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I'm a teen and never used them. I don't use social media apart from Discord and Reddit. I have no friends either, so no need for social media haha. All I know about snapchat is that it has those face filters, the icon is a ghost, and everyone puts emojis in their names lmao. Yep, you see the extent of my knowledge now. So is it normal that this is all I know
Social media is a great way to learn to feel shitty about yourself and your crap life.
What you see on social media are carefully selected snapshots of the lives of people. Those often bear little resemblance to the reality of their lives, so it's easy to come to the conclusion that everyone else is having a great time, and it's just your life that's shit.
I think social media is a good way of staying connected to people you know in the real world and care about, but it's a communication tool that should be used with care. You need to always be aware that the platform owners set things up to draw people in ever deeper because they profit from that, but that's not in your best interests.
Well said! I've never been on anything except facebook, which my daughter and grandkids talked me into and I stopped using it late last year when the bushfires were raging and I was triggered every time the same clips of infernos and devastation came up. I was thinking of using it again when the virus hit and haven't bothered because I can't be bothered scrolling through stupid theories about the cause and even stupider ideas of how to prevent and/or treat it.
My area is back in full lockdown again from last night after a few weeks of relaxed restrictions and I'm staying away from facebook and all commercial media. I do get reliable information from non commercial radio & TV and a couple of good newspapers and that's quite enough for me.
I did find it interesting that apart from family, only one of my facebook "friends" bothered to contact me to see if I was OK (I'm old and have serious pre-existing conditions): so much for facebook friends!
Yeah, Facebook-only "friends" aren't friends in any real sense. Zuckerberg could have called them "contacts" or "links" or he could have come up with some snazzy neologism, but "friends" sounds so much nicer. Facebook and its like pretend that they're all about improving people's lives by connecting the world, but the truth is that it's all about fine-tuned exploitation of human needs and desires in the pursuit of eyes on pages and advertising money.
I'm convinced that social media is one of the core evils of our time. It rewards fanatics and whoever shouts the loudest and most persistently, it plays on the innate human fascination with the novel and extreme and it satisfies our need for social interaction, but it's actually false and shallow. Even worse - since it has an impact beyond the sterile, detached world of social media itself - it gives people the illusion that they've acquired knowledge without expending any effort, when all they've actually done is uncritically accepted whatever nonsense is believed by the majority of the people in whichever little bubble they're inhabiting. Since an awful lot of people have very poor thinking skills and little or no understanding of things like science, history and government, the result is a lot of ignorant people who are certain they're well-informed.
There have always been whacky little cults whose members believed things that had no relation to reality, but they've always been on the fringe and usually didn't have any impact on society as a whole. Social media means that these days, we're surrounded by people who've signed up to irrational belief-systems, their interactions within their bubble confirm and reinforce their beliefs and they're constantly seeking to recruit new members.
Excellent analysis Boojum!
Facebook in particular provides an outlet for people wanting to express themselves in black and white terms (try and introduce shades of grey into facebook debates and you'll soon find yourself attacked by both sides!) and also in hysterical melodramatic terms: I feel very strongly that this has to spill over into the general community.
I'm happy to have broken the habit: even bushfires and a pandemic have had one small good effect for me!
I don't use it either. I am on several social media sites; but, highly control what information is there about me. I'd certainly never use anything that identified my location to people.
Yes it's normal, I use it rarely these days but I check on it once in a while.
I'm 23; all my friends used to use and many still do use that kind of stuff. I never used it either. It seems like a waste of life.
pretty normal - if you have no reason to use it, then why would you ?
I'm only on FB so that some people can still get in touch with me, who use it for some reason. Same for most other messaging Apps.
I only use snatchat so I can send my bf dirty pictures. He’s really my only friend. I haven’t had Facebook for the past 8 years. And I deleted my instagram a few months ago. Fuck all that shit.
I hate Snapchat.I think its messy with all the disappearing messages and photos and I dislike the fact that people can see where you are on a map all the time, even though you can turn that off. I have it but I don't use it, i've tried to a couple of times as some people prefer it but nah. And I never understood the point of sending random snapshots to each other. You can send each other photos in most other chats like Messenger anyway when it's necessary to share a photo.
Yeah it's fine. Just make sure you're on the major networks like FB. These days if you aren't on there people will think you have things to hide.