[anxoo]

also in the old days, your friend bob would have told cory, "hey, did you hear alice's dad died? we should all go out for drinks". but we live in the bowling alone era, where we're increasingly isolated.

quitting social media is not, on its own, going to fix your social life. and being on social media can make you more connected, or more miserable. the responsibility is yours

[jahsome]

I'm a firm believer being loosely connected to so many people isn't the fix many seem to think it is. I find shallow connections, which is about all social media can support IMO, are worthless at best and detrimental at worst.

YMMV, but my quality of life increased in ways I can't even begin to describe by severing all the dozens or perhaps hundreds of shallow connections social media was encouraging me to cling to.

With the saved time and energy, I've been able to cultivate far fewer-- but much deeper and more (mutually) fulfilling-- connections with those who are _actually_ important.

[kelnos]

Couldn't agree more. I haven't deleted my Facebook account, but I no longer sign into it (I kept it because of event invitations, but at this point no one I know uses it for that anymore either). I have a little over 1,000 "friends" there. Back when I scrolled my feed multiple times per day, I read so many things about so many people who I hadn't interacted with outside of Facebook posts for years and years and years. I read so many things about so many people who I didn't even interact with on Facebook, let alone outside of it.

I don't miss any of that. Those connections were beyond shallow, and weren't adding anything positive or useful to my life.

[JavierFlores09]

This kind of comment always makes me wonder, are the people doing this doing well financially to afford cutting off all those "loose" connections with people like that? Because I couldn't imagine just destroying these relationships for no reason when I myself have benefited vastly from keeping them alive, even if barely communicating at all with these people.

I think this advice is generally harmful to networking as someone grows, which is vital in today's society

[kelnos]

I don't think this discussion is about professional networking. It's about personal and social connections. If quitting Facebook makes you un-/under-employed then I think you're Doing Life Wrong.

GP mentions "severing" those connections, but I think that's even too strong a phrasing. There wasn't really anything there in the first place, so there wasn't anything to sever. Simply not reading someone else's social media posts anymore, when you didn't really interact with them outside Facebook (or for some people even inside Facebook) isn't really severing anything.

[jahsome]

I wouldn't agree it is "vital," but that definitely depends on perspective and one's goals, as well as the baseline level of privilege one enjoys.

If someone's goal is to achieve CEO and/or the top 1%, certainly every single connection could hold extricable value. I'm perfectly fine hovering somewhere in the middle, even knowing I have the capability to achieve much more. My future is uncertain; I probably won't retire when I would have liked. I've accepted that, and choose to live in the present rather than focusing on the future. I know at least I won't die miserable tomorrow.

I don't deny I could have done better financially by maintaining the status quo. Now that I think of it, I'm doing worse financially than when I was using facebook & twitter. I had more money, and my career was progressing at a much higher rate, but I was inconsolable. Without the money, and without the accompanying social media-imposed drag, I see the world more clearly. My relationships are stronger with my wife, kids, and close friends. I am much happier.

[oblio]

1. LinkedIn.

2. Keep the other accounts, just in case.

3. How exactly are remote connections helping? In the Western world, for example, people you haven't interacted with for months and months in real life for sure won't help you financially. For jobs stuff like LinkedIn is probably better, plus regular chats on 1 instant messenger. You don't need Instagram to keep up with them.

[BlueTemplar]

GP deleted their LinkedIn account too.

With GitHub and Discord, these 3 are really hard to boycott for programmers (even more to publicly shame people for using them). And yet, we must dissent.

[GoblinSlayer]

I had only financial losses from these loose connections. Nobody will shove profit down your throat, but there are many greedy people that will try to extract profit from you. I basically work as a bank for them, muh connections, lol.

[watwut]

> but we live in the bowling alone era, where we're increasingly isolated

What I see over years is that, especially in developers online groups, any usual and normal way of socializing is stigmatized. I remember reading comments about how lazy people who socialize with friends are and how we are better if we code every evening. I remember people being proud about spending christmas coding supposedly being superior to the rest of the family that is socializing.

Now we are proud if we remove ourselves from social media.

It is always the same - however other people socialize is wrong, they are stupid and lazy. We remove ourselves, because it is superior to not participate. Eventually those places die out or change, but we do not like the new places either.

And in each iteration, we expect other people to do work of keeping and managing relationships while feeling superior over not doing that.

[short_sells_poo]

I don't think the parent poster was arguing to exclude themselves from social life or do coding instead of talking with people. They merely argued that it's better to have fewer but meaningful and deep connections with people you genuinely care about (and they care about you), rather than having a 1000 meaningless connections with people who are basically strangers on facebook.

The role social media plays is in encouraging large numbers of superficial relationships, rather than a small handful of deep ones. It stands to reason: I don't need facebook to keep in touch with a dozen close family and friends. I can do that perfectly well in person, or over phone calls/messages. What the various social media apps did was kill the close circle of friends in favor of having 1000s of followers and turn everyone into a one-way broadcaster.

[oblio]

> What I see over years is that, especially in developers online groups, any usual and normal way of socializing is stigmatized.

Developers are not typical of regular people. They're, basically by design, outliers.

[wink]

I'm not sure I agree, but I'm not disagreeing on principle.

You make it sound as if something was lost, maybe recently. In the grand scheme of things I'm not that old (41) but I don't even remember how that would have worked out, because I wasn't old enough to have people's parents die before social media, at least in my social circles. Yes, of course you'd hear about grandparents and such from your immediate friends but that's usually a handful and people would maybe not be shaken as much. I agree with you that social media doesn't have to mean "blasting it to hundreds or thousands of followers", but it's a thing where I actually liked Facebook. Not only techies, and getting enough updates from people who are not your closest friends that you have things to talk about (as in reference) when you met again (or talked synchronously, or privately).

[lodovic]

In my circle, very few people maintain a social media presence. I cannot remember posting anything on social media myself - except maybe a job update on LinkedIn, and some light anonymous trolling on X. I don't have Facebook or Instagram accounts and so I never visit those sites anymore (as they require an account to read). Spending a lot of time posting on social media is seen as unintelligent, attention whoring, and a waste of time.

[oblio]

> In my circle, very few people maintain a social media presence.

You are not characteristic for the population at large (neither am I, don't feel sad :-) ).