Recently, I decided to delete Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok from my phone. It was a conscious choice I had to make after experiencing an anxious meltdown last week. Reddit wasn’t any better for me, and we all know where that place is headed. I haven’t deleted my accounts yet, but prioritizing the loss of easy access to those sites was important.
As usual, I feel better now. A lot of the content on those platforms brings me hateful and unpleasant feelings. It’s addicting, like a mess you just can’t seem to take your eyes off of. I had to be honest with myself and accept the truth that profit-driven social media has a net-negative impact on my life.
I’m glad I’m here now. I’ll never stop repeating this until it becomes untrue (hopefully not), but I enjoy being here. I don’t see this place as an alternative to anywhere else. It’s helping me break the habit of skipping long paragraphs of text and only relying on article titles at face value. The nuance present in several discussions feels more human.
Anyway, enough about me. How have your experiences been with other social media platforms? How do they compare to Beehaw?
Getting rid of Reddit saved so much of my time.
I’m currently more in love with Mastodon to be honest. It’s a bit more polished experience and with more active users. But i’m sticking around, hoping that lemmy and kbin can close the gap.
More and more people are realizing that these apps have a super unhealthy, poisonous hold on them and they are breaking free, finally. Huge congrats!
Im writing this as someone who never signed up for facebook or instagram, and ive only tried twitter a few times without getting hooked at all.
It just didnt have any interest to me, but i think thats because im into tech, and social media seems to be more focused on drama.
currently have a FB, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit account. The first three is basically my first delve into the art world of drawing animes and stuff, and Reddit…well, for Reddit stuff, niche communities, hobbies, etc. FB is actually pretty nice and cool and good tho…at the beginning. You play games, you delve into groups about your hobbies, you like your friend’s pictures and lifes. Nice.
Until recently, when for profit social media gone mainstream. Suddenly it’s not just your connections and hobbies, now everything is filled with ads, suggestions, influencers, all mining our data. Not to mention the outside bigotry, racism, religious intolerance, homophobia, hard and extreme politics slowly creeping first in FB, Twitter, and now or soon, Reddit. Yeah there you’re “technically” able to express yourself, but be prepared to be brigaded by those people that are now a majority in current mainstream social medias.
Also, including Reddit, all now becomes just another dick-measuring contest. Who’s more popular? Who’s more funny? Who’s more edgy? Who’s more based? Who’s more Chad? Who’s more liberal? Who’s more homophobic? Upvotes, likes, shares, all of that is just another dopamine effect to further the dick-measuring contest. Needless to say, I am happy to find Mastodon and now, Beehaw. A relaxed, nice community that isn’t just yet another popularity rat race.
I think what you are striking on is a difference in platform design. Remember, with social media you are the product to be sold to. Here in the fedverse there is no highly tuned algorithm keeping your eyeballs engaged and your dopamine/cortisol receptors in lock step.
I really enjoy other social medias like tiktok and instagram but I’m really intentional about how I use them. I only consume and interact with content that brings me joy. I use it to stay in touch with friends so that means making sure I talk with them, interact with their posts, and show them some love. I don’t engage with trolls or haters but i will try and have a discussion with people who seem genuinely curious, confused, or open to other view points and not hostile. I try not to spend more than an hour on the both of the consuming content a day (usually spread out while i wait for the sun, at lunch, and before bed.) I love to create silly videos about crafts, gardening, and baking so I like to post those but I find I will get sucked into scrolling and not do all the things I love if I don’t set limits.
Beehaw is great because it’s not so busy I have to spend a long time catching up and I have already ran into so many friendly people with similar, positive interests. I really want this space to be something that adds to my life and so far it has. I’ve got a new kombucha guide to try, more info on how to organise community projects, crafty friends to share projects with, and even some info on how to fix my oven! Beehaw is different than the other social medias as it’s a place that’s very conversation focused. Its smaller than reddit making it feel more accessible as comments don’t get drowned out in busy threads. Tiktok has character limits that doesn’t allow for real conversations and instagrams feed is usually outdated and full of sponsored or irrelevant content so I really just stick to stories. This is my new favourite space but I still enjoy the others for different reasons
Your self control with Tiktok is admirable. I tried setting 30 minute limits for the apps but it just doesn’t work for me. I’m glad Beehaw is giving you so much fulfillment too c:
I just have one of those times for andriod that tells me I’m done for the day. I can click add 10 minutes if I’m in the middle of something like making a post or messaging a friend but I generally just accept it and tune in again the next day. Things are more fun when they’re finite
I only follow the limit when my mental health is great. Otherwise, I’m stuck in an endless hole of doom-scrolling. Your self control is stronger than mine lol
Congrats on getting off of social media! Glad to hear you like it here :)
I actually agree with you. The sole reason I still have instagram is so I can find and keep track of tattoo artists. I was never very active on twitter, will probably delete Facebook soon, and once tiktok automatically logged me out I never logged back in. Being on facebook generally just makes me angry while tiktok drains away whatever self-esteem I have left. Instagram is just eh.
Actually, I like that upvotes don’t add to a total on your account as with karma on reddit. And yes, likely because of its smaller size, conversation on Lemmy feels a lot more pleasant. I really like it here too :)
First off, congrats on breaking free. I was a twitter user from 2010 to 2019 and a facebook user from 2011 to 2019. I was on reddit from 2015 to 2023. I gave up fb and twitter for in order to only use mastodon and reddit in 2019. I personally found reddit impossible to get away from due to its community nature. However, now thanks to lemmy i have done it finally. Reddit was the last to go and hitting that delete button felt amazing
dont forget to scrub your accounts before deleing them - those companies own that data if you dont, and in many cases (especially with facebook), you and your content are the product. I’ve subbed to a few @beehaw instances, but only the top level ones.
yeah, the interaction here seems to be more… organic I guess, for lack of a better word… more natural. the platform itself has a fair number of issues as well, it’s not a polished product with several years of success behind it (loosely defining “success”). lemmy still seems to be in beta, but its perfectly usable despite that once you figure out how to get around on it.
not sure if I want to go back to how I used to access media prior to link aggregators - it was not ideal, slow, and difficult to find new things - like, imagine reading the newspaper (lol dating myself there) and never having seen sunday edition comics, but then you see them finally and it opens your eyes to a whole new world of what that kind of media could be. probably a bad analogy but its late and I’m tired :P
I’m definitely going to do my best to scrub as much as I can with the help of my tech husband lol. I’ve had some of those accounts since 2010 and I’ll definitely have to put in some work.
The slowness actually helps me ground better. Like, it gives my brain time to buffer to better digest the information given to me. The learning curve to access this community isn’t that steep and I’m not a picky user anyway. I’ll stay primarily for the vibes lol
I made FB account after some group wanted to post there, never used it much. Now I use Messenger sometimes but not too much. Reddit was only thing that I used more, it is more anonymous and still you can be sure to read people generated content which isn’t suggested by algorithm.
I am happy that most people which I need to contact use email, it is best thing to contact people - literally everyone has one.
deleted by creator
I’m glad you feel better here.
I only have Instagram as a form of social media, though I don’t post anything there. It definitely tears at my self-esteem at times, but I haven’t the heart to delete it because I consume other healthy content there. Only got FB to use Messenger with my parents. I don’t get all this social media hype, I guess; TikTok, Snapchat, etc… not my thing.
I like Lemmy. Like some others said, conversations feel more organic and refreshing. The website is pretty ok, I like the new icons here on Beehaw. I’m looking forward for more niche communities to grow, especially those catered towards specific shows or movies. I think I’ll grow to like this site even more as time progresses, honestly.
