There was a time when I perused Facebook and Twitter several times a day.
Then, a few years ago, I decided life would be better without Facebook and deleted my account. Never looked back.
Then, in lockdown, I set up Screentime to limit my use of social media apps to 15 mins a day. Good decision.
Then the whole Twitter/Musk thing happened and I shifted my attention to Mastodon. I found myself looking at Mastodon about once a day and Twitter about once a week.
Now, I find I’m only looking at Mastodon about twice a week and Twitter about twice a month. And I’ve never even had the urge to investigate TikTok.
I think this is all a healthy progression. I feel like a drug user breaking a habit.
Or does it just mean I’m getting old?
RSS feed
I must be getting old too then…
How often do you look at Usenet?
I miss Usenet news. Of course, I used to read it back in the day when commercial activity wasn’t really even allowed on the Internet. Happy times…
I’ve had a similar progression. I’m not sure if it’s an age thing, it may be that some of us are just more aware of how much time (and content) we’ve been giving to sites, apps & services and what effect that has had on us? I track a few accounts on Mastodon via their RSS feeds, but otherwise I’m quite happy to read blogs in my RSS reader of choice. And even happier when I find new (to me) people who are still blogging.
Yes, I think there’s a lot to be said for just deleting all the apps except my RSS reader 🙂
Made a conscious decision 15 years ago not to have any social media accounts. I don’t regret it and I am no less informed than my peers with accounts. It is perfectly possible to live a fully informed life without them.
I don’t know who originally said it but a comment I saw on Twitter a while ago that amused me said “ No I don’t watch tiktoks, I watch Instagram reels of tiktok videos that were popular two weeks ago, LIKE A GROWN UP”.
I know you’re not much of an Instagram user but I think the intent is clear. The good content makes its way to the other platforms anyway. I’m too old for tiktok, but I’m happy for people to curate that content for me, not everything has to come from the meme firehose.
Nice 🙂
It’s a bit like our normal habit of not watching any TV until 10 years after it airs, when we can binge-watch the good stuff that has stood the test of time.
TikTok is, IMHO, far more scary than even Facebook. Not going near that one 🙂