I'd reckon the median user is not someone who has been "publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week" at any point of their life and that the most likely risk is mindless consumption rather than endless production. But just quit following random strangers on the Internet, keep social media as a way to maintain your irw network of relations, and you'll usually be alright.

Sure, then we can discuss about the inherent issues of the platforms (which are many), but first one has to exploit their own agency to the utmost degree.

Still I'm glad Mr. Newport has a comments section on his youtube videos. He doesn't always explain things that clearly.

I would say he is write about LinkedIn, TikTok, Snap, Meta and its associated gram's, threads and face... BUT - HN has a different vibe, this is a community with sharing knowledge and information - on HN, I never doom scroll - there is genuine interaction and useful content. To some extent X provides useful updates from the main AI labs, so it is knowing how to use it and not be used by it.

Someone needs to make a good Facebook groups/pages alternative. That'd make it easier for most.

I did, deleted Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X). And it helped me a lot to gain back my inner peace. My meditation was deeper, more profound, I genuinely gained back my inner peace. The constant bombardement with posts made to boost the ego of people is toxic for the consumer of these images / texts.

But then, in the context of the Gaza conflict, I realized that X is a very good source to follow intellectuals, thinkers, journalits whom I wouldn't read otherwise in Germany, where anyone is vilified who even wears a Kefiyeh. When you see how our western media frames, justifies, whitewashes a conflict caracterised as a genocide by many scholars, we need other platforms to hear those voices.

Now this sounds like the alt right that wants its platforms. But hear me out. There are intellectuals who show the headlines, the framing, and you cannot help but think that Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media", written in 1988, is more relevant than ever.

X has the capacity to show different perspectives and can be invaluable. But it's also a curse exploited by many. Russia, China, Iran, but also our allies. See this for instance[1].

[1] "The Israelis Destabilizing Democracy and Disrupting Elections Worldwide - National Security & Cyber - Haaretz" // https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2022-1...

I’m about 9 months off social media (not including Hackernews, if you consider that SM). I have no regrets whatsoever. I’m in my late 20’s so SM came into my sphere when I was around 16. I haven’t quite “grown up with it”, but it’s been an omnipresent force for most of my teenage and adult life.

> I am better at making time to catch up with the people I really care about, be that in-person or over WhatsApp. > When I do catch up with someone, I genuinely have no idea what’s been going on in their life and that makes the catch up a lot more enjoyable and engaging. I haven’t passively kept up to date on their every movement through Instagram stories or Tweets like some kind of ghostly stalker. The best example of this that I can give is that my partner and I got engaged to be married ~4 months ago. Nothing posted on SM, just WhatsApp messages to close friends and family. I get to keep reliving the joy of telling people and witnessing the ecstatic surprise and pure love on their faces each time I catch up with someone I haven’t seen for a while. > I am much more aware of just how much everyone uses their phones. Take a look around you. Sitting on the bus, waiting in a queue, riding an escalator, pissing at a urinal. Our minds are being constantly bombarbed with mostly useless, inane shite. Cat videos, stories of that person you went to school with 10 years ago doing stupid drunk things, misinformation from your scary uncle on Facebook etc. I let my mind wander more and it feels all the better for it.

There is only one I use: Orange Reddit (aka HackerNews).

> Quit Social Media

You can follow the author at https://x.com/profcalnewport .

Quit? Ban!

I quit social media over 10 years ago, already having been a conscientious objector to Facebook and other platforms, much to the confusion of my classmates who didn't understand my idiosyncratic positions on digital privacy, attention span, banality, and brainrot.

It's gotten to the point where I view the narcissism of the modern 21st century social media user the same way I would view a crack addict smoking a pipe out in public, unable to pry their hands away from their glowing plastic rectangles, swiping incessantly in the hopes of getting just another dose of sweet dopamine with every refresh, or some artificial symbol of social validation in the form of more likes and upvotes.

Somehow even in the wake of the Snowden revelations people are still ambling off of cliffs for fear of being left behind by the herd of lemmings. I feel vindicated as the years go on with every news story or opinion piece I read about (dissatisfaction with) the growing encroachment of surveillance capitalism, ad-tech and social media into our personal lives, and all for what? Some shitty memes and "influencers" peddling their garbage through thinly veiled advertisements?

When I am exposed to mainstream social media content I can't believe people subject themselves to the digital equivalent of ass-to-mouth that is the brainrot of the algorithmically driven social media feed. If "you are what you eat" were analogized to an information diet, most social media users would be consuming informational shit and consequently producing the same 140-byte thoughts or reciting the same 5-second memes.

If the attention economy is indeed a real concept, there is a premium for the ability to hold your concentration on something for more than half an hour and produce thoughts whose complexity is more than just a few bytes.