Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

AYCOFSM??

great band

in all seriousness though, no I am not, and I should have realized this the first time I told someone on USEnet I wished he was dead when I was 15

I'm a no too. ilx is as close as it gets for me

What’s our working definition of ‘social media’?

I know I have laid myself open to nothing but acronyms and emoticons and links to Chris Cillizza think-pieces.

lol

For me it would be Facebook and ILX, but that would extend to the other popular platforms people use--Twitter, Instagram, etc.

😎

j. is going to single-handedly kill this thread I worked very hard to conceptualize.

Voting something in-between.

was amateurist really popular? i think not

i mean that was his charm

such as it was

I tried to cozy up to him a few times early on but he was having none of it.

Maybe popular is the wrong word. I always felt like he was taken to be very thoughtful, but I couldn't get past the tone. Anyway, I don't want this to be about him--my point was that I sometimes share the thing that drove me up the wall.

I already know I will not join commercialized social media unless under compulsion of force majeure. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no Tumblr, no TikTok, no Next Big Thing Everyone Uses, even if it turns my snoot into unicorns. It's bad enough being shadowed by Amazon & other retailers, and having an Android phone.

Thank you for existing, ILX and ilxors. This is a scene I can happily join without selling myself bit by bit. (see what I did there?)

I dont count ILX as "social media", nor most other forums, even Reddit. SM is more things like FB/Insta/Snapchat/Twitter.

So insofar as Ive always loved fora and blogging (Usenet, mailing lists, blogs/livejournal/ILX), I have always sat somewhere between bored despair and outright revulsion for the rest. I'm too old (SC/Insta), or I just Dont get it (Twitter).

I log on to twitter the most because I can refrain from posting and can be anonymous and it really feels like something I can make my own very easily, also it feels like a social leveler

then instagram where I can look at my friends' posts.

I can't bear to go into my facebook account these days, I’ve been thinking about why that happened, there was nothing particularly egregious about it in my experience, I guess I’m just embarrassed to share my experiences with people I barely know

it’s much better on ilx with people I don’t at all know tbh

I love some of tiktok

I can’t sh0t any of them successfully but I try now and then. I’ve been on a discord kick for a few weeks now, it’s ok I guess.

(xposts) Age is definitely part of it (I'm 58). I think back to arguments in fanzines...You had a month to temper your response. I remember one in particular, having to do, of all things, with Celine Dion (between two other people), and I thought, wow, that's a pretty nasty exchange. It would be a shadow of an echo of a blip today.

i'm basically just wishing happy birthdays on facebook. If I posted a photo more often I'd be more in line with the majority of major social media platform users. OP describing power users/vocal minority i think

i was pretty sure this thread was going to be about the 1975

OK, I guess I'll be the pro-social media guy.

I'm reasonably active on Twitter; I use it to post links to shit I've written, or when I have a new episode of my podcast going up, and then I engage with the people I follow. (I have many more followers than people I follow - basically, I'm on there to have conversations with people I think are interesting, and anyone who follows me is the audience for those conversations, is how I think about it.) I post a lot of jokes, making fun of bands and politicians and stupid news stories and whatnot.

On Instagram, I mostly post pictures of whatever I'm reading or listening to.

On Facebook, I post some of the same shit I post on Twitter, and I comment on a few friends' posts, but that's about it. I'm also part of a FB group which has occasionally yielded professional opportunities.

For about the last decade, I have also been the social media person for my employer or for clients. I actually find "speaking" in a professional (or academic) "voice" on Twitter, FB, Instagram and even LinkedIn to be interesting, and it can be a creative challenge at times.

social media was more or less fine before it was public facing. the combination of 1. real name/identity linked to account and 2. assumption that random people you've never met will (and should be) exposed to your content turned me away from it probably forever

twitter becoming a personal brand machine for people who don't need personal brands + a supposed networking tool for many has ruined a lot of the social world for me. i can't force my brain to adjust to it and if i had it my way i would live on an island where it doesn't exist. jobs requiring people to have a professional twitter presence is obviously very bad. i don't hesitate to say it's a general evil and i don't trust people who claim it's a social good.

facebook is sort of the same. i loved it when it felt like the posts i made were for my friends. then it blew up, suddenly you're adding everyone in your family and people you barely know and even though you aren't expected to open it up to complete strangers, it still becomes a performance where you must create a version of yourself for everyone you know. i stopped posting on it when that shift happened, it lost its intimacy.

uperson you have a much more neutral approach to this than I've been able to manage

I took my birth date off my facebook profile, felt really uncomfortable with the happy birthday posts. it's ridiculous i know but I didn't want to be in the spotlight like that

I think that encapsulates my aversion to facebook

i listed where I actually worked for a year and posted once innocently about a raise I got. somehow, it got back to my boss as someone squealed on me for posting that.

I then changed my profile to say my job was selling drugs

haven't had it happen since

I miss the days (2008) when Twitter was an amazing thing that beamed the thoughts of kristin hersh and kay hanley to my phone

98% of my Facebook "friends" are actually professional connections - other writers, music industry people, musicians, etc. The other 2% are a couple of my relatives, with whom I never engage, and one or two people I went to high school with. Every once in a great while, my brother will comment on something I post. But otherwise, it might as well be a LinkedIn page, with dumb jokes.

I took my birth date off my facebook profile, felt really uncomfortable with the happy birthday posts.

Did the same three or four years ago--uncomfortable, and also, the worst, cognizant of who posted and who didn't. (Probably got that from died-just-as-Facebook-was-invented grandmother; she used to always keep an exact count of how many Christmas cards she got each year.) I continue to post birthday wishes myself with most people I've actually met, with a secret system that indicates how I actually feel about you.

"from my"

the creepy thing about birthdate on FB is I've had friends die and their family members didn't know how to convert their profile into a Tribute page, so casual acquaintances who didn't know they died would write "happy birthday" posts on their wall. I don't mean the "remembering you today, my angel" type posts, but like they actually thought they were saying it to a living person.

it's also creepy to see FB accounts up 10+ years after the person died, and yet...someone my age that I didn't even know died of a heart attack in 2010 (she was a friend of a friend), profile is still there, still not a tribute page, page preserved in amber from 10 years ago.

Twitter is basically my newspaper, I'm on it a lot to know what's going on and be entertained, but I have no drive to cultivate my own online personality or brand.

I understand everyone's ambivalence about social media but I also wonder whether "I don't even have a Facebook account" might become the new "I don't even own a TV."

Personally I think some of it is good dumb fun. Plus a lot of stuff you can safely ignore and scroll past.
And it is all, ultimately, a voluntary leisure activity. It's only in your head to the extent you allow it to be.

I understand everyone's ambivalence about social media but I also wonder whether "I don't even have a Facebook account" might become the new "I don't even own a TV."

I think it already has. See also "i have an account but i don't even use it"

kristin hersh still beams thoughts at me!

i still have a facebook profile because i need it for work, but have stripped it of everything but my name. (xp lol) should probably change my photo now that neil peart has died

started using twitter because of work and have become pretty attached, but if i missed something, it's gone; i'm not a completist. the politics/trump stuff can become draining, but that's my fault for not better pruning my follows/filters

i'm on no others, which, i'm told, is where the real shit happens now. it's fine; i'm pretty old

85% of my relationships started one way or another on FB, usually because I'd start a convo online and then wouldn't feel so awkward talking to the person in public.

xp -- true! if only it was just that (these were the days when tweets were sent as SMS messages to your phone)

(at least in my circles, a lot of people have migrated to Discord, which feels kind of like a happy public vs. private medium)

jill hennessy liked one of my tweets so can't nobody tell me nothin about social media, forever

Yah the kids in my house are all on discord. It seems to be akin to a cross between a forum and a sort of IRC?

don't like the name discord, it sounds alt-right to me

the highlight of my Twitter career was zinging Prodigy of Mobb Deep and having him laugh at it

RIP

we've probably all been retweeted by Lil B at some point?

he linked back to the ILX thread ten years ago!

also Ripper Owens was upset that I dismissively mentioned his blip of a career in Judas Priest in less than illustrious terms

but like Daniel (?), I read news sites online (Guardian, CBC, Al-Jazeera, etc.) as well as let places like ilx and bsky point me towards articles in a very large number of outlets like magazines or regional newspapers I wouldn't normally read

lol sorry for assuming anything there, Daniel

I get it from both.

On social media...I mean it's just people and journalists providing commentary and get angsty over events which means you get some nuance within conflicting views. You get a lot of random pieces.

And obviously you get many viewpoints on a thing that you just don't read about in the news. Some stupid, a lot not. From people who are directly affected. Xps

That makes sense for a more live situation tho it doesn't seem like the bread and butter news type stuff, like reports of events that have already happened.

I guess I'm curious how anyone, including people on social media, can eliminate all primary news sources rather than read them and challenge stuff or go and find other sources to corroborate or disprove.

xpost rob that is p much my method also.

Sorry loads of xposts

boring pedant note: YouTube is generally classified as social media IME. it's all user-generated content (even if the user is, say, the BBC) and there are comments and followers. I get why it's not like a social networking site, but it fits the standard definition

I guess I'm curious how anyone, including people on social media, can eliminate all primary news sources rather than read them and challenge stuff or go and find other sources to corroborate or disprove.

I also find this baffling personally, but have also seen enough surveys over the years to be forced to acknowledge that it is the case for many people.

You said something about the people who put policy into practice making something good out of something bad. I wish I thought that would happen! I can see how maybe what little I know of your background could give you the insight into what can happen but at a minimum I don't trust US states or feds with that decision.

Wait though let me be clear. I believe that parents know that social media is bad for kids and that they're right. Social media, the way it's currently configured and the incentives of it, IS BAD FOR PEOPLE. I agree with you it doesn't only harm children. But there absolutely won't be any useful changes to that bc the tech and media oligarchs and trillionaires control every platform and want it that way. So what's left isn't really...meaningful. They won't allow it to be. Moreover, there's a lot of evidence that content moderation (to the extent that it's done at all, AND under the condition that it's a form of violence done to the moderators) disproportionately silences minority voices (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/double-standards-social-media-content-moderation)

People with 16yo kids, just to take one example, are 35-45 years old, roughly, and lived through a very different kind of social media landscape than their children are doing. I think they know that, and they also regret letting their kids be online, have screentime, get phones, all of the things. But schools have bought in to every student needing a computer and educational content being online instead of in books and every parent having to use 17 online platforms to communicate with schools and educational infrastructure, so it's too late to take that back. (Which should probably also be done, seeing the latest research about how the motor action of typing a key doesn't inscribe information onto the brain like handwriting does--even if that turns out to be more complicated than it seems so far, there's probably a there there.)

I understand why parents want to do SOMETHING and that a lot of avenues to addressing their fears & misgivings have already been closed off. But to say, I would rather media platforms police content or police users, with the cascade of intentional surveillance and criminalization and marginalization that is aready stemming from that and will get much worse, rather than address that adults in a kid's life are making or permitting or simply not addressing racist and sexist and homophobic statements and assumptions and then are SHOCKED when kids are susceptible to being radicalized around violent masculinity and white supremacy...this just enables a lie that harms everyone and intentionally does not actually protect kids.

Not to mention we're watching a lot of our PARENTS believe every AI video and crackpot health grifter on Facebook. I just unsubscribed my mother from like 12 mailing lists that she doesn't even know how she got on, and she keeps sending me AI generated TTs. If people 60 and up are in that poll, they likely do not understand quite a lot about any of it. I'm not being blindly dismissive of the voting populace--I have evidence lol. And I lived through the moral panic around back-masking and Satanism in popular music from inside of a high-control religious community. The playbook is much the same.

Aren't the people on the socials reacting to or taking news from the mainstream news sources, besides in live situations as discussed?

xpost

Booming post io

Not to mention we're watching a lot of our PARENTS believe every AI video and crackpot health grifter on Facebook.

Yeah I've had to have some convos w/ my mum about how to decide what's legit online. Her standards - writing style, vocabulary - were probably fine in the old media landscape but have lead her to buy into some pretty concerning woo-woo stuff. And again, very difficult to tackle that w/o coming across as condescending!

Normal people don't have time to figure out how to take a news article or look for 5 corroborating or disproving sources. They read one thing by a trusted messenger and they believe it, is my experience.

I tried to explain the SpaceX going public thing and the NASDAQ rule rewriting that will force index funds to invest in SpX and Anthropic stock and leave every retirement fund holding the bag when those bubbles burst, however that happens, and she said disbelieving, "Aren't there laws against letting them ruin people's retirement savings?" and I was just like, a lot of people do not understand anything. I mean she's not the sharpest spoon in the drawer at her age, she has a lot of other concerns in her life and people should be able to do that and not have to be ravenously consuming and filtering news all the time imo, but...that's kind of the point.

I'm just so fascinated by people who engage with social media videos and audio formats. When I'm on my phone it's generally because I'm either on a bus/train/etc or I'm watching something that doesn't require a lot of attention. But I'm still listening to music in the background through my headphones or hearing the narrative of whatever TV show is on in the room. I hate when I'm listening to an album and something autoplays and interrupts it, and it's so alien to me that people would rather listen to someone talking than read at their own pace. Especially because every video on Instagram seems to be made by someone determined to win a medal for Most Annoying Voice And Presence.

i don't have a strong feelings about social media bans for children/teens, or a strong prior about how it'll go. i see it as an interesting social experiment and i'm curious to follow it as it unfolds

will kids switch to using the internet in some other way? if so, how?

how broadly or narrowly will "social media" be defined?

a lot of social media is no longer "social" the way og facebook/instagram were social; it's a stream of algorithmic curated short videos made by people you've never met. this seems especially true for younger generations, some of whom never experienced it as a "social" technology

if a british tech start-up were to create a new platform that isn't classified as social media (no friending, following, liking, comments) but has lots of addictive videos, and then all the under-16s get hooked on it, that kind of defeats the point

they banned news from social media in canada in june 2023. haven't read any studies of its effects but... seems like it's kind of been fine?

My mom is trying to get more informed, she realizes that she got to a big age without sort of...growing up and taking responsiblity for her own information sphere, but again per Daniel_Rf's obervation, it used to be good enough and now just isn't. She texted me "Is the New York Times a realiable news source?" and I had to write back "Yes I guess pretty much except on X topic, Y topic, and Z topic, at which they're pretty bad. But you might as well go with them as any if you're only going to read one thing and it shouldn't be that lady from your HOA on Facebook."

I don't think it's some arduous task to read and filter news, I think a lot more people do this than are given credit for it. The assumption that you or I do it and others can't is problematic for progress. Not least since some of the most overworked and underprivileged people are very aware of what's going on. You can read a news source and get to that place, like some news is not a lot more than 'this event happened'.

I personally think that is less likely or harder when you listen to or watch news, but maybe that's just me.

Your earlier post, IO, gives me a sense you see this as a wider problem than just the regs for kids. I don't disagree. But sometimes these things given how vast they are need to be dealt with in stages. I don't know what actual law will be proposed for this or whether any will become law, in the UK. And I am not sure one vast overarching policy for all of this is the way to go, precisely because of how difficult that is to get across the line. It may be just the beginning of a positive conversation, as it has been here tbh.

As I said before though, I think radicalisation is only one part of it. There are smaller more common issues also.

This is prob worth posting here, haven't read it yet but flicked through it and it begins with some surveys and stuff that tie into some of the stuff discussed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-the-online-world-a-national-consultation

Again, I assume the ability to filter through whatever government bumf it begins with since it's got a lot of input from kids/parents.

I don't think it's some arduous task to read and filter news, I think a lot more people do this than are given credit for it.

We're in the realm of the anecdotal here again, but I am entirely convinced that not only do most people I know not do this, most of the people I studied journalism with do not do this.

(the filter part that is: people will read their sources and assume they're legit, the impulse of going to several sources every time you read a new piece of news is not generalised imo)

Probably like a lot of people here, I serve as kind of filter for friends and family. Because I pay a lot of attention to the news out of professional as well as personal interest, people will ask me about things or we'll trade headlines, etc. I think lots of people serve those intermediary roles, what the consultant class calls "thought leaders," which can obviously be good or bad depending on the person leading the thoughts.

Right, I don't spend much time on primary news sources, but I follow a lot of journalists and commentators on social media who I find trustworthy, and that's pretty much how I get the news throughout the day.

xp That's the old two-step flow model of communication (1948). It is true that consultants like it a lot though

On the one hand, quality alternative news sources were harder to come by decades ago and they just couldn't keep up.

Now the issue is there's too many of them and they outscoop the majors, accurate or not.

Problem is so many bad ones gain a foothold because it's hard to always tell, it's definitely work to curate and research reliable go-to resources nowadays and even then you fall for a crank now and then.

i would hope that people who rely on social media for news are fully aware of what that means about the nature of news they're taking in (i.e. tailored to push their buttons in one way or another)

I think what a lot of people are saying is that regular journalists and essayists and commentators are on "social media" now. It's not just manufactured to drive addictive engagement (though that content is still there). I mean is Jessica Valenti reporting about abortion criminalization "tailored to push [my] buttons"? Sure I mean I guess but it's also true reporting.

Exactly

fair enough, if there's a trusted reporter you're following then that's different. and obviously all news sources need to be scrutinized regardless of where you're finding them

Right, I prioritize following trusted sources over consuming algorithmic feeds.

Not to mention we're watching a lot of our PARENTS believe every AI video and crackpot health grifter on Facebook.

Sad to report there was a lot of messaging from one auntie to another to my mother on WhatsApp during COVID.

And yeah it carries on a bit over YT..

Just ran across this on social media: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm

Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

Many people switch to more conservative views as they consume right wing gruel in newspapers overtime as well..

Right, I prioritize following trusted sources over consuming algorithmic feeds.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Wednesday, June 17, 2026 10:03 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

but the social media companies who determine your feeds do not

I have two girls, 11 & 16 years old. Their levels of screen time, content, and internet access have increased as they have gotten older.

Regarding social media, there’s practically none until 16 which is when they get a smartphone. They have/had ipads before that but with parental restrictions appropriate to their age and a lot of oversight. Open access to youtube but only on a desktop in a shared space.

When my oldest was 15 I let her get on Pinterest which I kept an eye on. When she turned 16 and got a smartphone all the training wheels came off and she now has open access to whatever. They didn’t work to circumvent these restrictions because we’re very open to the type of content they seek out and we engage with them and their interests.

The computers/social media aspect of parenting hasn’t been a serious struggle, and big part of that is specific to us. My kids are not tech focused; they’re too lazy to figure out workarounds. Neither are gamers. They have in-person social lives.

That’s what works for us and it should not be enforced by the state.

I have two girls, 11 & 16 years old. Their levels of screen time, content, and internet access have increased as they have gotten older.

Regarding social media, there’s practically none until 16 which is when they get a smartphone. They have/had ipads before that but with parental restrictions appropriate to their age and a lot of oversight. Open access to youtube but only on a desktop in a shared space.

When my oldest was 15 I let her get on Pinterest which I kept an eye on. When she turned 16 and got a smartphone all the training wheels came off and she now has open access to whatever. They didn’t work to circumvent these restrictions because we’re very open to the type of content they seek out and we engage with them and their interests.

The computers/social media aspect of parenting hasn’t been a serious struggle, and big part of that is specific to us. My kids are not tech focused; they’re too lazy to figure out workarounds. Neither are gamers. They have in-person social lives.

That’s what works for us and it should not be enforced by the state.

but the social media companies who determine your feeds do not

Right, that's why I don't use their feeds for news.

Just reading about the cuts at the BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgmqrrlej5o

If the government was really interested in keeping up a strong information environment it might've been a good idea to try and put together a package to replace the shortfall in license fee money

xps thanks rob, that was enlightening

people absolutely DO need social media to get news

wow, you guys are clearly very intelligent and so I'll just say that it's fascinating to me that intelligent people can think this, when to me it seems so obvious that social media is a terrible source for news, and that it has actively eroded traditional media which - for all its flaws - is the only reliable source for news

I'm a parent of a kid about to step into all this stuff in the next few years. I haven't read all the discussion so far itt as it got derailed.

I have seen data from our local school kids about the things they have seen online that concern them (the kids themselves) that weren't even on their parents' lists of worries (real or imagined). Eating disorder and suicide content for starters. Bullying etc.

I see up close exactly what is pushed to my kids and what they think is worth clicking on, or giving credibility to.

the whole thing is a mess that needs careful navigation and engagement.

sorry for not navigating or engaging with this thread so far :)

xps CowArt I'm doing similar. phone will be for calls / text messages only. They have a tablet they use at home and I'm going to be 'educating' about what to trust, what's junk etc and what they can even access at age 11.

They both got flip phones at 10 which worked well. When the oldest was 12 she griped about not having a smart phone but around 15 she thought it was cool (she still wanted a smart phone).

.

_people absolutely DO need social media to get news_

wow, you guys are clearly very intelligent and so I'll just say that it's fascinating to me that intelligent people can think this, when to me it seems so obvious that social media is a terrible source for news, and that it has actively eroded traditional media which - for all its flaws - is the only reliable source for news

Maybe if traditional media actually did its job, people would trust it. To even suggest that a paper like the NYTimes is more reliable than more marginalized reporting and on the ground reporting is laughable. The Times and most major news outlets are in the bag for hypercapitalism, endless growth, the destruction of the social contract, and any number of other noxious and destructive views. And that’s not even getting to the manufacturing consent for genocide. I am equally shocked by people like you!! How was Ross Douthat’s friendly convo with JD Vance? Enlightening??

let's not conflate opinion columns and podcasts with news reporting.

the new york times publishes 100+ pieces of journalism every day, the majority of which are perfectly good, straightforward news reports that never make waves on social media because they aren't controversial or inflammatory in any way. yes, the paper employs some dunderheads and yes, it has some major blind spots and biases on certain subjects. but justifiable complaints about these things on social media have led some people to believe that the paper is unmitigated trash that can't be trusted for anything, and I really don't think that's true.

Yeah I'm still curious about people saying they get their news from social media only and whether they mean like someone talking in a video or a podcast. And if so presumably that person has to get the primary news report from a mainstream source, unless it's the kind of on the ground situation rob mentioned. So people want to consume news and opinion at the same time? Or some other reason?

Is rando Qanon pizza guy a marginalized source?

Only when banned from ILX

if so presumably that person has to get the primary news report from a mainstream source, unless it's the kind of on the ground situation rob mentioned.

Well, they probably have to get it from Reuters or AP, yes, same as the traditional press has to, by and large. But there's also a lot of good independent reporting being done - É Apenas Fumaça for instance is an online based publication in Portugal that regularly outscoops the trad press ans goes WAY deeper into investigative journalism than the trad papers can afford to. I don't instantly know of a UK equivalent, sadly.

I mainly get my news from here and Bluesky, but a lot of the sources are mainstream.

Social media really illustrates how schizophrenic it has always been to look through a newspaper. Yes you have your reporting on topics and countries with little interference on on page after page and then you see biased reporting, lies and inflammatory opinions from their thought leaders, who are only employed because that's the politics of the paper.

Often enough its the latter that is mostly picked on by people posting as worthy of comment/shooting down.

opinion is rampant in newspapers because of social media. the stuff that costs nothing generates as much attention as the stuff that someone has to leave a desk to do, or be sent away to do, or do months of research for.

Not "as much" - considerably more!

My memory is that this development was already a problem before social media but it's def made it worse yes.

yep for sure. don't disagree.