I’m old enough to have signed up for Facebook as soon as it was available to the general public. It was 2006 and my 15 year old son and I did it together. We weren’t sure how safe it would be so my son agreed I can could look at his page with him weekly. This proved to be a good strategy because, almost immediately, mean kids at his high school began to use it to make fun of others, including at one point, my son. He and I had lots of chats about how it wasn’t real, those kids were jerks, and we both figured out how to block out those whose posts weren’t productive for either of us to see.
Both of us are still, eighteen years later, on Facebook. My son uses it to showcase his music and thus has 2200 hundred friends. I, who uses it to genuinely connect with my friends both near and far, have 170 friends all of whom I interact with outside the platform.
I’m the rare person who still likes Facebook–right now it’s helping me connect with other friends who are also struggling with breast cancer plus all those pictures of my friends’ pets, kids, and grandkids always make me smile.
I was, in an earlier era, somewhat active on Twitter/X but those days are gone. I do occasionally use it for AAR, but rarely. It seems to me to be a place full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I’ve tried TikTok but it isn’t for me. I like words more than pictures and pictures more than videos. Plus I can’t figure how to find anything valuable to me there.
I do like Instagram mostly because that’s where all my children’s friends are and I love seeing their adult lives. I also have lots of friends who are not on FB but are on Insta so it’s a way to connect with them there.
Overall, I use the social media I do–Facebook and Instagram–to keep up with those I already care for. I can say in all honesty, social media is the last place I look for news or public information. For me, that’s what newspapers are for.
How about you? Do you use any social media? Which platforms? Why? What do you love about it? What do you hate?
I comment a lot on YouTube videos and articles in the online newspapers I subscribe to. But I don’t have accounts on any of the big social media platforms. Apart from privacy concerns I’ve got better things to do; there’s not enough reading time now without wasting it on social media.
Just to clarify, I’m not saying social media is a waste of everyone’s time (although the world would be a healthier and happier place if it had never been invented) but that I personally prefer to spend my time doing other things.
I’m the opposite of you when it comes to news. So many of the newspapers in the UK are heavily biased – the Daily Fail and the Torygraph are very right-wing and so are most of the others with the exception of the Daily Mirror and The Guardian (which I still read occasionally, but online) – and even the domestic news on the BBC is something I no longer trust and seek out. So I get most of my news from a handful of trusted people on Twitter and, more recently, as Twitter has become such a shithole, on BlueSky and Substack.
But I’m not particularly active on any social media platform. I have notifications set up for a few FB groups and people I follow and I might have a quick scroll through after I’ve seen those, but FB is mostly a lot of crap I’m not interested in, and I spend very little time on Twitter, and when I do, I’m just checking out a few select accounts. It’s easy to get pulled in and spend hours scrolling just looking at random stuff, and honestly, I’d much rather use the time to read a book.
SM simply doesn’t interest me all that much. I don’t love the ease with which so much misinformation can be circulated, the way that so many people use the anonymity to be absolutely horrible to others and, given my job, I have serious concerns about the effects it’s had and is still having on young people, whether it’s regarding their mental health, their physical safety or the effects on their brain chemistry (low attention spans, poor sleep etc.)
I fit into the category of ‘modern day Luddite’. I am not on any social media. Back in the day I did have a facebook page and I enjoyed it for a while. However I found the general tone increasingly uncomfortable and I decided to leave. Honestly, I didn’t think that the environment was good for my mental health. I’ve decided I must be a real lightweight!
Like you Dabney, I was an early FB adopter. At first, I thought it a great way to stay in touch with family and friends. But I stopped posting after the 2016 election, when it became apparent they’d sell out people as individuals, democracy around the world in general, and the US’ national security specifically just because they can and are legally allowed to. I would have completely deleted my account but there are a number of small businesses for whom FB is their only web presence, so I still have an account. I log in once or twice a year to lurk at a few friends or family members’ pages to catch up (no one writes a holiday letter any more to catch you up – they just expect you to follow them on SM), and as needed for businesses I want to patronize.
I was on Twitter at one time, mostly to follow favorite authors. But I deleted my account when Musk took it over and implemented blue check marks for pay. I’ve never been on Insta because FB bought them; and I’ve no interest in TikTok or YouTube videos for social media purposes. (I do use YouTube for a few “how to” videos; or to click through to a link related to some news story or entertainment clip. But my time on the site is less than an hour per month.)
I prefer my news sources to be things I’ve paid for and that have been vetted. And generally, I want to read my news. I listen to public radio in my car but otherwise it is print based unless there is a national or international breaking news story e.g. election night returns.
My source of information about what books to read or movies to watch are topic specific web sites like AAR, where there is a modicum of moderation. I stopped reading Amazon reviews years and years ago, and GoodReads as soon as Amazon purchased them.
I have 2 accounts on FB (personal and reviewer) but probably check in on them every week or so. I use X daily – I have curated lists of people I follow so it’s only to see their stuff (I have a politics list, a romance list and a weather list). IG and Threads I use when I have a picture to post. And once in a blue moon I remember that I have a bluesky account and a mastadon account and there’s probably something else that I’m forgetting. And then I have LinkedIn for my professional career.
I am on LinkedIn too. I love reading about what my friends are up to in their work lives!
I joined Facebook back in 2009, so not at the beginning but still a long time ago. Its great for keeping up with extended family and old friends or coworkers. I usually only post jokes or vacation pictures. There are a few groups I follow, mostly either movie sites (TCM, etc.), book related sites, or musicians. Somehow I ended up following a real estate company from Wales (I live in the U.S.), a tiny homes page, and a couple sites where people from all over the world post pictures of their yards or neighborhood (The View From My Window). I never saw the point of Twitter so I didn’t care when Elon Musk decided to rebrand it as X. I used to say only twits tweet, so now only Xes X. Frankly, Facebook takes up too much of my time as it is so I don’t feel the need to join any other social media sites.
FB has enabled me to keep up with friends who live far away. Yesterday, a friend from France reached out–she’d seen my Halloween post–and we chatted for 30 minutes on FB Messenger. Such a gift!
I’m not on any social media that you have to log in and have an account for (Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, etc.). I do scroll through cooking & home renovation videos on YouTube and there are a number of subreddits I enjoy perusing, but I keep up with close family & friends through emails & texting. My husband and our kids are on FB (the kids are also on Instagram). I don’t have any particular animus toward sm, but I’ve never felt the urge to be instantly & constantly connected to everyone. Plus, what passes for political discourse these days is so awful, I know my blood pressure would be sky high if I spent any time looking at what a good number of my relatives are likely posting right about now!
I don’t use any social media. It was a nightmare for me to remove my husband’s FB page when he died. I do use WhatsApp and particularly like that I can speak to friends overseas without cost. And a better quality of sound than by either a mobile or landline phone.
Well, I’m on Facebook, mainly to keep in touch with scattered friends and relations and, hopefully, with readers and fellow writers. I also enjoy the jokes—you can never have too much humor. And I like to check X to see what people are getting hysterical about at the moment.
I use Facebook to see what my extended family members are up to, Pinterest for inspiration about stuff I like – style, home decor etc. but I haven’t been on them in a while. Goodreads (does it qualify as a social media app?) for book reviews & to keep track of my reading. My most active social media apps are Twitter (I refuse to call it X) for yapping with “Twitter friends” about my favourite shows, Tumblr for gifs of my favourite tv shows/ships and Whatsapp which is a cheaper means of keeping in touch with my loved ones.
I am on lots of social media and have been since, wow, 1992 (Prodigy, anyone?). I mostly like and have used everything, but the 3 I like the least are 1. Instagram, 2. Snapchat (never got into it), and 3. YouTube. I like TikTok videos but not the YouTube ecosystem. I loved Twitter but left it a few months after Musk bought it and got rid of blue checks, which served a useful purpose and now … don’t.
I miss the social media environment that was influencer-free and algorithm-free. I made a lot of friends back then in fandom-based social media. These days I use Facebook for extended family, old friends, and genealogy groups. I use Bluesky and Threads for news. I use TikTok for entertainment. I use Instagram because a good friend insists on messaging me funny GenX content there. 🙂 And I have a few text group chats.
Prodigy . . .heck, yeah! I joined it to talk to quilters about the same time you did. How revolutionary it seemed. 😉
Prodigy! Loved those bulletin board discussions. I’m pulling away from Twitter and am shifting to Bluesky. Had joined Bluesky a while ago, but it’s only now that I’m starting to see a real uptick in users and activity there. Have been discovering lots of authors on there and discussions have become more robust – all without the toxicity that has overtaken Twitter (refuse to call it x).
I thought I did not use social media, because I’m not in Facebook, Tik Tok or Instaram. But when I have looked, many apps and webs are considered as such. Therefore, I use more than I thought.
Blogger, WhatsApp or You Tube.
Videotelephony: Zoom, Meet or Teams, if you include them.
Collaboration pages that are, in a sense, social media. Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, Babelio, Spotify and Wikiloc.
Facebook (mainly for my relatives) and Instagram purely to follow authors I like (i don’t post, only follow). I do love Reddit, Tumblr (only to follow the All For The Game Fandom), A03 and Goodreads. I’ve tried and deleted ticktok, twitter, and snapchat.
I’m reluctantly on Twitter/X. (Why does that man like calling companies “X”?) I’m on Facebook — and it’s good for book and movie groups. (Still, nothing compares to ye olde mailing lists.) I also like some of the book groups on Reddit.
Much of my activity these days is on Threads. It’s driven by algorithms, so it can be wild. But it’s a great way to follow authors — as so many of them left Twitter. Bluesky is good because people who use it tend to be less noisy — but I haven’t found as many cool romance threads to follow.
I’m on Instagram, but while I follow writers there, I prefer to use it to follow a movie/theatrical actor I like. 🙂