I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve. It's like telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin and use it more moderately".<p>The only realistic way to reduce the grip of the these technologies on your mind is to use fewer of them and completely opt out of the worst offenders, like FaceBook, and TickTok.<p>I've deleted most of my social media accounts at this point and gone back to a more basic phone and my life is noticeably better for it. Sure there are some inconveniences and some people think I'm a weirdo, but it seems like a small price to pay to get my brain back.<p>So much of the power these technologies have over us is not that they're so useful or wonderful, but that there's a social expectation that we use them, i.e. people sending social invites via FaceBook, stigma against the "green bubble people", etc. We use them initially because of social pressure and then get hooked. If even a small and stubborn minority opted out of some of these technologies, say 9% of the population, reasonably distributed across ages and demographics, a lot of these expectations would disappear or at least reduce.
Delete Instagram and Facebook from your phone. I did and I recommend everyone do it. You can still access via browser, but obviously not as good UX (which may make you less addicted).<p>I get how people can get addicted to social media apps (I got addicted to FB when I was in college 2005-2007 ish), and I am happy to see articles like this and other media outlets cover social media addiction and spread awareness, its a big problem. I would not blame the apps, though.<p>I think the real problem is that social media turbo-charges the social dynamics of the real world:<p>* attention seeking - "likes" are attention, and people love attention<p>* social presentation - you can present the best picture of your <i>fake</i> life<p>* envy and fantasy - men and women who think they live boring lives observing the curated, filtered lives of the people they want to be<p>* social hierarchy - who follows who? Prettier people having more follower / friends<p>* etc<p>I fell into those traps, and fb/insta were there to indulge my insecurities - but, critically, it was insecurities that fed the into the addiction. I'm a different guy now - I spend more time on myself than observing others.<p>I'm poorly articulating all this, but I think there is something to be analyzed there.
One way to rethink your relationship with social media is to, for lack of a more succinct phrasing, get a life.<p>I don't mean "don't be a loser", I mean have a life with goals, projects, and real relationships. Once that life flowers, you see social media as merely a tool for the further flourishing of that life. This mindset also makes you take a hard look at the connections you make through social media. Most are 1 dimensional, and based on emotional extremes or hits of "content". Instead, follow people you actually know. Then do stuff with them out in the world.<p>Doing stuff, and not just surfing social media, with other people is far more rewarding than being amongst 3 billion users.
> I'm a Libra which means I was born to find balance<p>While there may be good points in the article, this indicates a low level of scientific rigor by the writer. Couldn't continue after that.
The propositions in the article are good, although the tips proposed by the Center for Humane Technology [1] are much more tactical (they are apparently mentioned in the audio version, but I only read the article).<p>Also, as a complete aside, I'm not sure if the third passage [2] in the article is facetious or what, but I'm always surprised to see credibility-destroying statements like these in legitimate publications. In this day and age readers have to be ruthlessly efficient in discerning reliable information/advice from nonsense. They are on the lookout for <i>any</i> reason to abandon articles and content to avoid wasting valuable time and attention. There is an old direct-response copywriting dictum: "The purpose of each sentence is to get the next sentence read." The aforementioned passage does the opposite, even though the subsequent tips are pretty good.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.humanetech.com/take-control" rel="nofollow">https://www.humanetech.com/take-control</a><p>[2] "I'm a Libra which means I was born to find balance, and I wanted to apply that principle to my social media behaviors and consumption."
I recently deactivated Facebook (which I only ever used via web browser) and since then I’ve been counting the number of times I unconsciously end up on the Facebook login page when I’m bored/killing time. I’ve noticed that faced with a “new tab” I’ll often just hit the f key and hit enter without thinking about it, landing me on the Facebook login page. Before I deactivated, this would result in me somewhat unconsciously scrolling through my newsfeed mindlessly consuming whatever Facebook decides I should see that day. I don’t consider myself to be mentally weak so it scares me to think about what percentage of the population does this without ever realizing it.
Maybe age has something to do with it - yes, I used to spend too much time on Facebook. Back in 2007. I also used to drink too much alcohol. Today I just don't have time for social media other than when I'm waiting for something, like a bus or train or my boy to come out of school.<p>I can't program with a hangover, I can't read, I can't scratch-build radio-controlled trucks. I can't scuba dive when I'm hung over and I can't do Krav Maga while I'm online. I like these and other things more than being online. But yes, I like being online too. Pintrest is great for research when you're building a garden bench.<p>I guess filling my life with meat-space things I <i>really</i> like and enjoy means I spend comparatively very little time online.<p>I do wonder what people who don't have meat-space interests more important to them than being online, think about.
Social media nowadays is not just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.<p>There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube… I’d even count HN.<p>There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid amount of people way to invested in those<p>See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn’t call that responsible.
I think people have a bad relationship with social media because they use it to consume instead of produce. I changed my mindset from 'social media is a place where I learn about/keep in touch with my friends' to 'social media is a place where I share my art, jokes, life events, etc with my friends'. I spend less time on it because I go in with the mindset of 'What can I create right now?' instead of just mindless scrolling. Or when I am mindlessly scrolling I have more of a perspective, what do people find interesting right now?
Am I the only one bored by virtually everything on social media? Everything feels like its been curated for either teens or people with exceptionally low attention spans. I find it all very annoying (With Hacker News being the exception).
I solved the problem when I went to facebook and deleted all groups (except two - both related to family events: I personally know in the real world everyone in both groups). Often when I check facebook now it has no idea what to show me as I've seen everything, and it has to revert to showing me pictures of classmates I haven't interacted with in years - which is what I'm on Facebook for in the first place! Even then it runs out of things to show me fast.
I have a couple of hacks I use that, once developed as a habit, have been enormously helpful for me.<p>1) I never look at a general feed. (Which I means I just never use Twitter as that's kind of all it has) I open FB on my message url, which shows me the three things I want: messages, event notifications, and a search box to go to the four or five dedicated topic areas I use where off-topic posts aren't tolerated. Basically all the "designed to be addictive" shit is on the feed page.<p>2) I use Stylebot on Chrome, which allows you to add custom css overrides for every page. It's awesome. You can just turn every thing that clamours for your attention or has "suggestions" into empty whitespace.<p>3) I don't use any of their apps. You can't control the apps the same way.<p>hth
“Navigating the internet” is dead. The majority of users are swiping at 5 second videos between 5 major platforms. The rest of the web is weird tabloids and abandoned blog spots. Try looking up a recipe and tell me you don’t get plagued with ads like you’re on XVideo.
I wonder how long before the advertisers on these platforms realize how much the social media companies are using the same variable rewards, random payoff, low friction, and rule of reciprocity to manipulate companies into continuing to buy ads? Measuring ad effectiveness is already hard, now the social media giants are both the platform and the technology for measuring "engagement".<p>Isn't it blindingly obvious to ad buyers that they are essentially putting coins in a slot machine, pulling the "show my ads" lever, and getting a good feeling when the metrics show their ad 'went viral'?
Take social media off your phone. Install a news feed blocker that forces you to toggle on the news feed for your site of choice when you want to scroll. That helped me cut my social media time from 1+ hour a day to less than 15 minutes.
I've never heard a convincing argument for the upside of social media. It's never looked like a good way to spend time from the outside.<p>I guess this is the difference between people who look at drugs and decide not to even try them vs. people who don't think about any of that and promptly get addicted.<p>The connection of all social media companies to either DARPA or CIA is also a strong negative trait from the get-go. Having visited East Berlin before 1989 and seen what totalitarian surveillance looks like and operates like, I'm a bit sensitive to the sight of the same all over again.
Last year at the start of the pandemic, I stopped using Facebook, Youtube, Reddit and Linkedin. Just stopped, no exceptions. It took an incredible amount of discipline at first, but now it's become a habit. Its had a net positive effect on my life and I highly recommend others to try it.<p>Its incredible how little I'm tempted to open these apps now. Once you're properly out of the hyper-addictive ecosystem that they create, that's it, you're unlikely to want to get back in.
I recently got the app One Sec - <a href="https://one-sec.app/" rel="nofollow">https://one-sec.app/</a><p>It has been an absolute game changer for me in reducing my screen time. The app is really good at changing habits - it makes opening up social media apps annoying and disrupts the expected dopamine hit. My app opens are way down and I’m no longer even hitting my screen time limit for social media apps.
I feel the need to start with metrics (mostly because I do worry about the effect (good and bad) it has on my kids).<p>I am planning on somehow pulling screentime metrics and youtube history data together - have not really got a plan but if anyone fancies a few spare hours please shout.<p>(ironically those of us with kids probably have the least time to scratch this itch !)
I want to quit this stuff but I can’t seem to find anything to fill the void.<p>Time fillers for Five to ten minutes Of downtime where I don’t want to do any deep work since I’ll probably be interrupted. Maybe some kind of game?
I found that Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" book a great help in making sure that my social media usage was confined and intentional.