> Should we all just leave Facebook? That may sound attractive but it is not a viable solution.
Leaving not just Facebook, but Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media of its ilk is an extremely viable solution. It's like quitting smoking. For the first month or so you feel off-kilter, but, after a while, you can't imagine going back. Life is quantifiably better without it.
Realizing that I don't need up to the minute updates on literally everything has done amazing thing for my mental health in the last year.
There is a certain amount of second hand smoke in the room, though.
1) I can quit my social media, but people are still creating a lot of content with me in it that is being used. I don't need to take a poll about which potato I am if all the posts my friends tag me in are mined for data.
2) While social media is in itself great for cloistering my own community, it's still the case that vast numbers of my compatriots are involved with it and it will continue to be affected by it.
"Just leaving" isn't going to solve either of those problems.
I wholly agree, by the way, that leaving it is a personally good thing. I still use, but I heavily filter it and I have several 0-tolerance policies for unfollowing / blocking / etc. I probably ought to quit, but the crushing loneliness and disconnection of being a 40-year-old, divorced, atheistic remote worker who is quitting drinking make it about my only social interaction short of buying groceries.
This is OT, but perhaps you could join a structured exercise or sports group, like an ultimate Frisbee team or CrossFit. Having a regular group you can meet up with is usually pretty feasible without Facebook. It's good for you (don't go overboard and hurt yourself) and good for making friends.
Right on. Another thing that works for me is not watching any news at all on TV except for occasionally NPR. Instead, I like the text only feeds of NPR and CNN, and I try not to read those every day.
I do still look at Facebook once a week for about 10 minutes. I do so in a private browser tab, and routinely try to delete FB cookies.
Set up a site specific browser, which makes it easier to sequester all FB cookies and browsing to a separate environment. I use Fluid on macOS, but there are other approaches.
Quitting Facebook isn't as easy as it might seem. The same way as it's not easy to escape from the effects of smoking. Not because you can't, but there is always a chance of passive smoking.
So, as long as we have some relation with some society of which some one is connected, we will have some passive effects due to that.
Say like, if some one need to stop your car, they don't need to stop yours, but someone ahead of you.
Your life might be better, but mine wouldn't be. I use FB to keep up with loved ones and discover local events. That's it. It's not toxic or upsetting to me. All news is filtered out of my timeline.
The privacy issues are my only motivation to quit, and between Google, LinkedIn/Microsoft, and FB, my privacy is irreparably fucked anyway, so it feels futile to try to fix it now.
Leaving not just Facebook, but Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media of its ilk is an extremely viable solution. It's like quitting smoking. For the first month or so you feel off-kilter, but, after a while, you can't imagine going back. Life is quantifiably better without it.
Realizing that I don't need up to the minute updates on literally everything has done amazing thing for my mental health in the last year.