially and from an opportunity perspective. Still trying to not click anything not related to people I follow, the algorithms on meta apps are just insane.