I have officially deleted all social media as of today, 4/25/2025. No more facebook, no more instagram, no more discord, no more X/twitter/bluesky, and no more reddit. from this point onwards, it’s only forums like this, email and youtube, and tumblr/pinterest (which I don’t count as social media)
I am ready to take back my life and mental health from phones/social media.
So happy for you.
I never started til here.(I’m told this is social media,) I’m glad I missed that boat.
My break away was News media on Television. It was hard. But I haven’t felt this less agitated in a couple of years.
I tell people I’m not on social media “but I do hang out on an anti-social media site…”
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Congrats, Hal. Good for you.
I’ve seen what happens when friends have become hooked on facebook or political news. Ain’t pretty…
Facebook and reddit are both cesspools and hiveminds. one is a right-wing conspiracy theory haven and the other is a left-wing doomposting echo chamber to see who can come up with better worst case scenarios.
That totally describes the less cheerful parts of the SDMB, and a certain coterie of one-trick pony posters here.
Hint, this is social media. Maybe a different flavor, but this totally is social media. You sound like someone declaring they’re a vegetarian because they’ve given up beef and only eat chicken and fish and pork and seafood. Plus veggies of course.
Don’t get me wrong; you’ve done a good thing that will remove a lot of crazy-making from your life. I never did that garbage, so I didn’t have to quit. But good on ya’ for quitting it.
I’ll give the OP a pass on saying quitting “social media”
They’ve flushed the worst offenders.
That’s a huge step.
I mean to be fair forums are a form of social media, so I can’t say I quit entirely. just went low-key preferring places like this.
My only (classical) social media site is FB, and mostly I use it for messaging and for the birthday reminders!! Alas, FB is now just a cesspool of clickbait and doggie pics. I don’t have a dog, but woe and betide if your mouse hovers over a cute pic of a bulldog/pug/bull terrier inadvertently because you will be INNUNDATED with loops of those pics forever more.
No Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit for me. I had enough issues with the changeover here to Discord. I’d be fucked trying to navigate a new site. 
It really isn’t. Forums predate the entire concept of social media. There is no curated feed or friends or followers, or any of Web 2.0.
We all see the same thing, and do not post for likes or upvotes.
I would have included Tumblr with social media, and excluded Discord, which at least as i use it is more like a group chat. 
But it may be the OP hangs out in constructive Tumblr topics and in destructive Discord servers.
There’s only two things I want out of Social Media: the social; and the media. I like it as a source of news, and I also like making some online friends. I can get the same here, but it’s a more limited pool and less up-to-the-second. This is, however, a great place for long-form discussion, and some expert knowledge.
Anyway, I’d only ever been on Twitter, then transferred myself over to Bluesky to get the same buzz. It’s not there yet, but I think it will be in short order.
I left some social media about 6 months ago, and it was a good decision.
No daily (or more) checking the news. I’ll hear bits and pieces from different places.
I stopped Facebook. (I got a new laptop and have never signed in with the new one. I forgot my password).
Here I mainly read Cafe Society and the Miscelanious sections. And don’t read almost all politics type stuff.
I have my places on reddit for personal interests.
What I don’t know won’t hurt me.
Congratulations, a wise decision. Regarding “leaving” social media the facebook example is perhap illustrating: It is not as easy as it seems.
It’s important to note that there’s a difference between deleting your Facebook account and deactivating it. Deactivating your Facebook account temporarily freezes it, which is useful if you want a brief hiatus. But that does nothing to prevent the company from tracking your online activity.
To fully separate from Facebook, deleting your account is the only answer. Deleting it also severs ties to Facebook Messenger, the platform’s chat app. (If you want to also get rid of Instagram and WhatsApp, which are Facebook properties, you’ll have to do that separately.)
The other so called social media are just as sticky. Good luck!
Although I’ve tried, I can’t do without facebook because of the various local and niche groups, organizations, and clubs I belong to, which often have no presence elsewhere. Nubian goat breeders of New England and the like. There isn’t another equivalent, apparently.
I avoid reels, clips, ads, and responding to assholes as much as possible. I read things like ‘Anyone have guinea keets near Pittsfield?’ or ‘Grounds clean-up this Saturday!’ The classifieds are similar to craigslist and I post on both when selling stuff, which is a random event.
I nearly missed two high school reunions because they only organized and advertised on Facebook. But i don’t have anyone i really need there.
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, but it’s not a social media app, it’s a messaging app. It’s actually very similar to signal, the latest media darling.
I never entered most social media. This place was it until a few years ago when I started going to reddit for specific topics. I am on facebook just to maintain connections but rarely go there and never post.
Stifling news sources these days can give a definite mental boost, and news distributed on social media is pure garbage anyway. Here on the board I’ve staunched the P&E forum and all threads about the President - this is a better place for me as a result. I made a decision to not let them live in my head and not be in a constant state of outrage. News and social media exposure is something we can fully control - I applaud the OP for exercising that control.
Good for you OP. I deleted my FB account a couple months back, and by extension got dropped from IG, which I never used anyway. I never took up Twitter, because I thought its character limit would create more short attention-spanned minds and lead to the downfall of mankind, and I was right.
I have TikTok because a friend makes funny Christmas videos, but he hasn’t made anything in a couple years. I still have my LinkedIn account because it helped me get a job, but I only use it nowadays to drop a line to former coworkers. This board is my only real social media outlet.
This is social media in the sense that it is still social - we are humans, having conversation.
The other things that used to be social media (FB in particular) are no longer social media - they evolved into something else - a delivery method for piping hot sewage directly into your face, or something.
Have you seen the current thread comparing the SDMB to reddit?
One point made there is that one’s experience with reddit can vary quite a bit depending on which subreddits one frequents.
This is at least a little bit true of Facebook as well. What you encounter on Facebook will depend on who your friends are and what they post, and on what (if any) groups you’ve joined or people you follow. My Facebook isn’t “a right-wing conspiracy theory haven,” but certainly it could be that for other people.
The only “right wing conspiracy” stuff I encounter on FB is in a couple of left-leaning groups that mock it. Easily avoided if that’s my preference.
The only significant problem I encounter with FB is that it keeps shoving postings at me from groups its algorithms suggest that I’ll like (i.e. Well-Endowed Young Women Who Raise Capybaras), and I end up spending a minute or two daily blocking them. Otherwise, it’s useful to be a member of groups discussing figs, gesneriads, tropical plant culture in colder climates, spaniels and retrievers.*
*Scientifically Literate Shitposting, The Institute for the Scientific Study of Human and Non-Human Phenomena and Chemtrail Pilots Club can be amusing.
Twitter’s a cesspool, no question, but there are still decent and informative accounts on there.