Hi guys, lately I've been thinking a lot about my own social media habits.
I'm getting more and more convinced it's a complete waste of time. The selfies, vanity, hoping for likes etc.
I completely stopped posting stuff to Facebook, even when traveling. I might start posting text posts again to start an interesting discussion, but I won't do the whole humblebragging thing anymore, posting beautiful pictures with stupid quotes...
On top of that there are actual negative consequences:
- more social media -> more likely to feel lonely and isolated
- slot machine / random rewards etc -> short circuits the brain -> "pervasive background hum of anxiety"
- the market values rare and valuable things -> social media is opposite of this
- fragmentation of your attention -> permanent reduction in ability to concentrate -> less capable to perform "deep effort" (see Cal Newport)
I absolutely love this quote by Bo Burnham:
“Social media is just the market’s answer to a generation that demanded to perform, so the market said “Here, perform everything, to each other, all the time for no reason.” It’s prison. It’s horrific.”
I installed news feed eradicator a few months ago and it's amazing, it blocks your Facebook news feed from showing but you can still chat to people and follow the fb groups. It's the single best thing I've done so far in terms of mental health.
I wrote all my thoughts down here: http://ift.tt/2pjoU3k (nothing to sell, I just like writing :)
Do you have any tips on how to handle social media in general? Do you use instagram/snapchat? I feel like I missed the hype train there. How do you keep in touch with friends without wasting too much time on bullshit?
Submitted May 10, 2017 at 09:04AM by toomasb http://ift.tt/2qZtNL9
