I haven’t had personal social media since I deleted it all 7 years ago. It was giving me anxiety to post anything, ruining my mental health due to FOMO and comparing myself to other people, and I had concerns about privacy.
However, now, with all these social media companies imploding and new ones starting, it kinda makes me want to rejoin social media again. I do feel out of the loop quite a bit not being on it. I often can’t view posts linked in articles and other places online because I don’t have an account. And I also think I’m way more equipped to handle it now that I’m a stable adult and not a teenager with an identity crisis lol. But I wonder if it’s worth it or if I’ll just regret joining again.
Do you have personal social media? What are your thoughts on it?
I don’t have personal social media, for several reasons:
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as a teacher, I want to limit what my students know about my private life.
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as a public servant in France, I could be sued for criticizing the President and his government (I’m far left and union).
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generally speaking, I like that my circles of colleagues, friends, family have no intersection.
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I use Facebook for talking with family and insta for friends and miscelanious things. In both I rarely post.
In the beginig I also had that FOMO feeling, but ended overcome it by reducing the time I spent on Facebook a lot.
In general, I think people dont say what is really going on their head and use the non anonimous social media as show off and status.
I think a media plataform anonimous is a more incentive for people beeing true about their opinions. For exemple 4chan in the begining and a little bit of 8chan as well, even if the opinon was controverse people would post and other people would tell what they think about it (without including reall sick things like pedo and stuff).
Seems like the social media ends beeing an extension of the user real life, you dont say what you really think because you can be ban, criticized, doxxed or called a nazi. Thats why people end creating throwaway account or secondary accounts.
I only use Facebook because family and friends do. I rarely post. Mostly an address book. Well LinkedIn too but even less. I do not like Twitter at all… it is basically either people who want to be the person or who want to follow the person… I am niether. So I think personal social media is not very important. Forums on the other hand that are topic based, not personality, based I like.
Edit:. As far as not annonymous. Who wants the trolls and the hassel.
I used Twitter from 2008-2022, and hated 80% of that time, so I absolutely get where you’re coming from.
These days I only use Mastodon and Lemmy, and that’s all good with me. I love Masto, it’s pretty chill if you want it to be.
I have it but i never use it. Its nice on occasion to have a place to lookup events but i never missed the main newsfeed