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Comment by 97s | Hacker News Reader

I am in the opposite boat. Deleted all my stuff never looked back. Best decision. This is probably the only social thing I read now; its like 5 minutes a day to scan the front page, then close it.

I still have discord, but I am super careful to make sure I only stay in channels when I need them and then immediately leave when I no longer have a use for it.

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I never 'delete' them. I just add them to my ublock and then do not use them anymore. I also am very careful about which site I join. Social media sites come and go quickly and am I missing out a ton of stuff? sure thing. I realized it was consuming my time for other things I care more about. When many of these sites turned from trying to connect me to people and more to trying to outrage me with dumb things as that feeds 'engagement'. I got out.

I also add their sites to ublock as they are many times disguised advertising networks. "why yes I love seeing the last thing I looked at on amazon all over the web" /s.

The time consumption was a big one for me. It is easy to underestimate how much time 30 minutes a day is in 10 years. People always talking about how they have no time etc. But if you can gain 30 minutes a day for something you really enjoy you can become so skilled at it and really enjoy it deeply much faster if you abandon any interruptions to that thing.

Same here.

Zero regrets and if anything my social life improved, didn't get worse.

It is true that Facebook is nowadays the reference point to stay in touch with what's happening locally (events and things like that), but this has maybe impacted a bit my knowledge of cool events around, not my social life.

I feel like the issue with social media is you are not really social at a level that is helpful or relationship building. It is more of an observation of your friends doing things. That really isn't a friendship. A friendship is about connection and communication on a level deeper than what social media provides.

This is like me and TV. I gave up cold turkey a few years ago, and in the first few days and weeks, I felt some sort of guilt of not watching TV. Now I feel like it was probably the best thing I've ever done.

now its just youtube every day

I found it amazing how much 'free time' I had after ditching TV. I became much more productive.

What would you watch? Like cable television or streaming services?

For sure. The only time I watch TV is when I am eating because my hands are occupied. I guess the other time is when my wife or kids want to watch a movie together.

Do you use any blocking/restriction tools or really just programmed yourself to only check once and for five minutes a day? I'm really bad at that, it's so easy for me to just randomly check and then lose a bunch of time. To be honest that is exactly what I am doing now :(, over the years i've just never been able to break this habit.

Check out LeechBlock. It's a browser extension that lets you define block lists and time limits that periodically reset so you can, for instance, limit yourself to 10 minutes every 4 hours of browsing Hacker News. It's one of my favorite productivity tools.

> I've just never been able to break this habit

You probably haven't really tried other than what most people do - declare to themselves that they won't look at Twitter (for example) and then feel bad an hour later when they notice they are looking at Twitter.

I know he doesn't have the best reputation around here, but James Clear's book Atomic Habits has some pretty good advice about building new habits.

If I were trying to stop reading HN, I would start small. Tell myself I won't reload it for 30 minutes (or whatever - some small easily achieved goal). I would keep setting small goals like that and then start to stretch the time. I would also need something to replace the activity in those time when I reach for HN reflexively. I keep a guitar at work that I'll noodle on or I'll read for a few minutes, write something to myself, go make tea, step outside for some sun and air, etc...

No. I found that if I used blocking programs, I would just unblock them. So I just ended up making a stance on what was most important in my life. I tried to fill any voids with something that I needed to do or something I enjoyed doing. The moment I would open it I would be like, NO, do this instead.

Eventually it just became natural to do other thing instead.

Have you maintained a connection with your past friends? If so, what do you use?

Text message, phone call, physically spending time together... Was this a serious question?

are you the OP

This was more of a "what does 2+2 equal" question though, so it wouldn't require the OP to answer.

Before my friends and i deleted all social media, we opened a pigeon-club, thats how we communicate today, also we exchange backups that way.

Remember before you delete the bird on your phone buy some real ones.

BTW: Don't use the pigeons around the us/mexican border.

This is amazing!

The idea came from a massive Harry Potter fan :)

But, we have still mailing-list and signal, but a pigeon is used for BBQ invitations...the important stuff, we have one where the pigeons can life and he cares for them...we pay our share (everyone is the owner of three pigeons).

I talk to my friends via text every so often to check in with them, and I use discord to talk to daily friends. The problem with social media is you don't check in with friends, you observe them and that isn't really a friendship.

Are you bragging? I`m happy for your personal decision, but I`m not sure why you decided to share with everyone that you stopped using some websites..

I don't think they are bragging. They are contributing to the conversation with directly relevant content/personal experience. I'm not sure why you decided to be confrontational and condescending about that.

I also deleted all of my social media several years ago (except LinkedIn in case I need to find a job) to enormous personal benefit. Most people don't care when I bring it up. When I lived in suburbia, however, it was a different story. For every person that was interested or congratulatory when I told them I encountered five that were defensive about it and chose to frame it as some type of personal failing akin to alcoholism - "well I'm sorry that _you_ can't use it responsibly, but I can!".

I've no idea why this is and have more important things to do with my time then try to explain or rationalize this phenomenon but it was definitely a thing.

Mainly because I don't have an impression that it contributing to the conversation in a meaningful sense. We have a lot of different social media platforms out there. If you decided not to use one or more - good for you, but what exactly the message here? Could you explain it please?

Hi. I am not bragging, just sharing opposite experience. I found it refreshing to view things in my own light and no be influenced by others as much. Observing my friends or social media people doing things and living their life was not really living mine, so I just self corrected every time I noticed until I didn't have to anymore. Sorry for the late reply, just now checking HN after my original post.

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