My wish for 2024: less social media

This is a new year. Last year has certainly been interesting, and I intend to make this one interesting too. I was asked a few times by friends and family if I had any new year resolutions, and I wanted to be a bit less generic than "go to the gym regularly" or "survive the year".

So, my new year resolution is to disconnect from social media, and reconnect with people.

I want to invest more time into chatting, and less time into scrolling.

I want less acquaintances and more friends.

The plan

No two ways about it, I've got to take drastic action. Here is a list of what I'm going to do to minimize my social media usage, or justify it:

1. X/Twitter

I'm going to keep it for now. But I'm going to reduce it to strictly professional followings, and redirect my friends to other places.

2. Bluesky

The Fediverse is exciting for a few reasons, but I'm not sure it's for me anymore. Bluesky's app is a pale copy of Twitter (still no timeline sync?) and unless a 3rd party app (like one made by Tapbots) comes along, I'm not sure I'll ever want to use it regularly.

3. Mastodon

I like what I'm reading on Mastodon, but like Bluesky it doesn't bring much to my life. I'm not much on here anyway, so I don't plan on changing that.

4. Instagram

Unfollow all brands and companies. If there was a way to see a "you have nothing else to see" screen instead of recommended posts and reels in my feed, I'd pay for it. I also have a secondary account for painting and since this is an activity I want to invest more time in, I'll keep it for now as this is where I get the most inspiration from.

5. Threads

I gave it a short chance, but I've deleted my account yesterday. It's full of hate speech, transphobia, and other awful things. I don't want to be associated with it.

6. Facebook

I've deactivated my account! I've made a backup of my data (~16GB) and I can't wait to go through it and cringe. I couldn't delete my account because I sadly still use Messenger - if you do, let's chat somewhere else please - but deactivating it lets you keep using Messenger.

7. LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become a bit more important for me this year as I've gone freelance and require it to keep a tab on potential projects and clients. I'm going to clean up my followings and connections though: I don't want to see recruiters, influencers, growth people, or people I don't know in my feed, so I'll remove as much as I can. The same goes for people I've met once during my masters at an afterwork and with whom I have nothing in common.

8. Reddit

I'm contemplating deleting my account. I'm already quite inactive as it is: I never post, never comment, I just lurk. I'm quite happy with the subreddits I follow, it's the closest thing that still exist from the forums era. The aggressive steps taken against 3rd party apps make me sad though, I wish I could just hide from recommendations, crypto ads and porn bait.

9. BeReal

Ah, BeReal could be SO good. If the team behind it became a bit serious about the features they're adding and their bugfixing. I don't post much, but I don't get any FOMO from it and when I do post I have short and nice interactions with my friends. I'm going to keep it for now.

10. This website

I obviously recently remade my website and now it has a nice simple blog in it. I want to use it more often to post my thoughts, rather than posting somewhere else. I want to make it also easier to do things like micro-blogging or sharing my bookmarks, so I'll work on that. Of course it's not really social media but it's part of my online presence and I want to make it more prominent than the platforms that own my data.

Conclusion

In general I'm super excited to clean up those accounts and delete apps from my phone. I'm also excited to see how I'll be able to reconnect with people - if you're reading this and want to reconnect, hi 👋 don't hesitate to reach out through one of my active accounts, and we can explore together how to be reclaim our time together.

Happy new year everyone! 🎇