Ask HN: Is quitting social media (Instagram, snap) sign of weakness?

You ever play pool? I love pool. Billiards I mean. I'm not very good at it but if you watch the pros on YouTube or whatever you can't help but say "well even I could have made that shot" over and over.

Why? Because the pros set themselves up to take easy shots. Sure sometimes things don't go right and you have to make the hard shot. But given the choice, set up the easy ones.

Not checking your phone is a hard shot. Not having a social media habit is an easier shot. Frees up brainpower for more important matters like wasting time on hacker news.

I don’t understand the cognitive dissonance. If you believe that they are not serving you, what point is there in keeping them around? It sounds like a smoker who thinks that by not having a pack of cigarettes in her pocket and constantly denying them that she hasn’t “really” quit.

I went nuclear on Instagram and Facebook a couple years ago. I downloaded all the pictures I liked and saved all the posts I thought were worth keeping, and then I deleted everything and I unfriended everyone. I figured if there wasn’t anything to come back to, then there wasn’t any reason to come back. As has been discussed here before, you can’t really delete a Facebook account, but that doesn’t mean you can’t empty it out. Most people just have too much FOMO.

I Got some texts asking if I was suicidal (I was not, but what a sign of the times!) but other than that my life has never been negatively impacted. I text my friends regularly (~10 people ~once per day) and I really enjoy the unmediated relationships I have with my real-life friends and family.

Escapism is a helluva time.

If I find myself repeatedly checking the same app, I uninstall whatever app I check for a while to give me some space to figure out why. I always end up recovering, re-installing and continuing as normal. I wouldn’t say it’s a sign of weakness, it’s space that you need to figure out why you have the need to spend so much time on it.

Also, remember that these apps are actively designed to keep your attention for as long as possible. Algorithmic feeds, infinite scrolling.

If you discover that you have a nuts allergy, would you continue eating nuts to prove that you are tough? Same with social media - if it hurts you, ditch it.

I recall feeling like social media was taking up too much time. Instead of just quitting, I listened to tips from other people and figured out my own hacks to minimize distraction. In a couple cases, I just uninstalled apps - though it wasn't easy because some people only communicate on certain apps. It's just that I realized that my time is more important. Some of my work is social media, so I do have to keep my accounts. On Facebook I set privacy so that only friends could see my activity or contact me and then unfriended everyone so that no-one could contact me - this lets me follow groups, manage pages, and access developer APIs without being bothered. On Twitter, where I mostly hang out, I have a list that I've made private and I only add people I really want to follow there. By minimizing exposure, I'm able to stay on a platform without wasting a lot of time.

Being weak isn't shameful. Recognizing that you have a weakness and doing something about it is a strength though. If you need glasses to see then wear them with pride, same with quitting social media, if it distracts you from more important things then quit and be proud that you had the strength to overcome your weakness.

In my case, it may be weakness. My life is not that great, and I lack the fortitude to even dress it up and project a better life on social media. There would be benefits to this for sure, like appearing a little bit more normal and ‘out there’, and I think I’ll try to build a passable image over the next two years (I certainly need to get laid, did I mention that? It’s always been sort of about that for me, but it’s not an unhealthy or uncommon justification in society).

It can be a sign of weakness if you are avoiding it entirely because you can’t bother to present yourself, even just a little bit (which I am absolutely guilty of at the moment).

Look, we all need to get laid and look normal to make friends. Now, if you’ve crossed into psychotic territory where you are posturing for status and adulation, then yeah, you are fucked.

No.

Would staying on be a sign of strength? What kind of strength? That you're strong enough to use it without letting it run your life?

Or would it be a sign of weakness? That you're weak enough to waste tons of time on pointless stuff while telling yourself how in control you are?

If you're unable to keep it in limits, then at least be strong-minded enough to recognize that you can't keep it in limits, and strong enough to do something about it.

Are people who quit drinking every night weak ?

Absolutely not, as long as you're not hurting anyone else, you have a right to do whatever you want. Don't fall for the lie that there's some imaginary committee judging your every move.

You can accomplish everything worth accomplishing without using social media at all, I personally use Facebook to stay in touch with tons of old friends, but that's it.

No, you are just better then the app and engineers that design it to be addictive. Everyone thinks tech is supposed to be complicated, it isn't. Feedback loops, dopamine spikes and network effects were keen to human survival for millenniums.

Now they're being exploited to profit off you. Why stay in that cage? Be free, delete the apps and see what's really left in the world.

There's nothing wrong with having a weakness. Plenty of 'strong' figures you probably look up to have had issues with substance abuse (although social media addiction is probably a newer form of it).

I'd even argue that using social media at all is a form of weakness. Why should you feel the need to validate yourself and keep in touch with people you hardly care about?

My advice? Stop worrying about what other people will think of you. Figure out what is important to you (your time, focus, sanity, etc) and work from there.

I quite the whole of Facebook's ecosystem back in '19 and have not looked back.

I am still on Twitter and try to heavily curate what I follow and limit the amount of it.

Not at all. If anything it sounds like your brain making excuses for -not- quitting. Addiction is weird like that.

Your life is the things you spent your attention on. Live how you want, and remember life is for living, weak or strong. Interpret that in your way, and think particularly on the attention you spend thinking about your thoughts about attention

If anything it's a sign of mental strength.

Think about all the people hooked on social media. How is it weak of you to break this cycle for yourself?

No. Social media consumption is a cognitive equivalent of smoking. You're better off without it.

Frame it this way: would you rather waste less time and feel ashamed or not feel ashamed and waste more time?

No. Social media is a behavioral sink.

Nope. No where near weak. You quit. How much more control over your time could you have?

How can you control something that knows how to use your system against you?

I have a feeling that the conversation about quitting social media has shifted lately among normal people. If you think you should quit because spending time on social media is an unproductive activity in a hostile environment, they might think they have a responsibility to correct misinformation, to raise the profile of marginalized groups, and to prove to the trolls that they won't be intimidated. Instead of asking how to get rid of facebook, they want to know how to give legal effect to facebook's moderation policies, especially the one against anonymous accounts. I don't know whether this mentality is coming from somewhere or if it's spontaneous, but I've seen it reflected in BBC documentaries, and there was an interesting discussion a while back on HN about a blog post by someone claiming to have received a boilerplate reply from a recruiter featuring apologetics to this effect after declining to interview with facebook.

It is a sign of strength. Cut through the hype and think for yourself rather than following the lives of others and listening in the echo chamber(s).

There is a reason why these social networks have chosen the word 'Followers'.

I think it's the opposite.

Nope. A sign of intelligence.