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Comment by mbo | Hacker News Reader

Every time something like this gets posted, everyone on HN comes out of the woodwork and explains how they barely use social media.

Snapchat makes it really easy for me to share what I'm doing, my location, and to quickly meet up with people. Messenger is great for group chats that I talk about garbage with mates all day. Instagram is good for sharing and talking about art and design. And Facebook is filled to the brim of fantastic memes, general shitposting and lovely private groups for specific interests. I'm constantly seeing events that my friends are attending on Facebook, and it makes it really easy to organise groups to attend them.

What's not to love? Honestly, I read these threads and just think y'all just using social media wrong; no wonder why you're all having such a miserable time.

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>everyone on HN comes out of the woodwork and explains how they barely use social media

It's funny how many people don't see the irony of it. Do people lurk on Facebook or reddit, waiting for the right moment to tell everyone they don't use social media anymore?

Did you read the article? The topic of conversation was teenagers who are looking to unplug because they are tired of what social media turns their peers into. They obviously have many things "not to love". I don't see anyone complaining about having a miserable time on social media - it's just that they recognize the need to unplug due to what social media does to your brain.

Yep.

Do teenagers have unhealthy relationships with social media? Of course. They're teenagers. A lot of their relationships ARE unhealthy at that age anyway, and if disconnecting completely is the best way to rectify those issues, more power to them.

What gets me is grown adults on HN talking about "abhoring social media" and "no phone Sundays with my girlfriend" and "having a minimal social media presence because I hate what it's become" and "I believe social media time should be controlled" and "social media is a class A drug". Like, chill. Go follow a few meme pages and hide the posts of the people you genuinely detest. There are ways to avoid those unhealthy cycles without entirely disconnecting oneself from literally all one's peers and losing the immense utility that social media provides.

It's quite obvious that social media provides utility to their user's lives, but there is much more to consider. When sitting in a lecture hall a quick glace across the room reveals that nearly every student is scrolling through Facebook or Instagram. That's a real issue. They can't sit their phones down for one hour to pay attention to something that will benefit them in the long run. The main issue is that users aren't able to moderate their usage. It's the first thing they look at in the morning and the last thing they look at during the night. It may not be clear to them that there is much more for this life to offer.

I've learned to accept that social media is just a mixed bag. The easiest way to not get addicted to social media is to just pretend there is no such things as a quantifiable like button. Just pretend it doesn't exist. Just be yourself, do whatever you want, but at the same time still share cool things that happen regardless. For me, this is the following:

- Facebook/messenger is just for messenging convenience and facebook specific groups. I'll make a commitment to using it once a every 1-3 months to keep up with people, looking at friends profiles etc, liking every post when I use it to support other people, then waiting for the next cycle. I post once every 3 months at least to tell people I'm still in good health

- Instagram → dumping cool things I find or cool events I take part of, or things of general interest to me, photos with friends, etc.I'll scroll through every now and then when I'm bored

- Snapchat → don't care, I only message people that only use this

- Linkedin → don't care, once a week / month I'll look at it. Rather build meaningful conversations with people I care about.

- twitter → I just shitpost all my random ideas and things I learn, and cool youtube videos I like / companies I support

Really just know what value your getting out of social media. Steel yourself and don't let ego and envy get to you, just be happy for the other person.

Also, when you learn to accept there's no such thing as privacy, it removes a big cognitive burden. I don't care that instagram is scraping all my photos on my phone, I don't care what google is gathering data from me, things are so much easier when you just accept it for what it is.

I don't care how many people are looking at my profile or how many followers I have, how many likes, its shallow metrics. I care about qualitative things, not quantative.

This.

The amount of social anxiety and peer pressure from constant liking causes so many people on insta and fb to conform to popular opinion or get into harsh arguments with hateful language instead of having meaningful conversations. I think we need to encourage major social media platforms to remove quantitative features from social media such as likes and follower counts. It is just an emotionally destructive feature

I highly recommend adding a browser extension to block out likes and other crap. Personally, I use Stay Productive for Firefox

(disclaimer: I am not the creator of the extension)

https://github.com/antitoine/stay-productive

You're either popular among your friends, unaware of your current social status, or aware and okay with it. Social media, acts a quantification of popularity metrics. The most attractive and popular people get the most engagement on social media, and the least attractive or least popular get the least engagement. For teens, it's a lot harder to ignore your own social status, since all of your socialization takes place in what amounts to a closed system (school and clubs).

Yeah, look, frankly, I am pretty popular among my friends. I'll acknowledge that. But I don't like social media because I'm getting a tonne of engagement with everything I post, or because I pull 300 likes on my newest profile picture, etc.

I like it because it helps me meet up with people in person, reach out to those who I wouldn't otherwise be in contact with, and see the passions, opinions and activities of my friends and peers.

Let's not suggest that social media is what it takes to realize you are unpopular as a teenager.

Social media is a constant, unyielding reminder of exactly how popular you are. It doesn't turn off when you go home, and all of your friends are on it.

> Every time something like this gets posted, everyone on HN comes out of the woodwork and explains how they barely use social media.

I call them "me too"s, and downvote and hide their comments. They aren't helping the conversation, but they look like they are, so they get many upvotes. C'est la vie.

If you don't see how spending all day on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram could be affecting your mental health then obviously you won't understand everyone else's concerns and distaste for Social Media.

The data is pretty clear and teenage anxiety, depression etc are off the charts and can be directly attributed to Social Media. The problems are real.

Not sure how this could be downvoted. It's factually accurate. FB, Snap and Insta astroturfers must be out in force.

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