Comment by dpeck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpeck | Hacker News Reader

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Similar to sibling comment, but from a slightly older perspective as I approach 40.

It seems that people in my circles just don’t use anything any more, at least that I can see. Most who aren’t really techy or political have abandoned or never adopted Twitter. Facebook gets a few photos of first days of school and vacation. Instagram gets the same but more of it, and occasional food pics.

But it seems that most actual communications isn’t public anymore. It’s all silo’d off into various instant message groups, mostly just over text message. Perhaps it’s just aging out, and not sharing as much or people feeling like their life experiences aren’t worth sharing to broader audiences. Whatever the cause, my Internet experience used to be so much about connecting and communicating with people (almost all of which I knew in person), and these days it’s just a much quieter place.

Though I’ll admit that could just be middle age bias. A lot of priorities change for a lot of people and your 30s can be a slog with the combination of young kids and aging parents.

I know my grandparents used to send a Christmas letter to all their friends and family updating everyone on their life for the previous year, births and deaths, victories and defeats, interesting travels, etc. I’d love to see similar things from the people who I still very much care about even if I don’t get to see them in person much these days.

> Whatever the cause, my Internet experience used to be so much about connecting and communicating with people

Maybe as we get older, we realize that whatever it was we were doing on social media, it wasn't actually connecting with people. Whatever these companies' mission statements say about "building community" and "bringing the world closer together" and "connecting people," it's not actually what their products are doing, and people are finally wising up and realizing this.

I haven't been on social media for probably a decade. I'm no less "connected" to my family or community or events than someone who is on it. It's not really doing what they claim it's doing.

Maybe as we get older, we realize that whatever it was we were doing on social media, it wasn't actually connecting with people.

Before social media you’d sign up to forums and talk to people with similar interests. The smaller communities and purposeful writing was much better. Now it’s just a cesspool of ads and spammers. These platforms are still useful if you highly limit your usage.

I find the best way to use facebook is to join the useful community groups but otherwise do nothing of consequence. Maybe you post a holiday shot of a landscape so your friends in other countries know you’re alive. Otherwise simply don’t engage and sandbox Facebook.

Twitter is fine if you use it more like a news feed. Follow John Carmack or other people with interesting things to say. Again, don’t engage with the platform. It best when smart people send out ideas.

I guess the next space to watch out for is teleconferencing. How long can they provide a free service for personal use?

While there's certainly some truth to what you say, I think it's also very true that social media platforms used to be much more about connecting people. That's how they got their start.

Then they began to be corrupted by the insatiable search for ever-growing revenue.

This is my experience as well, with the difference that almost all my friends are techie. Most have eschewed social media from the start, for the same reason why some airline mechanics don't fly - they know too much about what can go wrong.

We use Signal and text messaging almost exclusively.

Yes, I saw growing older (33 here) that everyone is stopping these because we dont have time :D

As for your grandparents things, dont worry, when you ll worry abt being irrelevant, you'll send the postcards too :)

I wouldn't call instant messaging "social media". I see a fundamental differences between the 1:1 (or 1:n where n isn't that high) bidirectional communications and the 1:world fundamentally one-way principle of Twitter and the likes. Yes I know it happens you get replies but I'd say that's less expected (and less happening). So while you use the one for exchanging infos, you use the other for... advertising? And the latter is less important.

yeh most of my friends or at least people i am interested in following don't post much compared to several years ago. those who do are usually techies or people in sales trying to push their agendas

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