+ thoughts on socmed
May. 26th, 2022 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
letterstonowhereI've been doing some reading ever since I learned about the general concept of "digital mindfulness", and I think it's really made me rethink my relationship to the internet and social media. The ultimate goal is to have your phone and social media be a TOOL to help you out, rather than an entity that takes over your life. I often fall victim to the endless feedback loop of refreshing Twitter, scrolling, getting bored because surprise! no one has posted since the last time you refreshed 5 seconds ago, and switching to another social media app. Rinse, wash, repeat. I've always been aware of this, honestly. Because of that, I always thought that the best possible scenario would be to just banish social media entirely. Now though, I'm putting more thought into that.
Social media isn't entirely bad. Some of my friends like messaging through apps other than iMessage. I am very invested in the musicians I love, and Twitter is by far the most efficient way to stay updated. Obviously, there are plenty of cons, which is why I'm so obsessed with the concept of the RSS feed like I mentioned before. After messing around a LOT, I've finally (I hope) settled down on NetNewsWire—it's entirely free and syncs devices. There, I can check specific twitter accounts, subreddits, and Substack newsletters all in one place, without the ability to get sucked into the endless scrolling feedback loop. I also kept my social media apps on my phone, but put them on their own page and hid that page, so I can only really check it if I take the extra time to scroll to the App Library, and most of the time I only even go on them because I see their icons on the home screen taunting me. Instead of saying goodbye to social media forever, I've gathered all of the most important parts and consolidated them, which in turn makes it more beneficial than harmful.
I think this has already benefited me just within these couple days. I'm less inclined to go on my phone. I have, however, decided to keep YouTube intact as of right now. I'm not someone who really falls into a bingewatching trap with stuff like YouTube and Netflix, so I guess I'll see what happens. I recently switched to only watching YouTube on my laptop anyway because I FINALLY decided to get an adblocker (I have no idea why I didn't do this forever ago), and the ads on the app bother me an insane amount. Like I mentioned, it's harder to be glued to my laptop simply because it lacks the portability my phone has, so I think keeping YouTube will be okay.
Here are some of the articles/videos on this topic I've been consuming lately:
https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/how-i-set-up-my-social-media-diet-via-rss-4b1e936be09d
https://omoulo.com/digitalwellbeing.html#blogs
Social media isn't entirely bad. Some of my friends like messaging through apps other than iMessage. I am very invested in the musicians I love, and Twitter is by far the most efficient way to stay updated. Obviously, there are plenty of cons, which is why I'm so obsessed with the concept of the RSS feed like I mentioned before. After messing around a LOT, I've finally (I hope) settled down on NetNewsWire—it's entirely free and syncs devices. There, I can check specific twitter accounts, subreddits, and Substack newsletters all in one place, without the ability to get sucked into the endless scrolling feedback loop. I also kept my social media apps on my phone, but put them on their own page and hid that page, so I can only really check it if I take the extra time to scroll to the App Library, and most of the time I only even go on them because I see their icons on the home screen taunting me. Instead of saying goodbye to social media forever, I've gathered all of the most important parts and consolidated them, which in turn makes it more beneficial than harmful.
I think this has already benefited me just within these couple days. I'm less inclined to go on my phone. I have, however, decided to keep YouTube intact as of right now. I'm not someone who really falls into a bingewatching trap with stuff like YouTube and Netflix, so I guess I'll see what happens. I recently switched to only watching YouTube on my laptop anyway because I FINALLY decided to get an adblocker (I have no idea why I didn't do this forever ago), and the ads on the app bother me an insane amount. Like I mentioned, it's harder to be glued to my laptop simply because it lacks the portability my phone has, so I think keeping YouTube will be okay.
Here are some of the articles/videos on this topic I've been consuming lately:
https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/how-i-set-up-my-social-media-diet-via-rss-4b1e936be09d
https://omoulo.com/digitalwellbeing.html#blogs
