Early last year I unplugged from all social media sites, and for me personally it has been a very healthy choice. I'm still pretty easily able to read anything I want to read on Twitter without having an account or installing the app. There is no worthwhile content on Facebook or LinkedIn, so eliminating those was pure gain. I never had an account with Instagram, Pinterest, or others.
I've occasionally applied for jobs either directly with social media companies or with companies that make products or services that augment social media experiences, and they often ask why I would be interested in working for them if I am not myself a consumer of social media sites.
I try to explain that even if I don't personally get much value out of it, I can still appreciate that other do (or at least believe they do) and at the end of the day I'm interested in engineering problems that help customers.
Sometimes these places don't want to talk further with me because they seem to believe it's just not possible to empathize with a social media user or customer unless you yourself are one. Some other places don't seem to care about that at all.
I do worry that as the ubiquity of Facebook rises, people will try to unfairly accuse non-Facebook people of "having something to hide." I always want an individual's ability to choose to not interact to be highly socially respected and not come with downsides that are in the slightest bit meaningful in terms of that person's life goals, and I fear that a social media culture damages that.
I talk to my much younger sister about it sometimes. She is just starting to reach an age where our parents will consider letting her have an account. She's very precocious and asks me all the time why I don't have an account. But when I explain my reasons (e.g. I don't like ads, I don't like sharing data about my personal connections, I don't want to feel like the service is adaptively responding in some ways to optimize itself against my behaviors) she doesn't understand. To her, Facebook is life. Without Facebook, in her social circles even in middle school, you're a nobody and can't possibly have functional circles of friends. You just miss out on all the inside jokes, stories, photos, etc., that everyone will be talking about at school.
I feel bad for her. I'm at a point in my life where I couldn't give less of a fuck about that kind of stuff, and most of the close friends I have are the same and would never exclude me just because I didn't see their vacation photos on Facebook.
But for her, it's very much like she does not have an actual choice. Functional social experiences are necessary for healthy development, and it's getting to a point where kids can't have functional social experiences without Facebook.
This frightens me and makes me want to use my choice to not have an account as a tiny, laughably insignificant market signal that maybe we should stop, and maybe we don't actually get the value out of this concept that we think we do.
I've occasionally applied for jobs either directly with social media companies or with companies that make products or services that augment social media experiences, and they often ask why I would be interested in working for them if I am not myself a consumer of social media sites.
I try to explain that even if I don't personally get much value out of it, I can still appreciate that other do (or at least believe they do) and at the end of the day I'm interested in engineering problems that help customers.
Sometimes these places don't want to talk further with me because they seem to believe it's just not possible to empathize with a social media user or customer unless you yourself are one. Some other places don't seem to care about that at all.
I do worry that as the ubiquity of Facebook rises, people will try to unfairly accuse non-Facebook people of "having something to hide." I always want an individual's ability to choose to not interact to be highly socially respected and not come with downsides that are in the slightest bit meaningful in terms of that person's life goals, and I fear that a social media culture damages that.
I talk to my much younger sister about it sometimes. She is just starting to reach an age where our parents will consider letting her have an account. She's very precocious and asks me all the time why I don't have an account. But when I explain my reasons (e.g. I don't like ads, I don't like sharing data about my personal connections, I don't want to feel like the service is adaptively responding in some ways to optimize itself against my behaviors) she doesn't understand. To her, Facebook is life. Without Facebook, in her social circles even in middle school, you're a nobody and can't possibly have functional circles of friends. You just miss out on all the inside jokes, stories, photos, etc., that everyone will be talking about at school.
I feel bad for her. I'm at a point in my life where I couldn't give less of a fuck about that kind of stuff, and most of the close friends I have are the same and would never exclude me just because I didn't see their vacation photos on Facebook.
But for her, it's very much like she does not have an actual choice. Functional social experiences are necessary for healthy development, and it's getting to a point where kids can't have functional social experiences without Facebook.
This frightens me and makes me want to use my choice to not have an account as a tiny, laughably insignificant market signal that maybe we should stop, and maybe we don't actually get the value out of this concept that we think we do.