Anyone quit social media?

I am a massive stroker... Miss you too, Ben!

I'm sure we all do that to a degree and I wasn't singling you out

Heheh, Cheers for the reply. I didn’t assume you were, just figured I’d atone for my sins.

I didn't quit. They kicked me off for being too awesome.

"You shine too brightly for us!" - Mark Zuckerberg, 2015

Haha, they keep only whining strikers…

Did a Instagram rinse the other day and stopped following a bunch of people. Made a huge difference. Also trying to spend less time on there.

Quite fascinating that a something as simple as a few accounts posting images can mess with your head like that.

But what do you do with all the times it free's up?

Currently on a googling spree on active monitors. Time better spent.

Got rid of FB maybe 4 years ago, and haven't missed it once. Twitter I still have, but every time I check it makes me realize why I haven't checked it for over a year. Instagram was the last to go, I still have it, but again every time I went on it I immediately got that feeling that I wasn't "living my best life" compared to other people. So I just stopped looking at it. Put my phone down, went outside, actually looked at the world and realised I have a pretty fucking nice life really.

I very rarely post here but this topic really rung some bells. Basically don’t delete Facebook etc but use it to your advantage if needed.
I gave up on FB years ago, preferring meeting people / phone calls / emails as they are more personal. I was considering deleting it but never got around to doing so. Just over a year ago my mother had to move into a nursing home due to dementia (my sister moved far away and I work full time, father died years ago so nobody to look after her full time like she needs). I really trusted my sister and her husband, they had the time to look after my mother’s money (they are both retired) and I have never had a problem with them before so this was alco helpful. Eventually it turned out that we needed to sell my mother’s house to pay for the nursing home fees, my sister accepted an offer for the house without discussing with me. I got suspicious and asked my sister to have access to my mother’s bank account (we both have power of attorney but I never applied for access to the bank account as I trusted my sister) but she told me that I didn’t need this, eventually she gave in. I discovered that there was a lot of money missing from my mother’s bank accounts dating back from when my father died (blank cheques cashed, random ATM withdrawals for the maximum amount possible and massive bank transfers to random accounts that I later discovered were my sister’s).
Whilst this was all going on I had a lot of family ignoring me – I am part of a large family spread around many countries and they like to use Facebook to communicate. I was paranoid as this was unusual.
I asked my sister via phone call, email and text for the stolen money to be returned, I never received a reply.
My sister is an active poster on Facebook, so when I saw that she posted a message to all her friends that we should support dementia charities I was mad. I replied to the group say that she is a thief and she has stolen money from someone suffering from dementia. Some of the money has been returned, except for the blank cheques and ATM withdrawals. I have spoken to a solicitor but it will cost a lot to recover the other missing money and I might not be successful so have not pursued this.
People in the group that have been ignoring me have now been calling me to apologise and we have now re-connected!
Anyway, TLDR, I am glad that I didn’t delete Facebook but only use it whenever necessary.

That’s quite a story. Must’ve been heart wrenching going through it. Have you got someone to lean on? Few good threads on here to post in for support.

Also, top marks for using FB to solve the mystery and out the thief. Some people huh

I'm guessing bicyclepubes has quit

Awesome !

I'm heading that way on Nextdoor.

I never had Facebook, quit Instagram and Twitter earlier this year. Now I just waste my time on other stuff (like this website)

I think the rot is internal and I'll never escape it 🙂👍

All SM accounts are just tools, and like any tool their usefulness depends on which tool you’re using and how you use it.

I’ve had FB for years and I use it daily for family stuff (my family is spread about a bit), bikes, music and football. It’s a useful tool in that respect. I have both a Twitter and IG account, but I’ve used Twitter maybe half a dozen times, and I only got it so I could chase up some gig tickets a few years back. I’ve never posted a tweet of my own because I can’t see why anyone I don’t really know would be interested in my thoughts. I got IG during lockdown so I could watch some live gigs by Fyfe Dangerfield, and that’s it. Apart from that I can’t see what IG offers other than the others.

Like I said, they’re tools. Just use them to make things of your own.

what IG offers

A clean UI, but the compromise is it's less useful for anything much other than curation/promotion. The way FB has incrementally added features over the years makes it useful like you say, but horrible to use. If I could sack off everything but marketplace and groups I would.

It's quite well known that SM sites capitalise on our dopamine receptors to promote continued use, inventing ever more instant ways that we can interact with content or each other, and different kinds of "notification" or reward that trigger the dopamine response, which we normally get when completing a task in the real world or finding something we were searching for. Basically SM and the internet more widely tricks the brain into thinking we are making/ achieving/ finding things when we are not.

If you have a naturally low dopamine response, the effect can be quite extreme. I realised recently that my internet use was taking the place of things like bulimia, self harm and binge drinking as release valves for ADHD and associated issues. I would scroll or check sites obsessively without really registering what I was looking at, or realising what I was doing, and find I had lost up to 4 hours at a time, sometimes whole days. The only solution I found was to go out without a phone, which meant I started losing work and missing social events.

I have enabled 2 factor authentication on FB and Twitter, and put a close friends number as the second factor. Now every time I try to log in, I can't. What this means is, if for any reason I need to contact someone through these channels the accounts are still there I just need the code from my friend. If you have someone you trust enough to do this with I have found its a great solution. I've been free for two weeks now and it's a big boost to my mental health.

The other great tool I have is a dumb phone with no internet capabilities that I switch to. Only problem is many people use WhatsApp instead of Text now which is frustrating.