The difficulty of giving up social media

[Tradd]

Lots of people these days have said they’re giving up social media. Don’t you end up isolated? I tried giving up FB around 2010ish for a couple of months. I found out friends had lost babies at term, gotten married (eloped). I didn’t know about any of this until I saw them weeks later.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to give it up, but as I live alone, I would be so out of the loop. Dives are arranged on FB groups or Messenger chat groups. I have long term friends I’ve known only online for more than 20 years. No FB, no keeping in touch. One group started on a forum, but then the forum died, and we moved to a private FB group. I have friends who don’t text, but only use FB Messenger instead.

I rarely post on IG and I’ve only ever occasionally read stuff on Threads.

What about you?

[pinkytoe]

I mostly text or email with family and friends but will occasionally check to see what family/friends are up to on FB or Instagram. However, I recently reached out on FB to an old high school friend since we now live in the same state. We got together and had a great time. That would not have happened without seeing her on FB. When I moved here, I made sure to join a couple of local groups so that i can have some community that is not online - book club, garden club. Ironically, I only found out about those things by seeing them on FB first.

[catherine]

I gave up social media for Lent once. It was OK, but I really had no intention to give it up for good! There are a lot of annoying and even addictive aspects to it, but I agree that I've gotten a lot of positives from it as well. (Y'all being one of the biggest positives!) I'm active on FB, here, and Substack mainly. I don't do Instagram or Threads or WhatsApp or Twitter. I've got my hands full with the platforms I'm already on.

[iris lilies]

I am unable to give up some forums. If you can tell me how, please do.

[happystuff]

I have facebook, but rarely go on it at all. I hope to soon, but only to try to sell some stuff on Marketplace. That's about it for me. People I want to be in contact with, I call, text or visit.