[butteredpopcorn]

I quit all personal social media years and years ago. I use a ton of email and text and am deeply involved in several real world communities and hobbies. I do have a LinkedIn I mainly ignore, just because it helps when searching for jobs.

If a person doesn’t have real world interests or networks, I think they should take lessons or classes in things they like from people they respect and see what happens organically over a year or so. They can reintroduce their hobby’s tech stack into their life as needed. For instance, I still watch a lot of YouTube (without an account) and read a lot of non-Reddit forums, like this one, because they help me learn things.

Not having social media is rarely an issue for planning and staying in touch with people and I rarely get asked about it. I still waste lots of digital time but I do it in ways I find more amusing than toxic.

[iagooar]

I'm actually in a similar situation - I don't want to quit the Internet completely, I just wish to recover some time that I think is wasted on social media, and at the same time "escape" that often toxic environment.

I still want to read interesting discussions, but I don't want to read all the other clutter and BS.

[butteredpopcorn]

I’m living your dream then! It’s pretty good. It’ll be ten fun tears “mega social media”-free next year.

I’ll use any online tool if it has a point (usually work or hobby related) and doesn’t bother me in terms of privacy, ethics, or the behavior of the other users. The cozy internet of happy, nice people of all ages and backgrounds doing stuff they love still exists, it’s just hidden in smaller places built for specific interests. I consider HN about as general and large a community as I’m willing to frequent, and I only come here to lurk and listen.

My miscellanous private social life (no point other than that I love these people) is all phone, non-Gmail email, and text because IMO no company has created anything more funny and useful than group texts and hour-long phone calls. I do want to be a little elusive and hard to find so that people value my time, and I want my happy times with other people to feel more concentrated. It’s the personal version of avoiding overexposure.