from Hacker News

Fast Food for the Mind: Why I Don't Have a Facebook or Twitter Account

by daktanis on 6/6/14, 4:14 PM with 39 comments

  • by geebee on 6/6/14, 4:58 PM

    Wow. This was almost the exact analogy that prompted me to quit facebook about a year ago.

    I was watching a show about the addictive nature of junk food, and how it works. Many food items, especially zero calorie ones like diet soda, trick your mind into believing it has received something it needs. However, by tricking your mind but denying your body, you come back again for it later (and again, and again). Unfortunately, this applies to high calorie foods that are largely nutritionally empty. You sense a need, you go to the food for that need, and it provides a mental signal that you have received it without actually filling the need.

    The recommendation was - every time you find yourself reaching for a salty bag of chips or a diet soda, ask yourself, what is my body actually telling me it wants? While it may seem more expensive, try to fulfill that need as low on the "processed" chain as you can. This way, you'll fulfill the signal and the need.

    That was kind of long winded, but I realized, at that moment, how I was using social media. I'm in a state of life, for better and worse, where I have very, very little time (kids, mortgages, work, and so forth). Many relationships are starting to fade, or rot.

    My mind was sending me signals that I needed more social interaction, and I was fulfilling these signals with social media rather than real human contact. To me, this is the aspartane of social interactions. You have a need, you use something that satisfies the signal but not the need itself, and so you keep coming back.

    Very specifically, I was replacing something that used to be a big part of my life - playing music at jams and with friends, with youtube clips and other videos.

    Now, this is a little complicated, in that videos have actually been a good thing in some ways. For instance, because of youtube, I've been able to learn a lot of bluegrass songs well prior to going to a jam, which has certainly enhanced my experience at those jam sessions. And if all I have is 30 minutes after the kids go to bed to learn a new song, well, at least I got to learn a new song.

    So I'm not sure total abstinence is a good idea here. There's an interesting continuum of these addictive things. You can quit cigarettes completely, just walk away. You can (and probably should[1]) quit junk food completely, but you can't quit food. And lastly, I'd say you probably shouldn't quit social media completely. But this does make it much more complicated, and you need to be careful about it - and of course, keep in mind that a corporation that seeks to maximize ad revenue from you is something you need to be particularly cautious about.

    Personally, I am glad I quit facebook, for all kind of reasons, not just the one above. Occasional fast food is pretty much harmless. I'd also guess that the risks of a once in a blue moon cigar are vanishingly low. The difference here is that you can tolerate some of a bad thing, whereas I'm not sure all social media should be considered a bad thing. But I'd put it in the category of food, there is definitely junk social media that you would want to avoid.

  • by was_hellbanned on 6/6/14, 5:38 PM

    I eat at McDonald's once a week, and I log onto Facebook a couple of times per month. This sounds like a recovering alcoholic ranting about how alcohol is evil and nobody should drink it.
  • by blutoot on 6/6/14, 6:06 PM

    I can't quit - my active Facebook-ing GF and my own profile have a relationship status pointing to each other. If I quit her relationship status would suddenly look weird (I think) and that would raise silly questions. But I'm practically inactive on Facebook. I do request my friends from time to time to not tag me on photos after social gatherings and events. Facebook Message is the only useful thing for me - glad Facebook recognized that there's a market that covers people like me and decided to separate the Message app from the main one.
  • by Fuzzwah on 6/6/14, 4:54 PM

    ... much like fast food, there are decent options out there for moderate consumption.
  • by jccalhoun on 6/6/14, 5:47 PM

    People who say they don't have a facebook or twitter account are the new people who say they don't own a tv...
  • by rebelidealist on 6/6/14, 5:41 PM

    The usefulness and power of FB and Twitter is for your professional network.

    It is immensely valuable that relevant people that you know get update on your what you are building and any insightful information that you have. Rarely do people keep up with their LinkedIn.

  • by shearnie on 6/6/14, 9:58 PM

    I have been having intriguing discussions on Facebook with my friends. I think it's a matter of what friends you have or are paying attention to. One could say visiting mediocre people who gossip about other people is junk food for the brain also.
  • by Rudism on 6/6/14, 8:35 PM

    This smells a lot like arguments people would have made against TV when it first showed up. Comic books, non-classical music, yadda yadda yadda. It seems like every generation thinks that the way they grew up was relatively wholesome and meaningful when compared to newer generations... I don't buy it. People change, habits change, ways of communicating and experiencing the world change, but I think it's silly to compare any of that to actually doing things that are physically unhealthy or harmful to your body.

    All that being said, I don't use Facebook or Twitter either, but mostly because I find them tedious.

  • by daktanis on 6/6/14, 4:16 PM

    I've been thinking about quitting Facebook but I haven't convinced myself of it yet. Over the last year I've been trying to eat better, trying to be more productive with my time....is it time to quit?
  • by vezzy-fnord on 6/6/14, 4:58 PM

    I never understood the appeal behind Twitter myself. I don't have an account (nor one on Facebook) and I only use it infrequently to search various trends when my curiosity is piqued. Twitter is an indispensable tool to perform sentimental analysis and analyze/predict societal tendencies and trends in general.

    But as a social media tool? People always keep saying that there's plenty of interesting information to be obtained from following technical individuals. I just don't see that. What can I get that I won't obtain from blogs attached to my RSS reader, or even just by going to high-profile communities and message boards like /r/netsec, HN and Slashdot/SoylentNews/AltSlashdot to use as digests?

    Finally, even if you do find golden nuggets, they're buried between layers of inanity and mundane content. Who would've thought a communication medium limited to 140 characters would suffer from that?

    I guess the only real benefit is that I can directly speak to tech figures, although in a highly constrained format. I don't think I'd want to, though, especially considering plenty of those people would likely see you as a Luddite for still using email and IRC. Twitter's very webdev-centric, I find.

    I waste enough time on the web as is. Adding Twitter to the mix would offer no benefit. Though I'm assuming employers insist on it?