from Hacker News

I quit social media and now I want a cigarette

by supr_strudl on 9/24/19, 8:19 AM with 179 comments

• by moksly on 9/24/19, 9:14 AM

  I’ve always found these articles fascinating on HN, because while anecdotal, hacker news is easily the social media that has wasted the most of my time and been the source of the most stress and anxiety (aren’t you using this new tech yet?).

  The privacy issue doesn’t exist here, at least not unless you decide to share, but if you do, you actually won’t be able to delete your posts unless you contact the admins.

  Facebook actually adds a lot more value to my life than HN does because Facebook is the place one of my friend groups arrange our 4-6 yearly weekend retreats. This is the only thing I use Facebook for though, I don’t have any of their apps and I only log on a couple of times a month. Don’t get me wrong, I wish we could do it on some other medium exactly because of facebooks evil history, but unfortunately Facebook is the only place everyone is.

  I used to use Facebook differently, I used to follow things and interests, but one I removed all my likes and follows it became a pretty harmless address book that sells my information to advertising. Hacker news on the other hand is where I waste the most of my online time, and mostly it’s on feeling inferior because I’m not learning X and Y or starting some side project company. This is anecdotal like I said, but I don’t think HN is any better than FB from a purely psychological point of view. Facebook is obviously still more evil due to the privacy issues, but this article is about the cigarette side of social media.

• by meerita on 9/24/19, 8:43 AM

  I have partially removed all my social networks except Twitter. I want to find out about things in real time, and from various sources, therefore Twitter is still a valid medium for this purpose. Although I interact little in the discussions.

  Leaving Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and other networks gave me automatic anxiety relief. I no longer care what anyone close to me thinks and I don't get into discussions with close relatives.

  My life as a conservative is much better without social networks where they censor me non-stop, just Twitter and being very careful with what I write and how I write it I can more or less start conversations. Sooner or later I will leave Twitter too, it is a matter of finding another social network, free and open and nurtured by people.

• by seanwilson on 9/24/19, 9:07 AM

  I can't help but feel that people that become addicted to social media should really be looking for underlying issues they need to address e.g. the need to compare themselves to others, the need for validation from likes/upvotes. If the underlying issue is still there, quitting social media isn't addressing the cause.

  I use social media to keep in contact with friends and can't relate to posts like this at all. I don't check often, rarely see the point in posting and generally feel bad for people that boast all the time about how great their life is.

• by darrmit on 9/24/19, 12:10 PM

  This is a refreshing article to see on HN because it’s not the typical clickbait “I did X and my life is changed forever” nor is it “I quit X and I’m better than you for it”.

  It echoes my personal experience. I’ve gone without social media for extended periods - years. But I’ve always filled the boredom void with something else: HN, work, other websites.

  Now I have a Facebook account but I have a very small number of friends and family I keep up with and I follow a small number of interests. I run out of things to scroll often and that’s okay.

• by BucketSort on 9/24/19, 9:01 AM

  I quit social media and after a while I couldn't even make sense of why I was there to begin with. "There was no value lost... what the hell was I doing on there all this time?" I never had any "glowing" experience on social media, no memories, yet so much time wasted. People just aren't that interesting. It's all the same stuff over and over again. And if you do get into something interesting, you end up with an exchange of 20+ comments which just seems out of place... especially on FB.

• by jordan801 on 9/24/19, 1:09 PM

  I quit Facebook and Alcohol at the same time, cold turkey. Facebook I didn't even notice. I looked back after a few months and thought, "oh yeah, I did also quit Facebook". I didn't delete it. I just stopped using it.

  Quitting Facebook changed basically nothing. Now I don't get done with a Facebook binge and feel like I just wasted 10-30 minutes of life. Alcohol was a totally different experience.

  The one thing that I regret about not having Facebook is organizing events. I've missed a couple with good friends, because I simply don't have Facebook. As a software developer, I wonder if this is something I can change. Perhaps couple Facebook's API with Twilio's API and convert events into text messages. Perhaps a completely separate system that I have to urge my friends to adopt, simply for my inclusion.

  Not sure what the solution is, but the problem itself isn't worthy of luring me back into Facebook.

• by mordymoop on 9/24/19, 3:19 PM

  Social media is addictive in roughly the same sense that not punching yourself in the face is addictive. The "dopamine hit" aspect is grossly oversold. Social media is distraction from suffering. Most addictive behavior is, but social media is almost entirely distraction from suffering.

  If you don't do something about the background suffering that's leading you to the distraction, you'll just fill that void with something else.

• by donatj on 9/24/19, 8:58 AM

  > I absolutely cannot understand people who have 153 unread notifications. They're probably the same people who sleep with a blanket turned the other way around — zipper facing the head.

  a) What kind of blanket has a zipper? I don’t think I have encountered any.

  b) As the kind of person with several thousand unread emails, I don’t know why people bother? I can easily search for the important stuff, and visually scan the new pile a few times a day. I have better things to do with my life than manage my inbox, I don’t need that stress. Family, video games, basically anything else. It’s way more work than reward. I know a number of people this drives absolutely nuts, but I don’t get it.

• by enz on 9/24/19, 8:42 AM

  > Social media is like smoking. It takes a while to get addicted. You do it because everyone is doing it

  I would add: Besides, it tastes awful when you start, but you do it anyway until you get familiar with it.

  Just like the first days when discovering a social media without understanding it and doing dumb things such as posting the wrong stuff etc.

• by corodra on 9/24/19, 2:35 PM

  PSA for anyone who does this, regarding the friends part. Hell, works well if you happen to move to a new place too.

  Go join a hobby club of some sort. Even if you're introverted. A structured "social" activity makes it super easy, approachable and everyone (in my experience) is welcoming.

  Meetup.com is a pretty good place to start. Even the generic social groups are fun too. Try your local library and rec center too for get togethers near you. Or if you do have a decent friend circle already, do the leg work to coordinate something. Doing a structured social activity helps a lot. Even everyone bringing a random bottle of whiskey and watching a movie while you all try different whiskeys is better than being home alone.

  Having a real social network you meetup with, makes it real easy to cut back on the addiction of social media.

• by imgabe on 9/24/19, 1:40 PM

  > I would pay a monthly subscription for an ad-free version of Facebook.

  I think we're on the cusp of an explosion of ad-free subscription sites. An ad-free subscription Facebook could provide all of the actual benefits of Facebook at a fraction of the cost. No need to employ hundreds of PhD machine-learning experts to analyze mouse movements if you're not trying to hyper-optimize ads.

• by ubermonkey on 9/24/19, 1:04 PM

  My wife and I have taken opposite approaches, kinda, to curtailing social media.

  She removed the FB app from her phone, so she only takes a stroll through that feed at night, while we're watching TV or whatever. She left Twitter entirely (well, her account is there, but she neither reads nor posts anymore).

  I still participate in Twitter, though I've moved some of the prolific accounts I enjoy to Feedbin so my feed isn't impossible. It's about evenly split between "people I actually know" and "entertainers / writers I like who are clever." I don't go in for rage-Twitter or whatever.

  I wish I could abandon FB entirely, but the network effects keep me there. The biggest one is cycling. I'm an avid road rider, and in my city pretty much ALL the coordination for cycling events (group rides, out of town trips, even happy hours) is on FB. If you leave FB, you're out of the loop.

  So in a real sense, FB is both healthy AND unhealthy for me.

• by hartator on 9/24/19, 12:09 PM

  The funny thing is the people the most adamant about quiting social media are usually the ones oversharing the most on it.

• by bvanderveen on 9/24/19, 1:52 PM

  Apropos of LinkedIn: I run my own business. I deleted my LinkedIn last year (having nuked everything else a year before) and the only thing that changed is I get fewer mass mails from recruiters. My overall deal throughput is not large enough make any statistically significant conclusions.

  (edit: speling)

• by mikedd on 9/24/19, 9:40 AM

  I'm in the same boat. Recently quit LinkedIn too and am working on my github.io page for people to contact me for potential opportunities. Have no idea if it'll work out or not, in the long run but tbh, I feel a lot better not being on these sites than vice-versa. Just my 2c :)

• by outime on 9/24/19, 8:51 AM

  I left Twitter (where I was very, very active since ~2008) and FB (which didn't use much anyway) 2.5 years ago. For me, the typical listed benefits are mostly true. I have a lot more time to spend mainly on side projects and books, I stopped caring about futile arguments (-> less anxiety) and also realized how little real connections most of us have. Overall, it made me focus on the important stuff and never looked back.

  Granted I do have other distractions and I'm not aiming to be a perfect productive robot but social networks do affect us in at least some negative ways.

  Nevertheless there are cases where balanced usage is possible and you can reap many benefits while experiencing fewer drawbacks. I couldn't use it in a smart way though.

• by gwbas1c on 9/24/19, 1:21 PM

  > Social media is like smoking. It takes a while to get addicted.

  It only takes about a pack of cigarettes to get addicted; but it takes awhile to realize you're addicted.

  I'd say the same thing is true with Facebook. It took me about a decade to realize I was addicted.

• by danso on 9/24/19, 1:12 PM

  > For every “good” post I had to consume thirty “bad” ones. 30/1 is just not that good of a ratio.

  It'd be interesting to see the writer expound on his expectations for "good" and "bad". Speaking for myself, I go into social media with much different (i.e. lowered) standards than I do for other media, because the energy of consumption/opportunity cost is so low. I couldn't stand consuming 10 bad books/movies for every good one, but for tweets it's no problem. And of course there are ways to increase the signal-noise ratio (trimming the list of users you follow), but I generally like the serendipity of seeing what people are randomly tweeting. I don't feel the pressure to consume my timeline feed more than just a few swipes. And I find the Twitter default non-chronological sort does a decent job of surfacing interesting content for me.

• by KirinDave on 9/24/19, 2:47 PM

  I can't work out if I should flag these articles or not. They seem off topic and are almost invariably uninteresting and uninsightful. This one has the added flaw of being written in an obnoxious way.

  Why are these articles so popular here?

• by nakodari on 9/24/19, 9:26 AM

  Why not balance the usage with moderation that works for you? I would always catch myself picking up the phone randomly and checking Facebook even if I didn't plan to. I decided this was bad and it was distracting me from experiencing the world and spending time with my family in the evening. So I removed FB from my phone. I check FB once or twice a day for a few minutes on my laptop during work and that's all. It works for me. I stay in touch with some friends and at the same time, I am not addicted to checking it over and over again on my phone throughout the day. Has anyone else tried the same?

• by ShadowFaxSam on 9/24/19, 12:15 PM

  I've always reflected on the idea of deleting my social media accounts, especially after studying media in University. The more I learn about social media, and other forms of media the more aware I am with regards to what I post and share online. At the same time, I have friends all across the globe and use social media to stay in contact with my friends. I have a question though, would you consider Whatsapp to be social media? Especially because users can share stories on the platform.

• by MatekCopatek on 9/24/19, 8:37 AM

  I have a slightly similar experience - I got off all social media, felt good but not life-changing. My guess is this is due to not being an extremely addicted user in the first place.

• by raverbashing on 9/24/19, 12:00 PM

  While social media impact on mental health is important, I have to confess it's mostly self inflicted.

  Once I realized the unfollow/mute button was there (not knowing it was, realizing it was there), it was a no-brainer to just unfollow toxic people.

  And while there's FOMO, sorry, don't turn your social posts into a political propaganda piece/disgrace curating panel and I wouldn't have muted you

  Follow the right people and it will be a much more smoother experience.

• by MrOxiMoron on 9/24/19, 2:54 PM

  I don't get that people want notifications for basic stuff. I always turn off notifications and only leave the really important ones. Also no blinking lights or sounds or vibrations, I check my phone often enough and if it is really important those people can call me. Then social media is just a thing to scroll through while on the toilet .

• by bobloblaw45 on 9/24/19, 1:18 PM

  I had Myspace for a short period of time and hated it. When Facebook came out I had it for about 2 weeks before deleting it, hated it as well. Even back then people would love to get in stupid arguments for stupid reasons and display a fabricated life. I've always felt like the weird one for not being into these forms of social media.

• by amriksohata on 9/24/19, 1:02 PM

  According to Hinduism, we are all here in this world because our jiva (souls) want to be the enjoyer, so we get the opporunity to enjoy. Hence the dopamine, on anything, video games, cigs, social media etc. However self realisation is when we realise we are but a tiny spec and not the true enjoyer at all.

• by quirkafleeg3 on 9/24/19, 8:57 AM

  I've never had any issues with social media, and they key is making sure your feeds are pleasent. I make sure that the people I follow on twitter are people I like and people who post nice things, like fan art of franchises I like or jokes. I never follow people who post stuff about politics.

• by jdlyga on 9/24/19, 1:47 PM

  I stopped posting pictures to social media since I realized I was just using it to share them with friends and family. Instead, I just send them to group chats or people individually. It feels a lot more personal that way.

• by Kiro on 9/24/19, 8:48 AM

  I mostly use social media to follow artists and DJs I like. It's my prime source of finding new music and almost everything I see is relevant. I can never relate to these posts and I feel like I'm in total minority.

• by investologia on 9/24/19, 8:47 AM

  Some people scroll social media, some watch the Khardashians, Some play World of Warcraft, and some smoke cigarettes

  Most of the people are addicted to something and it might not be the worst thing in the world if you somehow keep it balanced

• by agumonkey on 9/24/19, 9:53 AM

  forget social network, join a local group that do whatever is nice for neighbors or the area

  it's probably widely healthier on every metrics

• by ulisesrmzroche on 9/25/19, 8:12 AM

  How trendy. Next up hipster PDA making a comeback?

• by eafkuor on 9/24/19, 11:57 AM

  Another "I quit social media" post? Haven't we had enough of this? How are these interesting?

• by 11235813213455 on 9/24/19, 10:49 AM

  the good side about social media is you can totally ignore it, cigarettes on the other side it's not easy as soon as you're among other people

• by tripzilch on 9/24/19, 9:29 AM

  That Joe Rogan video linked in the article has some super questionable statistics and misleading graphs (which are then described badly for the podcast listeners leaving out "details" such as "there are only three data points but they still drew a line through them").

  Not that the thing they're talking about might not be a real effect, but holy hell

• by HNLurker2 on 9/24/19, 8:59 AM

  Malboro red long or die

• by amelius on 9/24/19, 8:38 AM

  I wonder if the endless edit-compile-run and "see if it works" cycle is as addictive and harmful as social media. At least with social media I'm interacting with other people.