I think what you are striking on is a difference in platform design. Remember, with social media you are the product to be sold to. Here in the fedverse there is no highly tuned algorithm keeping your eyeballs engaged and your dopamine/cortisol receptors in lock step.

I’m glad you feel better about it. I deactivated Facebook about a week ago on a whim, and days later the Reddit fiasco came about so I deleted my account there. I watch TikTok and this is the only other social platform I use. I’m unsure about how I feel about it. It feels isolating in a way. But you’re right. Doomscrolling on social media brings about mostly negative feelings. So far, this place has been positive, although some of the content I don’t care about, but at least I’m not looking through it mindlessly.

currently have a FB, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit account. The first three is basically my first delve into the art world of drawing animes and stuff, and Reddit…well, for Reddit stuff, niche communities, hobbies, etc. FB is actually pretty nice and cool and good tho…at the beginning. You play games, you delve into groups about your hobbies, you like your friend’s pictures and lifes. Nice.

Until recently, when for profit social media gone mainstream. Suddenly it’s not just your connections and hobbies, now everything is filled with ads, suggestions, influencers, all mining our data. Not to mention the outside bigotry, racism, religious intolerance, homophobia, hard and extreme politics slowly creeping first in FB, Twitter, and now or soon, Reddit. Yeah there you’re “technically” able to express yourself, but be prepared to be brigaded by those people that are now a majority in current mainstream social medias.

Also, including Reddit, all now becomes just another dick-measuring contest. Who’s more popular? Who’s more funny? Who’s more edgy? Who’s more based? Who’s more Chad? Who’s more liberal? Who’s more homophobic? Upvotes, likes, shares, all of that is just another dopamine effect to further the dick-measuring contest. Needless to say, I am happy to find Mastodon and now, Beehaw. A relaxed, nice community that isn’t just yet another popularity rat race.

Getting rid of Reddit saved so much of my time.

I’m currently more in love with Mastodon to be honest. It’s a bit more polished experience and with more active users. But i’m sticking around, hoping that lemmy and kbin can close the gap.

dont forget to scrub your accounts before deleing them - those companies own that data if you dont, and in many cases (especially with facebook), you and your content are the product. I’ve subbed to a few @beehaw instances, but only the top level ones.

yeah, the interaction here seems to be more… organic I guess, for lack of a better word… more natural. the platform itself has a fair number of issues as well, it’s not a polished product with several years of success behind it (loosely defining “success”). lemmy still seems to be in beta, but its perfectly usable despite that once you figure out how to get around on it.

not sure if I want to go back to how I used to access media prior to link aggregators - it was not ideal, slow, and difficult to find new things - like, imagine reading the newspaper (lol dating myself there) and never having seen sunday edition comics, but then you see them finally and it opens your eyes to a whole new world of what that kind of media could be. probably a bad analogy but its late and I’m tired :P

More and more people are realizing that these apps have a super unhealthy, poisonous hold on them and they are breaking free, finally. Huge congrats!

Im writing this as someone who never signed up for facebook or instagram, and ive only tried twitter a few times without getting hooked at all.

It just didnt have any interest to me, but i think thats because im into tech, and social media seems to be more focused on drama.

I’m glad you feel better here.

I only have Instagram as a form of social media, though I don’t post anything there. It definitely tears at my self-esteem at times, but I haven’t the heart to delete it because I consume other healthy content there. Only got FB to use Messenger with my parents. I don’t get all this social media hype, I guess; TikTok, Snapchat, etc… not my thing.

I like Lemmy. Like some others said, conversations feel more organic and refreshing. The website is pretty ok, I like the new icons here on Beehaw. I’m looking forward for more niche communities to grow, especially those catered towards specific shows or movies. I think I’ll grow to like this site even more as time progresses, honestly.

I really enjoy other social medias like tiktok and instagram but I’m really intentional about how I use them. I only consume and interact with content that brings me joy. I use it to stay in touch with friends so that means making sure I talk with them, interact with their posts, and show them some love. I don’t engage with trolls or haters but i will try and have a discussion with people who seem genuinely curious, confused, or open to other view points and not hostile. I try not to spend more than an hour on the both of the consuming content a day (usually spread out while i wait for the sun, at lunch, and before bed.) I love to create silly videos about crafts, gardening, and baking so I like to post those but I find I will get sucked into scrolling and not do all the things I love if I don’t set limits.

Beehaw is great because it’s not so busy I have to spend a long time catching up and I have already ran into so many friendly people with similar, positive interests. I really want this space to be something that adds to my life and so far it has. I’ve got a new kombucha guide to try, more info on how to organise community projects, crafty friends to share projects with, and even some info on how to fix my oven! Beehaw is different than the other social medias as it’s a place that’s very conversation focused. Its smaller than reddit making it feel more accessible as comments don’t get drowned out in busy threads. Tiktok has character limits that doesn’t allow for real conversations and instagrams feed is usually outdated and full of sponsored or irrelevant content so I really just stick to stories. This is my new favourite space but I still enjoy the others for different reasons