We're addicted to social media. How do we get sober?

Social media has become so terrible in the last few years that I've grown to depend on it less without even making an effort to. I deleted my accounts on the worst sites and only visit anonymously, which has trailed off over time. I've joined newer/better sites but haven't let myself get attached to them. If they go away it won't feel like a big loss.

In that respect, the worsening of social media has been a gift. I'm still online but with the attitude of: "Don't ever let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner."

This is what worked for me, started maybe a dozen years ago and completed not long past the time of covid.

First you have to realize that it's bad for your health. If you don't, give up at this point.

Then stop posting. Only send direct messages to friends if it's a social media that allows that. It helps using a social media app that can only send and receive messages. In my case WhatsApp and Telegram. A little bit of Messenger. At this point you realized that you're still alive and you still have all of your friends that you care about and viceversa.

Then stop reading. Only send and receive direct messages. Maybe respond to birthday messages the day after your birthday, eg on your Facebook timeline (if it's still called in that way.) If you want news about the world, check a couple of news sites or google for the news you want to know about.

At this point you only chat with friends that you reciprocally care about, in DM chats or groups. You can uninstall the apps you don't use to message.

You will still receive SM content that they share with you. Open them, maybe in the browser. Most of them open even if you are not logged in.

When you are with your friends you will notice that they spend time doomscrolling. Don't say anything, let them keep doing it. Eventually they might realize it's bad for them too or they won't.

The famous attention economy quote goes - people have limited attention to give anything but unlimited capacity to receive attention. The platforms exploit that diff.

I used to wonder in the early days of social media if better metrics would make a diff. Cuz when the platform says you got 10 views it doesnt say those 10 viewers then go and look up 10 other things. So the attention captured is actually a fraction. The platforms can actually calculate it within their site. And it feels like both the producer and consumer of the content currently see some sort of mistaken measure of what attention anything gets. And behavior is driven by it.

Are comment threads like this 'social media'? Do we need to get sober from reading other fellow people's opinions on information?

Isn't sober an intransitive verb already? Why not "How do we sober?"

Hackernews is the closest thing to 'social media' that I touch. The internet is a tool and shouldn't be used to socialize at all. As with all technologies, the danger is introduced through misuse. The internet is a powerful tool that you shouldn't talk to, same with LLMs, powerful tools to do things but chatting with them or pretending you're actually 'socializing' while doing so is just dumb.

Hackernews is less 'social' (very little interaction) and more of just a time waster and idea gathering path, so I give it a pass.

I’m in AA. Needs to be a SMAA