What social media presence/internet experience are you looking to quit?

[alexela64]

Feel free to delete this if it is unhelpful. I have now quit consuming short form content as a whole (finally!!) and almost completely quit social media as a whole.

I found that using timer apps like apple's Screen time, or something akin to LeechBlock, is unhelpful for me because once I start, I find it hard to stop. It needs to be difficult for me to *access* the source of the problem.

First I deleted all of the apps that had enough content that I could "instant refresh" and get new content immediately. The only way for me to access these apps now is through a mobile browser, which they are not at all optimized for and it feels really clunky.

Second, I close the browser tabs as soon as I am done with them. My object permanence is terrible, so if i have to seek it out, I often forget about it.

Third, I mentally flag when I get the urge to pick up my phone. I write up a little mental report like "why do I feel the need? What else could fulfill this urge?"

That way, my brain often goes "i want to watch a video" --> "Why do I want to watch a video?" --> "I want to watch a video because I am too tired to do something mentally engaging but I still want to be entertained." --> "What else could fulfill this criteria?" --> Cross stitch and listening to music or catching up on the single podcast i listen to

Anyways hope this helps someone. Also update I stopped having my phone beside my bed altogether now. I've just been LARPing as a 90s kid who doesn't have internet access and gets stuck in video games a lot.

[WynterSkies]

I would really like to stop using Instagram Reels so much. I cut Reddit and Twitter out because I was doomscrolling too much, and I finally kicked TikTok in February of this year because of the whole "ban" thing but also I could feel it frying my attention span. I use Instagram to follow the artists I left behind when I quit twitter and have found some super cool accounts so I don't want to lose it completely, but the Reels are starting to destroy my attention span the way TikTok was. It can be fun sometimes, if my husband and I are in bed and don't have time/don't feel like watching a movie before we sleep we can watch some Reels then go to bed. I've even gotten better about not requiring ASMR to fall asleep (though I still use it to help me get tired some nights.)

I've started reading comics online, listening to podcasts and I have Libby to all allow me to have some entertainment that isn't social media. I have tumblr as well but I'm way more controlled with that since my following count means I can really only scroll for so long before I see stuff I've already looked at. It's just this stupid Instagram lol. Putting timers on myself doesn't work so I've just been trying to force myself to do other stuff instead of clicking on the app. The comics have kind of been working!

[lakes]

1. Use my computer and phone less. I've already made some progress by exercising more and deleting certain apps from my phone. But I still find myself looking at my phone right before bed and lacking off on exercise when I'm not in the mood.
2. I wanna quit Discord, but I have some pals on there and I don't wanna lose them.
3. Same with Whatsapp.

[warlock]

Feel free to delete this if it is unhelpful. I have now quit consuming short form content as a whole (finally!!) and almost completely quit social media as a whole.

Third, I mentally flag when I get the urge to pick up my phone. I write up a little mental report like "why do I feel the need? What else could fulfill this urge?"

That way, my brain often goes "i want to watch a video" --> "Why do I want to watch a video?" --> "I want to watch a video because I am too tired to do something mentally engaging but I still want to be entertained." --> "What else could fulfill this criteria?" --> Cross stitch and listening to music or catching up on the single podcast i listen to

This is a super great way to self-regulate and mentally stop yourself from scrolling! Forcing yourself to be mindful of why exactly you're reaching for that sort of fix is a great way to stop doing it so often. I'm definitely going to pinch this idea for myself - I've been trying to do it piecemeal, but it's very easy for me to open a site/program reflexively without even thinking about it when I'm on my computer.

One thing that's helped me break from social media and be more creative has been fully separating my writing from my "daily driver" computer. All of my writing/webcrafting (however minimal that may be) is done on a 2009 Mac Mini. It can't load most "content consumption" sites, so I have far fewer distractions to open. The most it has is IRC functionality (which is just text chat, and is very dependent on how busy my friends are) and e-mail, which is slow and thoughtful enough that I don't mind them being available while writing.

The only site I have left now is instagram, which I check once a week to check what my friends have sent me. The temptation is there to scroll, of course, but forcing myself to only see what my friends shared with me definitely assuages that urge. I haven't posted on it for over two years as well, so I'm not feeding my information (beyond usage) to Zuck either.

[monsters]

<Mate>
Fun question because for us, it's just figuring out what we're doing as a system on the internet.

The internet gives us both unlimited freedom and it's hard to reign in. We just create a lot of different individual accounts, and they wind up being forgotten or dead, and it's hard to clean up all of our different accounts. We're still just trying to come up with a method and tools that work for us while not making it overwhelming because we still want to be individuals.

We also want to get more into building our website in general, and with that we're just trying to kick the "It needs to be perfect!!" expectation. We've been looking more into web gardens and learning in public concepts and that seems to be more our style than the blog post/essay a lot of alterhuman spaces in particular lean towards.

[virtue]

BlueSky, indisputably. It's the only social internet service I'm on that I feel compelled to open despite the fact that I almost always literally feel worse within seconds of doing so. I can barely even excuse why I am still on it at this point. I might just remove the app at some point. I like the infrastructure behind it, its just a damn shame this is what it all got used for.

[flowerrobin]

I neeeeeed to stop lurking Reddit. I've fallen down the politics/current affairs rabbit hole and I hate to say it, I also read subs dedicated to celeb gossip and I can feel it all really taking a toll on my mental health, but the negative stimulus it provides me makes me addicted to it 

[wolfkitty42]

I really, really would like to get Discord off of my phone. Unfortunately at the moment, I have people who I am close to with whom I just...  Enjoying calling! It also admittedly comes in handy sometimes. I think it's okay for now, but eventually I would like to reserve Discord to be a computer activity.

[xero333]

Instagram. I used to use it years ago to just take pictures and share them to my friends. This is back before it became utterly enshitified. I then quit using it when I quit all social media a good few years back. A couple of years ago, I decided to get back on Instagram, and I wish I didn't. I like it when a friend sends me a funny video on it now and then, but it's no longer a place to just share photos with your friends. It's become like every other shitty social media app and introduced a bunch of features like stories, messaging, reels, and god knows what else. I find myself using it less and less and I imagine at some point in the near future I'll uninstall it or delete my account entirely.

[GarbCat]

I've actually been quite "good" about this kind of stuff my whole life on account of me being a chronic social media hermit. I consider my usage of larger sites like Reddit and YouTube quite healthy, I think? In the sense that I'm not becoming bitter and miserable while on those sites and they don't consume my life (though I do sometimes spend more time than I like scrolling on YouTube trying to find a video to put on  ). Hopefully this doesn't come off as me trying to brag, I've just always been asocial to the point that I never developed addictions to say, Twitter or Tiktok to the first place, because those places never appealed to me.

That being said... I really need to do something about Tumblr. I've had a tumblr account for almost 9 years at this point, and even though I have a lot of friends there and it's a very fun site now that I've spent nine years curating it, it can still be a terrible experience there. Hot takes and people being plain miserable are aplenty, and the site has become a breeding ground for bigotry due to the site being managed by a skeleton crew and a now very long culture of incredible hostility between the staff and userbase that goes both ways. It can be a very unhealthy place to be and I'd like to find some sort of way to cut usage of it in some way or another. Does anyone have any suggestions? I can't necessarily replace Tumblr with pinterest like I've seen some people to do; I am an absolute Tumblr gremline through and through so I do a lot more than just look at cool pictures on Tumblr. I have a lot of friends there and I post a lot as well but tbh my interest of seeing and hearing from people that I don't know or are not posting in tags I follow is almost 0%, because it seems like Tumblr is crafted to turn you into a nasty little tar pit of a person with incredibly acidic opinions. You hate to see it

[Indigo]

I'm hoping to be less drawn to Instagram as time goes on. I want to treat it like how I use to treat Facebook and just have a place to message people on.

It was great in the beginning,maybe mid 2010s,where you can just share you art and be part of a community with no pressure to grab people's attention. Now since reels were introduced and IG wants to either have people be consumers,influncers,or constantly doomscrolling,It's not the same as how I was first introduced as an artist and it overwhelms me a lot.

I hope to be more mindful and at peace once I get control of my IG usage.

[cirro]

Probably Reddit since a lot of the subreddits that I've been using over the last few years have become argumentative cesspools and/or filled with teenagers, but I honestly don't know how else to connect with people who share my hobbies online anymore. It's hard to find other forum sites, and again, all social media seems to be filled with people way younger than me that I have nothing in common with or that don't like the same generations of the things I like (like cartoons and video games). Reddit sucks, but it's kind of the only thing we have left for a lot of niche interests.

[virtualpet2001]

in general im trying to quit a lot of gossip because, to be frank, despite doing it I dont even LIKE doing it. its like a dopamine addiction beartrap that is very hard to escape. unfortunately being raised by tumblr kind of primed me to do things like this but it feels so much better to NOT do them and it makes everyone else happier too

[cyberfun1 (dizz)]

I wanna use discord less. I really like talking with my friends there but i dont like discord itself. I managed to get the emails of a few of my friends but some of them are gonna be hard to get. I just hate when all the information about something is on a discord server and you have to begrudgingly search it to find what you wanna know.

[rnottelovesowls]

i’ve already deleted my facebook and twitter accounts, and i’ve abandoned reddit. i barely even scratched the surface of tik tok before deciding it wasn’t for me. if it weren’t for the fact that some of my friends and clients still use instagram and discord, i would have deleted my accounts from them a LONG time ago

it’s not just because of political content. modern social media has a venting problem. there’s a lot of complaining and not a lot of looking for solutions to what you’re complaining about. and being frustrated and angry all the time just sucks the life out of you; i don’t understand why so many people believe that a barrage of negativity is worthwhile