
Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It - shill
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/jobs/quit-social-media-your-career-may-depend-on-it.html
======
hashtagMERKY
This part really resonated with me:

> Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks
> is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy.
> Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The
> more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently
> throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick
> hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom.

I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I
genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening
twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that
literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured
images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from
the real world.

I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't
to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used
in moderation), but rather to change the way I use them. Maybe deleting the
native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough
that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them.

As for Facebook, I deleted that a few months ago and my quality of life
instantly increased.

~~~
Veen
> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work

I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to
shake Hacker News.

~~~
diegoperini
Same here. HN is addictive, but also insanely useful in some cases which makes
it hard to leave like any other mentioned site there.

I literally owe many of my succesful professional decisions to researches that
initally started here. I find some interesting article, read the comments
first, then the article, then the comments again. In the middle of this flow,
I decide whether it is worthy to save to my Pocket account. Those things in my
Pocket quite often become kickstarters for things that I eventually adopt
using or learning. I see no way of giving up such opportunity. Why would
anyone do that? (That is a serious question that I really wish there exists a
convincing answer)

~~~
WA
Have you checked if the articles in your Pocket share something, for example
upvotes or number of comments? Because then you could browse the top posts
only once per week. Either via Hckrnews [1] or use the curated Hacker
Newsletter [2].

[1]: [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)

[2]: [http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/)

~~~
duck
Thanks for mentioning Hacker Newsletter! I hear from several subscribers a
week (currently have almost 40k) that mention it has helped them cure/control
their HN addiction. :)

~~~
sjayasinghe
I'm getting an access denied error when trying to subscribe

~~~
duck
Sorry to hear that. It seems to be working fine based on the couple hundred
others that have signed up this evening, so maybe try again? If that doesn't
work, hit me up via email (listed in my profile) and I'll see what I can do!

------
cuantos
More importantly social media is bad for your mental health. It hits the brain
in many of the same ways as the 'news' and those intentionally boring phone
games. It causes dopamine dysregulation which leads to a dependency. Consider
the anxiety you feel if you need to go to the bathroom and cannot find your
phone. This dopamine dysregulation destroys your mood and motivation.

Being social is a good thing. However companies have figured out they need
addictive properties in order to be successful. I previously worked on
optimizing companies for user engagement and the addictive properties
naturally fall out of the process. If social media satiates your desires you
will actually use them less. Think about it; why are your keys always in the
last place you look? Because once you find them you stop looking. If you want
to keep people on your site you hide their keys. People love a challenge and
will be even happier when they find them.

It's particularly bad with modern (low information) news media. I'm a
compulsive news junkie* so I have to avoid the news in order to get anything
done. I quit facebook and google over their insistence on pushing 'news'. It's
junk food for the brain. It's low information and only gives an illusion of
being informed. E.g. the recent election.

* Note: I consider HN to be social 'media' news and I am aware that I'm here 'chipping'. I do so intentionally in effort to avoid fettishising vices. Plus HN is as close as I get to an online group of peers. I only use HN after self-flagellating while repeatedly muttering "the flesh is weak".

~~~
forgetsusername
> _Consider the anxiety you feel if you need to go to the bathroom and cannot
> find your phone._

Is this a real thing?

~~~
Noseshine
A thread on reddit about just that very topic gained front-page visibility and
a lot of "I'm actually doing this _right now_ " comments.

EDIT - I actually found it, "Reddit is probably the world's largest group of
people that communicate while shitting.":
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/5dqufr/redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/5dqufr/reddit_is_probably_the_worlds_largest_group_of/)

------
noir-york
Why social media only?

After being a news addict for years, I've decided to not only limit my social
media posts (and reading) down to zero, but also the amount of time I spend on
the daily news sites (NYT, Guardian, Politico etc). Instead I read media that
operates on a longer cycles like weekly (Economist, NewYorker) and longer
(Foreign Affairs, Private Eye)

Its been an interesting experiment: most "news" is just content that is
ultimately inconsequential, discussing ephemeral events that will be forgotten
by the next news cycle.

However, the weeklies and the monthlies, because they have to edit what they
write about, do a great job of filtering out the fluff and giving me a better
perspective of what mattered that week/month.

I've found I still know what I need to know, suffer much less distractions,
and more time to read books (amazing invention btw!)

~~~
Dragonai
This is a super interesting approach and I really like the sound of it. I
might just try switching to it sometime! Thanks for sharing :)

Side note: it sounds like adding the occasional dose of /r/tldr +
/r/outoftheloop would add quite nicely to the "filtering".

~~~
noir-york
It was hard at first breaking the habit, developed over years, of opening up a
few tabs with news sites each morning over breakfast. I still occasionally
_scan_ the headlines, which is enough to know what is roughly going on.

News is essentially free (and commoditized). What I value is thoughtful
analysis and good interviews; Andrew Marr's interview with Marine Le Pen being
a recent case in point.

------
stevewillows
About five years ago I bumped into an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen
since around 2005. Despite not keeping in contact physically, we both knew
everything about each other's lives. It was great to reconnect, but we didn't
have the typical reward that comes with the rediscovery. I knew what he was
doing for work, the projects he had going on the side, etc.

Tracking my friends stripped a lot of the romance, joy. and mystery out of
reconnecting.

Around the same time I got into a new group of friends that were all about
their 'personal brand.' Every occasion was started with a good ten minutes of
silence while they checked-in to Yelp, Foursquare, snapped photos of the venue
/ table / food, and tweeted bullshit along the lines of 'having the time of my
life!' \-- I spent the time looking for typos and leading errors on the menus.
It was exhausting. Everybody was there, but nobody was present. Even the meal
itself was dull because of the endless obsession with creating something it
wasn't.

I never bought into those bullshit games of 'put your phone in the middle of
the table' or whatever. If you're a typical human being, my expectation is
that you can silence your phone and have the slightest bit of restraint to
avoid looking at it every few minutes. I understand if there's an emergency or
whatever, but otherwise, keep it on vibrate and be done.

Around this time I completely disabled all notifications and the phone never
made a peep.

A few years after that I starting tracking how many images and tweets I was
reading vs enjoying. It was about one in twenty or so.

Examining my own tweets and other contributions to social media had me
realizing that I was as social as a guy at a party shouting opinions over the
music to a room full of people doing the same. It wasn't social, and it was
barely media.

I decided to purge the accounts and start from scratch -- and will be doing so
every year or so. Starting fresh is nice, but I find that I rarely have
anything of actual value to contribute.

I've avoided facebook for years and only use it for events. Instagram is all
kids. Twitter is all business and 'I'm speaking at x conference --- here's a
link to an instagram post of a photo of a slide in my presentation taken from
the back row'. I've avoided the graphic design sites like dribbble where most
'portfolios' aren't filled with client work or art, just 99designs level work
that is good, but irrelevant... and the list goes on.

Social media isn't completely dead, but for me, I checked out a long time ago.

I'm hoping that the next wave will be a hybrid of twitter, meetup, foursquare,
and tinder --- an app where you check into a location to say 'I'm here, who
wants to hang out?' and you can hang out with some strangers for a time.

~~~
syaz1
Thanks for sharing, that was very insightful. I find myself being increasingly
annoyed being around people who are continuously tapping their phone, taking
pictures, spending minutes choosing filters and thinking of cliché captions,
list goes on. They aren't present, often giving wrong replies to my questions.

I don't know why, I find people doing the same but playing games instead are
less annoying.

~~~
stevewillows
It feels like a lot of people are creating an archive of a life they wanted to
live, but didn't.

An ex of mine has a young boy who she treated more as a mannequin than
anything. She'd get angry if I didn't take a Vogue-level portrait of her
posing with an ice cream cone. It was exhausting --- and to what end? To get a
higher Klout score?

Big whoop.

Online social apps should be focused on improving the offline world.

------
kowdermeister
I've read the whole article, but this is where I should have stopped.

> I’ve never had a social media account.

He basically summarized that procrastination is harmful and social media is to
blame. He doesn't really share anything I haven't known as a social media
addict. Kinda like saying to a smoker that smoking tobacco causes cancer. I
know that, what now? I tried shutting down social media sites with plugins,
blocking sites in the hostfile and other slow to circumvent things. They kinda
worked, sometimes never. I also noticed that if a site gets shut down,
something new emerges that replace it.

This is something you have to deal with, regulate it. If you find yourself
constantly opening FB, Twitter or whatever your addiction is, then it signals
that something you are having problems with something you should be really
doing.

~~~
jotux
I actually think that quote is interesting for a different reason. First he
says:

> I’ve never had a social media account.

Then:

>I think many more people should follow my lead and quit these services

You can't quit something if you never started using it.

~~~
generalpf
I think what he meant was, be like me, and to do that, quit those services.

------
grappler
I approach social media (twitter in particular) this way: “try to be a good
neuron”.

Meaning: social media forms a global hive mind. It determines what a lot of
people see and hear about the world. Witness the flare up recently over the
influence of “fake news” going viral.

A neuron's role, as one tiny piece of a brain, a neural network, or, for my
purposes, a hive mind, is to take in a number of inputs and filter them,
firing occasionally to convey some distillation of the inputs received.

Anyone who reshares highly inaccurate or incendiary content is being a bad
neuron.

If instead you gather a range of news and opinion from a variety of sources
and then, being very selective, reshare the one or two things each day (or
week) with the best combinations of reputability, newsworthiness, timeliness,
importance to current problems society is facing, and exploration of new
ideas, then you're being a good neuron.

This in my opinion is the best use of publicly shared social media. If lots of
people did this the world would be better off.

There may be career risk in sharing things related to politics, but that's a
risk I'm willing to take. Without the freedom to do that, I might as well be
in a repressive totalitarian society, and now more than ever that is something
we should fight to prevent.

------
jccalhoun
The general message is good: stop procrastinating and actually work (which is
what I should be doing instead of mulling over the wording of this comment).
The way it is written, however, is less than ideal because it has entirely too
many unsupported claims. Without evidence it isn't a solid argument.

For example: "My second objection concerns the idea that social media is
harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard
tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated
economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be
addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used —
persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to
crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom."

I know it is a newspaper article and not an academic paper but I still need
evidence to make me believe these claims are true. I've read people claiming
that we are becoming more distracted but I haven't read that the ability to
not be distracted is becoming more valuable. Similarly, while I've read claims
that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so.

~~~
harryf
> I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is
> engineered to be so.

Recommend reading up on the "Hook Model" \-
[http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked](http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked) \- or watch
this video - [https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM](https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM) \-
the techniques for building addictive products are well known, with a history
that goes back to Las Vegas and the gambling industry.

Most social media companies - with the exception of one or two like Zynga - of
course aren't overly announcing "we're building stuff to get you addicted" but
their business depends on audience numbers so guess what: try searching
LinkedIn jobs for "Facebook" and "psychology" and it's pretty clear

------
pjc50
Rather like alcohol. Universal social lubricant. Popular even in places where
it is banned. People complain about it being used noisily in public by young
people, especially women, but it may be the lonely older people at home whose
use is more problematic. Causes problems for people who don't indulge and feel
left out. Associated with long-term health risks including suicidal ideation.

You probably shouldn't indulge at work, but in some careers it may effectively
be required.

Most people learn moderation, but some may have to cut themselves off.

------
santiagobasulto
I found this hard truth by myself. I noticed how my attention spans were
decreasing. I've always been a really distracted person, but social media made
it worst.

I ended up adding Facebook, Twitter,9gag, Reddit and other sites to my
/etc/hosts (0.0.0.0). Was the only way to fix it.

While I work I leave my phone at a distant table, with notifications turned
down. The only thing that I get are phone calls.

I remember Simon Sinek saying something like: "if there's a person that the
first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is drinking a glass of
whiskey, you'd say he's an alcoholic". What does that make you if the first
thing you do when you wake up is checking Facebook?

~~~
thenomad
I'm not a big fan of social media, but the argument here seems specious.

Here's another way to put it - "If the first thing a person does when they get
up is eat, you'd say they're a glutton". True?

(Or indeed "if the first thing a person does when they get up is go to the
toilet, you'd say they're incontinent.")

~~~
sixstringtheory
The "first thing in the morning" idea is pulled from the CAGE assessment for
addiction, as the "E" which stands for "eye-opener", the others being "cut
down", "annoyance" and "guilt"
[https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/johns_hopkins_healthcare/dow...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/johns_hopkins_healthcare/downloads/cage%20substance%20screening%20tool.pdf)

You're right that this one thing alone doesn't spell addiction, but if someone
talked about how they should use the bathroom less, felt bad about how many
times a day they went, and annoyed everyone by the bathroom constantly being
occupied and the person being absent/late due to their use, in addition to
using it first thing in the morning, then... maybe they're addicted to social
media and using the bathroom as a way to get their fix ;)

~~~
johan_larson
Thanks for sharing that link. The test seems to be setting the bar pretty darn
low, however. It's enough that you think you should be doing less of
something, and others have criticized you about it to the point of annoying
you. That includes things I would put in the category of bad habits rather
than clinically actionable disorders.

------
brudgers
Social media does one thing really really well. It makes the maintenance of
weak social connections really really efficient. Secondarily, it makes the
reestablishment of weak social connections and the establishment of new weak
social connections very low cost.

Facebook is full of old people because they have more weak connections, while
my boy doesn't use a social media platform because in his words, "I have high
school"...I'd asked him about it just this week.

What social media might give the author is the ability to continue their
relationship with their editor's assistant over the next twenty years as their
careers progress and paths diverge and perhaps the editor's assistant becomes
an editor in their own right. Sure, TANSTAAFL. But it points both ways.

~~~
Senji
It has helped me vicariously reconnect with old schoolmates.

------
jeremejevs
Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

What I did was I've unsubscribed from all people and pages on Facebook,
unsubscribed from all Reddit subs, and unsubscribed from all YouTube channels.
In the end, I've learned to stop visiting facebook.com, since all I was seeing
was an empty page, but at the same time I avoided giving up my network, and I
can still check up on people when I remember about them, I can keep using
Messenger and I can keep using Facebook as an identity provider on other
websites. Not to mention that this way I don't have to throw out years of
stuff generated by me (which can be painful with photos, especially for a data
hoarder like me). Same goes for Reddit and YouTube (I keep my comment and post
history, the ability to participate in discussions, my uploaded videos, and
more).

For Hacker News, which is too valuable to me as a knowledge expanding tool, I
did something else: I've started using the "top 10" section on hckrnews.com. I
can keep checking it however many times I want, but I'll get stuck in at most
10 comment threads per day, which I consider to be a reasonable compromise
(this thread being one of them </meta>).

Never used Twitter, but I suppose something similar can be accomplished by
muting all the accounts you're following.

YMMV.

~~~
kilroy123
There's also the newsletter.

I have a buddy who refuses to open hackernews on his computer. Instead he
waits until Friday and reads the newsletter.

------
donatj
I disagree that you should quit everything entirely. You can be an occasional
Facebook user. I check it a few times a week to see what friends up to and
it's not a major distraction to my life. It's become a social hub, a way to
organize events that not having one makes you "that guy", a pain to invite to
parties, a pain to get a hold of. You can have a Facebook and use it as a tool
rather than an addiction. Everything in moderation.

~~~
tvanantwerp
I keep my Facebook open for the events and messaging, but use the Newsfeed
Eradicator extension to remove even the temptation to scroll endlessly. I
live/work around DC, and 50% or more posts I see are political in nature. I'd
lose my mind if I spent even a few minutes going through that.

~~~
Veen
I agree. You have to separate out the Newsfeed from Facebook's other features.
Its messaging app is pretty good. The "networking" features that let you stay
in touch with people is great. But the Newsfeed, with its constant dribble of
garbage and the constant temptation to contribute, is the problem.

------
ksenzee
This article reads very much like me, a non-drinker, telling you why you
shouldn't drink. I've never tried alcohol, but I've heard plenty of bad things
about it, and here's a list of them! It's addictive, you know! Messes with the
dopamine system!

I do consider social media addictive. But adults can usually handle addictive
substances. We just have to know our limits, and cut ourselves off if needed.
There's really no need for 21st-century temperance activists preaching its
evils.

~~~
majewsky
The problem is that most people don't even realize that social media is an
addictive substance.

~~~
ksenzee
I agree. It would be great if as a society we handled social media (and other
addictive experiences) the same way we handle drugs and gambling: adults only,
know your limits, here's help getting clean. Instead we have kids obsessively
snapchatting and messing with their dopamine system before their brain is even
finished developing.

------
bootload
_" the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming
increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media
weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive."_

Interesting viewpoint. Does the author really follow this? Has a webpage, blog
and an archive that stretches for 91 pages ~
[http://calnewport.com/blog/archive/](http://calnewport.com/blog/archive/) Not
a good sign if the author thinks you should quit or limit your social media
contact. I don't care if the authour justifies this as necessary. It's a sign
that ignoring the real problem doesn't seem to work.

The Internet is addictive. In fact I've spent a bit of time writing my own
tasking system to tackle this problem. In writing up an accompanying blog post
on distraction and focus I found the GTD, work hard, achieve more in less time
frenzy isn't new. It pre-dates the Internet by decades. Take Charles R.
Schwab, owner of Bethlehem steel, someone who Thomas Edison described as a
hustler. Schwa hired the best productivity guru he could. Ivy Ledbetter Lee.
Lee proposed a very simple technique to focus and work on. Then charged Schwab
USD$20,000 for the effort. You can read more in this article, _" Ivy Ledbetter
Lee"_ ~ [http://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee](http://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee)

Quitting social media is a temporary fix as you'll probably find other ways to
distract yourself and avoid work. The deeper problem is realising the Internet
is very addictive and find coping mechanisms to counter the side effects.

While reading up on the problem of Internet addiction and digital works, I re-
read the article pg wrote on this topic, _" Distracting Distractions"_ I found
an update on his suggestions: _" The strategy described at the end of this
essay didn't work. It would work for a while, and then I'd gradually find
myself using the Internet on my work computer."_

It is a problem that could yield some interesting work.

------
cocochanel
I quit Facebook for 6 months and I felt that a big burden was dropped off my
shoulders. I found myself reading more books and frequenting a lot of
interesting blogs and discussions. I also focused on personal projects without
the need of social validation. Then I reactivated it for a week to give sign
of life to my "friends", but felt a pressure to be active, to post and respond
to messages. I had gone back to checking my Facebook as my first tab and felt
suffocated by the need to always "keep up." I finally decided to deactivate it
once for all and never looked back. I personally think that instant messaging
is the sweet spot, allowing me to communicate with friends I actually care
about, without the need to rack up likes and keep up with the joneses.

~~~
manmal
What about Twitter?

~~~
supernovae
I find twitter to be worse than facebook.. in facebook its more like i'm
spying on my friends and they're letting me but on twitter it feels like you
have to prove a point over and over and be something so people will follow
you. Being a voyeur is easy, having to be a "socialite" on twitter is
draining..

The people I follow that are popular are always posting.. 24x7.. its a wonder
they get any work done.. but they're also people that appear to love talking
on the phone and chit chatting about everything.. so if you're a socialite it
may work better for you...

I find both draining, but twitter more so and i'm currently takinga hiatus
from FB mostly over fake news, but considering a hiatus from twitter as well..
unfortunately though twitter is the way people in my industry communicate and
get news.. (devops / distributed computing)

~~~
kyleashipley
Maybe you're just using the wrong heuristic for Twitter? I never follow more
than 100 people and periodically cull my list down to that if I go over. My
goal is primarily to follow interesting people, especially other local
programmers, people who are working on cool research topics I would otherwise
miss, and friends who make me laugh. I remove anyone who is too noisy for too
long, even if they are interesting. Twitter is by far my favorite social
network and is generally high-signal for me.

Popularity seems like an anti-goal unless you're selling something.

------
deathhand
Extremes should always be evaluated carefully. Social media's place in the CS
field has two main reasons for me.

1) To show how the mind works and to showcase it on a CV. 2) To be available
to this thing called the 'internet' which is basically a giant global party
where the only information that we can find out about one and another is
either through what others say about us or what we say about ourselves. If I
purpose a crazy solution to a problem you will most likely want to verify who
I am to see if my idea has any credence.

The article is right that it is a distraction but for CS minds to come
together and share ideas it is almost a necessity to help drive innovation.

------
erikbye
A sensationalist headline... The article actually read more like: stop wasting
time. Sure, if you spend too much time on social media, reduce the time spent.

As someone who, years ago, implemented a lot of change to improve my life;
here are some thoughts:

If you want a better, and more meaningful life, figure out what (and who) in
your life is detrimental to your quality of life. Then rid yourself of those
elements.

Second, enumerate everything (and everyone) you spend time on that adds no
value--eradicate those elements from your life.

Make no mistake, these can be two very big, strenous and time-consuming tasks;
which might need to be planned out in detail--as in how you will rid yourself
of each element. The hardest part will usually be to "quit" detrimental
people. But once you are done, boy, will your life improve.

When these two steps are done, you have been rewarded more time, not simply
given, but earned. In the case of social media, I think I read that the
average (globally) time spent is at something like 2 hours per day! If social
media is one of those things either detrimental to you, or that adds no value,
and you are an average user--then you just freed 14 hours per week.

Imagine if you took up a new hobby (do you even have one? many don't),
something that actually improved quality of life, 14 hours a week learning a
new instrument, or learning to draw, or write, or ski. That is a lot of time.
Novel activities are good for your brain!

Another thing I have observed, especially in the age of social media--but it's
not new, just seems worse now--is that a lot of young people need to learn how
to be alone. Some people are hardly never alone. They have to learn this
before they can learn to concentrate.

If you are like me, an introvert, you are probably alone a lot (if you are
not, that can drain you of energy), but one thing you probably need to learn
is to cut down on multitasking. It's not good for your brain (learning,
memory) or body (stress), it's not good for productivity.

Sorry for rambling.

For the record: I barely use social media; I have inactive accounts here and
there.

------
JDiculous
Sure, quit social media if you're a robot who's sole purpose in life is to
maximize your career - though I'd still argue that social media is valuable in
that it enables you to expand your network and maintain/strengthen your
personal connections. But even if it were the case that social media is worse
for your career, a lot of us live for more than our careers.

If you find yourself constantly wasting time on Facebook during work, you just
lack discipline. I don't know about you guys, but my news feed is generally
pretty boring, thus I don't have the urge to keep checking it. I'm not trying
to claim moral superiority here, just saying that if you have an addiction
problem, you need to take responsibility and hold yourself accountable rather
than blaming the tool.

~~~
iamhamm
I bounce back and forth on this. I don't really feel like Facebook enriches my
personal connections; it just lets me remain to a lot of people I'm not really
connected to anymore. It's like having a system for maintaining lower tier
friends. LinkedIn feels the same way: I have a huge network of people that are
all talking, but none of it really does anything to enrich my career. I don't
listen to them, they don't listen to me. When I need career advice, help with
job hunts, etc. I call someone I know and trust and they do the same. I don't
think we can feasibly maintain large networks.

~~~
kyleashipley
I have found a large LinkedIn network to be useful for finding customer
interviews for startup ideas. There are a lot of people that I am connected to
enough that an intro from them beats a cold email. I often will find a company
that seems like a good fit for a problem or idea I am working on, see if I
have any second-degree connections there, and ask for an intro.

I really enjoyed Brad Feld's post[1] on choosing how to use each social
network you sign up for. On LinkedIn, I've decided to be a public, promiscuous
consumer. On Twitter, I am public, selective, and a mix of consumer/producer.
Facebook is one that I probably need to cut even more than I do, since I don't
have a strategy and get little value from it.

Social networks can be tools, and if they are not providing value, it may mean
you need to use the tool differently or get rid of it if it doesn't solve a
problem you have.

[1] [http://www.feld.com/archives/2012/02/happy-birthday-im-
unfri...](http://www.feld.com/archives/2012/02/happy-birthday-im-unfriending-
you.html)

------
tedmiston
> A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally
> passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and
> attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the
> world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive, especially for many
> members of my generation who were raised on this message, but it can be
> disastrously counterproductive.

> Most social media is best described as a collection of somewhat trivial
> entertainment services that are currently having a good run. These networks
> are fun, but you’re deluding yourself if you think that Twitter messages,
> posts and likes are a productive use of your time.

This rings of the author's experience being in academia. In the business
world, good products do not sell themselves.

"Most social media" is not Twitter. Twitter is a relatively unique social
network.

------
ChuckMcM
It was interesting that the story was about being distracted rather than
having potential future employers seeing you in an earlier and perhaps less
flattering context than you currently present yourself. Both are good reasons
to avoid social media I suppose.

~~~
Anderkent
Yeah, I expected this to be about the small risk of devastating impact, should
you make an off-colour joke or an offensive complaint on a public view and it
goes viral.

------
zigzigzag
Good, tightly written article. I think there's another reason I was expecting
to see but didn't - when people say "social media" they usually mean Twitter,
and Twitter seems to be optimised for creating huge dramas and flamewars. I
think it must be the character limit. You can't say anything really
interesting in 140 characters, so much of what's said ends up being so
compressed all nuance and explanation is lost. Also the site encourages you to
just blurt out whatevers on your mind without thinking about it. It's no
surprise that Donald Trump had his Twitter access taken away from him towards
the end of his campaign.

~~~
humanrebar
> I think it must be the character limit.

I think it's how easy it is to get the last word in and check out of the
conversation without any real consequences or feedback.

Everyone gets their smug win in, even the lurkers. No real understanding is
promoted.

The character limit is a problem, but that has simple workarounds (blogging,
tweet storms, text images) if that was a real issue.

------
skybrian
There are browser extensions to block websites, but I think a more subtle
approach might help: add latency.

Social networks spend a lot of time optimizing performance because they know
how much it increases traffic. So it seems like a browser extension that adds
a bit of latency and gradually ramps it up for the websites you choose could
help to reduce the impulse to check too often.

------
tehabe
I understand the procrastination argument but if it is not some (social)
website it is something else. People who tend to procrastinate will do it
anyway.

At least this is my personal experience.

------
hmmhn
I have found it weird that despite the commentators here being the loudest
proponent of privacy, you cannot actually delete a Hacker News account and all
comments with it.

~~~
forgetsusername
This is a great point.

Why not?

~~~
Noseshine
Because a comment made on a _public_ worldwide-readable forum is not private,
and you know that before you sign up with an account, so it's not like you
accidentally made a public comment that was meant to be private. Protecting
private communication is about just that - stuff that actually _is_ private
(to begin with).

Public opinion and the law may of course change, the issue that something
uttered in public, be it by voice or in writing, can be retroactively taken
back and declared as "private" has only been an issue with the advent of
public electronic forums.

I don't think you will find a lot of people who think enabling people to
change their mind after they made a public statement is a high priority,
especially since it has a negative impact on everybody else: How does a forum
look like when key posts are suddenly missing? And I say "key post" because if
it didn't get a lot of attention to begin with it's unlikely that the poster
will regret having posted it.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _Because a comment made on a public worldwide-readable forum is not private,
> and you know that before you sign up with an account, so it 's not like you
> accidentally made a public comment that was meant to be private. Protecting
> private communication is about just that - stuff that actually is private
> (to begin with)._

That's an incredible strawman. Nothing you argue is a reason why we _can 't_
delete posts with our accounts.

> _How does a forum look like when key posts are suddenly missing?_

I guess that depends where your values are: privacy or making sure a forum
"looks good".

~~~
Noseshine
Your entire tone is completely out of place here, on many levels.

    
    
      > That's an incredible strawman
    

Merely yelling "strawman" whenever you don't like an argument doesn't mean it
is one. Since I'm talking _about the issue itself_ it can't be a "strawman".

    
    
      > Nothing you argue is a reason why we can't delete posts 
    

I didn't argue "can't". You are inventing things. Sure it's _possible_. Did
you read the previous comments of the conversation before commenting? I get
the feeling you didn't.

    
    
      > depends where your values are: privacy or 
    

I wrote about just that - I wonder which comment you _read_ when you wrote
that comment? You reply feels like you didn't bother reading what people incl.
myself wrote, it's so disconnected. Not good.

Again: It is NOT a private post, it was posted on a PUBLIC forum, and pretty
much guaranteed not by mistake! I wrote about that.

------
webscalist
Not everyone worships their career.

You can of course get rid of TV, music, theater, art, books, .. out of your
life and focus only on your career skills development.

Social media is young generation's way of life. It's such a valuable
communication channel for teens. Embrace it. Teach them and yourself how to
use it to your benefit in moderation.

------
dvcrn
I'm wondering if there is a simple trick / way to keep social media around
without getting too addicted too it. I can completely 100% relate to this
article and am scared by it.

However, I can't just shut my accounts down. The advantages they give me over
a life without them are just things that I don't want to miss out. I feel
"blessed" of having even the opportunity to use amazing worldwide connected
tools like facebook and twitter considering the last 100 years.

I get around very often and make friends and contacts almost everywhere. Some
of these connections are not relevant until I am in location X again. Some are
old friends in my hometown that I from time to time contact. Some are
professional connections. In many cases Facebook is the only viable connection
to keep contact with less-frequently contacted people.

Messenger? Doesn't work. Some countries use WhatsApp, some LINE, some
KakaoTalk, some Threma and some, well, facebook messenger. Replacing facebook
with 6 messaging clients is just not gonna work.

I am currently blocking most websites through a little snitch profile but I
can feel the urge to unblock them and just... one more time... check if there
is something new. I even catch myself occasionally opening facebook just to
see the "connection unsuccessful" message.

From my experience, Pomodoro helps a lot in staying focused. But please, if
you have anything to share to get rid of this addiction, share!

~~~
yosito
Flag your Facebook account for permanent deletion and then go on a two week
vacation without your computer or phone. By the time you get back, you'll be
over the hump of needing a social media hit, and your list of Facebook friends
will be gone, which is a good barrier to re-entry. Same for Twitter. Getting
rid of Reddit, HN, etc might be harder, but if your habits haven't changed
after two weeks, you could also set up a hosts file to block problem sites
before your vacation.

------
defunctirl
We recently had a presentation at my University from a number of local
industry leaders, and the topic of Social Media's role in the hiring process
came up. I've been in the process of slowly reducing and removing social media
where possible, and the reaction I got to a question regarding an individual's
lack of a social media presence was quite negative. Basically the consensus
was that if, during the hiring process, the managers / recruiters / HR were
unable to find social media accounts (or found highly private / restricted
accounts) for the applicant then they would view this as an immediate red flag
and indicated that they have previously dropped candidates from consideration
purely for this reason. I could have imagined this happening in isolated cases
but I was surprised to hear it from 2-3 of the presenters, none of which had
any relation to one another.

The irony of this whole situation being that the reason they scan applicants
social media in the first place was to look for red flags in the applicants
behavior outside of the work place and/or to find reasons they shouldn't be
considered for employment.

Kind of ridiculous.

~~~
nether
What kinds of companies were these? In many industries you'd seriously
compromise your hiring if you ruled out all the experienced 40+ year old
candidates who don't care for FB accounts. Mechanical engineering and defense
work especially.

~~~
defunctirl
There isn't a whole lot of dev. work or innovation going on in the private
sector where I live. This was local Government and a couple of Software
Development Consultancies (who primarily contract with local Govt.).

They did give the impression that the suspicion when finding no internet
presence was generally when vetting younger graduates.. ie. Millenials, and
those who they felt were more likely 'trying to hide something' by not using
social media..

------
orthoganol
I'm pleasantly surprised this is being discussed at the top of HN.

I feel like 2 years ago people would pile on about how unusual it was to not
be part of social media, how there is little argument against leaving, or how
you must be seeking attention or must be anti-social. Well, as a very social
20-something, I left Facebook 3 years ago, myself a heavy user with thousand+
friends scattered around the world, and it has made zero negative impact on
any aspect of my life ('invitations to events' or 'keeping contact' is the
typical fear against leaving, and it continues just as seamlessly [1] - people
don't stop caring, thinking, or reaching out to you just because you leave
Facebook, and vis versa), and it has easily been one of the top 5 or 3
decisions I've made in these 3 years. It's the equivalent of cutting out
unnecessary yet significant things, or simplifying your life so you can remain
mindful of the bigger goals. This may sound like something cheesy from the
4HWW, but I nonetheless think that kind of mindset is right on.

Now I see more people leaving Facebook who I wouldn't have imagined doing so a
few years ago. Perceptions will remain divisive for some time, but I can see
"avoiding social media" as gaining some real cachet as "I don't fuck around".
Regardless of whether there is actually a correlation with avoiding social
media and being a more serious, goal-oriented person, I do think mainstream
perception will continue to change for the better away from the stigmatizing
"Wow <person X> is not on <platform>, what's his deal?"

[1] Lightweight messaging apps, especially for international contacts...
certainly not the whole investment of 'social media' since it's nothing but
the messaging.

------
Mikho
Always wanted to spare some time to calculate how Facebook and other social
distraction influence our productivity and income. Every single notification
and distraction during work hours makes us less productive not only by taking
time, but also by decreasing ability to focus. We achieve less during the day.

Basically, Facebook converts time of every single user life and productivity
decrease into own revenue. And it's done with very very low efficiency--for
the whole year it's around $40+ per US user for Facebook. As reported average
user spends 50 minutes per day on Facebook. Hence, about 7.3 full 24 hour days
(if we add sleep time required to compensate being awake 7.3 x 1.4 = 10.2
days) of your life make Facebook $40+.

I wonder what it means for US GDP in general should the data be run
countrywide calculating distraction time and productivity decrease during the
work hours.

------
matwood
Maybe it's the discipline I've learned from years of power lifting, but I
don't have any issues with social media. I'll often skip FB for days because
it's not something I think about doing. I do like games though and will
sometimes play one for an hour or maybe even 2 hours if it's the weekend.
After that I start feeling like I need to do something productive.

As far as comments, I always try to act online as I would in real life. This
means I try to avoid snark online since it is so hard convey sarcasm online. I
also always think about if I was having a real conversation how would I act.
If you read my comment history, most (all?) are calm, and I think are how I
have disagreements in real life. I try to follow the thought process that you
can shear a sheep many times, but can only skin it once.

------
mihau
Great article :). Cal Newport has some reaaaallly important ideas. I encourage
you to read his book Deep Work in which he explains how to create deep,
complex stuff.

~~~
swah
Great book - but instead of applying the ideas I'm surfing reddit, facebook
and twitter even more :(

Maybe I should re-read books more, and at some point the content ends up being
used.

------
daveheq
Not realistic. I've seen multiple companies build their success on social
media (don't forget Pinterest) after stagnating through SEO and traditional
advertising, so to say "quit it" is not only killing millions of dollars of
opportunity but completely unnecessary if your point is that you as a worker
waste too much of your work day on it.

Do like I do and turn your phone or tablet notifications for these apps off
and check them later in your free time. If you really can't handle being
personally responsible in your job, then sure, quit social media, but
otherwise grow up and keep your brain on.

------
CydeWeys
I sort of agree, but at the same time, I don't use social media to advance my
career. I use it to keep in touch with friends, which is important because I
moved away from most of them two years ago.

~~~
dorfsmay
I agree with you but find it hard to use social media for that, because people
mix personal news with politics, religion, jokes etc...

The worse being twitter, a lot of people retweet so much junk.

The best being reddit, because by picking subreddits you can read about
specific topics with a very low noise ratio.

What we need is a social media that is only about personal news.

------
kejaed
I recently started and finished a side project over a week and did so on a
computer that I don't normally use. I was not logged into any of my normal
'social' websites and I found my productivity was very, very high.

It was quite an eye opener.

This may also have something to do with the fact that this was a novel and
enjoyable project (for me) with a hard deadline, but there were a couple times
where my brain was trained to go open up Reddit when I was stumped on
something, and I immediately caught myself since it wasn't the normal page and
got back to work.

------
heisenbit
The closest comparable to journalists running their blog is hackers to run
their github portfolio. There seems pressure to run one almost professionally
and on the other hand there are others in the industry that are doing well
without one.

I like his scarcity argument there is something to it.

I'm less convinced of his argument that he and Steve Martin don't need it.
Yeah right - but they already got visibility. Arguing against marketing from
the top of the hill may get you print in the NYT but it still feels false.

There may be generational aspects to this story too.

------
euske
"In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and
valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable. "

This sounds such a short-sighted argument. Do people greet others because they
expect some sort of rewards? It's a basic courtesy. Yes, some people overdo it
but using a social media moderately could be a good norm. Again, the balance
is the key, and we'll still need a bit more time to figure out the right
amount of dose for each, but rejecting them outright is equally misguided.

------
jtcond13
FWIW -- Cal Newport's books on career development ('Deep Work' and 'So Good
They Can't Ignore You') are very good, quick reads for those interested.

------
dakull
Why not to use FB in one classic line: you are the product being sold,
everything else is just an illusion. Case in point: in FB. ads you can even
target specific individuals.

The only problem is that like every social illusion it creates a social
contract which makes it hard to get out of it - mostly because it will feel
like being isolated from the "world" and in losing that perfectly crafted new
"self/identity" will shatter the ego (we all know the ego doesn't enjoy being
messed with).

Even if one is using it "just" for the messenger part, one is still part of
all of this.

I'm not sure why would anyone use FB. to get new opportunities, FB. et al
should not be taken seriously since most create their own persona on it akin
to an MMORPG where one can literally choose to act like an Apache helicopter.

Moreover FB. is pure evil at its core: it's a global scale psychological
experiment that future generations will refer to as: "those decades where
everyone diluted their identity online, forgot about their "real" selves and
thus slowly became clinically insane".

Some of the other arguments in the article are so broad that one can apply
them to the Internet as a whole e.g. "distraction free work: just unplug your
cable or disconnect your wi-fi"

------
heyAaronHatch
As someone who's quit social media several times, I can confidently say that
my life is far better with it. Saying you never post and rarely look at it is
like saying 30 years ago that you hardly ever call your friends and rarely
pick up your phone because it's distracting and mentally damaging. And yes, I
understand that it's a flawed analogy because social media updates are far
more frequent than phone calls, but the analogy is still strong. We can make
excuses for why all communication platforms are bad.

At the end of the day, you gotta do what you gotta do. If you have to avoid
social media to stay mentally healthy and to get your work done, OK. If you
can still do your work and remain mentally healthy while using social media,
OK.

I don't see the point in using anecdotal evidence, limited research, and
popular myths to prove that social media is bad or that we should delete it.
If it doesn't work for you, stop. It's like telling the world that alcohol is
bad and that we're better off not doing it because you have a problem with
alcohol. I'm not here to defend alcohol. I am here to suggesting considering
that alcohol isn't necessarily evil. And I'm also here to say the same about
social media.

This idea that social media is inherently evil because of the psychological
tactics used is academically interesting but practically just a way for you to
get onto your soap box and sound profound. It might also be a way for you to
rationalize your choice for having somewhat regretfully deleted your Facebook.
I get it. I did that for a long time. I see now that my problems with social
media were mostly my own issues; and I see now that I can maximize the benefit
of social media without becoming mentally disturbed or financially ruined.

------
welly
I'm currently in the process of withdrawing myself from social media.

I pulled the plug on Facebook and Instagram this weekend, not that I was a
heavy user of Instagram anyway and Facebook a light to moderate user. (it
sounds like I'm discussing a coke habit here). What I will find frustrating is
that in my social group - and I'm sure I'm not alone - Facebook appears to be
the central tool for organising one's life.

Everything is organised on Facebook. Social events, parties, last minute "Does
anyone want to go for a drink?" requests, discussions and meetup arrangements
on my side hobby of homebrewing. I fear I shall become something of a social
outcast, particularly as many friends I have, I don't have their mobile
numbers as all contact was made through Facebook messenger.

This is one part of the reason that I'm pulling away from Facebook in
particular. Facebook has almost two billion users and the internet as a whole
has roughly 3.5 billion users.

How one corporation having that much data willingly supplied - where they
live, where they work, where they've been, where they currently are, among
everything else - by so many people is, frankly, a disaster waiting to happen.
I want no part of it. I've given them enough data over the last couple of
years. No more.

And on a less tin-foil hat angle it is a huge distraction that, aside from the
social life organisation aspect, serves no good purpose that can't be provided
using other means (email? phone calls? meeting face to face and sharing your
selfies in person?).

I've also withdrawn from Instagram and plan to start developing in VueJS or
EmberJS rather than React. I'm not officially boycotting Facebook, I'm just
choosing not to use their products.

------
overcast
I've written about this many times in responses here on HN. Removing myself
from Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and what not, was the best thing I've ever
done. For any remaining sites, I've installed comment blockers, so I don't
have a chance to get sucked into negativity. Someday HN will be on the
chopping block, but for now, it provides real dialogue. There really is
nothing of value gained from wasting time on those sites. Now I have more time
to read, hike, finish personal projects, whatever I want. Dating since Tinder
has been completely ruined. Relationships are disposable, while everyone is
just looking for the next big thing.

I'm really looking forward to a post social network world. Though I fear
something even more addictive, and destructive will come around.

------
kristianc
This reads more like adjusting how you use social media than quitting it
altogether. The overly sensationalist headline probably obscures what the
actual point of the article is.

If you're trying to turn social media into your career - say, being a
journalist but only tweeting about things - then, no, that's probably not
going to work. This seems to be what the article is railing against.

If however, you're using social media to help your work elsewhere find a wider
audience, and then providing added nuggets of value on social media, then
that's valuable.

The era of someone producing one piece of work that defines them for the rest
of their career is now probably over. Theres an expectation now that you're
continually engaged.

~~~
carlob
Yeah I think the author would agree with you that moderate use of HN is
probably fine, but FB, Twitter and Linkedin are probably useless and
altogether harmful.

------
aikah
Some also people made a career and a lot of money out of saying obnoxious
things on social media.

I think it works both way. It can be detrimental to people who think what they
say online is "private" (Justine Sacco), but plenty of attention seekers
double down and take advantage of the viral effect of Twitter or Facebook to
"promote their brand", whatever that means, or to make up controversy. But for
these people it is also a double edged sword as the consequences of saying
something on social media cannot really be controlled. But for most of us it
is only a source of problems and unnecessary controversy, it is especially
true on Twitter.

------
CM30
Of course, if you're a journalist or news reporter, then you're a bit screwed
here. The stuff you need to write about is what's being posted on social
media, especially when you're working for an entertainment focused media
outlet. Someone working for a gaming, TV, film or music focused site or
writing for a gossip mag isn't going to be able to quit
Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/YouTube any time soon.

Then again, maybe that's also kind of why everything's become so polarised and
clickbaity in the media world now. Because the people writing for it are
incapable of writing anything deeper than a 140 character soundbite.

------
jdmoreira
I've read Cal Newport's book Deep Work. I've also quit facebook almost 2 years
ago and more recently twitter and instagram. I have zero regrets and overall I
can say that my life improved a lot, including my professional life.

------
vic-traill
In 1992, a fellow student called Usenet the 'ultimate procrastination device'.
The Internet provides access to an inexhaustible supply of people, topics and
thoughts (some interesting, others less so).

This is still the case, except that the number of access methods and filters
have increased, and many of them are with us everywhere, all the time.

Our own time is indeed finite, and my experience has been that the digital
world will consume as much of that limited time as you let it.

Awareness is a first step, and a purposeful approach to consuming content
helps keep your content consuming time balanced with, well, all the other
stuff you can do in this world.

------
abhip
> Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks
> is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy.

I agree with this particular sentiment but I don't believe that "deep work",
as Cal Newport calls it, requires us to turn off social media or other forms
of less-deep work altogether. Certainly, we must balance and control our usage
of social media. Certainly, we must be more than just consumers and create
tweets/posts/blogs/etc. These mediums can be great ways to give back to the
community.

------
bogomipz
I agreed with everything in the article. However I have also seen no shortage
of job posts for tech - backend dev, where employers asked to provide links to
any social media activity. So there is a fair amount of tech jobs that seem to
expect you to have cultivated an online brand. This has always made me
uncomfortable because I am of the same opinion of the the author and I
generally won't apply to a company when I see this being asked for in an open
job post. For things like "evangelist" I understand asking for this but
otherwise no.

------
blondie9x
You could also say reading hacker news is somewhat of an addiction as well.
It's easy to become fixated on seeing what the latest trending stories, repos
are. Everything in moderation.

------
ftrflyr
Beyond the "work without distractions angle" think about this:

You online presence affords recruiters and hiring managers the opportunity to
identify who you are before they make a determination to formally invite you
to an interview (phone or in person). Even if you opt out of self identify,
they can still figure it out if you have FB, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.

Thus, are you qualified, but didn't get a call back or request to interview
email? It may be because of your race, gender, sexuality, etc.

------
useandthrow94
I created an extension to solve this problem while I was preparing for GRE and
it has served me quite well since then! Here is the link in case someone would
like to try: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-
modifier/h...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-
modifier/hbhdccjdfjcpakliojfnpincocolhcob)

------
mcguire
" _My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is
common: As you become more valuable to the marketplace, good things will find
you._ "

If I didn't laugh so hard at this, I'd have to cry. Let's say my mileage has
varied significantly. Diametrically. Exponentially. Hilariously.

No idea whether social media has any effect on anything; I don't use it. So
there's that.

------
HeavyStorm
I was about to write - I'm ok, I don't have a Facebook login and my twitter is
just for show...

And then I realize that HN is social media, after all.

------
maxt
This article assumes we are at the whim of social when infact many people have
tamed social and, for lack of better phrasing, made social their bitch.

Read The Distraction Addiction:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16131064-the-
distraction...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16131064-the-distraction-
addiction)

~~~
ethanbond
That seems like an incredibly overconfident attitude. I actually can't name a
single person who uses social media in a highly productive way. Like what is
even considered productive on social media? I don't mean just workplace
productivity, but even conducive to personal growth or producing more empathy
or more understanding of the world or deeper friendships etc.

That shit doesn't happen in Facebook.

~~~
maxt
> I actually can't name a single person who uses social media in a highly
> productive way.

I'm talking about mining, say, Twitter's firehose for nuggets of gold using,
let's say, R[1] or finding other clever ways to separate the signal from the
noise.

It's well known that Twitter and even Facebook's firehose are a cluttered, un-
curated mess which are crying out to be analyzed with things like R[1], if you
are so inclined, or finding other ways to do signal analysis on other social
networks like Facebook.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_\(programming_language\))

------
blondie9x
What this article doesn't mention but should very seriously be considered,
recruiters often look to disqualify candidates based on controversial ideas or
standpoints that might not agree with the company's cultural mindset.
Definitely need to be mindful of how your views will be analyzed before you
have even been considered for an interview or offered a job.

------
zachruss92
I really enjoyed this article. I initially was introduced to Cal Newport's,
Deep Work book. This book is amazing and I recommend anyone to read it. Since
then, it's sent me into an almost obsessive time where i'm trying to do more
productive and meaningful work. I respect this article and actually am off all
social media myself (unless HN counts :) ).

------
sosuke
I wrote about this last year, your online persona in relation to your personal
career.

Quitting social media for personal usage is a pretty good idea though if
you're always checking it.

[https://sosuke.com/creating-and-taking-ownership-of-your-
per...](https://sosuke.com/creating-and-taking-ownership-of-your-personal-
brand/)

------
bogomipz
The author mentions:

"There are many issues with social media, from its corrosion of civic life to
its cultural shallowness,..."

Can anyone elaborate on how it "corrodes" civic life? I am guessing this mean
"civic" in the sense of civility not civic as in civic duty? Is this referring
to the mean spiritedness of many people's online personas?

------
krishicks
People don't realize how negative an impact social media and its related
notifications can have at work. I recently wrote a blog post about
notifications at work while pairing:
[http://krishicks.com/post/notifications/](http://krishicks.com/post/notifications/)

------
ausjke
"If you’re serious about making an impact in the world, power down your
smartphone, close your browser tabs, roll up your sleeves and get to work."
\-- without the tabs open I hardly can work anything these days, sigh. But yes
I agree that social media attention decreases my long-time-focus-capability
gradually and it is terrible.

------
gaur
Why was the correct punctuation of the original headline replaced with a comma
splice?

Can we get someone to restore the correct punctuation?

------
bbarn
I've been telling everyone I care about to follow my lead and leave facebook,
twitter behind. Like the author, people seem surprised that someone in my
field is against it so much, and once I explain why, they seem to understand
but not want to process that understanding (like explaining to a smoker that
tobacco kills).

------
vesak
Are engineers who work at addictive software (social media apps, some type of
games, etc.) actually breaking ethics? Should we defy this as a profession,
not allow our skills to be used for a thing that's borderline evil?

If pushing addictive narcotics is denounced as one of the moste evil deeds
possible, how's this different?

------
pavlovs_ding
It would be interesting if there was a simple way to monitor dopamine release
into the system, with a little bell attached.

Every time you distract yourself with browsing HN or checking whether Toady
One has updated Dwarf Fortress, a little ding lets you know you just satisfied
an addiction.

Probably turn people into bell addicts with a feedback loop.

------
LurkerAbove
I've recently started reading the dead tree version of the newspaper and I've
noticed that only do I seem to retain more of what I've read vs. reading the
electronic version, for me it's something along the lines of a focus exercise.
It really feels like it's clearing out the cobwebs.

------
tomkadwill
The author implies that there is no value in social media. It seems to me that
there is value in social media. Effective usage of social media can build
networks and be an alternative to meetups.

I think a valid solution is to limit social media usage to within specific
windows (eg: only use social media for 1 hour per day)

------
Bahamut
I recommend a different approach - if one feels bound to go on social media
often, take a couple of month hiatus from it. The main important thing is to
be able to break the power of addiction, since it is what causes the
distractions in the first place. It is not really a problem unique to social
media.

------
nippoo
Has anyone found a reliable way of blocking websites / apps (ideally on a
time-restricted basis) on iPhone? Short of routing all your traffic through a
remote SOCKS proxy. I'm tempted to move to Android just to customise my
/etc/hosts but I'd rather there be a simpler way...

------
shmerl
It's like in that anecdote - I guess the author is _not_ using the wrong kind
of social media ;) I get a lot of useful information from diaspora* for
instance.

If someone builds a stereotype and then says - I don't like that. It speaks
more about the stereotype, than about the real thing necessarily.

------
superpope99
Since no one's mentioned it, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr covers some of the
neurological effects of constant social media/internet gratification quite
well. Ironically it took me about a year to finish the book because I kept
getting distracted...

------
Notice092
Concerning facebook, I got annoyed by the whole newsfeed a long time ago. So I
unfollowed everyone & groups. Next was the invitation crap. End result is a
near empty newsfeed. If I'm interested in some person I will go to their page
myself.

------
h4nkoslo
The NYT is putting you on notice that any political involvement, _especially_
outside of approved channels, may necessitate threatening your career. What
you should really be doing is paying taxes and keeping your head down.

------
therealasdf
A simple fix for social media addiction is using the 'do not disturb' feature.
No notifications for the next hour. Take breaks every hour to take a short
walk and look at your phone. I find it to be very effective.

------
andresgottlieb
If this article made sense to you, you should read the author's book on the
topic. I've just finished it and really liked it.

[http://amzn.to/2fdEaol](http://amzn.to/2fdEaol)

------
keiferski
I'm more than willing to delete all my social media accounts. The only problem
is: I travel frequently and need a way to keep in touch with a wide variety of
people. Ergo, Facebook.

Any suggestions on replacing in this manner?

~~~
pault
Just stay logged into messenger and don't ever open facebook except to post a
few pictures so people know you're still alive.

------
intopieces
If this topic interests you, Tim Wu's latest book, "The Attention Merchants,"
might also. He chronicles the rise of attention-monetizing by the media and
the various rebellions against them.

------
spking
If you struggle with this, try:
[https://selfcontrolapp.com/](https://selfcontrolapp.com/)

It's a digital nicotine patch for your bad browsing habits.

~~~
MehdiHK
I second that. Works like a charm.

------
linuxvorpal
I agree with this sentiment mostly. I did delete my personal facebook. My
twitter account I removed a lot of previous posts in the hopes to inactivate
it without deleting it publicly.

------
segmondy
I just finished reading his book "deep work" this morning. I highly recommend
it, I'm not going to give up social media but I'm not going to give in to it
either.

------
shams93
I got into the industry working for Geocities. Back then we had no cell phones
no social media it was easier to focus in a world of landline answering
machines lol.

------
dangoldin
On a somewhat related note I started just shutting Slack off at work when I
need to get some thing done and it's been incredibly liberating.

------
dep_b
I was the only one that laughed out loud reading the title while seeing
Twitter and Facebook share buttons on top of the article?

------
98Windows
I found unfollowing everyone on facebook helps. I now just look at my friends
list to see who has new posts a few times a month.

------
natural219
Flagging this for obvious, one-sided political bias. The bunny trail from
Trump being elected, to "fake news on Facebook" story being perpetuated in the
press, to this editorial, is just straight laughable to me.

Maybe I made the wrong call, but I'm happy to start flagging nytimes articles
with the same judiciousness I'd flag a Breitbart article with an innocent-
seeming but obviously-politically-motivated conclusion at hand.

------
dsr_
I wonder if surviving Usenet Septembers prior to the Endless September
conferred some immunity on the survivors?

~~~
Animats
I used to see this back when I had a catchall email address on a .com domain
which was the same as a domain for a school in .uk. Every September, I'd get
misaddressed student emails. I'd send them back a note, and they'd stop. By
October the new students had figured out their domain name and the problem
stopped.

Once, though, I got a message "I am going to kill you tonight", addressed from
one student to another. Ignore, reply, report to UK law enforcement? I got the
headmistress of the school on the phone, in the middle of the night in the UK.
After about a minute of confusion, she told me that the sender was 12 years
old and the problem would be dealt with.

If that had had happened in the US, it probably would have involved a SWAT
team.

------
SFJulie
Only in ______* (fear of Godwin point reference) society do you fear to have
opinions.

------
nimaa
This especially was amplified through the election season. The distraction was
all the time!

------
chrisgd
A simple way to break a bad habit it, Ted Talk transcript:

judson_brewer_a_simple_way_to_break_a_bad_habit

------
naiyt
Have there been any studies done that link social media and a decreased
attention span?

~~~
tcrews
If MS' ad division is admitting this publicly and saying advertisers should
prepare for it [0], you can be sure it's something.

0 -
[https://advertising.microsoft.com/en/WWDocs/User/display/cl/...](https://advertising.microsoft.com/en/WWDocs/User/display/cl/researchreport/31966/en/microsoft-
attention-spans-research-report.pdf)

------
rajahafify
How can you trust someone about social media who said they never own a social
media?

------
emodendroket
I gotta tell you, that has to be one of the least convincing reasons I have
heard.

------
DrNuke
The underlying issue is that we are going to see if the coming nationalist /
populist policies will break down mundialism and its pretence for the educated
white-collars to live in one single, global, always connected community.

------
chrisgd
Quit hacker news, your career may depend on it

------
bhartzer
So does this also apply to quitting H/N ?

------
peatfreak
As usual, NYT is ON IT.
[https://twitter.com/NYTOnIt](https://twitter.com/NYTOnIt)

------
cbanowsky
ghost blog i believe has more potential

------
anigbrowl
tl;dr 'back to work peon!'

------
thro32
There is also another aspect. In theory your personal life and work are
separated. Your religion or political opinions should not matter at work.

But many people (sadly even on HN) think it is ok to fire people, based on
their opinions.

~~~
tajen
> fire people, based on their opinions.

Lest we forget:

\- Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, fired for a donation,

\- Douglas Crockford, uninvited from NodeVember, the general opinion is that
he said something that a woman didn't like,

\- Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, upon an unproven
accusation,

\- And all people and the 2 colleagues who have been fired in smaller
companies, in smaller events, without proof, only based on lynching and
without demonstratedly due process to determine what they're guilty about
(@mr-kanks from PyCon, I think about you every day I talk with a woman at
work).

~~~
TheGirondin
\- GrubHub CEO saying that anyone who voted for Trump is not welcome.

~~~
veidr
The ballot is secret for precisely that reason — it's not possible to judge
people based on their vote.

But making _public_ your support for Trump — or the KKK, or NAMBLA, or Hacker
News — is a completely different thing. You can and should be judged on the
basis of the ideas and opinions that you promote.

~~~
Retra
The ballot is secret so you cannot pay people to vote a certain way. It has
nothing to do with judging people for their vote.

~~~
echelon
It serves both to protect both the integrity of the vote, as well as the
freedom of the voter from reprisal. Imagine a less than democratic democracy
(if such a thing could be imagined). Dissenting votes, if public, wouldn't be
very safe to make.

------
brilliantcode
I've said before that Social Media is our generation's "cigarette".

Very much like in the early days, people just didn't have any awareness that
cigarettes were harmful. Hell, everybody was doing it (see Mad Men).

I've learned from day trading and investing is how much we downplay herd
psychology. Our society has geared us to beat any sense of opposition as
hostile. Our evolutionary process have selected individuals based on how well
they are able to blend and we feel instinctively safer in large numbers (def.
mech. against predators). We are social creatures so they say.

But history is filled with instances were the crowd behaves very predictably
over and over because the underlying constraints of group think are there.
Social media is particularly aggravating medium for which false,fake,wrong
have greater mobility than facts and common sense.

Besides the dissemination of false information which is harmful to our society
and individual as a whole, perhaps the sheer noise and frequency of
sensationalist artifacts is the biggest perpetrator of all.

It's only recently that we are beginning to become aware of the what if
effects of being exposed to so much "spamming with our running commentary of
bullshit masquerading as insight". So far, studies have confirmed that it's
negative on the individual.

Having said that, there's plenty of people who don't care. They are happy
uploading selfies and food they are about to digest and poop out in 12 hours.
It's fleeting moments that are so ephemeral, information that otherwise would
be irrelevant, insignificant noise, is being magnified through the crowd
effect that social media platforms exploit and engineer to grow their user
base.

Our low interest money has created a whole new economy where the number of
active users without any doubt, taken at it's face value rather than examining
it's intrinsic worth.

Just how important is it for everybody to be so connected and knowing every
possible detail going on with everybody else?

For me, not very, and I've for the most part (besides HN & Reddit) have
embraced off the social media grid lifestyle 3 years ago and I'm fucking
loving it so far. I feel happier.

I'm not perfect as I use HN & Reddit. Although, I do spend less and less time
on those platforms and experience more joy as well.

~~~
alaskamiller
Social media is this generation's cocaine. It's fun at parties, it's
fashionable when done right, but sad when doing it by yourself.

------
wcummings
>I’ve never had a social media account.

So why should I listen to what this guy has to say about social media?

------
berntb
I get dependent already on computer games (not a bad thing for Nethack and the
Dark Souls series of course). It might be easy for me to get dependent, so I
avoid drugs and other dependency causing things religiously -- like social
networks.

But I am now a heavy FB user despite that, as an expatriate it helps a lot
with keeping the fluency of my native tongue. The ease with keeping in contact
is also really good for me, quite a bit away. I just wish there were fewer cat
pictures.

The relevance for work and career is zero, of course. But the personal value
is high.

------
xiphias
Social media was supposed to be about your social life and not about your
career. And of course social life doesn't help in career (less time for
working/studying). How a post changes someones social life (positive/negative)
is a question, but I think must 16 year old teens are much better at it than
the author.

------
oliv__
God the nytimes had become so click-baity, it's sad to see this happening.

~~~
untilHellbanned
Nytimes has jumped the shark. I'm dead serious in saying its days are
numbered.

------
andrewclunn
Already quit Facebook, but this article just convinced me to quit LinkedIn
too.

~~~
Jaruzel
LinkedIn works if you just treat it like an online CV; Keep your details and
work history up to date, and ignore all the other social crap. My last two
positions came from recruiters finding me via LinkedIn, so for some
disciplines it still has merit.

------
andrewvijay
I'm addicted to HN like that. Should I quit it then?

~~~
Normal_gaussian
In your profile you can set 'noprocrast' to allow you a max visit length and a
minimum time between visits. Wean yourself off to only browse at certain times
of day or week where it is convenient and useful to you (ie. news catchup
hour)

~~~
andrewvijay
yo thanks fam!

------
throwaway-hn123
So if your co-worker believes that, for example, black people and gays are
subhuman and expresses that view you think that's ok and we should all just
put up with it?

~~~
67726e
Looks like you're going to troll with a throwaway account, but I'll bite.

Does he express his views at work or somewhere else? If he's professional at
work, I don't give a shit what he thinks.

~~~
throwaway-hn123
It's just a thought experiment - not sure why you need to be talking about
trolling.

So, if this person is professional at work, then you come home, and watching
the news, you see a report about a neo-nazi parade, and there this person is,
literally on-screen, shouting "burn the niggers*. Is that also ok?

Of course, this is an extreme example, I'm just interested in understanding
where the line is, or indeed if there is one, in the minds of people who think
it's ok to express any opinion without there being any consequence.

~~~
67726e
I'm talking about trolling because you're using a throwaway account. That's a
bright red-flag if I've ever seen one.

That said, is he professional at work? If he does his job and doesn't discuss
shit at work, that's his business. I'm not going to fire someone because of
personal beliefs. Yes, that's an extreme example but I'm not going to play
arbiter of beliefs because we are quickly going to get into a slippery slope
of defining where a line is, who decides, etc. Hell, if half the folks on
Facebook had it their way I might not have a job simply because I prefer Trump
to Hillary. You see where I'm going with this?

~~~
throwaway-hn123
You're welcome to assume anything you want about the account and its nature, I
simply don't care.

If it's my personal belief that I am duty bound to try and get this person
fired and find legal ways to ruin their life would you be supportive of that?
None of this activity would be carried out at work.

~~~
67726e
By it's very nature, trying to get him fired involves work. If you're trying
to cause strife in the workplace that's fireable in my book.

~~~
throwaway-hn123
It's interesting how much of a safe space some people want work to be, isn't
it?

~~~
67726e
See, this is where it's clear that you're trolling to push your agenda.

I don't discriminate at work, full stop. I don't care what you do or who you
screw so long as it doesn't affect folks at work. The second you start pushing
your political agenda at work it becomes a problem. It has nothing to do with
a "safe space" and in fact it is in no way a safe space. Work is not a place
to talk politics and push your ideals onto society. We all know these "safe
spaces" are just a place for a given "side" to espouse their ideology without
having to defend it from rational discourse.

------
sean_patel
> I would take a 45 minute dump just catching up on stuff

ROFL. That's 1 long helluva a Dump. Hope you don't have roommates or a large
family.

~~~
bitwize
Word. Your plumber be like "she's overloaded, Captain, she cannae hold out
much longer!"

~~~
sean_patel
LOL. You guys are killing me. Why all the downvotes? HN crowds seems to be a
very serious lot.

~~~
jliptzin
No toilet jokes we're too high brow around here for that

------
guard-of-terra
Who the F do you think you are to order me around?

That's my immediate reaction to the title.

As it happens, deciding for myself is more important to me than my career
assessment by other people.

------
known
Always post anonymously on Internet. Nobody wants you to succeed.

------
microcolonel
The way I help myself with this is I set up different profiles in Chrome. My
work one disables JavaScript, Cookies, and Images by default for every site; I
enable them only for sites which I need for work. This way, when the reflex to
"C-t h a RET" myself to Hacker News comes, I'm instead reminded not to.

