[chikenf00t]

I deleted my Facebook account back in 2015. I was in high school and going through a deep depression/mental break down. I remember feeling so much relief as the days went on. I don't think I was ever designed to handle social media properly. I doubt I'm the only one either.

[dgfitz]

I started college around 2005, when Facebook was still “exclusive to .edu college email addresses” and it was novel at the time, mostly because it was unfortunately exclusive.

My 3rd year I trimmed my friends list down from 10k to 1k, people I actually at least remembered having a conversation with. The next I took it down to about 300 people, and realized “I see or communicate with these people outside of this website already” and killed my account.

Best decision I ever made relative to the topic of social media.

[eleveriven]

Deleting my Instagram account has affected me in a similar way. I'm very grateful to myself for making that decision.

[eccentric_bb]

no one is designed to handle social media at scale. Our brains are calibrated to express empathy at different levels for finite numbers of people who are of a given proximity to us (emotionally and physically) — e.g. the smaller and closer the group, the more capable of empathy (and thus worthy of exposure to nuanced feelings and more frequent exposure) we are.

Being bombarded with the thoughts and takes (especially when distorted in content and exposure frequency by an ad platform disguised as a social media site) of thousands of people — only a few of whom you can possibly know closely — is a recipe for mass psychosis.