Should I quit social media again?

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Advantages of social media:
1 place to vent
2 place to talk about light hearted stuff
3 place to catch up on news
4 place for jokes I can't tell in person
5 I get news quicker than my stepdad does. He relies on me for it.

Disadvantages of social media:
1 Nobody likes me on there. OK not true but no other team's fan can stand me.
2 Even on here I never get replies if the topic is hard enough
3 I'm going out more and I don't have that much social energy
4 I'm obsessed with down votes
5 It's addictive

So should I quit?

You could try taking a 30 day break and see how you feel afterwards. Warning, the first week can be hard. Social Media is specifically designed to be as addictive as slot machines.

I don't think you should quit it "cold turkey." Quitting "cold turkey" will make it a temptation again in no time at all.

You have as*holes on social media who are just there to be as*holes. They get their jollies out of being as*holes.

How do they know you---truly, how do they know you? They don't see you in the street, in the pubs.

It's obvious that people criticize just to criticize; I wouldn't take it too personally. It's definitely not "you" they are criticizing. At the most, it's your opinions, your ideas.

Maybe you can find a middle ground between quitting & not quitting by making it a lesser/lower priority in your life. Still use social media but don't spend as much time on there & take the negative stuff with a grain of salt or maybe a gram of it. But if you feel the need to just get away from it, take a break for a while & reevaluate.

I fully quit social media cold turkey for several reasons. I am still on Meetup to organize and attend in-person stuff. I still post here occasionally, but not often - see reasons below for why.

1) Yes, it is designed to be as addictive as slot machines, as a poster above said. You don't expect things and get rushes of dopamine with the little surprises that are likes, replies, etc. Even email is addictive to me, but unfortunately our society does not allow us to get away with not having an email account (unless you are a hermit, but I have no desire to be one).

2) There is no body language or tone of voice involved in online communication. Yes, I suck at these, but they also allow me to feel an emotional dynamic that makes me seek out social interaction and human connection so much. I don't get that from being in front of the screen. In the long term, that makes me become more socially inept, which catapults into less social success = more rejection = more emotionally dead/drained feelings.

3) Social media made me be more in my head. By this, I mean that I generally felt I became too focused on getting social approval, was concerned as to how other people perceived everything I posted, and felt pressured to read and like others' content to get noticed more. This spiralled into a colossal waste of time combined with feeling like I was always not getting enough. I was also getting into some spiritual readings at the time, which talked about fostering the feeling of sufficiency. I felt that my social media presence was becoming a direct barrier to my self-sufficiency. I immediately noticed feeling happier and more independent once I quit it.

4) Somehow, having my personal information out there makes me need to check on it all the time. I think it's a feeling of a lack of control over who reads it, resulting in a need to assert that control over time.

5) Finally, being a research junkie, I've looked into impacts of social media and just found more negative than positive findings in terms of mental health, self-esteem, and social skills. I have plenty of social challenges to work on and don't need another deterrent in my life. In-person interactions are so much more beneficial in every way.

I hope sharing my experiences will be useful in guiding you to make your own decisions as to whether you will quit social media or not!

P.S. I still keep in touch with the same people I had on social media via texting, calling, and occasionally email, always with the ultimate goal of meeting up for a chat or at least a phone call. I do not actually find I am communicating with them any less than when I had social media profiles.

I'm bailing on Facebook shortly. I've been on it since 2008, and it's just no fun anymore, hasn't been for along time. I'm keeping Twitter, though I set a lot of word filters to keep the screaming and drama at bay, and Instagram, because IG is still fun. But Facebook? Meh. It started out as a nice way to keep in touch with friends who lived abroad, but now it's just kind of awful, not to mention it's run pretty darn unethically for the last several years.

I’ve had a really stressful week and it’s taught me a lot about social media I’m actually using. Basically – Reddit and WP. Sorry for people who don’t think WP is social media, it’s socialising with strangers online so I’m counting it.

I think Reddit is let down by the voting system unless I learn to understand what the votes really mean. On the Scottish football thread thing, often they just mean ‘I don’t like your team’ or ‘we have different opinions’. And also, Reddit is full of all the snobs who were rejected from Twitter so because I’m not part of the snobby clique I get downvotes just for that.

I need to either keep it and bear that in mind or get rid because it’s not good to second guess.

On both Reddit and on here there are nice people who will PM me back, but they’re strangers. In an ideal world, I’d have friends but because I don’t have real offline friends (guys down the pub don’t count, people in the café don’t count, mum has friends who are like family) I’m very lucky to have family I can rely on.

I kind of have a hard time separating myself from either – opinions/how I dress/what I’m into/what I look like. Once all that’s taken up, I don’t really know myself. Especially if opinions and values is the same thing?

But football mixed sites are weird. I don’t go to or know about pubs like that. The guy I knew who gave me grief was giving me it because he supports a really obscure team. I know nothing more about him and I’ll never meet one of them in my life. I don’t know how to banter with him and I shouldn’t have to learn. Waste of social energy when I’m an aspie with social anxiety and ought to be spending my social energy on real life.

You get people on social media who are just there to be a***holes but you get drunks outside of pubs who are going to be a***holes to anyone who’s in the wrong colours – which is more dangerous. It’s more about knowing what sort of space you’re in, online and offline, and knowing what to expect from that sort of space, then avoiding the bad sorts of sites/places.

Being in mixed spaces is making me second guess my own irl acquaintances too much and have some sort of running commentary in my head with what someone else would say or what I'll say later, rather than being in the moment. It’s unhealthy. I need to learn to separate what I read from my own internal monologue.

I’m using it less this week and I think I need to continue doing that. And I need to go onto it with a purpose in mind and with my own thoughts and not care too much about how others respond. After all, I don’t know these people, it’s all anonymous etc. I like the anonymity but it does reduce you to your words.

I find reading social cues in terms of body language really hard because I’ve learnt the ‘rules’ of them (especially the negative rules like how to tell someone is annoyed at you) but not the exceptions. Eg my stepdad facepalms when he wants to rub his head and sighs when he’s getting air and he isn’t being rude or thinking I’m annoying.

I found Facebook and Twitter were awful because they encourage you to actually put your actual details online while still being in your PJs typing something for the public… I deliberately avoid that sort of social media for that reason. But even so, Reddit is for small talk. On here I feel comfortable saying some pretty personal stuff in the Haven. I think because most people are autistic so they’re likely to understand where I’m coming from. Even so, I have to bear in mind that even my best friends on here don’t actually know me and need to be told more explicitly than the people who’ve known me all my life if I’m going to get the right sort of advice or understanding.

I feel like Facebook is used pretty unethically in terms of its management. Social media is massive so we can’t judge for eg how all of Reddit or all of FB or all of IG users behave. However, we can do that when it comes to who is actually running the sites.

Also when I came off the bigger sites, I found that most people around me don’t use them anyway. Like genuinely don’t use them. Eg woman at a café who I get on with because it’s like a local café place is having some trouble with a stalker and in the midst of that she told me ‘it’s not like I use Facebook, my information isn’t online’. So it’s pretty normal not to do all that.

But in moderation, the social media I use is good. I just need caveats.

My Facebook account has been deactivated for the past 11 months. I quit all online social activity. I'm warily rooting around Wrong Planet for the first time since then, under strict orders to avoid falling into the figurative flame-pit. But it was mainly about Facebook.

I was not in a good state this time last year, and Facebook just made it worse. Half the time I was just endlessly scrolling through my "feed" (good term) feeling too depressed to respond to anything. The rest of the time I was posting angry and desperate rants about the state of the world. I eventually realised that this was making my political views more extreme than they would otherwise be. Radicalisation doesn't just happen to "other people".

In theory, it's a great way to stay in touch with people, and to organise events. In practice, I stopped making any effort to talk to friends because I "liked" that picture of their puppy, and that counts, doesn't it? I never mastered the dark art of getting people to actually notice an event I wanted them to see. And yes, I find it hard to forgive them for the whole Cambridge Analytica business.

Being off Facebook has removed an ENORMOUS source of stress. It has left me a bit more isolated, though. I keep meaning to reactivate it for a few weeks while I message various people and put together a real-world address book. But I just can't face it.

Yeah that's true.

Also radicalism doesn't just happen from reading things you agree with. I figured out one reason I've been feeling so down lately is a deliberate effort to break out of my bubble by going to the opposition stuff all the time and that's been making me feel really bad and called out and defensive...

Yes. I am currently trying to find friends that are true friends. I'm hopeful because I myself am willing to be a true friend to someone and my social skills are good enough to actually attract some people. I'm not as much of a disaster anymore because I've received training. Social media literally generates depression in me, so I assume it might have a similar effect for some others, though not everyone. I much prefer real relationships, and I prefer unrestricted or explorative activities to create a strong bond.

I am in a major struggle when it comes to actually finding people to befriend. Once I find them, I can make friends pretty easily and I'm starting to understand small talk and all the rest. The next challenge comes with keeping them. I just don't know where to look and google search brings me back to the same website over and over where everyone there is thirty years older than me.

Social media platforms can have impacts negative and positive. In case they aren’t used properly the impact will be obviously negative. In fact, Instagram was created to share pics and stories, then it turned into a business generator. People started to see Instagram as a full-time job that includes posting new content daily. This is a negative impact because posting daily pics is rather a hobby than a real job. People became so crazy about followers and likes that they are ready to [url[/url] and to raise the figures. The positive impact is that social media is a great source of information. You don’t have to wait for the news on TV, then all the information is provided straight.