Should you delete social media? That’s the wrong question.

I appreciate this essay and I think your observation is true, broadly speaking. However one thing I find consistently lacking from the “digital minimalism” space is recognition of the things that social media has eliminated or made harder. The pandemic has compounded this problem. It’s not just that using social media for relationships is individually easier—it’s that the network effects eventually make it so that social infrastructure moves online and eliminates non-digital avenues for community. The logistics of IRL meetups are an enormous hurdle compared to instantaneous online communication, so people just…stop doing IRL events. My friends and family lead busy lives and rely on social media to maintain relationships because the alternative social infrastructure simply does not exist. It’s like car ownership—more cars makes city planning revolve around cars, undermines the critical mass for public transit, and makes everything that ISN’T car-based more difficult. It’s not just a matter of personal choice at that point, but of commons.

The alternatives only suck because we've been made lazy by the seeming ease with which social media facilitates human contact and interaction. Yes, you absolutely should delete social media, and yes, making an effort with people will feel like hard work. But it will be worth it.

I personally think sites like HN and Reddit are better forms of social media because they don't necessarily try to replace the contact you should have with friends and family. If I interacted with friends on Facebook, I felt like I'd already done enough with/for them, and left it at that. Without it, I make more of an effort to stay in touch. But at least on HN, this isn't a replacement for my friend circle, it's just more of an interest group that provides some interesting reading and conversations.

As someone who quit social media a couple of years ago, I would say, yes, you should quit social media (regardless of whether that's the question). It is wonderful for one's mental health.

It's true that you will lose a lot of connections, but you will manage to stay in touch with the people that matter.

You dont quit an addiction, you replace it with something else.

But social media is different. It's a reality show in which you re the unpaid actor, a replaceable lab rat. If you feel that, living your whole life oblivious under a painted dome (like in the Truman Show) by getting rewarded with likes is an OK life, then maybe you should grow up. In the end, Truman chose to get out.

There's a reason Merlin is so grumpy in so many portrayals of the character.

Imagine that you are compelled to solve problems, and that you loathe interacting with other human beings, and that you occasionally are lonely. That's why we have hermits, and that's why towns put up their hermits in a house about a mile away. You put them far enough away that they can't hear you enjoying yourself, but close enough so that you can bring them serious problems

Which problems are serious? The ones that give everyone else nightmares trying to even think about — or at least are worth a 2 mile round trip walk and a picnic basket full of delicious food.

Even grumpy old hermits get lonely for human company and variety in food sometimes. They just resent showing it because everyone will make a loud racket and give them hugs and eugh it's just the worst.

Social media, the Internet, BBSes, these all allow satisfying the instinct for human connection without the awfulness of dealing with actual real people very much of the time. Finding a way to make that satisfying and net valuable to you and/or others is the hard work. It doesn't necessarily require giving it up, but it absolutely does require being honest with yourself about whether you're getting a payoff that's worth the price.

This is a shallow and poorly written article that doesn't begin to address the issues confronting us. We are being replatformed as a society. Tech companies are addicting us to new ways of connecting. Those same media are sometimes necessary to do our jobs; i.e., the food we are addicted to is also the food we need to survive. Making relapse inevitable.

America, and especially its behaviorally addicted youth, are losing hours per day and hundreds of years of their lives to this crap. And it's not as easy as just saying "I learned to love the difficulty of connecting offline." I don't believe that.

What we need is a modern version of AA to march people through the 12 steps towards a dopamine landscape that is less stimulating.

What is “social media” in this context?

I’m barely on any “social” websites other than HN. Getting off Twitter was great. But almost all my friends are on Telegram. They are all over the world and many I’ve known for years. The heat death of the universe is going to happen sooner than me giving up instant messaging.

I feel like some of these articles need context or the author has completely different circumstances than I do.

I quit Facebook years ago when I finally brought myself to acknowledge that most of the people I was subjected to in my “feed” were not only not my friends, but many of them I actively disliked as they grew into their ways. I made a point not to extend any olive branches. The few real friends I had on Facebook would always just text anyway.

Read books, paint, draw, exercise, play music, listen to music, yoga, meditate, ring your mum and dad, re-arrange rooms, clean, cook, learn to cook, plant something, go camping, ride a bike, fix a bike, walk, take photos whilst walking...etc, etc

Put a capital L in Living.

Who needs social media?

So, what are the alternative to Social Media? What if we expand to include TV? Actually "TV" is so 1999; these are all wrong question, the correct question is:

What are the alternative to replace "screens"?

Books (ink on paper)?

Out and about, preferably in nature?

Meditation?

Writing?

Gym?

I think one effect not often mentioned is the particular pairing of social media with smartphones, where the smartphone is the key agent of change, not social media.

In the very early stages of social media, say the era of blogs, MySpace, and forums like these, there were no smartphones.

People would live their normal lives during the day, and perhaps reserve an hour or so of "computer time". Where they physically sit behind a desktop with a keyboard. So for some 90% of the day, they were not distracted by anything, and during computer time, they would find themselves using a device very suitable for deep engagement. On a desktop, it's easy enough to read deep content and to respond at length.

With the arrival of smartphones, social media are with you 100% of the time. It may interfere with your important time (your work, your sleep), but if not that, at the very least it will suck up any spare moment that you used to spent on just being bored or waiting for something.

And as we know, this still is only the basic consequence. It may affect one's relationships, distort their politics, cause depression, and replace healthy physical activities, as the article mentions.

Besides the smartphone intruding on your life non-stop, there's the issue that smartphones really suck. They are poor reading devices and even worse engagement devices.

So content has to be snack-sized. A tweet. A 6 second video. Preferably vertical, to save me from the massive effort of turning my phone. And auto-play, as I don't want to hit next or scroll. This trend of escalating effortless consumption turns into disturbing deficiencies in people. Not being able to focus on anything for any stretch of time.

As an engagement device, it has to be simple too. A like, a heart, and a one-line comment at best, full of typos. Because you can't really type well on a smartphone. So deep engagement is dead, replaced with status (likes, retweets).

This combination of effects (100% with you, snack-size content, poor engagement) can all be attributed to the smartphone specifically, in combination with social media. Not social media in itself.

There was an interesting experiment when I took my niece (18 yo) on a 3 week trip through a tropical nation with basically no connectivity at all. She's the stereotypical ultra addict, glued to her phone all day. Interestingly, not a single sign of withdrawal when offline. She was fine, happy, fully engaged in the real world activities, and not a single complaint.

But then, wherever we would return to a place with a gateway to the online world, all hope was lost again. We don't exist. The country does not exist. Dinner is a distraction. Nothing exists but the phone.

Of course I wondered what was it that she missed, that takes hours to catch up with? Actually, I didn't have to wonder as she explained it by pushing her phone in my face about 30 times per hour.

To show what? A meme. A funny video. Not even good ones, just pure low effort pulp garbage.

My friend is an entrepreneur, running some e-commerce warehouses. He stopped hiring young people. They take 30 minute dumps, 3 times a day. He's made clear policies regarding excessive smartphone usage and still finds them hiding behind shelves on their phones.

It's an epidemic.

HN is one of those social media. It comes with the same problems. But people are good at mental gymnastics and convinced themselves that it's different.

I was impressed recently, while waiting for DuoLingo to load. The load screen asked "What can 15 minutes of social media do for you?".

Oddly poignant.

Prior to reading this two days earlier I just deleted my social media profile except Twitter for news or updates. I already feel better and I realise now how much of my time was being utilised in social media as a user.

I deleted my Facebook because it now requires a phone number.

No thanks.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: it depends, but mostly yes.

most of this applies to any other addiction too...

Thanks, I needed this.