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Hozan
Veteran
Hi all
I have only recently joined twitter. While I find it useful in many ways I do find myself using it more and more. I know its not social media is the problem but rather our use/misuse of it.
I would be interested to hear peoples experience with social media and if they found it "addictive". I do not have a Facebook account.
Best wishes to everybody.
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Comments
On reflection, most twitter accounts I follow have a website so if I really need to look something up I can just use a website. This is probably more direct, mindful, and efficient use of time. Should stop me wandering around twitter and not being mindful or efficient with my time. Going Cold Turkey! Wish me well!
Hi @Hozan,
I do have a Facebook account, however, I hate to use it and honestly, it makes me a bit anxious.
I have found it addictive before so I deactivated it which helped me concentrate on my uni studies. It was so easy to get distracted by it and before I knew it I was 30 minutes into the useless stuff on there.
I do think it depends on who you have on there, & what their intentions are.
Cold turkey is hard at the start but then once it's gone a week or so then you won't even want to go back to it - that's my experience of it
Thank you @kerance. Even the relief of deactivating and removing the app from my phone has lifted a weight already. Obviously a sign that I wasnt using it mindfully. Looking forward to not thinking about it anymore.
You're welcome @Hozan. Enjoy!
I'll leave the tweeting to the birds. That was natures plan.
I enjoy the Twitter Machine™
Sometimes my hippie views are mocked by "more (western) civilized minds" but, no sweat off my back. As long as I can get a few nuggets of wisdom and Star Trek discussion, I'm happy with it.
I enjoy twitter for limited things. the limit on characters makes it easy for me not to respond. I mostly use it to follow a few interests, and not much else. I mostly stay away from politics and such things, and really only check it once every 1-2 days. Mostly use it for following updates on a few authors, some yoga webpages, some Buddhist webpages, and weather stuff. Weather stuff makes up probably 50% of my feed, lol. FB is a larger problem for me but I've gotten better at regulating myself and filtering the stuff I get tired of seeing.
In high school during the worst of my depression social media took over my life. I didn't have many friends in the "real world" so I had many online friends. While I cherish their help and friendship greatly it was unhealthy for me since I spent years embroiled in online drama and society of sorts. As I got older and healthier it slowly lost its appeal. Last year I deleted all of my accounts and it's been great! I am much more mindful of my current life and I have great friends now.
I think social media can be helpful but I am uncomfortable returning to it. My boss at an art center I work at wants me to make a Facebook to post my classes online but I really don't want to, I might ask my coworker if I can use hers to post things.
@eggsavior couldn't you just make a page for your classes alone and not a personal page? We have lots of community class pages here that are not personal, then can just post what you need when you need and leave it be.
I've used Twitter for many years. It is very much the go to place for news and views and it is great for social interaction during live events e.g. discussions during football matches or TV programmes. I also use it to keep up to date with news and events in my profession and with fellow professionals.
I have an account on Facebook but don't use it very often. My wife shares pictures of us and the kids which my family then get to see, but I'm not interested in what people had for breakfast or some grievance they have with the world!
I have a twitter account. I rarely, if ever, use it. My life would recognise absolutely not one iota of difference if I were to erase it, so actually, I think I might actually do that. If I could be bothered.
I de-activated my Fb account, but opened a new one which I utilise entirely and exclusively to keep abreast of my company's news, and more specifically, stuff going on in the branch I work in.
Some colleagues have sent me 'friend' requests. I have politely turned them down, telling them, "I'm already your friend. I love you to bits. I don't need a connection on Fb, I already have one with you IRL." There is nothing at all on my newsfeed but material regarding work and working practice.
I have email. Everyone has email. And I have opened different email accounts for different purposes.
I have one purely for registration to this forum, and communication with would-be members, or current ones.
I have one purely for all my household bills and expenses, and online purchases.
I have a personal one for friends and family.
I have one for my dog behaviourist 'business'.
I have one for my knitting' hobby, pastime, and communication with 'clients'.
I'm a tidiness freak, what can I tell you?
But social media, such as whatsapp, twitter, craiglist, snapchat ...?
Keep it, you're very welcome to it.
It is designed to be addictive. It is clickbait. It feeds the commercial database engines, that allow for targetting advertising to effectively de clutter your earnings. Just so you know.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/managing-your-social-network-addiction.html
Agree with @federica use email.
Enclosed is a pic of a real butterfly mind taken today, that I will be passing on via email to family and friends with other more personal pics. We saw many people today in beautiful weather glued to their mobile addiction machines - phones.
Mindless.
I have a FB which is the bane of my existence. I use it mainly to keep in touch with family overseas and spam my "friends" with my blog posts. As a rule, I only have people I know IRL on there, with 3 exceptions. I have a Twitter account which I rarely post on but keep abreast of news, Buddhist things and my daughter's school announcements. I would dearly love it if email were once again the main form of online communication, but social media has trained people to be so lazy that a few likes and broadcast posts have replaced any interaction that requires you to pick up a phone or make an effort these days
I hope one day to go off the grid completely in protest. No one would miss me I'm willing to bet.
_ /\ _
I think the less time spent on "social media" the better, they are addictive, distracting and ultimately unsocial. And stick your "I"Phone in a bucket of water while your at it.
@dhammachick It is an interesting thing to do. I cannot go entirely offline, as all of my kids' school and activity news is done via email. But I have taken a month or more off social media. It's funny how all the people who send "I will miss you!!" messages on FB don't even think about you after you leave. 3 people out of 150 on my friend's list (which is almost entirely family and friends I know in person with maybe 5 exceptions of online friends I have known since before social media) contacted me otherwise via phone or email. No one else. It's funny how important we feel on social media, yet we really aren't even a blip on the radar of even the people we think of as friends. Which of course is what social media does-makes us feel important. It's immensely freeing to not be on FB especially. It always makes me ask why i go back, but indeed my family is spread far and wide and I simply do not have time to call or email all of them but it is nice to keep in touch, which we didn't do at all prior to FB. Filtering has helped immensely, so most of my feed is now the things i want to see (pictures of my friend's kids, etc) instead of their political rantings and other such news sharings. I don't want my news from FB so I filter it out.
I do think cell phones have value. When I was a kid and we got home from a game, I often waited 20-30 minutes outside, in the snow and cold, for my mom to pick me up. Because I couldn't call until we got to the school and then we were locked out. I was always the last one, standing by myself at 11pm in -30 weather. It sucked. I'm glad my kids can let me know what their ETA is so I can be ready to pick them up on time. I'm glad that having a diabetic kid, I can leave the house and the nurse can still reach me. I went on a day long winter hike for many miles the other day. Something I couldn't do without a cell because my son calls twice a day so i can tell him what to do with his blood sugar reading. When he was in the hospital with his initial diagnosis, I could post an update on FB and everyone would know. I didn't have to call 20 people and ask them to call 20 people. It let me spend more time with our son than time on the phone updating everyone. Sometimes, it comes in handy.
I'm glad when planning a family thing, I can create an event on FB or group email people instead of sending 100 hand written invites or letters and spending the money on postage. Hand written stuff still definitely has a place. I actually make a point to hand-write thank you notes to random people (servers at restaurants and so on) and wax stamp them lol. I write letters to friends and family. I think that connection is important and real mail is so rare these days! But out of time saving and convenience, I think a balance can be struck as well.
Does dropping it in the toilet count? Cause I've done that before
Tell me about it!!!!!! I went off the grid for three weeks and experienced exactly that
That really cemented home the fact that people really are full of it most of the time.
Congrats on not having a fb account. I deleted mine 2 maybe 3 years ago and have never looked back. I felt liberated like I had been broken from a spell when I got rid of it. We don't need to be constantly seeing little windows of what others WANT you to see about there lives. It's all just "ooh look at me, approve of what I'm doing" attention seeking. I do still have instagram which isn't as bad in my opinion as Facebook but even looking at that I just see people constantly putting there ego's out there for us to judge. Its just a way for us all to participate in this tacit game of who can make there lives look better. Mind you it is definitely possible to go on and not fall under this spell but I personally think no good comes of it.
I use Facebook to keep up with close family and friends, I don't have old school friends or random "friends". And then I do like to use it for my news, I can like certain sites that I want to see, I have a selection of relatively reliable news sources (Politico, NPR, the Economist), fact check sites (Snopes, Politifact) and a spattering of feeds from across the spectrum like FOX and Slate and then some science news.
I have a Twitter account and tried to use it but found Facebook worked well enough. Plus Twitter has a bad rep for enabling trolls and moral outrage mobs.
I use Facebook to keep my friends overseas updated with my life.
I also use Twitter and Instagram.
And the IT social corpus.
But try to spend as little time on all as possible.
I have piles of books to read...