This is a serious question, and I don’t have answer to it. There is plenty of researches that say they are bad. But we all know how to use them and each of us found some good use for it. Even if it is some plain attention seeking or making some extra money, showing to the world how awesome your 2 days vacation to Bali was or advertising your home-made jam or nail-workshop, they can be an excellent tool. But it looks like they make us nervous, anxious, shorten attention span and more depressed (than what we should anyway be).
In my case I don’t know how to seek attention, and I don’t sell any things. But I would like to have healthier life so I have decided do decrease as much as possible my social-network life.
I still have to keep Facebook so that I can communicate with my friends but instead of going to facebook.com I use messenger.com. This is Facebook’s messenger web page, no annoying posts from people I don’t care so much, no adds, no distractions. It just sits as one of tabs and only when I get some message it starts to change tab text and seek for my attention. And I don’t look there so much because there really isn’t so much to look at.
I won’t shut down Twitter, because I like having @uroskuzmanov. Although they do practice censorship and most of tweets that I have seen are uber-cringe useless crap.
I won’t shut down LinkedIn because I like having @uroskuzmanov also there. But I made sure not to place any personal data there, I use my spam dedicated email as username and completely random password unrelated to any other of my passwords, so they can keep selling my data and getting hacked as much as they like. LinkedIn is garbage anyway.
Other thins I managed to kill long ago, or I didn’t even engage. I leave it to new generations. I just hope that nobody hits me with hers car while taking a snap-chat shot.
What I also don’t like is that they get free data that later can be utilized to make more money for somebody else (not me). Why would I put my nice photos on Facebook, and let it use them in add for penis enlargement drugs? Why would I review some hotel I have been in, and let google serve better and more competent adds? I don’t want them to know when I am sick, or getting married or planning to buy new car. I want to pick the thing I WANT not the thing they serve to me through subtle messages, direct adds and choice grooming. Somebody will argue that it is not bad, you get exactly what you want because they know you more than you know yourself. But it is not that simple, if they can sell you blender for 200$ and blender for 300$, what do you think they will try to sell? Interest of advertisers is always most important – which is of course to make most money as possible. But if they really cared about me they would know that I would be same happy man with 200$ as with 300$ blender.
If there is something interesting, important, or funny that I think other people should know I will post it here, on my web page and my terms.