Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media?<p>I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things.<p>I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to what I&#x27;ve been doing without having to call him. (I still call him, but we can talk about the pictures and things we&#x27;ve seen over the last week or so.) I plan vacations and events with friends. Next weekend I&#x27;m going to a bachelor party in the Adirondacks with people from around the country.<p>I&#x27;ve never been worried about my employer seeing my social media profiles. If I wouldn&#x27;t do something in public, I wouldn&#x27;t post it to social media. Maybe I&#x27;m unique in being able to restrain myself.<p>I always hear stories about how people are &quot;so much happier&quot; after they quit Facebook. What is happening on your Facebook that&#x27;s making you unhappy?

&gt; <i>In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer, I began receiving more interesting opportunities than I could handle. I currently have filters on my website aimed at reducing, not increasing, the number of offers and introductions I receive....My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is common: As you become more valuable to the marketplace, good things will find you.</i><p>This struck me as humble-braggy, and not particularly enlightening. Are there any details on this research? It&#x27;s not at all surprising that a tenured professor at Georgetown would have lots of inbound requests, so that one data point isn&#x27;t particularly relevant for most people. What fields were these other professionals in?<p>I&#x27;m completely open to the possibility that in some fields, the most successful people are not on social media much. But laying out this blanket advice without any detail on where it might or might not apply isn&#x27;t very helpful.<p>There are a lot of founders on HN, and I am interested to see the perspective of other founders. We wear lots of hats, including as social media marketers—which of course entails some social media presence. I&#x27;m pretty sure my Kickstarter would have never been funded if I weren&#x27;t on FB, for example! But maybe I&#x27;m wrong, and I&#x27;m not considering the alternate promotion avenues I would have pursued if I weren&#x27;t on FB?

<i>&quot;The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom.&quot;</i><p>While I do not use social media (have FB but don&#x27;t use it, never had Twitter, Instagram, etc.), and have taken steps to minimizing distractions like using the browser add-on Distraction-free Youtube (which is great, BTW), I have realized recently that HN is one of three sites I am addicted to and use in lieu of social media. I absolutely hit refresh on the HN main page whenever I encounter the &quot;slightest hint of boredom&quot; or just something I don&#x27;t want to do. Same for the other sites.<p>This is troubling to me, as all three of those sites are legitimately very useful. I read them for useful information and to keep abreast of topics important to me and to know what&#x27;s going on in the world. They also provide insights from other perspectives I have not considered and act as a challenge to my own opinions and beliefs. It seems obvious I am going to have to severely limit my use during normal hours. I am aware of the noprocrast setting but honestly, it&#x27;s a setting I have full control over so that doesn&#x27;t help as I&#x27;ll just override it and the other sites have no such setting anyway. Going to have to rely on good ol&#x27; self discipline.

Career and social life should be completely and utterly separated. The content on your social media page should have no bearing on your ability to perform the job at hand.<p>Quite honestly, an employer that even looks at your social media profile to do a sort of casual &quot;character check&quot; on you, is not one that you should want to work for in the first place.<p>Especially true in the realm of IT, where there just simply aren&#x27;t enough solid, responsible people to fill the need.<p>This article presents a nice thought, but on principle, I&#x27;m just gonna keep doing my thing outside of work (documenting what I want on social media), and crushing it AT work. My career should be growing based on job performance, not that one time I accidentally got too drunk at a bar.

This is self-promotional, but also highly relevant!<p>A few moths ago after reading Cal Newport&#x27;s book &quot;Deep Work&quot;, I decided to try to improve my social media usage by writing an app that could block HN&#x2F;Twitter&#x2F;Google News (the big 3 digital distractions for me) by default, and force me to go to an extra step to temporarily unblock them when I wanted to use them. It seems like a small thing, but that extra friction of having to open my app, unblock, and then go on to the service in question has really cut down my casual browsing. I feel much more productive and just... at peace with my internet usage since I&#x27;ve adopted this pattern.<p>If you have iOS and would like to give the app a try, I&#x27;d appreciate it! It&#x27;s totally free for now. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;timeguard.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;timeguard.io</a>

It advice where the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;.<p>Are you a police officer? Trial attorney? Inspector General? You almost certainly should not be on social media, or exclusively posting baby pictures and acting within defined guidelines from your employer.<p>Are you a teacher? librarian? social services worker? union steward? public sector employee not covered by collective bargaining? You should be very cautious about sharing your views&#x2F;experience on gun control, abortion, Trump, binge drinking, drugs, etc.<p>Are you a salesdude, politician, business owner, etc? If your personal schtick part of your branding efforts professionally? You should be on social media, focused on whatever you do.<p>Otherwise, Facebook, Twitter or whatever is what you make of it. If you do dumb things, there may be consequences. Most of the time it&#x27;s the equivalent of amusing yourself with friends in a semi-public place, except your buddy Zuck is always silently listening.

It feels like only months (OK, it&#x27;s been a few years) since we were being told that not having a social media presence may be considered suspicious.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;business.time.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;08&#x2F;does-not-having-a-facebook-page-make-you-suspicious-to-employers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;business.time.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;08&#x2F;does-not-having-a-facebo...</a>

Last week I watched a homeless man:<p><pre><code> - Get a phone - Start a twitter account - Start mico-blogging - Get offered a job - Get the job - Become no longer homeless </code></pre> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;CharlieBinbags" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;CharlieBinbags</a>

I didn&#x27;t sign up for Twitter because I thought it would open up professional opportunities for me. Not sure who this is aimed at to be honest.<p>OP thinks social media is bad for you and doesn&#x27;t need it for professional reasons so he doesn&#x27;t use it. So why should I take his advice on what I should or shouldn&#x27;t do on social media?<p>His argument boils down to there are more productive uses of your time. Brb, gotta delete Netflix too! Sorry to my family as well, since I need to move to a shack in the woods to be free of distractions for my important work.<p>If OP is worried about the &quot;seductive&quot; nature of promoting yourself on social media maybe he shouldn&#x27;t write humblebrag articles to post in NYT.

A fundamental rule that is eroding the allure of social media:<p>Information consumption != happiness<p>I have recently engaged in a somewhat forced[0] experiment. I have given up nearly all social media, and apps that send me push notifications of any kind, and replaced my news diet with e-books. Now, rather than reading the daily political gossip or worse, I listen to an audio book or read an e-book about something that interests me. I feel like my brain has much more space, and I am much less stressed.<p>[0] I broke my phone, and couldn&#x27;t get the one I wanted, so I got a temporary phone that gives me a grand total of 4GB of user-available storage. I&#x27;ve installed very few apps.

as a millennial its almost impossible to apply for a job that doesnt quietly scan through social media trying to find you. My last job sent a linkedin request from the HR director, but after my first week he lamented that I &quot;didnt seem very social&quot; on the internet.<p>My current job went so far as to browse the TLD for my email address for clues to any seditious or non-conforming behaviors.

The problem with Social Media (and a few other platforms aswell) is that they were explicitly designed with addiction in mind. There&#x27;s even literally a book about this subject called &quot;Hooked&quot; with subtitle &quot;How to create habit forming products&quot;, but you can and should translate the &quot;habit forming&quot; in the subtitle into &quot;addictive&quot;.<p>Everybody has neurotransmitters in their body, and these neurotransmitters have the ability to change brain chemistry. One of those neurotransmitters is dopamine, which makes you feel good when you have accomplished something. Basically it&#x27;s natural crack. So what do these platforms do? They abuse the knowledge of this kind of biology within the experience design of their platforms to create something I call &quot;dopamine loops&quot;, which basically means you crave more, and more, and more dopamine (and thus keep interacting with the service). And before you know it the last few hours you should have spent on work or other important things like keeping an eye on the traffic around you or having actual real life social interactions with the people around you, are rather spent on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and whatnot.<p>So it would rephrase the headline a bit. Not only your career may depend on it, but your entire life may actually depend on it.

how about quit all news media including the New York Times?<p>NYT = same exact incentives as Facebook. plus constant exaggeration of threats and pushing irrelevant stuff outside of your control.<p>i honestly don&#x27;t give a fuck what Kim Jong Un &#x2F; Putin &#x2F; Trump do because i can&#x27;t change anything about them.<p>which makes the NYT an addictive waste of time very much like social media.

<i>&gt; I&#x27;ve never had a social media account.</i><p>This is strictly true, but it&#x27;s not as if Cal Newport doesn&#x27;t have a web presence. He has a website registered for his name[1] and runs a popular blog called <i>Study Hacks</i>[2].<p>If you&#x27;re marketing yourself, you should register your name online. It&#x27;s one of the simplest and most effective ways to strengthen and, more importantly, control your personal brand[3].<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;calnewport.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;calnewport.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;calnewport.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;calnewport.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.financialsamurai.com&#x2F;strengthen-your-brand-by-registering-your-name-online&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.financialsamurai.com&#x2F;strengthen-your-brand-by-re...</a>

I live in the PNW and am in the tech industry. I haven&#x27;t had a need for social media in any job application I&#x27;ve filled out, and not a single interview or recruiter mentioned anything about social media.<p>Social media is entirely unecessary unless you consider Indeed social media or work in a social media role.

I vehemently disagree with the assertion that all social media is a net negative on one&#x27;s life.<p>First of all, there are many people who make a living off of social media, and HN itself is social media which for me personally has had a very positive impact on my life. But let&#x27;s ignore this for a second.<p>Social media simply allows one to expand their network and influence way beyond what one could accomplish solely offline. This means being exposed to opportunities that one may have never encountered via p2p word of mouth alone, whether that be job postings, business opportunities, potential clients, business partners, knowledge, motivation, etc.<p>Social media of course can be a toxic waste of one&#x27;s time (eg. the default Reddit homepage). Social media addiction is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. If you&#x27;re compulsively checking your Facebook&#x2F;Instagram every 5 minutes then that&#x27;s probably a serious problem (unless you make a living off those platforms) that needs to be addressed. For the rest of us who maybe check it for 5-10 minutes in the evenings during our downtime, it&#x27;s not really a big deal.<p>Also I&#x27;d imagine that the author is a huge recipient of the positive end of social media even if only indirectly, his blog articles and such being shared through social media in order to market his book. I discovered his work over a decade ago through his blog which I used to actively follow. So it&#x27;s a little bit hypocritical of him to knock on bloggers. But I totally agree with his observation that as a whole we&#x27;re losing our ability to focus, and social media addiction is a serious problem.

On the other hand, there has been an increasing trend of companies adding a red this-is-required star to social media links on applications.<p>I&#x27;ve been outright rejected for several jobs because I said I have no useful SM presence.<p>I could understand this for something like band promotion, but for programming and similar jobs, it makes zero sense. I don&#x27;t post pictures of me online, and even so, I never take photos when I&#x27;m out, and I&#x27;m not sure why it matters. It&#x27;s almost like they think I&#x27;m hiding dead bodies or prison tats on my face.

I&#x27;m not sure I buy that not using social media is the linchpin of my career, but I take his point that it&#x27;s largely a waste of time to be reasonable. I have all the major social media services and I use them occasionally (for example: I don&#x27;t install the apps, I just login from a browser). I think the bigger message that I take from this:<p>1. Some people are probably &quot;addicted&quot; or at least habituated in a way that makes social media actively negative in their lives.<p>2. For the rest of us, maybe some see value in social media and others don&#x27;t.<p>I&#x27;m in (2): I take the &quot;does doing X enrich my life?&quot; approach to social media. Maybe once or twice a week I log on and see if anyone had anything personally interested happen. If so, great, if not or if it&#x27;s just not something I want to spend brain on, I just keep scrolling. I&#x27;ve got other places to spend my time and I recognize that passively consuming a feed isn&#x27;t enriching my own growth - so I don&#x27;t do it.<p>For the people in (1), it&#x27;s a very different story. They may be using social media to an active detriment. Not sure how you get there, but to quote the psychologist in Annihilation:<p>&quot;Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct.&quot;<p>I guess for some folks, that&#x27;s social media - it&#x27;s destructive to the point that bloggers need to write articles about quitting it. Or maybe it&#x27;s just more clickbait since that&#x27;s our world now.

I don&#x27;t remember where I heard&#x2F;read it, but I always think about something someone said along the lines of &quot;I want to be the person who creates a social media app, not the person using it every day&quot;<p>I&#x27;ve found more and more time in the day the fewer social media accounts I have. I just wish the industry could step a little further away from LinkedIn. It&#x27;s the only social media site I feel has any bearing on my career at the moment (I mean the only one employers ask about regularly).

Something curious about facebook is, they let anyone access user profile&#x2F;pages (or whatever it is called), so visitor can see the user profile picture and might be able to see other stuff. Facebook &quot;protects&quot; the privacy of the &quot;visitor&quot; because the user cannot see what visitors have visited their profiles.<p>So, users have no privacy, but visitors have their privacy protected.<p>Facebook should list &quot;who&quot; visited user profiles. I dont know why they dont do this already. And even more, they could somehow list what photos the visitor chose to see, how long visitor stayed on user profile, which &#x27;full resolution pictures&#x27; visitor had downloaded. If they only saw thumbnails then no need to list, but if visitor made the effort to download all full resolution user pictures then the owner of those pictures should be able to see who has downloaded them.<p>So this way, the user would be able to see how frequently visitor X, Y, Z has stayed on their profiles, and how many&#x2F;which full res pictures they have downloaded&#x2F;seen.<p>If the user profile is not a person, but a store (or company snooping on you), then the store would be able to benefit from this data and send some message saying &quot;We noticed you have been visiting us lately, and you seem to have a lot of intrest in product X. Do you want to know the price or make an offer?&quot;<p>Or, if the user is a person and has seen weird behaviour from weird users, then user would be able to take precautions.<p>So in the end, the user profiles are public and have no privacy. But the visitors&#x2F;consumer of other people profiles can snoop on other lifes and have their privacy protected because the page they visited is never able to know they have been visited by visitor X Ntimes.

Is LinkedIn considered social media ? I don&#x27;t use it much but I consider it as an address book of past colleagues that updates itself.

Does HN count as social media?<p>Aren&#x27;t fora the original social media platforms?

&quot;Demographically speaking I should be a heavy social media user, but that is not the case. I’ve never had a social media account.&quot;<p>And I am supposed to spend the next 10 minutes reading your opinion, about something you haven&#x27;t even experienced firsthand.

&gt; You should quit social media because it can hurt your career.<p>Quitting social media might hurt your social life. FB is how I stay in touch with friends and family. Its how we exchange pictures of our kids.

I like Cal Newport&#x27;s Deep Work book. It gave me some extra confidence to blow off social media, email, and Slack, and focus on one thing, without feeling like I must be missing something important.

This title suggests a somewhat different piece than it actually is. The argument seems to be that cultivating a social media presence as a career strategy is not helpful at best and may even be hurtful for dividing your attention. That&#x27;s probably true, but I like to use social media to have discussions, find out about local events, or get in touch with friends, and have never really thought that someone would hire me because they liked an opinion I posted on Facebook.

Is HN &quot;social media&quot;?

Kind of a simplified argument. <i>&quot;...foundation to achievement and fulfillment, almost without exception, requires that you hone a useful craft and then apply it to things...&quot;</i><p>yeah that sort of overlooks a lot of stuff, like bullshitting skills (very important today).

What do HN readers use for social media?<p>I basically only use Reddit, HN, and instagram(which I&#x27;m slowly quitting).

OP doesn&#x27;t need social media for professional opportunities, therefore you don&#x27;t either

This is a powerful piece. Definitely Cal have a point when he says &quot;If you’re serious about making an impact in the world, power down your smartphone, close your browser tabs, roll up your sleeves and get to work. &quot;.

Devil&#x27;s Advocate: While we&#x27;re at it, how about we quit the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, etc too? They have the same effect, just not the same distribution power that they had in the past.

&gt; If you’re serious about making an impact in the world, power down your smartphone, close your browser tabs, roll up your sleeves and get to work.<p>I found this pretty pretentious.

nice article, but the concept of a career that is too much based on self-promotion and too little on actual production is not a concept invented by social media. It&#x27;s fine to say, &quot;hey don&#x27;t waste all your time on twitter&quot; but this seems to address people who specifically are pursuing their social media persona as a means to career advancement. It depends on the career.

&gt; Join Social Media. Your Career May Depend On It

Why all this sentiment now? Seems like all these articles are just chasing the financial headlines.

Does NYT just let anybody write for them nowadays? This article came off as very... amateurish.

In social media you&#x27;re unknowingly disclosing&#x2F;sharing intimate details of your life;

Does publishing YouTube programming videos and career advice count as social media?

I maintain multiple troll accounts on Twitter and Facebook. That&#x27;s all I use these services for. I take pride in my active part in the downfall of these services, while at the same time producing intriguing and low-brow troll content.<p>Once Mark Zuckerberg accepts the fact that not everyone uses the Internet according to his sheltered brain&#x27;s arbitrary rules (I&#x27;ve even had to send a picture of my driver&#x27;s license to Facebook to get them to unban one of my accounts. It&#x27;s just a website! Get over yourselves), then the bubble will pop - with small communities scattered throughout the multiverse of the net just like Web 1.0.<p>And that&#x27;s basically it. The web is a multiverse where each of us are simultaneously able to have multiple identities, living multiple realities. It&#x27;s never been suited to the rules that Facebook is trying to force people into. I feel like Facebook would be better off making their own Internet if they want people to adhere to their bullshit.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;pages&#x2F;Cal-Newport&#x2F;146867498697353" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;pages&#x2F;Cal-Newport&#x2F;146867498697353</a>

(2016)

Social Media is so obviously bad for you&#x2F;society and good only for platform owners and advertisers. Most obvious thing in the world. To me, it&#x27;s not at all obvious that crack addiction is, socially, any different.

Social media is not a problem. Tools for social internet connections are. Before all centralized tools we stayed connected with blogs, forums, etc. Fragmentation is important. Practically speaking, content is king. By giving your content to someone for free, you are creating a precedent in which, someone will explore your effort for nothing in exchange. Facebook is bottomless pit of greed. Thats why they are failing. Yes if you are technically and psychologically educated individual you can make this tools to work for you. But in a long run this is not true solution.