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Comment by jlarocco | Hacker News Reader

> For many people, leaving digitally can have bad effects on their social life. It's arguably not as bad as moving out of the country, but it's still a practically impossible hurdle for a lot of people.

That's nonsense. It is absolutely not "practically impossible" to leave Facebook, and anybody saying so is exaggerating its importance and being melodramatic.

On the other hand, it can be literally impossible for a person to legally leave their country.

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I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it does have a non negligible impact on your social life. It would be rather dismissive to wave away the impact of removing your social media accounts if you have by any stretch of the imagination a social life.

I think this is an age thing. For that group of people that have not known life without the internet, having a social life not attached to being online seems unfathomable. For those of us old farts that had a life before the internet, having a social life without the facebook is just another day. For those that think not having social media is the end of the world, I'd suggest you're just not very imaginative.

I think rather that it's not the person themselves but their peers and aquaintances. For example, I had never used facebook before moving to my current town, but now living here I practically had to create an account and use it semi-regularly because everything from finding a house to advertising a music concert was done within facebook.

Now that I am settled in, my usage has wound down a lot. I have found a comfortable rythmn with the activities and things I need, but should I ever want to discover new experiences or join social gatherings I would have to bring it up once again.

As someone who's experienced life prior to the internet, it's not that one can't live without social media but it does affect how easy it is to organize things when everyone else does. As another comment pointed out, social events are organised as a part of facebook events, or through group chat. Buying and selling things locally are done through facebook groups rather than a newspaper or even eBay or CraigsList. Photos and the like are shared on social media for key important events in people's lives that you mightn't have the opportunity to see all that often.

All of these things can be worked around, but the alternatives are slower paced and less efficient and leave you ultimately out of the loop. So it's not a problem of imagination, it's a problem of wanting to be able to keep up with what's going on.

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