I started this site to reduce the amount of time I spend on social media, so it seemed appropriate to make the first post about just that. I’m not giving it up entirely, given the time of year it would be ripe fodder for a New Year’s resolution, but I am guilty of doomscrolling and want to cut down. Best way to do that I figured was to find another outlet.
It used to be a relatively harmless way to pass the time and let the world know what was going on. I started in 2007/2008 with Facebook and Twitter and have since subtracted Twitter (when it became a toxic nightmare) and added Instagram (2015ish), Threads, Bluesky and Tiktok (all more recently). Most have been somewhat dominated by politics in one strain or another and while I’m reasonably political (which I’ll probably address at some point) sometimes you want to escape the horrors (a very privileged attitude, I know).
Facebook especially is prone to comments descending into a battle between fuckwits of various natures, and yes I know, you shouldn’t read the comments but sometimes you can’t help yourself and I feel myself getting sucked in, like standing on the edge of a whirlpool. Threads is much the same, I don’t really use it much and it’s the one I could probably lose entirely if it came to it. Also I’ve grown to have a particular aversion to the laugh reaction on pieces that just aren’t funny (hur hur, asylum seeker drowns in the Channel, hur hur, trans people want to just live their lives, hur hur). Also if Sadiq Khan wants a new career after being mayor he should take up comedy because thousands of people (or Russian bots) apparently find him hilarious.
I think I signed up for Bluesky not long after it started then, like a lot of these things, took to it more when Twitter became X and took a lurch to the dark side. It’s fun, something Twitter hadn’t been for some time, if I had to choose three it would be this, Instagram (mainly posting cat photos, it’s not one that I want to sit down and scroll through for any length of time) and Tiktok.
Tiktok is probably the surprising one for someone of my advanced years, it was my wife who got me into it, she’d send me Tiktoks via Messenger and I’d not get round to watching them so I set up my own account so that they were all together and now I scroll through myself and send some back. The algorithm has got it right generally, my feed is probably 90% cats or food. Again, it’s fun, something that a lot of social media isn’t. The constant advertising can be irritating, but it’s easy to swipe up and never see it again.
My intention is to still use them but limit the time spent (there’s ways to do this on the phone) so that I can still post but don’t get sucked in. Would I miss it if I couldn’t use it? Probably, I still occasionally miss Twitter but 99% of the time don’t even think about it.