More and more people are realizing that these apps have a super unhealthy, poisonous hold on them and they are breaking free, finally. Huge congrats!

Im writing this as someone who never signed up for facebook or instagram, and ive only tried twitter a few times without getting hooked at all.

It just didnt have any interest to me, but i think thats because im into tech, and social media seems to be more focused on drama.

Getting rid of Reddit saved so much of my time.

I’m currently more in love with Mastodon to be honest. It’s a bit more polished experience and with more active users. But i’m sticking around, hoping that lemmy and kbin can close the gap.

I think what you are striking on is a difference in platform design. Remember, with social media you are the product to be sold to. Here in the fedverse there is no highly tuned algorithm keeping your eyeballs engaged and your dopamine/cortisol receptors in lock step.

currently have a FB, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit account. The first three is basically my first delve into the art world of drawing animes and stuff, and Reddit…well, for Reddit stuff, niche communities, hobbies, etc. FB is actually pretty nice and cool and good tho…at the beginning. You play games, you delve into groups about your hobbies, you like your friend’s pictures and lifes. Nice.

Until recently, when for profit social media gone mainstream. Suddenly it’s not just your connections and hobbies, now everything is filled with ads, suggestions, influencers, all mining our data. Not to mention the outside bigotry, racism, religious intolerance, homophobia, hard and extreme politics slowly creeping first in FB, Twitter, and now or soon, Reddit. Yeah there you’re “technically” able to express yourself, but be prepared to be brigaded by those people that are now a majority in current mainstream social medias.

Also, including Reddit, all now becomes just another dick-measuring contest. Who’s more popular? Who’s more funny? Who’s more edgy? Who’s more based? Who’s more Chad? Who’s more liberal? Who’s more homophobic? Upvotes, likes, shares, all of that is just another dopamine effect to further the dick-measuring contest. Needless to say, I am happy to find Mastodon and now, Beehaw. A relaxed, nice community that isn’t just yet another popularity rat race.

Good on you for taking the steps to try and remove the sources of your anxiety from your life. Social media is certainly addicting and it’s a hard cycle to break free from.

I’ve been slowly deleting my social media and other internet accounts for a few years now. Facebook was the first to go probably half a decade ago now. I bailed Twitter around a year before Musk took over. I stopped using my Twitch account but I still need to delete it. I am in the process of weaning myself off of YouTube.

I started this process mostly due to privacy concerns and me feeling out of control of my personal information. Algorithms served to further push me away because I struggle not to engage with depressing topics which results in controversial and depressing content being pushed on me by the algorithm which severely affected my mental health. The final straw is all these platforms becoming almost completely unusable due to their need to feed the illusion of constantly growing profits by adding unnecessary new features that bloat the platform, adding ever more intrusive adverts, and locking features behind paid subscriptions.

These days I only use Mastodon and Lemmy. I also have a subscription to Nebula through CuriosityStream which has been scratching my YouTube itch so I’m aiming to delete my Google account completely soon. I also use Discord, just for keeping in contact with friends, but ultimately I’d like to bail from that platform too.

Ultimately this decision has freed up a lot more personal time for myself to pursue my existing hobbies and new ones. Overall I am much happier.

I’m glad you feel better about it. I deactivated Facebook about a week ago on a whim, and days later the Reddit fiasco came about so I deleted my account there. I watch TikTok and this is the only other social platform I use. I’m unsure about how I feel about it. It feels isolating in a way. But you’re right. Doomscrolling on social media brings about mostly negative feelings. So far, this place has been positive, although some of the content I don’t care about, but at least I’m not looking through it mindlessly.

Congrats on getting off of social media! Glad to hear you like it here :)

I actually agree with you. The sole reason I still have instagram is so I can find and keep track of tattoo artists. I was never very active on twitter, will probably delete Facebook soon, and once tiktok automatically logged me out I never logged back in. Being on facebook generally just makes me angry while tiktok drains away whatever self-esteem I have left. Instagram is just eh.

Actually, I like that upvotes don’t add to a total on your account as with karma on reddit. And yes, likely because of its smaller size, conversation on Lemmy feels a lot more pleasant. I really like it here too :)

I made FB account after some group wanted to post there, never used it much. Now I use Messenger sometimes but not too much. Reddit was only thing that I used more, it is more anonymous and still you can be sure to read people generated content which isn’t suggested by algorithm.

I am happy that most people which I need to contact use email, it is best thing to contact people - literally everyone has one.

I really enjoy other social medias like tiktok and instagram but I’m really intentional about how I use them. I only consume and interact with content that brings me joy. I use it to stay in touch with friends so that means making sure I talk with them, interact with their posts, and show them some love. I don’t engage with trolls or haters but i will try and have a discussion with people who seem genuinely curious, confused, or open to other view points and not hostile. I try not to spend more than an hour on the both of the consuming content a day (usually spread out while i wait for the sun, at lunch, and before bed.) I love to create silly videos about crafts, gardening, and baking so I like to post those but I find I will get sucked into scrolling and not do all the things I love if I don’t set limits.

Beehaw is great because it’s not so busy I have to spend a long time catching up and I have already ran into so many friendly people with similar, positive interests. I really want this space to be something that adds to my life and so far it has. I’ve got a new kombucha guide to try, more info on how to organise community projects, crafty friends to share projects with, and even some info on how to fix my oven! Beehaw is different than the other social medias as it’s a place that’s very conversation focused. Its smaller than reddit making it feel more accessible as comments don’t get drowned out in busy threads. Tiktok has character limits that doesn’t allow for real conversations and instagrams feed is usually outdated and full of sponsored or irrelevant content so I really just stick to stories. This is my new favourite space but I still enjoy the others for different reasons

I’m glad you feel better here.

I only have Instagram as a form of social media, though I don’t post anything there. It definitely tears at my self-esteem at times, but I haven’t the heart to delete it because I consume other healthy content there. Only got FB to use Messenger with my parents. I don’t get all this social media hype, I guess; TikTok, Snapchat, etc… not my thing.

I like Lemmy. Like some others said, conversations feel more organic and refreshing. The website is pretty ok, I like the new icons here on Beehaw. I’m looking forward for more niche communities to grow, especially those catered towards specific shows or movies. I think I’ll grow to like this site even more as time progresses, honestly.

dont forget to scrub your accounts before deleing them - those companies own that data if you dont, and in many cases (especially with facebook), you and your content are the product. I’ve subbed to a few @beehaw instances, but only the top level ones.

yeah, the interaction here seems to be more… organic I guess, for lack of a better word… more natural. the platform itself has a fair number of issues as well, it’s not a polished product with several years of success behind it (loosely defining “success”). lemmy still seems to be in beta, but its perfectly usable despite that once you figure out how to get around on it.

not sure if I want to go back to how I used to access media prior to link aggregators - it was not ideal, slow, and difficult to find new things - like, imagine reading the newspaper (lol dating myself there) and never having seen sunday edition comics, but then you see them finally and it opens your eyes to a whole new world of what that kind of media could be. probably a bad analogy but its late and I’m tired :P