As I do periodically, I had a thought. This one was about social media. There is a lot of analysis out there concerning social media. I’ve posted a bunch about it myself, including just last month. A recent U.S. surgeon general’s report on social media said it’s pretty much bad for kids, but with a few positives, which sounds like a precursor to government action of some sort. But maybe not.
Last year, I wrote about how I use social media. It hasn’t really changed in the past six months, though I do check in on Mastodon a bit more now, and check in on Instagram and Facebook less, especially since I no longer have a regular routine for doing so. I used to check them before bed on my iPad, but the blue light issue turned out to be a real thing, so I stopped with the late night internet socializing.
Now that the routine has been broken, it’s made me take another look at the two main sites I use to visit every day (if however briefly, much of the time) and think, “What am I really getting out of these?” Let’s have a look!
Instagram:
- I get to see Nic’s birb photos, which are spiffy and nice. But although IG was created around posting photos, they actually look better on Facebook.
- Tim posts sketches he’s started doing recently, including ones from a high school yearbook he found from 1960. These are great, and he only posts them on IG.
- A gaming friend in Santa Cruz, Mike, posts occasionally, sometimes about surfing, sometimes local scenery (Santa Cruz is a pretty seaside town), and he has a dry sense of humour. He has his IG posts automagically repost to FB.
- A metric ton of ads and reels, which I do not want to see. The reels (short videos) are especially obnoxious. I think I watched one about an airplane that was flying or doing some other airplane-like thing (keep in mind that on IG these videos autoplay as they scroll into view), and now IG is constantly shoving airplane videos into my face, no matter how many times I click on NEVER SHOW ME THIS AGAIN YOU GODLESS MONSTERS.
That’s pretty much it!
Facebook:
- Mike’s posts on FB are the same as the ones on IG
- Nic’s are also mostly reposts from IG, though he posts memes as well
- Tim tends to post more personal stuff on FB, like photos of the family, but also memes and weird/kitschy stuff
- A few other friends and relatives post nearly 100% memes or content they’ve seen elsewhere
- FB also has reels, but they mercifully do not autoplay (yet). I keep hiding them, they keep showing up.
- FB also has a metric ton of ads, and these do autoplay. I hate all of them.
To give you an idea of the ratio of ads to “content”:
On IG, it feels like about 50% ads, 30% content and 20% short videos (I’m not calling them “reels” anymore–take that, Zuckerberg!). It’s pretty awful. The one small mercy is the feed is actually in chronological order, and there’s a link to go to older posts if you missed something.
On FB, it’s about 45% ads, 45% “content” and 10% short videos or “People you may know” which also keeps popping up no matter how often I tell it to go away. Also, FB has this weird thing where it randomly starts shuffling stuff around. Old posts will suddenly come back, even though nothing has changed (no new comments/edits), while new stuff will get buried. I’ve sat back and watched the scroll bar in the browser jerk up and down for 10–15 seconds as it spazzes out. It’s both annoying and weird, but not the good kind of weird.
On balance, the only things I find especially worthwhile are:
- Nic’s photos
- Tim’s sketches
- Mike’s photos
These three things form a tiny slice of what I actually see in the feeds, which are mostly ads and “hilarious” memes being reposted for the ten thousandth time (that day).
Can I go without these things I enjoy? Probably. Am I considering pulling the plug on the sites for a while as an experiment? Definitely.
I’ll probably decide in a few days whether to try it out. If I do, I’ll post my findings when the experiment ends.
Until then, NO I DO NOT WANT TO SEE MORE AIRPLANES THANK YOU.
