Mindless Social Media

Last year I had a similar experience I quit everything for about six months and then when I came back it was amazing

Never even considered taking a break. I mainly use social media to stay in touch with friends and to organize events, so cutting off messenger and Whatsapp and this stuff would mean being lonely and that wouldn't be healthy for me. 

I have had to take breaks several times. Thinking about doing it again... the only thing I struggle with while doing it, is i have 4 sisters and social media is really the only way I keep up with them and all my nieces and nephews. 

OH man Ive been thinking of doing the same. I see a lot of people keep saying their only hold back is keeping up with family, then I'm like ..WHAT? People kept up with family before social media, why can't we?...Then I realized I was in the same situation. On top of that, I'm a nightlife DJ and social media is my main link to colleagues and bookings as well as being a DJ, social media is key! At the same time I know for a fact that social media has made me less productive, lost a lot of my creative motivation, sleep bad and it's like it's stealing time right from my life. I blink and it's 2 years later.. I feel it all and not sure what to do. So I was thinking, maybe plan 2 times a day for a set amount of time as social media time. It will be then and only then I will do anything on social media. Maybe that will work? IDK......it may be worth a try.

i was luckly enough to be "online" before the smartphone revolution so i never really used social media like that.

I have been thinking of taking a break, but then I remember a majority of my friends are only active on their socials, so I kinda have to stay on them if I wanna chat with my friends. 

i'm taking a break from my phone and tiktok and snapchat. on my laptop i cant access stressful social media platforms, only game websites, discord (for my friends), other people's personal websites and this one, and it took away a lot of stress!

Yea, I used to have such a problem with instagram specifically, and I found myself with so much more time during the day once I logged off. Ive kinda gone back to using it, but I think I should try restricting my time on it again. Good for your health :)

We had an internet backbone failure in our neighborhood forcing us to abstain from the interwebs for like two weeks. That was a quite a nuisance for work related things but honestly I haven't missed a thing on Insta, Snap or FB. As you said, sleeping haven't been so good for like ages.

It doesn't sound like a cliché, disconnecting from everything is like going back to the beginning of everything, but without losing anything.

social media is a toxic place but unfortunately i was raised on it and can't function for too long with out it lol. i've taken breaks for months at a time before but i couldn't function fully

Well recently I uninstalled my facebook, and logged out of facebook in web as well, I guess it's a first step for me.. felt already good, when I did that!

social media is constantly showing the best and worst of humanity like a constant news cycle and that's definitely not good for your mental health :/ it also exposes you to alot of unwanted content and leads to alot of side effects

its good that your distancing yourself and feeling better

While I may be quite young, I never trusted TikTok or Facebook well, and quite frankly, never used them much, if not at all. I pretty much only use YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, IRC, and Discord, the second I am starting to cut out. I don't quite know what to do in the free time I have acquired however.

i wish i could drop social media, but all my friends are on it, and it makes communication so much easier. i know how bad it is for me, but frankly i am addicted. i dread to imagine how many hours i have wasted on tiktok alone

Taking breaks from social media is a great way to boost mental health! Ever since i deleted TikTok ive spent more time with family and friends, and have improved my mental state drastically! And for all the people who struggle with addiction to social media, and people who need social media to stay in contact with family or friends. I recommend starting off by deleting or taking a break from one form of social media that doesnt have ties or contacts to important friends or family. Like tiktok or even tumblr, so you still have your normal messaging apps to talk on.

A lot of social media basically has to do with the infinite scroll where it just becomes an utter timesuck. I've basically taken a huge step back from a lot of my 'online only' friend group and it boosted my mental health like ten fold.

its surprising, i took an approach similar to u where i decided to drop social media fully but it seems due to the tendrils that those websites put into ur social life i struggle to stay away for too long, either smth happens that means i require it (like my job) or idk i get bored and decide to dm a friend, im sure if i left it completely id eventually get over it but i just have a life where social media is borderline necessary. maybe one day itll be easier to just uninstall and leave alone

a few years ago i broke my phone. i didn’t get it repaired for a while, so i went without any sort of social media for a few months. at first i hated it bc i couldn’t message my friends or post any of my art, but after like 2 weeks my mental health started to feel a lot better than before. i went back on social media soon after, but i plan on quitting it eventually. life is so much better when you aren’t relying on social media to get your dopamine fix imo.

social media is an addiction jus like anything else unfortunately. my phone is broke and so my screen time is nothing and i am in love with it. its nice to have almost strictly in person communication as well as learning so much more valuable information from yt, movies, etc rather than facebook

:))))))))))))))

I'm not really taking a break (or at least planning on making it one) but a full quit, I haven't noticed a big change in my mental health or productivity really

Kinda feels a bit more lonely actually and sometimes I feel like I'm living under a rock :/ even with the downsides though I will admit I prefer no longer using social media giants and less websites over how I was before

I'm so guilty of having screen time of over 12 hours some days when I don't have school and work, and even days with work, the rest of my time is just laying in bed scrolling instagram or tiktok. Godawful experience, they're not even 'social' medias, they're just about commenting or posting which gives you the illusion of being social. It's a cheap replacement for having friends.

 I've been recovering from something really heavy and don't talk to people or any of my friends because the uncertainty of their schedules, so I just go home and scroll. It's a nightmare for the past few years. Definitely going to do a detox soon.

I'm so guilty of having screen time of over 12 hours some days when I don't have school and work, and even days with work, the rest of my time is just laying in bed scrolling instagram or tiktok. Godawful experience, they're not even 'social' medias, they're just about commenting or posting which gives you the illusion of being social. It's a cheap replacement for having friends.

 I've been recovering from something really heavy and don't talk to people or any of my friends because the uncertainty of their schedules, so I just go home and scroll. It's a nightmare for the past few years. Definitely going to do a detox soon.

i decided to take a break from instagram (the only social media i used) 3 years ago and i haven't gone back since. i did make an alternative account for looking at memes and cat videos sometimes but that's all i use it for. 

however i wanna say that short form content (ig reels, youtube shorts, etc.) is quite addictive as well. i used to watch videos on youtube for entertainment and staying in the loop but after yt shorts came i now end up scrolling through them for hours instead of consuming better, more fulfilling content and it feels bad. these days when you open the yt app the first thing that shows up isn't your homepage but shorts. idk at this point i feel like it's better to just take a break from the internet as a whole lol

i'm glad i found spacehey though ! even though it's a bit dry i definitely prefer it over other social medias

I'm not sure that I've really had an addiction to social media, but my feelings on it have always depended entirely on where I am in life rather than how much I use it.  When I was young, I didn't feel good seeing other people being so much more ahead in life than me, but now that I'm where I want to be, I feel completely neutral whenever I see what others are doing; though I mostly use other social media to keep up on what's going on in my local areas.  

This is basically how I go about things now. No insta anymore, no facebook in like years, no twitter (thank mfing god), no tiktok. Just here, Neocities, and Tumblr. Even then I try to take breaks from all of those. My mental health has improved DRAMATICALLY. I don't really think those last three I use are even bad for me if in small doses. I think if cutting social media off sounds like too much for you, just try for like a day or a week away from it. Make a plan of stuff you can do instead, maybe even make a chart of your streak of not using this stuff. Maybe even just put your phone on silent except for calls and texts like I do, and keep your phone across the room whenever possible.

It's really great just working on my hobbies again, reading books, watching movies, and just like....being a person. The best part is when I talk to people in person, I don't feel the same anxieties and awkwardness I used to. I don't feel like the world is all doom and gloom. Most importantly, I don't feel like I'm doing things for the performance of it all, or thinking about if I'm attractive enough to be content with myself. I've stopped scrutinizing myself and my actions and just been human. Once you have a week of freedom you really understand just how much weight you were carrying. Time goes by too fast to waste it away disassociating in front of a piece of glass and metal. You'll be glad you cut this stuff out.

I just got done telling everyone on my Facebook that they can have fun ripping each other apart and I'm having nothing more to do with it. Sincerely thinking of going off grid in a random state and delete all socials. But taking a break is definitely going to happen after tonight. Maybe just sign on to here once in a while.

I've dropped both Instagram and Twitter 2 years ago and I'm not going back, it's helping me be more productive but I still get hooked on TikTok and Tumblr. I'm thinking of deleting TikTok and restricting Tumblr to my personal computer so I can draw and write more like I used to.

My creativity gets to be fricking garbage when I'm hooked in all the time. I took a full detox a while back, and it was so necessary.

It's really wild to see how Facebook changes and tries to hook you back in. It'll show notifications when there are none, so you'll be tempted to log in and clear the red dot. But there's nothing to clear and nothing to see. It's now taken to just hiding the things my friends are posting and pushing ads. Not like "oh, let's maniacally intersperse these". No, no, let's show almost exclusively ads to the point where you're missing posts from friends.

It's just hard to stomach that we've outsourced socialization to an algorithm.

The thing I really hate is that I have to have it for business-related things. It doesn't really build an audience or pull traffic, but it's one of those things that people check to see if it's active and your business is still running. There are ways to set good boundaries with that aspect of social media use, but it does make the cold turkey approach very difficult to pull off (which sucks, because I love a good digital detox).

i recently deleted tiktok because it was just making me depressed and angry. instead of connecting with people and having fun it became a place where bullying was so normalised. the final straw was seeing several people saying stuff like "dying for a man? couldn't have been me" under a video about a girl who had been killed trying to save her boyfriend from being beaten. I know that's not the worst thing I've seen on social media but its what effected me the most. i know twitter is much worse though and I'm glad for never really getting on twitter properly. I'm probably going to try and limit my Instagram use too soon, I've been bodyshamed too many times and I'm so fucking tired of it

I'm trying to do that but two reasons are preventing me.

1 information, about events happening in my area and concerts etc... Facebook is the main platform for sharing these informations.

2 exposing my music on those platforms

I've been thinking about unfollowing everyone on these platforms and just open it when I'm about to share my music.

Other than that I don't feel like passing time there, so much toxicity, too many dramas etc.

What do you guys think about it ?

seeing this post inspired me to delete some of my social media accounts. there are a few that i use to keep up with friends, so they would be difficult to get rid of. but it's a start!

i have been trying to cut my screen time down. i recently deleted my instagram because i never used it. i’ve also bought an mp3 player so i’m not on my phone as much when listening to music. it’s been really nice. plus i’ve disabled most notifications on my phone except for my snapchat and fb messenger because that’s how i still contact some of my friends and family. although, tiktok is hard because that’s one source of my entertainment. i can’t spend too much time on it because it causes me a bit of anxiety. 

Honestly, i do this pretty often. When i notice that my mental health is going down *poff* im out . 

It is really crazy how addicted people (and me) has become to internet, social medias etc. Scary.

Ive been thinking of limiting my social media usage too  I just wanna live a cozy life and all of the stuff I see online has just been giving me constant headaches

I think that a lot of us experienced the same thing! It's not a cliché, it's the truth that you're saying. :D

My only social media is this site and Plurk. I'd love to start a Neocities site sometime soon.

I've detoxxed from a lot of computer usage, my issue is less with social media specifically but doomscrolling on youtube and whatever, and as soon as I go out with friends and actively have a social life my mental state improves ten fold. It's amazing honestly and I think that a lot of the issues come from that there aren't really any third spaces for people to go to outside of social media and the internet which causes a lot of neuroticism in folks.

A while ago I deleted TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Discord. I do still have Reddit and YouTube and I now use those apps once a week at most. My phone is always on silent and I disabled all my notifications so I won't get distracted. Otherwise my phone is constantly bombarded with annoying and distracting pop ups and notifications.

As for Instagram I'm on there regularly because I have a busy social life and lots of friends I want to stay in touch with. I love texting them but what I don't like is mindlessly scrolling. I enjoy watching movies every once in a while, especially older movies because those are slower paced. I can't handle short form content, flashing images and loud noises. I don't watch TV or Netflix series and I don't keep up with the news either. This is way better for my mental health.

What I've noticed, is that now I hang out with friends on a daily basis, I have no desire to constantly check my phone anymore. I often don't check my phone for whole days. If you want to fight your social media addiction, delete addicting apps, turn off your notifications and hang out with friends more often! :)

social media and internet in general is so addicting it hurts, but I have nothing else to do, I can't hang out with friends, I can't go walk around my city since there's nothing interesting, and at home i have nothing else to do + I struggle to read more than 4 pages, so i'm kind of limited to the internet, i'm trying to limit myself tho slowly but something is something

started twitter about a year ago, and quit and deactivated a few months ago and it's been great . i didn't realize just how often i was bombarded with ragebait and things that didnt matter til i stopped :] i do think my experience has also given me a better grasp on like. if something is a real problem or just an online issue bc of it

Social media is a gift and a curse, yeah it's nice to see a million things in your feed, it can often detach you from reality and provide depression. I've taken numerous breaks from social media, including Facebook, Insta, Twitter, etc.

It's great for your mental, and helps ground you back to reality.

Doom scrolling is the worst, man.

I've took breaks before (mainly on the end of the blue bird) & a lot of the times, I find myself better by doing so. I'll probably plan to cut out Twitter entirely & move more prominately here & on Tumblr

Right now I am on vacation and I have decided to leave everything related to social networks and be more focused on things like my future, playing sports, reading, simply anything that means getting away from social networks and video games.

The results were very good ; I became much more calm, optimistic, I slept better, I went out more, I read a lot more, I did more activities, etc.

Although I do not leave it completely since it would not be possible in my case, I already feel that it is not necessary to be on the phone and I always put other things before the phone, video games and social networks ᕕ( ԝ ᗜ ԝ ) ᕗ .

Hopefully we can all take a break from social media (*´▽｀)ﾉﾉ

i kinda wish i could do something like this, social media seriously does take people's emotions and hold them hostage, i've tried to let go of social media sometimes but its honestly just.. really hard. i always feel lonely without it, i try to message with friends, then i get noisy and want to look through their page i don't know why i feel like this but i'm sure others probably feel this way too, at least one person i suppose

I wish I can do it but i’m addicted. If not social media then its some games on ipad that I clearly spend hours on it. I haven’t paint or scrapbook that often anymore and I prefer to stay cooped up inside. 

I have ADHD and honestly it caused me problems when people first made me join social media. I was addicted and couldn't stop. I was constantly fidgety, on my phone etc. and it eventually developed into an addiction and combined with my abusive parents, it turned into escapism and since I had no irl friends and was bullied at school, I started isolating more and more.

I only managed to start breaking out of it during the pandemic and I recently finally cut off most of my social networks like facebook etc. and it was the best thing I could do. I feel more relaxed, I feel happier and most importantly, more alive.

i mean its ALL WELL AND +++ GOOD IF YOU.,,.,., HAVE AN SOCIAL LIFE? OTHERWISE ITS JUST V L,ONELY

Honestly for me, using spacehey is fine because it is designed in a way that does not intrude my life, and it rather lets me be social when I want. Using stuff like instagram ups my anxiety cause it intrudes my life with all its notifications n shit so yeah