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I decided to stop using Twitter a while back, and just now deleted
Instagram, TikTok, and Tumblr from my phone (though I'll probably still
use the desktop version of Tumblr, as well as Reddit). I'm still on
Discord since that's where I talk to most of my friends.
I'm disabled to
the point where I can't often leave my house and need to spend days
afterwards recovering if I do, so I still want to be able to keep in
contact with people and understand current trends and worries. I feel the need to understand what other people my
age are doing and feeling, but I figure by keeping social media around
that is 1. less intrusive and 2. less easy to doomscroll and more geared
towards long-form, slower content, I'll still be able to get that feeling. Plus, I still have my friends.
This was
honestly my main barrier to deleting social media, as well as keeping up with my friends. I don't really get to
see a lot of people anymore. But I can always keep in contact with my friends through other digital means, or even through physical means! I've been exchanging letters with a few friends for a while, and it's really fun.
However, I
think overall, I just want to focus more on creative projects and
reading, which I can still do! I was really inspired by an article I
read a few months ago about a bunch of teenagers who have decided to swear off technology almost altogether except for Flip phones, which they use for safety reasons. I think it would be difficult for me to do that because I use my phone for so much—accessing books from the library for free, learning languages, as a camera, etc. I do know that I don't want to use it for social media anymore.
There are a few things I'm keeping around: Spotify—although I've been listening to actual audio files on "Music" (which is still called iTunes in my heart) more and more lately—Storygraph, Pinterest, Letterboxd, AO3, and Steam, which don't necessarily serve the primary purpose of being social media, but still end up being that anyway sometimes. I think that's fine by me. If an app's "social media" serves the primary purpose of being where I explore and talk about a specific topic, that's more fulfilling to me than the overwhelm that comes with other social media.
Social media is a great place to connect with other people and talk about things that concern us, but I think being in that space for too long makes me incredibly anxious, and doesn't foster real, careful interactions between myself and others. I'm not sure if I'll go back to these social medias in the future. I might! But for now, I really just want to focus on other things.
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dave
i did the same thing under different motivation; im just trying to keep algorithmic content delivery and apps that enable you to doomscroll, as well as any corporate social app, entirely out of my life
That is so fair!! I definitely feel that as well
by ouroboros; ; Report
web1 and veeerry early web2 are just so much more fun and better for your mental health
by dave; ; Report