I'll cut straight to the chase here, in a move that I suspect with surprise and amaze you frequenters out there. I honestly can't put a finger on much of anything good that's come from social media in my life. Genuinely.
I think the internet is a wonderful thing, and the conveniences it enables for me are something I've come to rely upon for everything from ongoing learning to productive hobbies to entertainment. But out of all the positive things I do glean from the internet, I can't think of a single one actually enabled or encouraged by social media. At best, social media services have done nothing but give me ideas for projects I'll never act on while distracting me from the projects I should be actively engaged in. At worst, social media has fostered a consequence-free series of echo-chambers that have stoked the worst parts of my family and friends until their faults or ignorance have become a raging inferno of bigotry, hate, or stupidity, and then made it possible for me to see these people at their newest low.
Even setting that harrowing fact aside I genuinely cannot think of a single positive impact social media has had on my life. These carefully curated feeds of what people show do nothing but reinforce a single dimension of my friend's personalities to me, a dimension I already knew they had. There's no engaged conversation to give me a sense of connection with these people. I already know such-and-such loves her family. I'm well aware so-and-so is into cats.
Seeing more posts of their kids or cats doesn't actually tell me anything about how they're doing, or what's new in their life. I don't get the opportunity to share in their highs or their lows, or feel like they have any investment in mine. Social media has not enabled me to actually keep up or stay friends with any of the people I wanted its help with, so like... what's the point?
I deleted Facebook off of my phone well over a year ago and I haven't really missed it for any purpose other than the classifieds page. I sign in via my browser twice a week to post these blog posts and that's about it. I also haven't really gleaned anything useful from Twitter or Instagram in absolute ages. I have found a lot of entertaining stuff on TikTok, but nothing that actually fulfills me the way quality entertainment does, while the short-form repetitiveness demands interaction that prevents me from multi-tasking.
I'm to the point where I feel pretty confident that deleting all of my social media may actually improve my life. And you know what I'm gonna do instead of browsing socials? I'm gonna read. I already spend a lot of time watching TV and working on my hobbies, and I don't really feel like increasing those numbers would improve my life. But it's been absolutely ages since I've read consistently.
I would still love to be able to connect and communicate with the people I care about via the internet, considering we're all too busy or too far away to get together regularly. But none of the social media sites seem to want me to actually do that. Facebook just wants me to argue with you all constantly. So I've set up a Discord server over here. It's called Spendlove's Server. I'm going to try and start a community of people who are sick of social media, but not sick of each other yet.
If you've never used Discord the short version is it's a cross between a chat room, instant messenger, and Skype. It's a very cool and also free service that doesn't monetize your posts by trying to feed you ads or force your engagement by feeding you conspiracies. You should give it a shot. And also join that server. Because if you're reading this, I do want to engage with you. Facebook just won't let me do it naturally anymore.
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