What helps keep you off social media?

A mix of boredom, being boring, and frustration.

Boredom: There's only so much Reddit, and Tildes is a relatively slow-moving site. It's not worth it to be here, there, or anywhere else all day. I'll pop in here several times throughout the course of a day to see if there's an interesting article (I don't search out articles myself), but Tildes doesn't have the same patterns other sites have to drive engagement, which I'm pretty happy about.

Being boring: I don't have much to share that I think is of interest to others, and plenty I simply don't want to share. I honestly don't care what my Facebook friends are up to, either, because it's just normal stuff anyway. All of my subscriptions on Reddit are interest-oriented, no general topics at all.

Frustration: Specifically Reddit, because I can easily clean my Facebook feed, my YouTube recommendations are easily ignored, and Tildes doesn't do anything crazy. There is a lot of outrage on Reddit. I browse /r/all to sort of push my way out of my normal zones, but even that's gotten repetitive and boring, plus I burn out on more outrageous days, so I've been doing it less (one run a day, instead of several). It's just to kill some time when I legitimately have nothing else going on.

Otherwise, I try to fill my time with video games or music. I'll go on the occasional walk to unplug for a bit, but those are unfortunately few and far between.

I've talked a little bit about how I've been Extremely Online and how I was spending way too much time on Twitter.

I've been thinking about making a post here on Tildes about my experience, but I didn't want to seem vain. So I'll write a shorter version of what I was originally intending to write.

I started using Twitter around late 2018. And I would continue using Twitter until the fall of 2020. Although I would take small breaks in between, for all intents and purposes, I was constantly online between late 2018 and late 2020. I initially only made my Twitter account for the sake of following the results from the midterms. What ended up happening is that I went down these Twitter rabbit holes where I became consumed with Twitter drama and other nonsense.

Throughout 2019 however, I made attempts to stop using Twitter. All of these were short-lived, I would maybe last a month or two before crawling back to the app. Eventually, on New Year's Eve actually, I decided to quit Twitter. I was actually doing pretty well. In fact, I felt myself developing as a person and maturing. This was a positive direction I was heading in life. Two months later I came back, but I decided to use an anonymous account just to mess around. I wasn't using the account that often, and I was mostly just seeing what some journalists were saying every now and then. I still felt pretty good, and I still felt like I was developing in a direction that I was happy with despite my slight relapse. And then the pandemic happened.

I suddenly went back to my old tendencies and I became more online than I had ever been. I felt different throughout my time spent on Twitter in 2020. I was suddenly aware of every little thing that was happening on there, I knew everyone, I was waiting every single minute for the next hot take to come out. I felt like my brain was turning into goo.

It wasn't until after I left that I realized that I had become a shell of a human being. I had no idea what people cared about anymore, real people. My sense of what was important or what actually mattered was fucked, because I was spending so much time caring about a bunch of bullshit.

I remember scrolling through everything and thinking "I don't actually care about any of this. This is nonsense. I don't even like any of these people." So by October of 2020, I deleted Twitter.

I'm a film buff, but I hadn't actually watched movies in a while. So I decided that I was finally going to watch movies. That helped me stay away from Twitter. I also decided to read books and articles. And I found that most of the people on Twitter have no idea what they're talking about. And there was a comfort to that.

Slowly but surely, I began feeling like myself again, feeling like a human again. It took almost half a year for me to feel like I was completely back.

I still use social media, I still browse Reddit and occasionally browse Twitter. But I don't do what I used to do. I am more strict about what I see. I browse a specific niche subreddit. I only follow five accounts on Twitter that can go days without tweeting. The majority of my time is spent watching movies and reading books. This is what I used to do back when I was in high school before I was extremely online.

And it feels nice.

The people on social media.

I walk a lot/exercise, read, play music, attempt to hone some technical skills, and occasionally play a video game. I spend the weekends with another and we try to keep each other busy. So, no time to actively engage with social media, even if I wanted to. I'm fairly fulfilled and don't seek validation from others. At least, not from others that I don't spend time with offline. Even then, though...

Hmm... by responding to this post, did I betray the idea that I don't actively engage in social media? 🤔
Well, shit... I actively engage here, on occasion, as it's mostly a low-key, friendly place. Still... this is a place that all too readily embraces hot-topic discussion and heated arguments. Not that that stuff should never be discussed (and it's mostly discussed respectfully here (even if some peoples' ignorance creates a sense of bad-faith hostility)), but it's kinda sad that some more pedestrian topics fall by the wayside.

I have found that most of the time I spend on social media sites like Reddit and Twitter has been to find some content that will be educating or informative. I subscribe to a bunch of random subreddits regarding science and the humanities, while on Twitter I try to break into the various disciplines of academic Twitter to follow people who post about things I would never think about.

There is still a mountain of trash to walk around even when taking on these sites as they are often targeted to the lowest common denominator (not to sound like a pompous ass), I want to be engaging in content that is targeted towards niche interests and ideas. Tildes can sometimes be great for that but I find that we often suffer from years of conditioned online behaviors (see some of our discussions on culture wars). Reddit and Twitter become the trash heaps that they do because their algos are designed in a way that discourages thoughtful reflection content creation to whatever they can find to drive engagement.

When I want a break, I will just go to Coursera or Wondrium (formerly The Great Courses) and just put on a lecture of something that I think will be interesting. That usually scratches an itch and sends me down various rabbit holes as I dig deeper into topics or things that I hear about.

In May, my partner and I tried to go without feed-based social media for the whole month (chat like WhatsApp was still allowed). We uninstalled all the relevant apps on the 1st, and weren't allowed to open them again until the 1st June. I found experience liberating, and very quickly lost the muscle-memory of opening up my phone and tapping on IG/Twitter/TT whenever I was bored. My partner found it a lot harder, and caffled after about a week and a half, saying that they were using it for research purposes (we had just started going bouldering on the regular). Sadly I did find them just idly scrolling through Pinterest and IG towards the end of the month when they were bored.

Since the end of May, I make liberal use of the digital wellbeing settings on my phone, setting daily 20 minute limits on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Once they're done, they're done. If someone sends me a link to one of those platforms, I have to wait until the next day to check it out. I frequently don't even get to the end of those timers before I'm closing the app though. I think the month's break has (to some extent) eliminated the dopamine hit that I get from opening them up, and I'm just not as interested.

Tweaking my feeds was very, very helpful. Since the start of June, my IG feed is mostly just my friends and a few local businesses that I support, so it's rarely overflowing with new posts. My Twitter feed is predominantly academics in linguistics, which is one of the most chill feeds I've ever made for myself, replete with interesting discussions and a generally inclusive atmosphere. It's very nice. TikTok is a bit of a mess, to be honest though. The algorithm has sent me down a queer/leftist/kinky corner of the site, which is sort of entertaining, but honestly, in need of a change because I'm trying to get out of consuming political discourse/news as much as possible. TikTok has very much settled into outrage territory, rather than positivity (something it used to do well for me), and I'm enjoying it less and less. Which brings me to reddit.

I was spending way too much time on the platform, specifically hitting /r/ukpolitics multiple times a day, reading the news and comments thereupon. But also hitting up other news subs, political conversations, and covid-related boards. It was all making me super depressed and powerless. It made me despair for the leaders in the UK, but also for the people that support them. It made me angry at the "obvious stupidity" of others, and it made me boring to talk to in real life. I lost count of how many conversations began with "so there was this comment thread on reddit..." I finally realised that it was too much and it was making me utterly miserable. So I went nuclear. I deleted my accounts, blocked reddit.com in my computers' hosts files, and set up leechblock on Firefox for Android. Funnily enough, even the act of blocking was enough to stop me even trying to get to it. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been the one to put the blocks in place, but I just stopped bothering to check it out.

I still read the news, and visit BBC News and the Guardian front page once or twice a day, but I'm not hungry for content like I was. I'm not desperate for the next scrap of information on what's going on, or the latest division results from parliament. Most importantly, I have no idea what other people are saying about it, other than my friends and family, when we bother to talk about current affairs at all.

TL;DR - Completely curtailing my access to any apps/sites for a while to fully detox was really liberating, and has helped me be more deliberate about the apps I do use, what I use them for, and for how long. I still don't use reddit though.

Let me shamelessly plug my project: https://linklonk.com (I launched it on Tildes last December). It is designed to help you find content that makes you feel like it was worth your time. When you like something, you get connected stronger to feeds and people who also liked it - so you see more content from them in the future. When you dislike - the opposite happens - your connections to those who liked it become weaker and you see less content from them.

This creates a feedback loop where each time you rate content you adjust who you want to get more content in the future. This makes you stop and think if this piece of content was actually worth your time, because it will affect how you will spend your time in the future.

Plus, LinkLonk remembers the list of recommendations you saw last time and will keep showing it to you unless you press "Mark as read and load new" or "Refresh". It means that the most important content does not dissappear automatically as time passes - less anxiety that you would miss something. I also feel less of an urge to opportunistically check my website for a few seconds, just in case something interesting pops up. I already know what it has - the same content as before I left it. I check Tildes and HackerNews more often to scan for new stuff, but I spend more time reading content on LinkLonk.

Seeing things like this; ironically sources from Twitter, helps prevent me from making a Twitter account, and encourages me to finish migrating from Facebook:

Some "Twitter is not real life" data, using Pew surveys:

• Twitter users are D+15 - which would tie HI & VT for the most liberal state.
• The 10% of Twitter users who post 92% of all tweets are D+43 - which would make it America's 2nd most liberal House district.

Also, 3% of the population creates 90% of all tweets.

Twitter still matters and can be a leading indicator, but its outsized influence on media, corporations, & politicians seems to be the illusion of numbers.

There was a period where I got a lot more reading done — the trick was to always carry around a book (or an e-reader) so whenever I had a few spare minutes, I’d read a bit. Purely as a corollary, my mindless scrolling decreased drastically.

Another good option is to hang out with people IRL and call each other out on excessive phone usage.

A combination of hobbies and scheduling.

If you simply say to yourself that you are going to spend any given time block doing enjoyable activities, you’re pretty likely to do them. The best hobbies are skill based so you are always motivated to improve or to make something unique and interesting, and that keeps you more interested in the hobby than in doing time-killers

I have a bunch of social media accounts, but i don't use any social aspects.

Goodreads where i register the books i've read and letterboxd for movies.

Facebook i use to look for new and cheaper places to rent and sometimes to sell things locally.

I guess i just stopped caring as i got older.

These days i tried Mastodon and two days later i deleted it. I am thinking of joining IRC again since they moved to LiberaChat because of the Freenode fiasco, but i'm pretty sure i will join two or three days and stop.

Even here i forget to visit.

Reddit is the only one i visit daily still, but i'm in like 4 subreddits that i care. It still sucks time and energy when i get sucked into useless debates. Just fell into one today with a person shitting on Linux because of fragmentation (again). Sometimes i fall for that trap.

Not saying that he is wrong, just that it is a waste of time.

Also, thanks for the flipside. Here in Brazil we have something similar too (Meio).

For me, it's about not wanting to give my PII and behavioural data to companies that are more interested in making money than sincerely caring for my well being. In that light, it's easy for me to harbour a distrust and dislike for the usual suite of tech giants: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, SnapChat.

Harder for me to avoid are: YouTube and Reddit. I don't surf YT randomly, but I receive links from others, and occasionally do a targetted search for things. I don't subscribe to any channels, and almost never use YT while signed in. Reddit I use occasionally for game-specific subreddits. Also, websearches for tech support sometimes lead to Reddit.

I use DuckDuckGo and https://searx.me/ for web searching.

Oh, and: being introverted and anti-social helps with not being enslaved by "but my friends and family are on [platform], so I have to be too". i.e. I don't care if my absence from [platform] means I'm cut off from [whoever]. Anyone who means anything to me knows how to reach me by phone or email.

I got tired of having to figure out the latest thing people are angry and outraged about, what happened, how much of it was true and how much was wild speculation or maliciously put to sound as awful as possible. Twitter, forums, reddit to an extent too (now I just mostly browse through trying to skip over as many posts as possible that are just images of text or some one-sided retelling of news), I started noticing how much I was reading was just people getting mad at headlines or second-hand retellings.

I got really tired of being made angry about things that don't affect my life at all, and decided to cut out as much of it as possible.

Tildes is at least a smaller scale more reasonable community where everyone is being earnest with what they say and put in a lot of effort to express their viewpoint. Twitter felt like an outrage machine, beaming short nuggets of text in to the anger centres of your brain, Tildes at least feels like more of a roundtable on things of interest to the small amount of people here.

Facebook keeps me away by simply not being very interesting. I was never able to get into Twitter. Too scattered, erratic, short-form. Don't have an Instagram, I'm not interested in a platform centered around pictures and very short videos, and similarly don't see the point of Snapchat. Tick Tock makes me nauseous.

I use too much Reddit, but never log in. Same for Hacker News. I am very active on Tildes because, even though it has less activity than any major platform, my interactions here are often very cordial, meaningful, unique, and intellectually stimulating. I have an emotional attachment to the community. Things seem to actually matter.

Feedly is not social media, but it occupies quite a lot of my time, as well as articles stored in my Pocket list.

Other than that, I use Leechblock on Firefox (with the Lockdown function) and the Lock Me Out app on my Android Tablet to reduce my internet distractions. My Xiaomi cellphone breaks the app, so I just turn it off instead.

Facebook, Twitter, et al: I simply don't really see a reason to use them, I don't have any IRL friends atm so FB is pointless, never got the hang of Twitter, massive privacy concerns (that's why I'm here actually), etc.

Use reddit a ton though, I have some people I like to talk to there, and there's an insane amount of helpful info and stuff there. Hate the extremely bitter undertone of the general user there though, I do notice reddit lowering my mood a lot. But it's not like I have much else to do so I just use it.