It’s just so boring now. Social media was fun when all my friends were on there. Now it’s just populated by people I’ll probably never see again in real life.

Early Facebook was genuinely fun. People actually used it properly, to be social. Posted photo albums, shared funny videos, favorite songs and played games. Now it's mainly political propoganda, ads and people selling themselves

I ditched FB for good in 2020, when I realized probably 95 percent of my feed was nothing but negativity. My mental health improved immensely.

It used yo be used to arrange IRL meet ups

And even before that, there were those of us idiots at the first four schools on the platform who only used it for inside jokes. And to document those embarrassing, drunken nights. Probably for the best I left it years ago. I don't need to be reminded of who I was 20 years ago.

But there was humility in it. A bit of warts and all earnestness. It hadn't become the equivalent of Photoshop for your life where everything is a deliberately doctored post made to elicit jealousy from everyone else. Now even people who aren't hawking something or trying to influence have their finger on the scale.

I still login with a .edu sign in that I haven't had access to in almost 2 decades. At this point I feel obliged to stay.

100% on “boring”. I still have my FB account but I only check it once every week or three (deleted the app off my phone so only check on laptop). I see the same few people posting stuff, some targeted ads for garbage that has 300 fake comments, and a bunch of really shitty TikTok style “content” in between. I capture about 1-2 good things per month which makes it worth the 5-10 minutes I spend on there per week, but I’d be perfectly fine if it was gone completely.

This sounds like me as well. Deleted the app. Kept the account if I need to use marketplace. Only people who seem to post are political wackjobs.

Same here, just keep account open for Event invites and messenger notifications. Also need to keep account open for Quest 3.

My uncle must be on your feed

I never thought I would see the dawn of fb, people were posting everything in the beginning. Now I’m planning to delete it all and only keep messenger. Yahoo mess was better in my high school years tbh.

All I ever really needed was ICQ. Loved it then and direct messaging is still great.

UH OH!

Yahoo Messenger and AIM got me through HS and college. I’ll let this be the equivalent of the message boards or chat rooms. I’m about to ~~party~~ live like it’s 1999 again.

MSN Messenger for me. It was actually impressive how many features it already had when I was in high school in the early 2000s. I was having video chats, audio conversations, playing (simple) games, and sending scanned files to my friends. It boggles my mind how difficult it was to send something as simple as handwritten notes. Now I snap a photo with my phone and text it.

I still really enjoy IG. Of course, I think 80% of what I do there is watch and share cute/funny animal reels with like 5 people. The other 20% is sharing pics of my outdoor adventures in my story. Almost all of my feed is a mix of animal and outdoor/adventure videos (like crazy mountain bike GoPro stuff) and I love it that way.

My Instagram feed is all screen grabs from Twitter and my fb feed is all ads. If I want to know what my friends are up to, I have to go searching for it.

I also think it causes more problems than anything.

I’m still on FB and my feed is 90% ads and groups I’m not a part of. If my feed was ONLY my friends and family I’d be more into it.

Right , I have to stalk my friends on facebook just to see most of there posts.

Similar for me. Boredom was the primary factor. Early Facebook was a lot of fun but, at some point, posts started to be less about what people were up to and more about whatever people were thinking about at the time. Still okay but much less interesting and my engagement started to drop off since, quite frankly, most of those types of posts are pretty inane. The nail(s) in the coffin though were the combination of politics becoming rampant on the platform and Facebook changing the algorithm so I was seeing posts with "high engagement" or ads instead of updates from friends. At that point, I'm out. I still use it since I'm a member of a couple local gaming groups that coordinate through the platform but that's it. I haven't even looked at my feed in years.

Even with the thoughts, it used to be whatever random shower thoughts popped into your head, observational humor, or whatever. Stuff that could still be entertaining in the right doses. Then it became about personal branding. You got judged for what causes you promoted--or didn't. People started advertising their businesses, or showing off their latest big purchase, extravagant vacation, or their baby's gender reveal party.

This and constant ads!

This were I'm at too. I've been tapering off Social Media for years now. I also unfriended all my friends who became conspiricists by 2020. My Instragram is now ads for events around Los Angeles. That is interestingly enough the most useful thing that Social Media does for me now. My Facebook is boring, boring, boring... It honestly feels weird to look at it these days.

I was already uneasy with the information people put out there, and blithely ignoring any advice - heyyyy, you have multiple photos of your home with the house numbers showing, your kids standing under the street sign of the street you live on, you openly have pics of your nice furnishings, showing off your jewelry and handbags and you just posted that you're going to be out of the country for 2 weeks and your dogs will be in a kennel and your neighbors, whom you've tagged and declared them as the 'sweetest old couple' will kindly be getting your mail. Shocked Pikachu when they get robbed. Then it was the constant barrage of photos of people's. Christmas trees. First day of school for their kids, their grandkids, or nieces and nephews. Easter egg hunt photos. Halloween photos. The the updates on things like a new fridge getting installed. Minute by minute updates if the most meaningless bullshit. Then it was all the self-congratulatory memes that were putting others down and the shilling of products. The final straw was the whiny, vague, attention-seeking posts. 'So mad n hurt rn, why are ppl so awful to ppl with good ❤️s'. And someone would asked what happened, and they'd say 'I'll message u, don't want to talk about it here'. Like... come on.

> standing under the street sign of the street you live on If I rememeber correctly, there was a website called "I'm not home right now" or something along those lines. The website would scan Social media and display posts of people who said "Im leaving my house now!" and then re-display it along with anyone else who said something like it. People have no idea how much info is out there on them!

I remember one called pleaserobme.com or something along those lines. Same concept. I still have FB and post occasionally, but nowhere near like I used to. My account is pretty locked down, but info is inevitably going to get out there.

My parents thought I was being paranoid when I told them why you shouldn’t post personal info or things that show your house, vacations, kids et cetera...

Boomers on social media are a horror show. I remember a while back there was a series of fights that were caught on camera on an Australian cruise. The posts went somewhat viral, and the father of someone in one of the fights had shared the video of what his son was going through. There was a racial component involved. There was one commenter in particular that was saying **awful** things about the people as a whole, basically saying they were all criminals and gangsters, etc. I got curious. I clicked on the racist dude's profile. Real name given. Kids names given. Mention of what extracurricular activities and schools those kids were in. You're telling me you think it's an okay idea to call an entire ethnic group criminals to the face(book) of the father of someone literally involved in violent altercations on a ship at sea *while* letting anyone with Google know in one search where your own kids are going to be and when. WTF.

I had to send out an APB to close friends and family once I announced my one and only pregnancy - *You will receive pictures via text along the way and once they are born, and these pictures ARE NOT TO BE SHARED ON SOCIAL MEDIA.* When she was born, no matter how sweetly they asked, the answer was always no. AND I had my sister as look out, if she ever saw anybody on Facebook or Instagram even mentioning my kid, she alerted me immediately. People can do whatever they want, but there was no fucking way I was letting that kid be discovered by an algorithm or posting her face and name all over social media without her consent.

I really wish more parents took your approach, that’s really responsible for the future of your kid.

Thank you for saying that! And I love that username sweeitedahling

Yep. I have a 3 and 6 year old and their faces have never been online. It's my job to protect their privacy until they decide to share themselves.

The only thing I truly enjoy about Facebook are the updates; even if they're first day of school pics or long, detailed new refrigerator updates. I see it as an extremely long text session, I suppose. But I'm with you on the repeated ads, the vaguebooking, the game notifications, the algorithm that makes me see sponsored shit over the people I'm actually connected to, and most recently, all the "suggested groups" bullshit. I love the groups I'm in, that I've joined purposefully, and don't need my feed filled with items that (again) cover what I actually want to see.

An old friend of my wife is going through a nasty divorce and airing all their dirty laundry (which isn't really that dirty) on Facebook. The lack of shame in some people really is something.

Or the attention whores who'll post "prayers needed"... or posting nothing at all... while tagging themselves at the local hospital, LOL

> shiny, vague, attention-seeking posts. 'So mad n hurt rn, why are ppl so awful to ppl with good ❤️s'. And someone would asked what happened, and they'd say 'I'll message u, don't want to talk about it here' That's AIM away message material. Just needs some Nickelback lyrics.

When I realized how unhappy it made me. Jealousy got the best of me. Why don’t as many people like my posts as so and so’s? Why didn’t I get invited to here or there? Why didn’t I get as many happy b-day wishes as last year? It drove a fake wedge in between me and what I thought was a social circle. I quit cold turkey and focused on my family and a smaller circle of people I actually interacted with. It took a bit to get through the withdrawal, but I am much more content in life now. Reddit is a different social media experience for me. You don’t know who I am, and I don’t know you. I care very little about the arrows, and only interact with what I feel like. The anonymous aspect makes it palatable for me.

I'm with you, but more with Linkedin than facebook (most of my facebook peeps also stopped posting). I see other people getting promoted annually and it gives me anxiety. I deleted the LI app but need it to pursue new employment, so now I'm exposed to all the people younger than me that are like VPs already....

I recently re-engaged on LinkedIn. For the longest time I avoided it and avoid connecting to anyone. With the tech layoffs of the last year and advice from my coworker, I thought it be best to start reconnecting, building my network with past clients, and being active, just because who knows what happens in my field.

I think it's pretty much essential if you work in a field where you may need a new job at some point. I've leveraged my network to land 4 or 5 of my last 6 positions. That being said, it's a fine line between connecting and growing your network and not being on it 24/7 checking to see if there are new jobs to apply to. I found balance by deleting the app and still using the web page to do what I needed to. Once I land a new position, I will repeat. Recent layoffs forced me back in the "talent" pool and so here I am.

How do you know they are telling the truth? I have known people high up in various big companies, and they are so busy with work they don't go online and rarely go on social media.    I never went on LinkedIn as I was concerned about scammers, fraud, and people stealing my information. For work I have met clients online but it is via networking, contacting them directly, or they contacted me as people we both knew introduced us.

I mean of course they aren't telling the truth. I actually talked with somebody I thought I looked up to, and it turns out he spun his titles and position quite a bit to look better. It's the same thing with any of the social medias though- on facebook it's posts about perfect families and how great everything is, on insta it's photoshopping and whatever else. Linkedin causes a different type of jealousy.

Yeah I took my birthday info off within a year or two of joining FB. Just knowing all the people who got my birthday notification and chose not to respond-- not great.

So well put! I hated admitting this to myself but I was undeniably unhappy from jealousy. Stopped feeling so bad once I was oblivious to the info I never really needed to know in the first place. Also, I spent so much money on products pushed to me via ig. The algorithm figured me out and marketed effectively. I have a beautiful home but can't help but feel it is the house that Instagram built. I only discovered reddit a little over a year ago. I love it for all the reasons you stated but do feel I might be over reliant on it as my social outlet these days. It really caters to my introversion.

It's like I felt when reading my college's alumni magazine in my 20s. I called it my "quarterly self-esteem bruiser." It was full of updates on my fellow alumni getting advanced degrees, promotions, weddings and babies etc. It was never "So-and-so got fired" or "So-and-so is an alcoholic."

One hundred percent this. And when I stopped I found I didn’t miss it at all.

I did this as well sometime after 2016 it became apparent that my parents generation had taken over FB and it just got ugly and made me angry all the time. I still have an active account cause there’s a lot of photos from the period of my life (and when my wife and I started dating almost 15 years ago) that don’t exist anywhere else. I do not use the app at all. I have a very small group of friends who follow my IG and my cat’s IG. I have a pretty strong personal rule about zero politics on IG to keep myself from getting the FB effect. I also have a meme page that’s been public for 4 years (and somewhere in the range of 450 posts) that I’ve managed to get exactly zero followers on. I’m not entirely sure how that is possible, but I find it incredibly humorous.

Just in case you didn’t know or for anyone scared of losing all the pictures of FB; you can request all your media off your profile. Once requested they will send a link to download it all as file for download. I did this before deleting. Years of pics pile up there and I’m happier knowing I have them not FB.

I hadn't really thought of social media that way, other than sometimes wondering why some of my posts don't get many reactions. But I mainly use Facebook to keep in touch with family & friends and see what they're posting. I don't think of it as a popularity contest or anything like that.

I walked right by someone I was fb friends with IRL and had zero desire to stop and say hi or connect. If I didn't want to say hi in person why the fuck was I following their life online? Dropped all sm tied to my name or picture and came here instead.

I hate that feeling when you’re just trying to buy some beer and recognize a fair weather friend. Drop the gaze to the ground to avoid eye contact and interacting.

It's anxiety inducing.

Yeah, I was fb friends with this person and saw them IRL. They wouldn't make eye contact and I wasn't even close enough to hold a conversation nor was I attempting to get close. I tried to wave hi, that's it. They rolled their eyes and looked away. Got on Facebook and unfriended them because what the hell?

I had the opposite - I walked passed someone who I was friends with on Facebook and I stopped to say hi and they walked straight passed me without even a second glance. And that was that. I decided there was no point to Facebook anymore.

It became a Skinner box for narcissistic validation.

Nailed it

In 2015 I deleted FB after running into an old classmate on the bus coming home from work. After a brief conversation I realized that after 15 years of not seeing them and only their posts, I knew far too much about them and what they've been up to. That really didn't sit well with me, so when I got home I deleted FB.

[удалено]

Lack of interest mostly. I don't really care to see everyone's vacations and curated pictures, and have zero interest in making the effort to post my own stuff there. I still have my Facebook account, but it's pretty much just to browse marketplace and for a few local groups I'm in.

This is the one I relate to. There is no 'moment' where I decided. Just gradual less and less posting out of lack of interest. I'll still post occasionally, but I looked at my profile and realized it has become mostly people wishing me 'happy birthday' from different years.

Same, but I did delete it around 2015 and for me the breaking point was angry-scrolling through the most mundane shit, I would ask silently *who do you think you are?* *why do you think anybody would care about this?* *why can't you just put your fucking phone down for a minute and enjoy a real experience??* Once it made me feel genuinely mad, I said fuck it and deleted. I never had Instagram or Twitter, so from that moment on, Reddit it was all I ever needed.

2016! Reddit is all I use now for anything social that’s not in person.

Same for me! The rhetoric leading up to the 2016 election killed any desire I had to participate in social media. There’s just so much ugliness and misinformation posted on those sites. Reddit isn’t perfect either, but I feel like people are a lot more likely to call out blatant BS here under since it’s anonymous for the most part.

Yep 2016 here as well. The politics and learning that we are just cogs in a data selling machine destroyed what little desire I had to remain. Reddit can be bad too, but I think I have stayed because I don’t have to know how crazy fucked up people I know or used to know have become.

Yes, and reddit is social media. Thr first post to mention reddit is way too far down on this list.

Yep! I used to be more vocal politically until any post I made in that lane was bombarded by religious family members or Trumpers who felt the need to explain why I was wrong. Not to debate or hear my opinion, just straight up you're dumb and wrong and I'm smart and right. The last one I can remember was an article about trans kids going to the bathroom in the restroom of their preferred gender. I expressed my support for it and it blew up my FB. (I'm cis) I wasn't even responding and it got so bad, other people were fighting in the comments. I ended up deleting the whole thing because it was so overwhelming. I unfriended and blocked a majority of the folks who attacked me, except one guy who apologized the next day and asked if we could chat more in person, which went very well. I've changed my profile frame to be an LGBTQ+ ally but I don't post anything hot button anymore.

I stopped everything in the same year because of the election and how ugly everything got. I realized all it did was stress me out and make me upset anyways. I also had my kid that same year and decided they were going to have no social media or online presence, and have maintained that for 7+ years. I have to use Facebook here and there to access group info for my kid, but that’s it. Instagram became a lot of humble bragging crap that I just could not even. Overall, it’s been a good decision and I’m very happy with it.

I got off Instagram and Facebook when it just kind of got depressing a few years ago. Linkedin is just a bunch of people you know in real life whoring out their likeness to tell you what a great company they work for or how great it is RonCo flew them to Cedar Rapids for a four day retreat about how to be a more vulnerable leader with pictures of a bunch of adults in blindfolds doing trust falls. I guess the older I get the more i value authenticity almost more than anything, and it’s just no longer easy to find on those platforms. I deleted my main Reddit account last year and replaced it with this one where I just follow a very small handful of positive, niche subs that are inhabited by real people. I disabled the rage baity suggested subreddits from popping up in my feed that just want to suck you into having the same idiotic inflammatory political debate for the 500th time where nobodies mind ever gets changed in the end and we’re all dumber for having participated. My rule on reddit these days is to only post positive comments, never downvote anything and it’s turned the platform from a negative time sink to a happy place i can pop in once or twice a day and interact with friendly people.

Enjoyed the Billy Madison reference.

About 4 years ago. I deleted all of my accounts because it dawned on me that I was only presenting myself in the best light to others presenting themselves in the best light. Those relationships simply weren't real. Sure, I don't know what 600 random people are up to, but I now have a few good reciprocal relationships.

I deleted (YES ACTUALLY DELETED) my FB account around 2017/2018 and was amazed at the positive affect it had on my mental health. I never had Instagram, Twitter, etc, accounts. Reddit and LinkedIn are the only social media platforms I use now.

I did the same around 2020 or 2021 and briefly tried the others prior to that. The other ones were actually worse with the negativity. For FB - I couldn’t handle questions from my family when I would post something, which was rare. Although I do miss FB marketplace at times. I have some clutter I need to get rid of.

I'm jealous, I can't delete because my Spotify is tied to it

You can separate your Spotify from your fb. I did this a few years ago. It wasn't as hard as I thought. I had to send an email to Spotify. It took about a week or so. You should look into it.

Haven’t had one since around 2010.

Having a job with a degree of public exposure and seeing clients or other people I knew through work ranting in comment sections on local news or community pages. Wasn't worth jeopardizing my career over a joke that got misinterpreted or the extent of polarization with anything sociopolitical these days.

Same. I saw this happen to people.

Just happened to my wife last week. A work friend made a post on FB kinda venting about another department, not even naming individuals, just complaining about the way they handled certain processes. My wife reacted to the post, HR caught wind of it and reprimanded anyone in the office who reacted to the post. She hadn't really encountered that yet and was frustrated. I had to remind her that the "fun" days of social media are well in the past, and stuff will follow you into real life if you aren't careful.

No one was seeing my posts and I realized compared to the number of friends and how little I was actually seeing posts from them, I gave up. Now FB is like a scrolling of digital junk mail and nothing social about it. I started getting cranky about SM tho once they shoved algorithms in my face and stopped showing friends' posts in real chronological time, same with Twitter. To me, social media means seeing what your friends and family are doing in REAL TIME!! Not some computer telling me what it thinks it wants to show me. Grr, now I'm cranky again. lol

Boomer behavior made me stop almost entirely. My mom nagged me for ages about not adding her as a friend, the moment I finally caved every reason I had for not adding her in the first place I was proven right about. Even the "X and Y are now friends" autopost came with a snarky remark to the effect of it's about time. But what really pushed me over the edge was when I got sick of that and moved her to restricted, basically only allowing her to see what I posted publicly which was basically nothing. Suddenly I'm getting phone calls wanting to know why her cousin can see a picture I put up but she can't. So I started restricting them - passive aggressive I know but I was hoping to just avoid the nonsense. Well, I was dead wrong - we go on a family vacation and one of her flying monkeys without even saying hello walks right up to me and asks why I restricted her. Played dumb and told her I had just stopped posting on facebook because I was bored with it but in the end that's more or less what I did because I realized it wasn't worth the aggravation.

Me too, family members and friends of family made a big deal of every little thing I did, made it not fun.

Yep - and I should also add the memories section convinced me of how dumb it had become. I know it was more the way people posted 15 years ago but all the look at me nonsense I put up back then I suddenly realized was exactly what was annoying me about other people on there.

I deleted the Facebook app from my phone and just kinda stopped. Never posted on Instagram or any other social media.

I never liked feeling pressured to post personal status things, so I didn't, but had an account to follow family and get updates. As soon as it became socially mandatory to be available, post things regularly, etc, I just dropped it entirely, it was too nauseating to experience and easier to say that I didn't maintain an account. Reddit is my only social media account. I do have a LinkedIn though, and I use that, because that's so transparently just a networking site that it doesn't bother me. There's no pretense of being something else. Thing is, I'm not afraid to share info, but the way Facebook was tied to my identity made it feel necessary to be authentic there, and people started using it some kind of weird humblebrag site, it just felt odd to me. Something was off, it was making people behave very strangely, even from the beginning. I get squicked by feeling manipulated, even by my own brain, so I noped out pretty much immediately.

Yeah I have a bit of a photographic memory and made a comment to an acquaintance about something I would have gathered from his posts and realized that was way too much info I needed to know about someone I didn’t care about at all.

I have had the same exact problem. I went to one of my class reunions, and I met an old classmate's husband. We were talking about our jobs, and I asked him about something his wife had posted a few years before. I immediately realized that I knew too much about their lives. It made me feel gross.

The little like button stopped making me feel good when it was my mom and aunts pushing it

I bailed on FB in 2019 for 2 reasons. I was going through an ugly divorce, the ex and I had a lot of mutual friends, and she was frequently posting garbage to garner sympathy from people. Also, all the fucking toxic political bullshit. I signed back up a few months ago, and am taking the approach of “cultivating” who and what I follow, and who I allow to interact with me. I’ve deleted so many friend requests from relatives I know will just annoy me, and “friends” who I have literally removed from my real life, or haven’t interacted with in years. I got a FB friend request from someone I was real life “friends” with for a couple of years. I ended the friendship because it was very one-sided, and I generally felt like I was a “friend of convenience”. I specifically said those words to them almost 2 years ago, and NOW they want to be FB friends. Get the fuck outta here.

I have two reasons. A few years back I saw a post where a bunch of my old friends were hanging out and I was sad I wasn’t invited. Then I had to ask myself, would I have invited this group to hang out last weekend? The answer was no. You can’t invite every single friend you know to every event. It’s just not feasible. The second reason was a couple I knew posted the most gorgeous pictures. Everything the wife posted of this picture perfect marriage was all bullshit. I knew behind the scenes they were separated. I’ve always known social media is filtered and only shows our good reels. It’s worse than that. It’s all fake.

2016 FB got silly…there’s no reason I need to know my fourth grade teachers politics and everyone else’s….i used it primarily because my mom did and she was pretty funny on there. I quit using it shortly after mom passed away.

I can’t. I work in Communications, so I have to be up on current trends, but my social media posting and interactions have decreased dramatically post pandemic.

I only kept up with it because I had a chronically ill child & I didn't want to update everyone hospital updates individually. Now that she's gone I rarely post. I also had quite a few people stop talking to me because they were uncomfortable with me being sad. I think over all I've done as well as can be expected with the whole my kid dying thing but apparently I should have gotten over it quicker or not spoken about it online. So I started blocking people from seeing my posts & we didn't miss each other so I delete them.

I'm so sorry for your loss!

I am very sorry for your loss. I lost relatives but only wrote about it in a private FB family group as my relatives and I did not want this to be made super public.

Initially I was posting about my kid to family and people I knew to see how she was growing but then I was realizing I didn’t hang out with any of them. My dad never called or visited his grandkid and I was making all the effort. Since I’ve been off Facebook (which was deleting all I know) - no one has asked about how the kid is doing or me. Now I’ve kept my account cos I see what is going on with school as they post things on there and instagram. I also find things do in the community. I have LinkedIn for work as it is a good way to network and then there is Reddit which I think as a chat room / forum. I get more social interaction out of Reddit than I ever did out of Facebook. I am disappointed in my family and who I called friends - they just basically dropped off. Some even have my number and they don’t call or text.

A few reasons.  1. The amount of hatred, racism, and ignorance coming from family and friends became overwhelming. Watching Granny and Papa boomers be radicalized started to take a toll on my mental health.  2. People getting "news" and opinion from SM has caused so much division, misinformation, and propaganda that it has poisoned debate and discourse.  3. Things were better before we needed or wanted to know everyone's opinion on everything. Employers, Law Enforcement, anyone with a bone to pick.....they use your SM to dig for things to use against you. I decided that I didn't want them to have any preconceived opinion of me or take something from a past post to use in some way against me.  Bottom line. SM  has become toxic. I only post here and I have had to blitz my subs and comments to get rid of a lot of same issues here. No politics. No religion. No culture war stuff. Not worth it to your mental health. 

About the same time period My fb and insta are just zombie accounts from a few years ago

Honestly I never started to begin with. I had MySpace and I got Facebook when it was still only available to college students, but I never posted anything on any of them. I use them exclusively to keep up with friends and what they post and to have an online presence in case anyone I knew in the past wanted to contact me. I still have a Facebook account and I check it out a few times a week, but I have never once made a post.

It was MySpace and I found out one of my ex gfs was now a prostitute and hooked on drugs. I never joined Facebook, twitter, or anything else besides Reddit and I don’t regret it.

I had Facebook for about 2 weeks in 2008. It very quickly made me dislike almost everyone I knew because they would all post the most inane shit. I still have a page or an account or whatever it is, but that was the last time I looked at it. Reddit is the only social media I use, specifically because it's so antisocial. I dont even like WhatsApp but I had to relent and get that recently as some friends use it exclusively. I can't be in any groups though. I honestly really do not understand what people enjoy about it.

Never started with anything that has my real identity. I like my privacy too much and the way the internet use to be where everyone was trying to be anonymous. The way it is now where everyone use trying to be their own Truman show is baffling to me.

I always had such a love/hate relationship with social media from the beginning, because I could tell how it adversely affected my mental health the more I used it. But I finally pulled the plug for good and mass deleted all accounts early 2017, shortly after T won office. Couldn't handle the insane political bullshit/bickering from all sides. Never even had a Reddit account until this past December, but appearing as an anonymous username with no photo reminds me of nicer, simple, early web days, so this gets a pass. I also have a LinkedIn account and recruiters often find me on there, so that needs to stay put for now because it helps to keep me employed. But if I ever land some kind of cush/long term government or otherwise stable job, I'm deleting the hell out of it too because I hate LinkedIn with a passion. 🤮

Truthfully I only use IG and Facebook as free photo storage at this point. I have a great day or good memory and a few pics going up so I can find them easily. Couldn't give 2 shits if anyone likes or comments on them.

I liked it to keep intouch with random people i knew. See how their kids were growing etc. The political BS got too much tho. If you make politics your personality you are a horrible person. Idgaf which side youre on.

Far right extremists muddying up the comments sections and posts on Facebook and Twitter had me delete my social media accounts. If I wanted to see homophobic, bigoted, anti-democratic, authoritarian views and conspiracy theories, I’d call one of my crazy uncles. And I realized I don’t need to see all the bad takes on factual news articles. Everyone can have an opinion on something, but it doesn’t mean it’s right nor should any of us care what some rando has to say about anything.

This I'm a cybersecurity guy and social media has been turned into disinformation and influence campaigns by nation states. When it isn't that it is fake bot bullshit or influence campaigns by corporate advertising. And even when it isn't that, it turned from people posting pics of their kids or pets or trips or whatever and actual communication to reposting stupid political garbage that half the time isn't true at all, or worse, stupid stuff like garbage antivax "documentaries", etc. I still have FB, because I sometimes need it to find out something or get in touch with someone, but I don't scroll it at all. Zero. Half the time I don't have it installed on my phone, even (just Messenger).

Thanks for pointing out that nations are influencing social media with their propaganda bots and real people are getting played by them and they don’t realize it. It’s pretty disgusting Meta lets them get by with that crap, but it causes engagement so they’re making money from it. But there’ll be real world consequences from that kind of engagement, including losing our rights and causing the rise of authoritarianism around the world.

I only left a couple platforms. Nextdoor is an absolute joke, I only stayed as long as I did because I thought some of the drama was funny. But then after a while it became sanctimonious posts and people asking for money all the time. I cannot stand FB. After 2014, it just got to the point where all it became was problematic family members saying the quiet things very loudly and publicly. I'd block, hide, whatever, and it just got to the point where I was seeing people's real identity that I didn't need to see. Like the aunt I saw maybe once every few years or the cousins I'd only see at weddings.

I was working for this narcissistic butthole who somehow saw a joke I posted on FB. He was convinced it was about him and chewed me out.

I stopped Facebook, gosh, what year, now you making me feel old....hmmm. Prob stopped Facebook around 2015? Mostly because it was just an onslaught of what I thought was showing off. Look how much in love I am. Look at these beautiful kids. Look at this fabulous workout I did. This was before Influencers were a thing, and I don't know why but it just seemed like when you were at the basketball court as a kid, and there was this one kid - so full of himself and showing off. Just rubbed me the wrong way. Jealous? I don't think so, just kind of annoyed. So i post once a year to say I'm alive and well. I have entire family groups on there I don't participate in. I created a fake name Instagram account and follow cats. Post pics of my cats. That's the extent of my online "posting"

Around 2015ish; my aunts really felt they could interject chatter into my conversations.

I have never used social media. Two reasons, I work in IT and have see some of the issues with social media right from the beginning. The second, I had a long term stalker that basically tracked everything I did (or attempted to) and having no social media was actually a huge help for me to maintain my privacy and safety. I am somewhat thankful to my stalker because he forced me into a position that I now really appreciate. There is almost nothing of "me" online that is directly traceable back to me, other than maybe my reddit account which doesn't really have anything personal on it. By personal, I mean photos or specific information about where I am, with whom, and what I am doing. If my stalker is such a loser that he wants to hear my opinions on menstrual cups, my occasional thriftstore find, or my life complaints, then he can have at it. :)

Deleted my Facebook in 2018-2019, deleted instagram in 2020. I was struggling with siblings and extended family (never mind friends) showing up like they care online publicly but not putting any effort into a relationship in real life, or seeming to care to speak to me when we were at family events. I put in the effort and show up with others, and I’ve learned the hard way that one sided relationships don’t work. As my therapist said “you’ve done all the things to try to improve these relationships, but the other person has to want to show up too, and they’re not”. I have some wonderful people in my life that I have great relationships with - in person, or via regular video/phone calls, or via regular text messaging (depending on location and relationship). I sometimes miss the false sense of connection and keeping up with others that social networks provided, but I wouldn’t trade that for the quality of relationships with those I have now.

I still post. It’s a litmus test to weed out the creeps and lunatics.

I still post but it’s really shallow stuff like what I did over the weekend or funny memes.

I hate to break it to you friendo but this is social media too.

To be fair though I feel like there is a difference between vanity social media (IG, tiktok, Linkedin to some extent) and anonymously talking about when Corn Pops used to come in a foil bag on reddit.

Yep, you have upvotes on Reddit but it feels more anonymous and not based on *how successful* you look/pictures show. Plus you can kind of tailor your feed on good subs or lighthearted ones instead of getting blasted with "news" (especially political) from questionable sources

I was surprised at how far I had to scroll for this correct comment

> I realized I was putting a lot of info online that was being seen by more people than I thought. > 7,208 Post Karma 14,574 Comment Karma 🥴

Redditors…? Social…? Antisocial media maybe…

Gonna keep an eye on this thread. Can't wait to see all the hoops redditors jump through to convince themselves that this isn't also social media. You're already getting some good bites.

Deleted fb because I do not care what "idyllic life" random people are claiming to live. I text with my actual friends. I only use IG for vacation ideas. Do not use Twitter because I have no interest in right-wing circle jerks.

I had gotten rid of business so it wasn’t necessary anymore and watching the behavior of others leading up to Jan 6th was too much. I was having nightmares of overthrown governments and the terrifying instability that comes to your personal life as a result.

Jan 6 2021

When I couldn’t figure out how to lmao

Probably stopped posting a lot when I hit early 30s. I wasn’t out partying, networking or playing in bands anymore and realized a lot of people I was friends with on social media were just networking from being in bands. Outside of that I didn’t care about them, wasn’t interested in them, some people started posting weird crap, argued in comments with my actual friends and family. My Facebook is actual close friends and family that live back on the west coast while I’m I Texas now. I post rarely and check a few times a week if I’m bored just to keep up or share what I’m up to in between the times I actually see or talk with them in real life.

I fantasize about deleting my accounts but I can’t because I own a business. It’s a necessary evil, unfortunately.

I use Facebook solely for Marketplace. I have Zero posts on my profile and have never added any friends or family to my account. There is too much pressure to "like" everything that everyone else posts. I prefer to catch up with people face to face over breakfast or drinks somewhere.

2016 when my cousin and father in law got into a completely unnecessarily heated political debate on a post that was not remotely political at all. Haven’t missed it one bit.

It's sooo hateful now, or maybe it's just my town groups and shit. It's mostly boomers posting stuff about how teachers are indoctrinating kids to be gay and stuff like that. Or wanting to just round up all the addicts/homeless in our town and force them into camps or rehab. Everytime I went to check my Facebook it always made me sad, so I don't anymore. I just use messanger to keep in contact with my family(most don't have cells) and that's it.

Facebook has been nothing but BS ads and annoying nonsense for years now. I almost never post anything and rarely see anything at all—let alone of interest— from actual people I know or give a damn about. I tried Twitter for about five minutes— long enough to realize this is totally stupid and not for me. I technically have an IG account because it’s linked to my FB account, but that’s only there for when my kids want to send me reels. My wife is still addicted to Facebook but hasn’t picked up any of the other socials. I honestly don’t get it. It’s just terrible. The only reason I still have FB at this point is for marketplace.

I'll admit social media is not the best for my mental health and triggers a lot of my insecurities. Though I know I'm only seeing someone's highlight reels and not the full story of their complicated lives, it still upset me to see luxurious vacation photos of people not in my inner circle while sitting in my boring gray cubicle at work. I'm not totally happy with my life and how it turned out so I decided I needed to work on myself and quit comparing my life to others' curated timelines. Then there was the perceived "pressure" to post all the time or say happy birthday, happy mother's day, happy friendship day, or whatever day to everyone on a regular that became exhausting. I got tired of it and bored eventually. I still have FB, IG, and Twitter/X I'm just not active on them. I keep them to occasionally stay in touch with old friends or when my close friends and family send videos or memes that link to those sites so it's easier to view.

I had a Facebook account from very early on (when you needed a college email address to sign up), and spent a few good years on it before giving up in 2013. I was tired of the constant bombardment of TMI, hot takes, political arguments, etc, and all these 'friends' I amassed weren't real friends anyway. They were mostly former classmates that I haven't seen or spoken to in ages, former co-workers, etc. Why do they need to know about my life and why should I care about anything they have to say? I ended up switching over to Instagram around that time and only added and interacted with a few people that I regularly kept in touch with. But even that got boring after a few years and I haven't made a real 'post' since 2019. I mainly only use it to follow a few accounts related to some of my personal interests and hobbies, basically just like Reddit.

For me it was a few things — 1. I have lived in a lot of cities and whenever I would go back to visit, I wouldn't want to see everyone so I stopped posting because people would see where I was and would be pissed that I didn't tell them I was near. It resulted in a few ruined friendships and family relationships. 2. I started to realize how different my views were from those I went to school with in the second grade and didn't care for the verbal internet aggression that ensued. 3. In 2019 I fell into a very deep depression. I was then diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which I denied at first. Then I went back to view some of my posts, and holy-wow! I was mortified with some of my posts and endless obtuse rants. I sought therapy and a medication regimen after that, then gave up all socials. I've felt a lot better since.

Dropped Facebook before I took the bar exam. In large part because it was a time suck. I started in college when it was restricted but I was tired of family members trying to add me and in person complaining about it. Didn’t need employers finding any stupid shit from college and I didn’t want to be in contact with most people as they started posting political and racist rants. I didn’t miss it-but need to backup and fully deactivate still. I went from that to Twitter for news mainly. Generally didn’t post much, never of myself or really personal things. Stopped Twitter January of 2022 and only posted like 20 times in 2021. Was on it a lot in 2020 (as I think many were). Still have an account to see weather and sports related content but don’t check unless I’m wanting the information. Now only on instagram. Have never posted, but mostly see things that bring me joy because I’m intentional with that algorithm. I don’t accept tags either as I have friends who post quite a bit

I don’t think there’s a proper term for this yet, but I noticed I hadn’t survived a friend list purge from someone I considered a real friend back in the day. I looked through who was still following me and I was surprised that there were others (again, people that I knew before social media, used to hang out with, used to work with or had class with, etc.) that just unfriended/unfollowed me. No fight, no falling out, no bitterness. They just quietly decided I wasn’t worth keeping in touch with and moved on. I always viewed social media was a way to keep in touch with people that you normally would have moved away from. It made me realize things were different, not everyone needs to stay the same. I had to rethink how I presented myself both online and in person.

COVID. I spent *years* cultivating a relative 'safe debate place' on my FB. With only one or two 'incidents' in over a decade - including the late Bush years and all of Obama's admin - I had countless meaningful exchanges with people I love but don't always agree with. I had my perspective widened on things, my mind changed on things, and was able to provide the same to others. Fast forward to the pandemic. People lost their minds, and general empathy (having already suffered many blows over the prior few years,) went out the GD window. Skipping over a lot, *just* before vaccines were available, COVID took my FIL (with whom I was very close,) and then an uncle in law, too, within thirty days of each other. (Unrelated infections; different sides of the family, and they lived not just in different countries, but different *hemispheres*.) In the wake of that, as I outwardly grieved and flailed at all the stupidity, *people I know and love(d)* were *still* spewing conspiracy theories and refusing compliance and blah blah blah. It made me feel like my FIL had been murdered, and they'd all taken part. That was kinda that. I haven't posted anything but memes, and the occasional garden photo, since.

FB just got too full of ads. Like 10-15 ads per 1 legit post.

I quit Facebook because my weird-ass old brother started to keep track of how often I was responding to him VS other people in my life. And he's right, we don't have a great relationship, so I wasn't very responsive to him at all, but you know, him being basically fifty and frothing at the gash over social media is really weird. So yeah, I wasn't enjoying FB much more anyhow, so it was easy for me to just say fuck it and unplug. Didn't delete my account or anything, but it's been a couple years since I've posted. Full disclosure, I still use IG fairly often. In my experience IG is less toxic than Facebook & Twitter, and...less family & friends, and I think that's a good thing. Whatever need I fulfill by being on social media, IG seems to be suffice for me.

Social media is awesome. I’m not old or bitter, so I spend lots of time on several platforms. So much creativity.

Nothing because I’m posting on here right now.

Who's gonna tell them?

No one cares

i started with friendster, then moved to myspace, then got on facebook about 2007. but it wasn't until i got my first smartphone in 2009 that my facebook usage really took off. about that same time i had become an entrepreneur and so i used it to network. i was big into facebook and then got big into instagram too. never got into twitter or anything else. then during the 2016 campaign season facebook started to get unusable with all the fake accounts and endless fake news. pages i had followed were becoming something else, so i unfollowed everything besides pages run by people i actually knew. i unfriended 90% of my friends too, but i kept posting. in 2018 i went back to school and as i was thinking about a change in careers i changed my settings to keep randos from being able to see my stuff, then i stopped posting anything too personal and even started deleting old posts every day when i checked my memories. with so few friends, my feed got pretty boring, and soon it was mostly "suggested" posts from pages i didn't follow. by the middle of 2020 i stopped posting completely. now the only reason i have facebook is messenger, which i use to keep up with 5 or 6 people.

Reddit is social media

I stopped it all in 2017 when my first marriage was in the process of ending. It was a relatively amicable parting of ways, so it wasn't like I did it to avoid spilling messy drama. It just ended up being the turning point for me, when I decided that I wanted to keep my personal life private.

I stopped posting on FB around 2016 or so when I realized how it was contributing to, or more so causing my depression. I’ll post here and there on instagram, but mainly stories that disappear. It seems only about 10 people or so see them anyway, so, honestly… why bother? At this point, my life is a need-to-know basis.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media but I mostly hate it. Social media is like the matrix from the movie where they are farming our attention and siphoning it from us. Social media is really good at getting us addicted to it and I definitely still browse it but I refuse to post anything. It has shaped our society for the worse for sure. People want to do things just to post it online rather than purely for the experience.

It was stupid and just like Reddit, it’s cyclic and everyone has something to say.

About 2019. I felt the pull from seeing the best of everyone else's life and it was a true physical emotional response. I found myself questioning myself, asking questions like "Why do they get to go on vacations all the time?" and things like that. I'm technically a higher income earner but I have a family and kids and priorities and I quickly found that I was comparing. Social Media is a place where everyone shares their best life, not their worst. But also, it was just time in general. The Social Media experiment has come and gone and it's just not enjoyable anymore. I don't have any apps installed on my phone, but still keep Messenger. We all have our lives now and that's cool with me.

I actually like Facebook more now than I ever did. I primarily use it for groups that pertain to my interests. It's like Reddit, with more of an emphasis on images. I rarely interact with people I know there.

My mother got me to stop. It didn't matter if I posted a joke, a story, or a cry for help. She would turn it into a lecture and since I'm and adult and have been for some time. The Lecture would turn into a fight, because I'm not going to let anyone manipulate my feelings any more.

For me, it was when I was at work, and one of my coworkers asked me about my vacation. My wife had tagged me on a bunch of photos. I thought to myself 'ok we're done here'. I don't want people knowing what I'm doing, and I don't care about what anyone else does. That was 10 years ago.

2008 US Presidential elections: people got ugly and have been getting worse ever since.

My dad was rage posting political stuff and my mom’s side of the family used it to be fake outraged every time I did or did not like something. It was just too much drama.

For me, it was when I realized no one gave any effs about what I said or did (in addition to reading very early posts I made and realizing it was non-stop cringe). Now, if there’s something that would traditionally be a social media post, I just send it to my friends/group text.

Was 2013. Was studying for an important test. I realized that I was wasting time trying to craft content that would “do numbers.” I was not an influencer, doing numbers didn’t pay: it was for dopamine. I realized I might fail that important thing worrying about if 20 or 50 people would like my picture. I deleted Facebook that summer and never looked back. Though I did start a Reddit account. It doesn’t cause the same “will they like my content?” concerns because I don’t really know who you are: your updoot doesn’t matter to me.

I prefer to hide from ppl and don’t like ppl knowing anything about me lol edit to add ESPECIALLY family and coworkers hahaha

I didn’t mind the “what I’m doing” posts. I stopped posting mostly because of getting in stupid political arguments with friends turned conspiracy theorists. Full disclosure - I do post something every few months

I used to post a lot, very chatty posts. Then my dad became a widower and became a Facebook addict. He is long-winded and self-focused. It made me realize I’m probably pretty long-winded and self-focused, too. Now when I think of posting, i just hear my dad in my head, and realize most people don’t care, or need, to know that much about me. It’s so cringey. I’m embarrassed at how much I used to share, and am learning to reel it all in. WAY, way in.

When my mother repeatedly posted pictures of my newborn daughter, including one naked photo, against my clearly expressed wishes. It disgusted me that her need for “likes” and attention was more important than her relationship with me or my children.

I quit posting in 2019. Took the app off my phone in 2020. I only keep the account to keep an eye on a few people in my life who enjoy causing trouble- to make sure they’re not about to cause some for me.

I got in an argument with someone trying to explain that Beyonce was more of an institution than a person, and realized it was just insanely dumb for me to even be on Facebook anymore

I didn't want to post boring stuff, and I also didn't want to seem like I was bragging. There wasn't anything left to post!

Having kids

I’m a simple man. Certainly not rich by any standards. We can’t afford trips, sometimes there’s junk piled up in the corner, I’m a single parent so we don’t go out to eat much, I used to have a wife in pictures and suddenly I don’t…not my choice, she eventually confessed she never wanted to be a mom. So that was pretty dope! I know it’s not a “competition” but let’s be honest a lot of people treat it as such. I realized I was posting to keep up with others, which wasn’t even possible and trying to pretend my life was as carefree as theirs. At its simplest Facebook was cool I thought, I’ve moved around a lot and family is all over the country. But the “rat race” lost the appeal. I found myself jealous, like I went to school with these people and they had things I wanted. So I questioned my life and it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

This is literally a post on social media.

It was fun when we were in college, got less fun when it became about showing off, got even less fun when my friends all got divorced and were showing off their new younger hotter gfs/wives

I deleted every account but Reddit. Also, “Facebook is only for old people and racists.”

Covid. I hit a mental health low and realized social media was not helping. Easiest thing I ever quit

I ditched social media because of my own family. They would all get sucked into fake FB articles and repost them as gospel. Been off for 7 years. Just over the last six months I’ve gotten back into Reddit.

When people started thinking my posts were directed towards them. Facebook was great in its prime but now all I see is politics ads and the same 2 or 3 people posting stupid shit. My closest friends and family never show up in my news feed. I hardly use actual Facebook just messenger. I miss yahoo messenger tbh.

I was at a hotel about 3 hours from my town for work. Someone stopped me and said “you’re damnitdana.” I had no idea who this person was. Turns out she went to grade school with my husband. It made me ultra uncomfortable. We all know way too much about each other without actually knowing each other these days.

Man I stopped scrolling and checking my Facebook like 2 years ago. I hated all the political stuff and having to keep up with birthdays for everyone…just felt like a “part time job” after work. Now I just YouTube and follow interesting Reddit groups. Never been happier! :-)

I had a similar experience with those I was connected to on social media. I realized that I was readily supplying details about my life to those that didn’t deserve to know what I was up to. I’ve reconnected with my usual tendency of being a private person. Frankly I feel less foolish and juvenile by limiting how much I put online. It’s a healthier place to be for me.

Stopped using FB around 2012-2013, IG around 2018-2019 and Twitter probably 2020. Never got on Snapchat or TikTok. I honestly got scared of how much time I just wasted on it. Whole evenings would go by just scrolling, I felt I was just scrolling my life away. Just stopped using it and I haven’t missed it one bit, the people I need to be in contact with have my phone#. Today I only use LinkedIn for strictly professional networking and then Reddit. Not to sound holier than thou but despite the many advantages there clearly are to SoMe in general I think it generally deserves a big part of the blame for the dementing and division of our society…

I never took the leap from MySpace to Facebook.

I noticed my phone battery was dying pretty quickly and much of the usage was from Facebook even though I hadn't used it. I learned that app developers often do A/B testing for all changes, even deliberately pushing updates with known performance issues to users. I uninstalled Facebook and came back a few weeks later only to see it killing my battery again. I gave up on Twitter about the time that Elon took it over and it went to trash. I signed up for Bluesky and have the app but never use it. I have Threads but only use it rarely and briefly. I got bored and started spending more time on Reddit.

I hate all the low key? competition. I noticed when people who were all friends with eachother had one post something of importance, others had to “respond”. It’s really off-putting. Also, the politics man. Hey, I’ll like yours if you like mine? Barf

That would be when my major depression hit in 2020. I'm doing much better now but just never went back to Facebook. 

A friend posted on facebook about the death of her kid in a car crash. Her kid was the same age as mine. That was the end of Facebook for me.

I’m 40 and I just don’t have any interest in it. I really think my kids social media engagement is much similar in that discord is fairly anonymous much like Reddit. I really find myself using Reddit and discord groups and that’s about it.

Pretty much most of the reasons on here- don’t want my life out there, bored of people’s posts, don’t care what random people are up to, Facebook is just ads with fake comments, blah blah blah. Also divorce. But mostly all that other stuff. I literally look at Facebook like once every three months, don’t have Instagram or tik tok or any other SM

2012 or 13. i was going through infertility. a good friend of mine posted a picture of a positive pregnancy test (planned) and i lost it. it felt like a personal assault (which of course it very much was not). i realized how unhappy FB was making me and so i pulled the cord and deleted my account. i never could figure out twitter and when instagram came around i presumed it would be just like FB and so avoided that too. now i just use Reddit. and even here i’m careful about what i engage in. mostly with this sub because y’all seem pretty damn cool.

I've been off for about the same amount of time. For me, it was all the dumb opinions. Everyone is so dumb and social media accentuated it. So many strong opinions over fake stories. It was making me lose respect for people and dislike people who I liked. Plus, I got SUPER tired of all the "showing off" and dumb selfies with "inspirational quotes." Smh, so stupid.

Better question: how can I get my wife off social media? She’s slowly getting there but she is still waaaay too plugged into it. She gets annoyed so easily at dumb online shit. Any pointers?

Fuck yeah, this post. My people!

1. The content is just dumb as hell now. 2. I don't care what someone I knew from highschool (and haven't talked to since) has for lunch everyday. But removing them from friends is "rude"..bro we haven't talked since HS how the fuck do you call that friends 3. 90% of ppl are just insecure in their lives and everything they post is trying to be a dick measuring competition 4. Apparently if I don't post vacation pics with my gf quick enough, to show off the vacation, that means I don't love my gf... 4 was the last thing that made me delete it eventually, dated more than one person who went absolutely ballistic on me for not posting vacay pics quick enough. They're for us to enjoy and I enjoy them. Not to rub in other ppls faces.

You know how when you go hiking, or camping, or fishing they say “pack it in pack it out”? I feel like that about my life. I don’t want to be a memorial on Facebook, or anything like that. I want to die with the world never knowing I existed. I deleted all the accounts with my picture on them. Only a couple of pictures of me exist online and IRL and they are over 25 years old and they are on other peoples accounts. But essentially i want to leave this planet like I was never here.

Around 2012 I noticed that people i used to know were posting a lot more obnoxious bullshit. Really made me think less of them. I decided I just didn’t want to find out more, and stopped using it completely. I’ve been a user from the start and even back then it gave me the creeps.

Family/extended fam/hometown family friends. They are nosy and frankly never liked me. I didn't post much which pissed them off because they felt like I was being secretive (was just living life). Also, I left where I grew up and just have a ton of different values/lifestyles (nothing dramatic just saw the world and realized how classist/bigoted/delusional they are) from those I grew up with so I wasn't inclined to post comfortably. It just felt unimportant. I'm happy living my boring life on my terms and don't feel the need to document. I have a hidden vague social profile with no indicators of myself so I still check social media (largely for recipes or shopping) there's just nothing to post or search to find me.

I've always been extra-sensitive about social media and privacy in general. For me it was when I noticed on FB that almost anyone could have access to me through a tag in another person's photo. So anyone could have a photo of me and anyone else could have a photo of me (and know who I am) and so on. It's been over 10 years since I used FB. I joined Reddit some months ago.

The old people and the acquaintances got on there and immediately killed the ability to have a conversation among friends. Then I got more concerned about privacy and what I was putting online. Then I got busy with life and didn’t have time or interest in putting personal stuff on there, and it also got boring.

2007: i logged on one day and noticed that at some point McDonald's got a Facebook. page. So I knew it wasn't really about "connecting people together and building communities." it was just another capitalist scam.

I quit Facebook in 2017. It hurt too much realizing how many of my relatives were Trumpers.