Facebook + kill news feed add-on from Chrome works perfect for me. Just notifications and without the endless newsfeed.

 

I used to be on that thing 24/7. I would just constantly scroll through the newsfeed for hours on end neglecting my studies. After a while, I would think to myself, "What on earth am I doing with my life?" Haven't been on there in a year and have become far more productive in better areas of my life.

I still use Facebook Messenger though to keep in contact with friends from other states and countries.

I remember reading the chapter, "My life should look better on Facebook" in Dr. Meg Jay's The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter, where it talks about how Facebook gives a sense of FOMO(Fear Of Missing Out). People would scroll through Facebook and wonder, "People's lives are better than mine. Why can't my life be like that?" People in their twenties and teenagers tend to get depressed and isolated. In fact, this upcoming generation is going to be the loneliest one.

I'm not trying to completely bash Facebook. After reading, The Accidental Billionaires, it's a fascinating story about how this unintentional idea spread around to become a global phenomenon. Yes, Zuckerberg got sued by the Winklevoss Twins and his friends but it doesn't negate the fact that Facebook really is unprecedented. They're trying to provide some value by connecting people. Unfortunately there are unforeseen consequences.

 

Facebook used to be cool but now I find it pretty useless now.

Probably why $120B just vanished into ether

 

Facebook is the closest thing we currently have to The Matrix. Everyone plugged in, supposedly for "free" or their benefit, but actually getting surreptitiously monetized.

That thing, along with Instagram etc, does no one any good. It causes massive exacerbation of the power law. Whereas in the old days you could only get local attention, geography setting natural limits (and then broadcasting capital costs), now any one person can get attention from millions of people -- and by extension, those millions of people get none.

There will have to be a reaction against it and the excesses of the internet generally, because it's just becoming toxic. It's damaging people's abilities to form real relationships.

That said, money is money. If you can made a killing with facebook ads, selling something to all those lonely isolated people who just want to spend their cubical money on a bit of desperation-alleviation, go ahead. Business first, charity second. It's not your fault they're plugged in.

 

Social media - A face to face human interaction killer. Fake friends, fomo, keeping up with the joneses etc. Fake news, selfie central, pointless updates (like i really want to know what you ate for breakfast, lunch & dinner today) Who fricking cares.

I could write a wall of text about this. Needless to say i'm not on it and have never been.