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I quit social media and now I want a cigarette
- investologia 7y agoSome people scroll social media, some watch the Khardashians, Some play World of Warcraft, and some smoke cigarettes Most of the people are addicted to something and it might not be the worst thing in the world if you somehow keep it balanced
- BigJ1211 7y agoJust because you spend a large amount of time on something that doesn't mean you're addicted to it. We shouldn't really throw that around willy-nilly. If your hobby isn't detrimental to your life, you're fine.
- Kiro 7y agoI mostly use social media to follow artists and DJs I like. It's my prime source of finding new music and almost everything I see is relevant. I can never relate to these posts and I feel like I'm in total minority.
- tiborsaas 7y agoNah, you only might be a minority maybe on HN, but the numbers are clear that social media absolutely dominates these decades. Also don't forget that it's not that interesting to blog about "I use social media moderately every day and I'm fine". Posts like this however are not the norm and thus they grab some attention.
- mojuba 7y agoVery similar experience here, plus I find that Facebook is good at suggesting and planning events, seeing who's going. Pretty much the only useful function for me. I follow a bunch of music venues and galleries and occasionally invite FB friends to attend if there's anything interesting. Works just brilliant. Twitter is more for following music makers, labels and things like Boiler Room. Just for a daily doze of music and music news. I guess that's another form of addiction though... Everything else, I just don't understand what people are complaining about and why it would require such an effort to quit. Don't like what you see, or don't find it useful? Just unfollow!
- markus92 7y agoGuess I'm also in this boat. Facebook is my main way of keeping track of gigs in and around town.
- outime 7y agoI left Twitter (where I was very, very active since ~2008) and FB (which didn't use much anyway) 2.5 years ago. For me, the typical listed benefits are mostly true. I have a lot more time to spend mainly on side projects and books, I stopped caring about futile arguments (-> less anxiety) and also realized how little real connections most of us have. Overall, it made me focus on the important stuff and never looked back. Granted I do have other distractions and I'm not aiming to be a perfect productive robot but social networks do affect us in at least some negative ways. Nevertheless there are cases where balanced usage is possible and you can reap many benefits while experiencing fewer drawbacks. I couldn't use it in a smart way though.
- MatekCopatek 7y agoI have a slightly similar experience - I got off all social media, felt good but not life-changing. My guess is this is due to not being an extremely addicted user in the first place.
- goto11 7y agoDon't you consider HN social media?
- jperry 7y agoWhy would you? I see it as more like a news site with a comments section. I don't consider those to be social media either.
- misterman0 7y agoAren't we socializing right now?
- amelius 7y agoI wonder if the endless edit-compile-run and "see if it works" cycle is as addictive and harmful as social media. At least with social media I'm interacting with other people.
- agota 7y agoIt probably isn't, given that social media is intentionally designed to be addictive, while tinkering with things (code in your case) isn't.
- amelius 7y agoI was thinking, perhaps it helps to make the edit-compile-run cycle as long as possible. E.g. coding until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and only then running code and testing.
- enz 7y ago> Social media is like smoking. It takes a while to get addicted. You do it because everyone is doing it I would add: Besides, it tastes awful when you start, but you do it anyway until you get familiar with it. Just like the first days when discovering a social media without understanding it and doing dumb things such as posting the wrong stuff etc.
- meerita 7y agoI have partially removed all my social networks except Twitter. I want to find out about things in real time, and from various sources, therefore Twitter is still a valid medium for this purpose. Although I interact little in the discussions. Leaving Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and other networks gave me automatic anxiety relief. I no longer care what anyone close to me thinks and I don't get into discussions with close relatives. My life as a conservative is much better without social networks where they censor me non-stop, just Twitter and being very careful with what I write and how I write it I can more or less start conversations. Sooner or later I will leave Twitter too, it is a matter of finding another social network, free and open and nurtured by people.
- thefz 7y agoI kept Instagram to follow just some athletes I like, but I am increasingly thinking about killing Twitter too. I follow a very small group of people, mostly C# developers, but keeping a restricted pool of people alone does not warrant immunity from the incessant political battage of somebody's agenda, fough retweet after retweet, of which I want none. I do really think Twitter is the most stressful of all. Nowadays there's no longer a sane discussion without this or that party injecting politics into even the most meaningless of debates.
- strzibny 7y agoYes. For example, I like Twitter for following some fellow engineers I value for their professional work or work in the community, but many of them inject a lot of leftist politics there, so my timeline is not what I want it to be.
- faceplanted 7y agoOn the other hand though, it's not anyone's duty to filter their worldview out of their speech. I have the same issue the other way around, where I follow a lot of young technical people and they just _love_ to be quoting and reposting young conservative voices, but it doesn't really make a difference to me to be scrolling past them.
- quirkafleeg3 7y agoI've never had any issues with social media, and they key is making sure your feeds are pleasent. I make sure that the people I follow on twitter are people I like and people who post nice things, like fan art of franchises I like or jokes. I never follow people who post stuff about politics.
- donatj 7y ago> I absolutely cannot understand people who have 153 unread notifications. They're probably the same people who sleep with a blanket turned the other way around — zipper facing the head. a) What kind of blanket has a zipper? I don’t think I have encountered any. b) As the kind of person with several thousand unread emails, I don’t know why people bother? I can easily search for the important stuff, and visually scan the new pile a few times a day. I have better things to do with my life than manage my inbox, I don’t need that stress. Family, video games, basically anything else. It’s way more work than reward. I know a number of people this drives absolutely nuts, but I don’t get it.
- bestest 7y ago> a) What kind of blanket has a zipper? I don’t think I have encountered any. This most probably refers to the "hole" which is used to insert the insert of the blanket, which, for most people at least, means that it should be at the "feet" end of the bed. It's just some blankets have zippers to cover the hole, others have buttons etc.
- donatj 7y agoOh, I think we’re taking about a duvet cover? I believe that’s distinct from a blanket, which is usually sealed fully or a single ply. I have certainly never been duvet levels of fancy.
- Broken_Hippo 7y agoOne doesn't need to be fancy for duvet covers - merely live in a country where the duvet is standard and the blanket is secondary. United States: Duvets are fancy. Norway: Common, everyday stuff.
- supr_strudl 7y agoThis is what I meant yes. I'm not a native English speaker, so I might've screwed that one up.
- xavieralexandre 7y ago
- HNLurker2 7y agoMalboro red long or die
- BucketSort 7y agoI quit social media and after a while I couldn't even make sense of why I was there to begin with. "There was no value lost... what the hell was I doing on there all this time?" I never had any "glowing" experience on social media, no memories, yet so much time wasted. People just aren't that interesting. It's all the same stuff over and over again. And if you do get into something interesting, you end up with an exchange of 20+ comments which just seems out of place... especially on FB.
- seanwilson 7y agoI can't help but feel that people that become addicted to social media should really be looking for underlying issues they need to address e.g. the need to compare themselves to others, the need for validation from likes/upvotes. If the underlying issue is still there, quitting social media isn't addressing the cause. I use social media to keep in contact with friends and can't relate to posts like this at all. I don't check often, rarely see the point in posting and generally feel bad for people that boast all the time about how great their life is.
- kennyadam 7y agoIn my experience with addiction (drugs), there's always an underlying cause. The problem is, there are lots and lots of people with unaddressed issues that aren't seeking or can't obtain the proper solution/advice/help/whatever and end up self-medicating with drugs, video games, social media, etc.
- moksly 7y agoI’ve always found these articles fascinating on HN, because while anecdotal, hacker news is easily the social media that has wasted the most of my time and been the source of the most stress and anxiety (aren’t you using this new tech yet?). The privacy issue doesn’t exist here, at least not unless you decide to share, but if you do, you actually won’t be able to delete your posts unless you contact the admins. Facebook actually adds a lot more value to my life than HN does because Facebook is the place one of my friend groups arrange our 4-6 yearly weekend retreats. This is the only thing I use Facebook for though, I don’t have any of their apps and I only log on a couple of times a month. Don’t get me wrong, I wish we could do it on some other medium exactly because of facebooks evil history, but unfortunately Facebook is the only place everyone is. I used to use Facebook differently, I used to follow things and interests, but one I removed all my likes and follows it became a pretty harmless address book that sells my information to advertising. Hacker news on the other hand is where I waste the most of my online time, and mostly it’s on feeling inferior because I’m not learning X and Y or starting some side project company. This is anecdotal like I said, but I don’t think HN is any better than FB from a purely psychological point of view. Facebook is obviously still more evil due to the privacy issues, but this article is about the cigarette side of social media.
- agumonkey 7y agowe need a legacynews where people discuss how they're not transitioning to java8 but keep java7 for now
- nakodari 7y agoWhy not balance the usage with moderation that works for you? I would always catch myself picking up the phone randomly and checking Facebook even if I didn't plan to. I decided this was bad and it was distracting me from experiencing the world and spending time with my family in the evening. So I removed FB from my phone. I check FB once or twice a day for a few minutes on my laptop during work and that's all. It works for me. I stay in touch with some friends and at the same time, I am not addicted to checking it over and over again on my phone throughout the day. Has anyone else tried the same?
- tsmarsh 7y agoI quit for a year. Then figured I’d just use facebook for the bits that work for me: local sales, peloton and fitness groups. My deal is no friends, not even my wife. No posting about me, just the group, just helping/commenting where it feels healthy for both me and the group.
- tripzilch 7y agoThat Joe Rogan video linked in the article has some super questionable statistics and misleading graphs (which are then described badly for the podcast listeners leaving out "details" such as "there are only three data points but they still drew a line through them"). Not that the thing they're talking about might not be a real effect, but holy hell
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- blow-jogan 7y agoJoe Rogan is fantastically meat headed about so many things, but really he's a jack of all trades, master of none, and he majors in cardio kickboxing. The thing is, he often operates pretty engaging interviews, and the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia is in full effect for all of them. He's basically talk radio, and despite the subject matter, he refrains from sophomoric shock jock goofing off, unlike Howard Stern. He is willing to meet most guests in the middle, and he's got the gift of gab, but infrequently waxing blow hard, with a few exceptions. Most notably: gender identity politics. But other than that, he's plays pretty fair with everyone across the political spectrum (he's had more than a few gay/lesbian gender bending guests on), even if head count favors hypermasculine tropes, and satellite ideologies. But while having serious pop-science guests on the show, fringe UFO theories are bread and butter among pro-wrestling enthusiasts that enjoy the art of kayfabe. And if you think it's all in good fun, hey that's fine, but Joe Rogan certainly seems to eat up junk science all the time. His recent show with Bob Lazar, discussing Area 51 was filled with "what-if" tales of anti-gravity and synthetic Element 115, which was futuristic when it emerged in the 1980's but hasn't withstood the test of time. He talks of cyclotrons shooting anti-matter at government synthetsized Moscovium fuel pellets to produce free energy and, then by turns, anti-gravity, concluding in time travel and teleportation. Joe just gobbles it up like a wide-eyed Joe The Plumber, and the rest of the bullshit artistry piles up. Now, faster than light travel across megaparsecs is an open, probable reality, and so too, alien races from Zeta Reticuli. The Grays are really androids. They're at war with The Reptilians, which is why an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Riiiiight... But it's all faces and heels in an MMA match, nothing more. Unless you're not in on the joke. Most people don't grok particle physics enough to be dismissive of the premise of magical (or rather, unstable) element 115. They don't get that it's just another blob of the usual nucleons that we're all so familiar with, no free gravity, no free lunch. That lights in the sky do not, a spaceship, make. Oh well...
- mikedd 7y agoI'm in the same boat. Recently quit LinkedIn too and am working on my github.io page for people to contact me for potential opportunities. Have no idea if it'll work out or not, in the long run but tbh, I feel a lot better not being on these sites than vice-versa. Just my 2c :)
- OJFord 7y agoMy (early career, not notable - hang on why am I doing this to myself :)) CV is hosted on GitHub, FWIW I have had a few people contact me as a result. Sample size is small and it's anecdotal anyway, etc., but I do think the quality (of all of them) is much higher than the average I get through LinkedIn. I think it's certainly worth doing. (And if you want to or have already written it in LaTeX, feel free to use the Docker image & CircleCI config I created for the purpose.)
- agumonkey 7y agoforget social network, join a local group that do whatever is nice for neighbors or the area it's probably widely healthier on every metrics
- ryanmercer 7y agoMany local groups use Facebook to organize/communicate though. Via private groups: our local Atari group does and we similarly have one for regional vintage computer gatherings, my Church does, one of my Lodges does, one of my gyms does and I know of several others in the area that do. Via pages/events: some local tattoo shops that regularly have events, several local venues, numerous gyms and their various strength competitions will have all communication/announcements through an event page associated with the page of the gym hosting the event, etc. It's effective because people know to go check Facebook for an update about the group/event, you don't have to worry about an email ending up in a spam filter or someone not seeing a flyer posted, you can post real-time updates like when our meeting place for the local Atari group was closed due to the weather instead of needing to text 2 dozen people, or when snow/ice necessitates a Church event being cancelled or when there are storms in the area and we can post what members need help.
- agumonkey 7y agoThen cut facebook usage as a tool too. #radical
- 11235813213455 7y agothe good side about social media is you can totally ignore it, cigarettes on the other side it's not easy as soon as you're among other people
- Funes- 7y agoWell, social media, and smartphones in general, make people around you ignore their immediate environment--including you--, so there's that.
- eafkuor 7y agoAnother "I quit social media" post? Haven't we had enough of this? How are these interesting?
- dev_256 7y agoAll of them are about how awesome life is after quitting. This one is not.
- raverbashing 7y agoWhile social media impact on mental health is important, I have to confess it's mostly self inflicted. Once I realized the unfollow/mute button was there (not knowing it was, realizing it was there), it was a no-brainer to just unfollow toxic people. And while there's FOMO, sorry, don't turn your social posts into a political propaganda piece/disgrace curating panel and I wouldn't have muted you Follow the right people and it will be a much more smoother experience.
- hartator 7y agoThe funny thing is the people the most adamant about quiting social media are usually the ones oversharing the most on it.
- darrmit 7y agoThis is a refreshing article to see on HN because it’s not the typical clickbait “I did X and my life is changed forever” nor is it “I quit X and I’m better than you for it”. It echoes my personal experience. I’ve gone without social media for extended periods - years. But I’ve always filled the boredom void with something else: HN, work, other websites. Now I have a Facebook account but I have a very small number of friends and family I keep up with and I follow a small number of interests. I run out of things to scroll often and that’s okay.
- non-entity 7y agoSame here. Worse, I thought I would be able to channel my time into something at least productive whether that be side projects or getting my life together, but I still can't
- dropit_sphere 7y agoUsing your downtime in a way that you don't regret is non-trivial. I totally get what you say about something else filling up the boredom void.
- ShadowFaxSam 7y agoI've always reflected on the idea of deleting my social media accounts, especially after studying media in University. The more I learn about social media, and other forms of media the more aware I am with regards to what I post and share online. At the same time, I have friends all across the globe and use social media to stay in contact with my friends. I have a question though, would you consider Whatsapp to be social media? Especially because users can share stories on the platform.
- ryandrake 7y agoDon’t think of it as “I have to quit all Social Media. What is the exact definition of Social Media so I include it in my quitting?” If you think something you are doing is harmful, just stop doing it and don’t worry if it counts as Social Media. It is highly personal and will be different for everyone. For some people their WhatsApp usage is a net negative and they should stop. For other people it might not be.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amriksohata 7y agoAccording to Hinduism, we are all here in this world because our jiva (souls) want to be the enjoyer, so we get the opporunity to enjoy. Hence the dopamine, on anything, video games, cigs, social media etc. However self realisation is when we realise we are but a tiny spec and not the true enjoyer at all.
- ubermonkey 7y agoMy wife and I have taken opposite approaches, kinda, to curtailing social media. She removed the FB app from her phone, so she only takes a stroll through that feed at night, while we're watching TV or whatever. She left Twitter entirely (well, her account is there, but she neither reads nor posts anymore). I still participate in Twitter, though I've moved some of the prolific accounts I enjoy to Feedbin so my feed isn't impossible. It's about evenly split between "people I actually know" and "entertainers / writers I like who are clever." I don't go in for rage-Twitter or whatever. I wish I could abandon FB entirely, but the network effects keep me there. The biggest one is cycling. I'm an avid road rider, and in my city pretty much ALL the coordination for cycling events (group rides, out of town trips, even happy hours) is on FB. If you leave FB, you're out of the loop. So in a real sense, FB is both healthy AND unhealthy for me.
- ssully 7y agoI did the same thing your Wife did with Twitter. I found myself checking it at work whenever I was stuck on a problem or basically whenever I was slightly bored. It's great on keeping up on things and getting some good laughs, but it was also draining in many ways as well (politics, being up to date on every terrible thing in the world, etc). I still check it every other night on my computer/ipad at home, or I'll login from my phone if something big is happening. But not having the app on my phone has made a huge difference. A minor aside, but it was almost pathetic how the first day after I deleted the app, without thinking, I would open my phone and click where the Twitter app used to be. It took me about 2 days to get over that habit. It truly is an addiction.
- jordan801 7y agoI quit Facebook and Alcohol at the same time, cold turkey. Facebook I didn't even notice. I looked back after a few months and thought, "oh yeah, I did also quit Facebook". I didn't delete it. I just stopped using it. Quitting Facebook changed basically nothing. Now I don't get done with a Facebook binge and feel like I just wasted 10-30 minutes of life. Alcohol was a totally different experience. The one thing that I regret about not having Facebook is organizing events. I've missed a couple with good friends, because I simply don't have Facebook. As a software developer, I wonder if this is something I can change. Perhaps couple Facebook's API with Twilio's API and convert events into text messages. Perhaps a completely separate system that I have to urge my friends to adopt, simply for my inclusion. Not sure what the solution is, but the problem itself isn't worthy of luring me back into Facebook.
- kuu 7y agoMaybe you can just call or send a message to your friends. Talking helps.
- derg 7y agoEvents are truly the only thing keeping me on facebook, honestly, and it's been such a pain in the ass to get friends and family to move away from it, but right now it's central to a lot of things unfortunately. Toying with facebook's api like you mentioned seems like an interesting idea though. I might play around with that when I get some free time.
- gwbas1c 7y agoI agree. I decided to dramatically cut back on Facebook. A few weeks after, I got a call from my mom asking why I wasn't going to a party at my sister's. Turns out my sister only sent out invites to her party via Facebook.
- beeskneecaps 7y agoLet’s be honest: Mom is the number one source of stress because of Facebook.
- 7y ago
- danso 7y ago> For every “good” post I had to consume thirty “bad” ones. 30/1 is just not that good of a ratio. It'd be interesting to see the writer expound on his expectations for "good" and "bad". Speaking for myself, I go into social media with much different (i.e. lowered) standards than I do for other media, because the energy of consumption/opportunity cost is so low. I couldn't stand consuming 10 bad books/movies for every good one, but for tweets it's no problem. And of course there are ways to increase the signal-noise ratio (trimming the list of users you follow), but I generally like the serendipity of seeing what people are randomly tweeting. I don't feel the pressure to consume my timeline feed more than just a few swipes. And I find the Twitter default non-chronological sort does a decent job of surfacing interesting content for me.
- bobloblaw45 7y agoI had Myspace for a short period of time and hated it. When Facebook came out I had it for about 2 weeks before deleting it, hated it as well. Even back then people would love to get in stupid arguments for stupid reasons and display a fabricated life. I've always felt like the weird one for not being into these forms of social media.
- gwbas1c 7y ago> Social media is like smoking. It takes a while to get addicted. It only takes about a pack of cigarettes to get addicted; but it takes awhile to realize you're addicted. I'd say the same thing is true with Facebook. It took me about a decade to realize I was addicted.
- imgabe 7y ago> I would pay a monthly subscription for an ad-free version of Facebook. I think we're on the cusp of an explosion of ad-free subscription sites. An ad-free subscription Facebook could provide all of the actual benefits of Facebook at a fraction of the cost. No need to employ hundreds of PhD machine-learning experts to analyze mouse movements if you're not trying to hyper-optimize ads.
- goatinaboat 7y agoThe paradox is: people with the disposable income to pay for ad-free social media are the most desirable advertising targets. The reality is that a subscription Facebook would take your money and sell a profile of you for ads on other sites.
- disgruntledphd2 7y agoExcept that most people won't pay, causing this new social network to be much less useful to everyone, causing it to fail. I'd like it to work, but I really don't see how it will.
- dfxm12 7y agoan ad-free version of Facebook Are ads the problem, or is mining and selling your personal information? I'm more afraid of the latter, and even if you're paying to remove display ads, your data is still going to be mined.
- jdlyga 7y agoI stopped posting pictures to social media since I realized I was just using it to share them with friends and family. Instead, I just send them to group chats or people individually. It feels a lot more personal that way.
- bvanderveen 7y agoApropos of LinkedIn: I run my own business. I deleted my LinkedIn last year (having nuked everything else a year before) and the only thing that changed is I get fewer mass mails from recruiters. My overall deal throughput is not large enough make any statistically significant conclusions. (edit: speling)
- corodra 7y agoPSA for anyone who does this, regarding the friends part. Hell, works well if you happen to move to a new place too. Go join a hobby club of some sort. Even if you're introverted. A structured "social" activity makes it super easy, approachable and everyone (in my experience) is welcoming. Meetup.com is a pretty good place to start. Even the generic social groups are fun too. Try your local library and rec center too for get togethers near you. Or if you do have a decent friend circle already, do the leg work to coordinate something. Doing a structured social activity helps a lot. Even everyone bringing a random bottle of whiskey and watching a movie while you all try different whiskeys is better than being home alone. Having a real social network you meetup with, makes it real easy to cut back on the addiction of social media.
- woodrowbarlow 7y agoin my experience (4 years without "friend"-based social media), becoming disconnected from friends is temporary. during the first year after quitting social media, you will have to work hard to maintain relationships; you will have to instigate social time with your friends through other channels. but after a while, it will start to work in your favor. when those same friends are setting up events on facebook, they'll start to remember that you can only be reached through other channels and they'll start reaching out to you even when they might not have thought to invite you via facebook. and when they want to have a conversation with somebody but don't feel like opening the facebook app, who will they reach out to? you. my approach was to keep my facebook account, but strip it of everything except my name and a profile picture that says "i don't use fb, please text me". that way, people can still be reminded that i exist and they know i'm always a text message away.
- KirinDave 7y agoI can't work out if I should flag these articles or not. They seem off topic and are almost invariably uninteresting and uninsightful. This one has the added flaw of being written in an obnoxious way. Why are these articles so popular here?
- MrOxiMoron 7y agoI don't get that people want notifications for basic stuff. I always turn off notifications and only leave the really important ones. Also no blinking lights or sounds or vibrations, I check my phone often enough and if it is really important those people can call me. Then social media is just a thing to scroll through while on the toilet .
- mordymoop 7y agoSocial media is addictive in roughly the same sense that not punching yourself in the face is addictive. The "dopamine hit" aspect is grossly oversold. Social media is distraction from suffering. Most addictive behavior is, but social media is almost entirely distraction from suffering. If you don't do something about the background suffering that's leading you to the distraction, you'll just fill that void with something else.
- beshrkayali 7y agoDozens of studies show the opposite of what you're saying. Social media companies do every tick in the book, and then some, to get people addicted. In certain cases what you're saying is true, but it might as well be the other way around for the rest.
- mordymoop 7y agoLet's say for the sake of argument that I was being hyperbolic with my "punching yourself in the face" statement. Let's say you are addicted to social media, and you use it for 5 hours a day. Let's say I take away your phone. For a week. You will probably feel gradually diminishing impulses to look at your phone, which will eventually subside almost entirely within a handful of days. You will not experience withdrawals. You will not lose sleep. You will (probably) not try to scam somebody else out of their phone. If I hand you your phone back after a week, there's a good chance you might just delete the social media apps off the phone yourself, having realized how much time you were wasting. In other words, if the social media companies are doing every trick in the book, it's not really amounting to much. If you were spending 5 hours a day on Facebook, it probably had a lot more to do with the general shape of your life and opportunities for actualization and socialization, than it had to do with intermittent reinforcement schedules. And fundamentally what I'm saying is correct: it is mundane daily suffering that creates the void filled by social media and other distractive addictions, giving them a foothold in your life. This is orthogonal to any claims about whether social media is "actually" "addictive".
- beshrkayali 7y ago
- ulisesrmzroche 7y agoHow trendy. Next up hipster PDA making a comeback?