The whole point of not using social media is to push you to actually meet people in real life. Form real connections instead of reading single sentence comments.
This guy is too scared to even make a new profile because he would have to send new friend requests to all of his "friends".
While that can be a reason, it's not "the whole point". I backed way off on social media a few years ago simply because I found it toxic. I didn't have trouble before that meeting people in real life, nor did it particularly change my behavior in that regard when I left most of the social media behind.
It's like when you bump into someone you know who you used to call on the phone and they ask you for your number. It's a little jarring knowing they consciously took actions to sever ties. This alone basically ensures that any preexisting bonds will most likely not ever be the same.
I deleted my accounts and felt similarly. There was a positive aspect to it but sometimes I try to find photos from certain period in my life but realise they were on a deleted account. Or I understand something someone once said to me and I want to reach out and tell them that I finally understood what they meant but I have no means of contacting them.
Its so easy to see the bad that social media has caused but if you have lived pre-internet you know the feeling of mistakenly loosing people forever. Maybe the risk of that enriched the experiences at the time though. It's so long ago now it's hard to remember.
I’ve had friends leave social media in a very holier-than-thou manner.
Coming back for them wouldn’t just involve re-adding friends, but eating a lot of crow in the process.
But setting that aside, I do find the post a bit sad. I think it points to the fact that even while social media is making us depressed, the world changed so much with its introduction that it can be difficult to operate without it depending on your personality type, the nature of your current support system, and friend group.
And if you suffer from social anxiety on top of that, things are only worse.
I don’t actively use social media, don’t have the apps installed, don’t have active browser sessions, and use Firefox Facebook container, but I didn’t delete my accounts either.