I stopped using Twitter & Facebook about 1 year and 3 months ago. I thought there might be some value in detailing how this has affected my life as an adult in this modern age. First, I do believe that my experience is skewed a bit by my physical location. I\u2019m up North among the trees and lakes. The girl I\u2019m dating doesn\u2019t even use Facebook or Twitter. My co-workers don\u2019t tweet and becoming the mayor of my office of 300 people on FourSquare takes about 2 weeks of work with little to no fanfare or celebration.<\/p>\n
Fine but what about the people I know who don\u2019t live this lifestyle and are in cities?\u00a0<\/p>\n
One thing I learned \u00a0is around communication in general. Getting people on the phone is impossible. I can call colleagues but to call an old friend in San Francisco and have them actually pick up is simply impossible. I can leave a voice-mail but they won\u2019t listen to it. They might text me back a few days later apologizing for not calling me. They\u2019ll try to schedule time for us to have a catchup. \u201cWe really need to talk\u201d and the schedule is missed or forgotten. Family and Friends both seem to avoid phones like the plague. The only persons who do call me back these days are my Mom and Dad.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve debated making letter-writing this year a priority. I\u2019d send out an email to people whose emails I still have and ask for their current mailing address and start writing letters. After 6 months, I\u2019d probably give up because no one has time to write a letter, put postage on an envelope and drop it in a mailbox. On the subject of emails, this has proven to be very difficult. If I want to email an old friend and see how they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s not possible. Most emails are not checked any more or their address has changed. How can I get in touch with them? Well, obviously it would be to join Twitter or Facebook and send them a friend request.<\/p>\n
Sending a friend request to someone I\u2019m already friends with\u2026.Ridiculous.<\/p>\n
My daily routine hasn\u2019t been altered by the lack of social media. I browse reddit, read RSS feeds and utilize Instapaper for longer reads. There\u2019s no shortage of content on the web that I find without the need for social networks. I still get spam on LinkedIN but I\u2019m not alone there. I don\u2019t get any spam in my Email anymore mostly because I unsubscribe from every spam \/ syndicated message I get and obviously I\u2019m not getting any social media emails about someone commenting on one of my photos.<\/p>\n
I did recently experience an issue for the first time in a year where someone promised they\u2019d invite me to a party at their house. It\u2019s a friend who I communicate with over the phone and via email. The party happened and I never received an invite. I found out weeks later that she invited me on Facebook and a few dozen others through Facebook. There have also been some occurrences of friends telling me they sent me a message on Twitter or Facebook or another social media site but I feel that this is an easy thing to fix.<\/p>\n
If a friend tells me, \u201cHey did you see my Facebook message?\u201d I respond with, \u201cI don\u2019t use Facebook. You have my email because it hasn\u2019t changed in 6 years\u201d They then learn to email or even call me. If they don\u2019t think that\u2019s worth their time, then I\u2019m no longer their friend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The few times I was in San Francisco last year, I did suddenly feel pressure again to join Twitter. It was the easiest way to communicate to a mass group of people, to tell a group you\u2019re on your way, to post a photo of something really great while you\u2019re doing it and it enabled spontaneous flash-mobs of friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the last year, I still upload photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube and I still blog almost daily. Reddit is great for some entertainment and I spent a lot of time both reading and writing. One thing I\u2019ll add as another fall-out to not using social media is my readership hasn\u2019t grown on these blogs. I see successful blogs posting their content to Facebook and Twitter and letting the conversations happen there instead of in the blog comments. I\u2019m not going to spend my day managing a community and posting things to Digg or Reddit to drum up more traffic. I think that\u2019s one of the main things that\u2019s keeping me \u00a0down a bit is that social media does have some positives but it\u2019s also a tremendous time-sink.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have a lot of free time these days and that\u2019s a good thing. My friend just got back from the Philippines and we were texting and I asked if she could send me a few photos (email, presumably) and she said they\u2019re all on Facebook. Oh well.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I stopped using Twitter & Facebook about 1 year and 3 months ago. I thought there might be…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2016-05-17T19:11:48Z","apple_news_api_id":"4f71699b-369e-4ef2-9ec5-9cb076a6b723","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2016-05-17T19:11:48Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AT3FpmzaeTvKexZywdqa3Iw","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-social-media","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-1av","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8685,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2022\/03\/24\/twitter-nine-years-removed\/","url_meta":{"origin":4495,"position":0},"title":"Twitter, Nine Years Removed","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"How best to distill 6 years of prolific oversharing? 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