It also eliminates opportunities to make new friends. It's surprisingly difficult to find a knitting group in my area that doesn't organize using Facebook Groups, for example.
It frankly worries me. In the past, we worried about monopolies on things like oil and diamonds. I'm not sure our culture has the tools to cope with a monopoly on participation in society.
After a while, though, it just sort of filtered the events down to those I cared more about. My good friends still reach out directly and vice versa. I think it took a while for that to start happening though.
I've lost touch with many acquaintances, but if I'm being honest it's probably better that I don't expend energy on those people. I'm certainly not isolated from society, though. I just engage on my own terms.
For example; I joined my local Masonic lodge and started doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Between those two things alone I find I have regular enough interactions with a variety of different people that I naturally find out about, and am invited to events and activities that more than make up for the loss of social media.
I'm not suggesting everyone join a Masonic lodge (obviously) or take up Jiu-Jitsu. There are a great number of things everyone can do that gets them around other people in a way that is natural and fulfilling.
Also--and this, I find, is critical--all my old friends are still friends and they call or email or text me and I them. Anyone who claimed to be my friend but couldn't be bothered to get in touch with me after I dropped social media was never a very good friend to begin with.
For example I tangentally consider meetup groups to be social media, but the entire point is that you actually meet people in real life. That led to me meeting one of my partners in 2019
I also do keep a Facebook around so when I meet people traveling I can just add them easily, I almost never ever use anything aside from Facebook messenger, and to maybe view a few events that my friends are organizing.
I think the key way to think about Facebook is that it's original purpose, keep talking to your college friends, wasn't bad. It's just it's mutated purpose of trying to spread mis information, spreading gossip, and bullying are absolutely disgusting.
After the first shutdown lifted somewhat, the health department mandates requires us to be part of small "pods" to help contain any spread (as an aside, that has worked surprisingly well considering how close in contact people are) We're also restricted to a limited number days we can train so pod members have to coordinate with each other the classes we're planning to attend so that we don't show up and be the only guy or gal in our pod that night.
You know how we invariably coordinate? Email or text. Primarily email in fact. It wasn't planned or dictated by anyone. It just worked out that way.
I had to be deliberate about telling people I'm not going to see their post about xyz so they would have to text or call me if they want to invite me. Sure I probably miss some events but the ones I go to I know I'm wanted at.
Socializing passively at a gym or Jiu-Jitsu or some type of class is the main way I've built friend groups over the years.
You’ll find people are very willing to discuss things if you initiate. This is how we did it before social media and it’s by far the more pleasant way. Just don’t be a jerk, you’ll be fine.
MeetUp is a great resource too. I’ve even asked randoms on NextDoor if they want to meet up at the pub. There are ways to be social without the big social media platforms.
But over time that difficulty lessened. I found the connections I made outside of Facebook were longer lasting and more meaningful, because there was actually some onus on me to try and stay engaged. And people do respond well when you demonstrate you care to engage in a deeper fashion. It feels like relationship building / maintenance in today's age is something of a lost art, because it's become so easy to superficially connect without putting in a bunch of work.
The big social platforms make you want to believe there's a monopoly on societal participation. Pushing back against that energy is such a powerful thing, even if it's somewhat isolating in the short-term.
Just think about that - you denpend on big tech for the very media through which you perform the majority of interactions with your "friends".
As for mass media, it is far too driven by reaction, and I mostly avoid all of it. In-depth general media, and focused media are more interesting. The Economist is generally great, for instance, because most everything is in depth. I've recently taken to reading a shipping news site, and that is interesting because I can hear more pertinent information about, say covid, because they aren't reporting about covid, but reporting the effects of covid.
Mostly I think we need more education and training for our population on handling media. Too many people seem to take whatever the read as truth and insert it directly into their brain without an skepticism or critical thought. I hate that. Everyone should have a "news vestibule" in their brain where new information must sit and be verified before they allow it into their mind as a whole.
Lastly, I'm now much more inclined to pay for content than I was 5 years ago.
Really mental health should be considered to have at least two components - 'morale' related to functioning and happiness and 'attunement to reality' based upon perceiving the world as close to as it is as possible essentially. That approach sounds like something which would boost the first at the cost of the second.
The early 20th century may have seemed hunky-dory to a lot of people, but there was a lot of bad stuff going on that just never had the chance to see the light of day. I don't want to go back to that.
Take it to a further extreme, the Amish. I'm sure many of them think life is great out there on the farm. But they aren't going to be much help for solving problems on a national or global scale. Heck even their votes (do they vote?) are probably based on some community consensus or shared local interest. As you narrow your gaze you limit your ability to participate in the world.
majority of things from the news has no impact on me at all
I have a Gopher site for that, from a really insteresting guy:
gopher.club/1/users/mmeta4/
No ads, no likes, no bullshit. Just pure text, some images and PDF's readable even under a Linux framebuffer.
You can argue that this logic is flawed or something, but that's how it is in reality.
I use them thru Lynx and a framebuffer image viewer.
Everything else is bullshit.
I'm probably 90% better informed than half of the mooks being idiotized at the social media.
I check that a couple times a week, and feel very “caught up”, and also have an opportunity to dive in deep as needed.