I would encourage people to consider permanent solutions to use social media more intentionally instead of taking a month off here and there. Two things that the apps really want you to do, but that you should resist as much as possible, are doomscrolling through meaningless content and compulsively checking apps or websites in case you miss out on interesting updates.

For myself, I've decided to direct anything and everything possible to my email (with plenty of filters to keep my main inbox tidy). For apps that don't offer email notifications, I use MacroDroid to forward Android push notifications to email. There are also plenty of ways to forward RSS to email.

I batch process my email 1-3x/day, and anything I don't want to see during this time is not worth seeing at all. It gets ignored, filtered out, or unsubscribed from.

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port11 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

30 days is long enough to form a habit, so it might be a good way to see how you can live without social media. My life is unquestionably better without Meta/Twitter/etc., but I have a hard time convincing anyone that that is the case.

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MisterTea 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have been off social media completely since 2016. Only have a Facebook left for family and the occasional marketplace browse. When I do check it I only log in via browser and spend maybe 5-10 minutes on the site. I posted a few times that people should contact me via email if they want to chat though so far no one has taken up my offer.

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yepguy 4 days ago | parent [-]

If it works for you, great! I've tried that before and it didn't work for me. I like the stuff I find on Hacker News, and I need Instagram to keep up with my friends, so this was the solution I came up with mostly to keep myself from compulsively checking both of those in an unhealthy way.

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MisterTea 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Keeping up with friends in my circle means a group chat. We moved around a few platforms but settled on google chat as that was most common among everyone. HN isn't very social to me, just a water cooler.

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brailsafe 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I need Instagram to keep up with my friends

Wdym? I think this idea should be included in your top-level comment about things Instagram wants you to do. I can believe it's likely that other people have very different relationships with people that are dependent on a particular platform, but I do my best not to accept that and make it clear that I probably won't check anything other than a DM whenever I feel like it, which consequently categorizes Insta as an unimportant means of connection.

Put another way, my relationships are defined by the communication and connection we have in real life or DMs regardless of the platform. Seeing posts does not count as friendship to me, and if I don't hear from someone or think about them because I disabled my insta, then it wasn't meant to be.

A sibling replyer said they use group chats, which is fine for some, but I find has personally just become another passive comms dump that I actively refuse to participate in; there's too much noise.

All that said, a real friendship formed in person after a real time investment can survive with very little or zero fake interaction from social media. It's ok that I see my bros from my home town maybe once a year. If I fear not receiving any direct communication from anyone should I decide to dip out of social media, then it's possible I have no friends and I should sit with that feeling until I can take action on that. People get too complacent imo thinking their posts count as friendship.

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yepguy 4 days ago | parent [-]

A good chunk of the social events I attend are coordinated mainly through very busy group chats, and then announced with Instagram stories (yes really, even though they disappear after 24 hours). I'm not really in a position to change that either, so I'd rather get the 1 update from Instagram than sift through hundreds of group chat messages.

I agree with you in principle, though. There are better tools for all of this that they just won't use.

	▲	brailsafe 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I occasionally feel like I miss out on impersonal events that do only get announced that way, and I definitely miss out on a bunch of group chat events, but personally I guess I just feel like that's ok, and if I was meant to be there someone would have hit me up. There are exceptions, like recently having attended a wedding (very personal) with a specific group of close contacts, but I received the invitation personally. There are some people that I've lost regular contact with or didn't form friendships with on the basis that they relied entirely on group chat to organize things, which I just refuse to participate in, and that's not for everyone. If nobody can be bothered to contact me, then I can't be bothered to show up. That said, if I was trying to monitor meetup groups or raves or something, I'd probably just do what you're doing.

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coffeefirst 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah. I will say, the best place to start is just deactivate one for 30 days and see whether you miss it.

It turns out I didn't actually like any of these apps. If I did, they wouldn't need to play all these dumb games to keep me engaged.

	▲	yepguy 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Nothing wrong with that. One thing I like about my approach though is that I can get what little value there is out of platforms that rarely ever serve up anything useful to me. Facebook, for example, hardly ever gives me any value, but sometimes it does. If I used Facebook like most people, I would have to check it regularly for that one time I get something valuable from it. The downsides would far outweigh the upside, so it would make sense to delete it. But instead I can go months without ever opening Facebook, and then get notified when there's a post I actually care about, and give it my attention on my own schedule.