I don't use social media and my phone is always silent. So, no.

 

Despite my generation mostly using social media, I never saw the appeal of it. I always preferred interacting with people in person. That doesn't mean I'm against being on a social media platform, but don't expect me to use it much. I prefer to keep to myself when I am not around.

 

This is literally the only reason I thought about joining Facebook. Apparently the only way to get certain parts for my truck is to join the Svt Lightning group on Facebook to see if anybody has one. Can't find the parts on ebay, even the place that makes reproduction parts recommended me to join the Facebook group, which I thought was kinda odd.

 

I don't really have social media. I use facebook messenger for work conversations and discord for a few friends. Yet I still feel inundated with its drama because it infests other outlets of my online experience. I also have an instagram where I follow a few artists and post some of my own art, but between the ads and tone-deaf recommendations it keeps forcing on me I keep it to a minimum.

Okay but I actually don't think you do, because the rest of your post seems pretty aligned with what he said. I think when Purple Heart says "people have built a psychological dependency" he isn't just referring to that intrinsic human need for expression and validation, but that people who actively use social media have warped that into something beyond that mere want for validation. He's saying the specific, distorted version of life social media gives us is what people who indulge on it are developing a need for, and they can't separate it from normal socialization. It's how we end up with so many socially maladjusted people who don't function in real life yet don't know they don't.

Not everyone who uses social media is like this, but the people who depend on it certainly are.

Funny you mention that, as I consider most if not all social media a monument to narcissism. It's mostly just people wanting to be told how pretty they are. I see this in how a majority of people have regressed to fawning over "e-celebrities" who are merely physically attractive and nothing else. I feel like somewhere around the later 2000's as a culture we became less, I don't know, tolerable to egotists and shallow people who survive solely on their physical looks and status? We still do the same thing, except instead of Paris Hilton or Jersey Shore it's instagram and tiktok stars dolling themselves up and measuring their worth entirely based on superficial qualities and it's weird to me. People become famous because they can do makeup, or lip-sync to songs. When did we stop looking at ego as a negative trait?

It also seems, I dunno, super unhealthy? And I've witnessed this all first-hand. Not going to be specific so as to not inadvertently call them out, but I closely knew someone who was very into social media and presenting themselves out there to be adored. They were quite emotionally unstable and self-deprecating, and any time I offered earnest personal support and compliments it was refuted. But likes from strangers who literally only know them from their appearance? That they appreciated. I'm not sure if it's chicken or the egg, because I didn't know them prior to their online presence, but this person craved attention and validation from people who didn't personally know them but acted as if they were super humble and self-loathing to the people who did. It was interesting to say the least and I never did figure out why, but I see their exact behaviour and emotional state mirrored elsewhere: desperate to satisfy their narcissism yet denying they have it.

Like I said, obviously not everyone who uses social media is like this, but it's the people who can't separate themselves from it who become this way.

 

social media's more of a boon to society at large than the nihilists would have you believe, but it is still easily made toxic and usually through shit we cause.

i mostly use TFW. i use facebook to occasionally post something about the economy or message people, i use instagram to absolutely waste time, and i use snapchat to keep up with people i actually wanna talk to.

i stopped using facebook as much because i realized the people i wanted to talk to weren't updating as much as all the rich preppy kids from high school whose personality was still being rich and preppy were. it was/is bumming me out to see people my age being literally given houses and getting degrees on their parents dime when lots of people are barely scraping by and are three times the workers most of these people are.

that's not a shit on my generation, just that Oklahoma in general is very... rich/poor divide and there's lots of people who wanted to *act* like they were down for changing the world but then graduated and realized it's easier to keep letting people take care of you instead.

you also can't look at the influencers. granted, they try to shove them down your face all the time, but at this point i've learned if you're below 25 and flexing about your house/car/paid off degree/gajillion followers... well, they usually don't flex how hard they didn't work to get there.

 

Voila.

As for the rest of your post, like you literally just said what I said. People have always had that want for validation, but social media has turned it into an instant gratification. Like you said, used to be you had to work to achieve it, but now it's easier. The easier something is, the more you can do it, the more it becomes all you want to do. Without that difficulty or effort it used to take people have let it take over their lives rather than moderate it in any way. People have built a dependency on social media because it hasn't always been around, and that validation hasn't always been that easy to achieve.

 

Not particularly. I only use Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram (and Youtube if you count that, but I only really use it for watching videos, not interacting with people). I do have kind of a love-hate relationship with it in general... except for Twitter, that's just pure unbridled hatred. The world would quickly become a slightly better place if Twitter just shut down. Social media in general has a tendency to bring out the worst in people, but Twitter is the only one that's uniquely engineered specifically to do that.

 

I have Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends, my list is very small and limited. It is the only such app on my phone and I have just about EVERY notifications for all apps turned off, with messenger and text being pretty much the only ones that are still active as those are for when people actually are communicating to me personally.

Oddly enough I work in the internet front and have managed hundreds of international sites and even lately was in charge of the corp. Twitter account, and yet, I don't care whatsoever about such things.

I see all social media to be tools, and useful to stay in touch with people, and get information of events, situations and such. It can have some entertainment value, but overall, there's already other venues for those.

But everything else is pretty much a cancer, and every time I hear about "influencers" I wish a meteor would crash down on them, and all of their "followers" that are feeding this degeneration of the human race. They prove that people are sheeps, and have a need to feel important to be of "value". The rate of suicide over such things is high and again, proof that overall, it's fairly out of control as people have no identity outside of this "social media"... heck, it seem that I hear about such "influencers" killing themselves on a regular basis.

So overwhelmed? nah, not whatsoever... you control your access to it and life would continue should the internet disappear overnight, especially social media. There is nothing to stop you from closing your accounts, removing the apps, and just live your life.

Whenever someone starts about it's "importance" (as in day to day function), my response is to tell them to go on a deserted island/lost in forest, etc. and survive for a few months, then maybe they'll understand what's really important in life and not some idiot stranger somewhere lost in the world with a stupid opinion over a 1st world problem.

But the simplest thing to do for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the "dinging" of their phone, hold your finger on that notification and disable them.

 

Just so you know... both of you are saying the same thing.

Social media feeds those that "need" for instant-gratification, to feel important, like they matter, etc. Sadly, it's in a bad way as it's an illusion, as the moment they go away, their "followers" will sheep to the next "best thing" and they will be forgotten.

Before the internet, you'd get the "bullies" (and similar behaviors) that would try to be important in their limited environment, those that would do whatever could be done within their capacity to achieve "popularity" or fame.

Sadly, with time, this behavior has been associated with mental illness with good reason. With the internet making it "instant", the polarity of how fast such a person reaches highs and lows is increased exponentially. Hence the high suicide rate...

 

Here's the solution: turn off your notifications (isn't that what everyone does the moment they set up a new phone anyway?) and don't check your socials as often. Easy.

 

Somewhat. I have about ten accounts of varying degrees of importance, including TFW2005, and going through them is time-consuming. And I often forget one or two passwords (even though I write them down!).

 

Read my post again, I did mention what you're saying.... That take away social media and people will still look for a way to get the attention. Trouble is, social media is a "n" factor as it multiplies that need for attention at a worldwide scale, and why I already stated the mental health issues involved.

 

@Dark Skull I am very well aware of a humans need for social acceptance and acknowledgement. We are social creatures and it had always been a part of our nature. I did not make that clear in my post as it was just a quickly written shit on social media as a whole. You are right, but I also never really said anything otherwise.


As for @SPLIT LIP, you were more on point with what that sentence was referring to. The needs to be acknowledged, accepted, and feel a part of a group has always been a part of our nature, but social media gives us the ability to a do on a much larger level, and as we are not perfect animals, tend to have an issue with that sort of thing, and it can spiral out of control.


When I post something, I people to like it because when they do, my brain releasing serotonin and it feels good, but that can seriously devolve into a huge issue which can be an addiction. My post was moreso a shot at the negative impacts social media can cause that we might not see the extremity of in the moment.

 

I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I thought that one of the worst things they could have done to this site was to introduce the "likes" feature several years ago. It added an element of pandering for cheap likes; mindlessly agreeing with people without articulating their thoughts, posting witty gifs, emojis, memes, photos of animals, etc.

It's funny- the whole likes thing reminds me of a Star Trek: TNG episode titled "the Game" where a device brought onboard (as part of a nefarious takeover plot) would release serotonin to the brain as a reward for mentally putting discs into a tube placing the user into an almost orgasmic state leading to eventual addiction. When we get "likes" the brain releasing serotonin is akin to this game, but on a lesser scale.

 

People are just whelmed. The 13 year old just has a poor vocabulary. Whelmed and overwhelmed are synonymous.