Why social media is harmful for you (or am I wrong?)

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Here is my reasons why social media is harmful. When I say social media I´m referring to Facebook and Instagram.

1. The "friends" who post the most haven´t you seen or heard for years but you know exactly what they are doing anyway because you seen their pictures online. This giving a false belief of being connected, but you are not connected if you don´t talk to each other in any personal ways

2. The comparing game is hard to avoid

3. People would not post ugly pictures of themselves, but they can post and tag you in some

4. The feeling of being "the best you" all the time is harmful because stress and pressure would pull you down when you are not feeling that way

5. People get less social and introvert, not just aspies, everyone

6. "me, me, me", it´s too much, what happened to the old "I call you" or "how are you doing?"

FB and Instagram was made for really good intentions, they whole idea behind it are fun and smart. If there is really no pressure, stress or anything bad for you, then by all means, just keep it. But for me that has closed down my FB 15 years ago and never returned I know for sure I did the right thing. Instagram I have recently shut down, I feel more authentic and the people that want connect with me will, same with me about them. It´s not natural to know too much about people when you really don´t have any contact anymore, thats for me is the biggest thing.

Please do write what you feel about this and please don´t be rude

I completely understand. I don't have people on my page that post selfies or brag about cars, houses, kids etc.

Weather pages, vegetarian pages, local restaurants pages, coffee pages, Freeway Jim, cats, New Mexico page, Ulta, Bath and Bodyworks, tea rooms.

Some local and outside area people who are NT but love to chat about these topics. Weather guy is almost certain to be on spectrum as are my freeway people.

We don't talk about kids, vacations, spouses or anything off topic.

Facebook allows me access to my interests 24/7.

No work people on my page. I don't follow anything other than sites. No individuals as that is not my interest resides. I don't care where someone ate or that someone got married.

My Facebook world as I like it.

Loved your post. Thanks

Thank you

That sound as a very smart choice this interesting-based-following you do. It was such a long time since I had Fb myself but is'nt a must to have your proper name? Of course not companies but I mean people. And if you do use your regular name there, how do people as friends or relatives handle your rejection if you dont following them when they ask? I would love to be on FB to ONLY be active as you are, in companies, interested based stuff but I dont want to be me there just anonymous

Facebook existed 15 years ago?? I never even heard of it until 2008.

I'm not 100% sure about the exact years, 12,13,14 years ago maybe. But it was more then ten at least

My family and friends don't care. I check on them periodically. I just don't want daily involvement in their lives.

I'm considering quiting Facebook, or at least silencing my account for a few months. It feels like the constant trickle of low-quality interaction is giving me an excuse not to try to talk to people properly. Also, I often get stressed by the information overload, shoot my mouth off when I get Angry At The World, or just stare mutely at other people's more fulfilling lives. Plus, the whole creepy selling-your-data-to-sinister-democracy-hacking-nutjobs thing. That confirmed the suspicions I had to start with, before I got suckered in by how normal social media had become.

Trouble is, it's still useful and I'd be even more isolated without it. I'm afraid of telephone calls, and don't even have numbers for many people I know. I'm a semi-professional musician, and it's useful for promoting gigs. There are quite a number of people I've got to know better via Facebook, who I would never have guessed would end up being a source of support on my mental health issues.

Do what I do. Don't follow people. Only follow pages.....that way you are not overrun with the rampant bragging posts. In turn I don't post much in the way of personal info. I have three followers or maybe two. I don't care. I'm not in it for popularity. I do it for special interest pages.

I follow a few pages (classic tractors, farm news, gardening) and that's it.
The social side of it is a crock.

I like the way you have phrased this. It helps me understand why one of my friends gave up on social media. I felt a bit upset and I guess that adds to your argument that social media is a bad thing because it can cause a silly upset when no harm is meant. I wanted to get to know this person better and felt that social media would be an easy, quick way to share our interests. But they find social media to be taxing. We are still friends even though we don't share stuff on social media. I can contact them whenever I want and it's our conversation, not a conversation with 50 other people as well. Which I suppose is better and more personal.

I enjoy photography and I love instagram because I can share my photos. I very rarely post photos of myself or other people. Plants, scenery and pets are my main things. I like to share interesting articles and songs on facebook as well. I have a good sense of humour and I like to make people laugh, so Facebook helps me to entertain people. It also helps me keep in touch with my family who live in other countries. So I can't be without it, I think it adds more to my life.

I don't feel competitive with it. Maybe I'm too much of a sociopath to be too much affected by what others are sharing. I mostly find other people's posts boring. Well, not everyone can be as hilarous as me I guess (I'm being sarcastic... kind of).

You're not a sociopath for finding other people's lives to be boring. I feel the same way and I sure as hell don't monologue about my equally boring life.

I did the same a couple years ago, it's an unfortunate habit I have every once in a while, deleted all the contacts but kept the follows on pages. At the end of the day, facebook can still be useful in matching you to articles and pages of interest if nothing else.

I just don't follow people. I don't post updates of my own very often. It works.

Thank you. I agree with you about the photography-part. Sharing photos are fun especially if it´s from travels I think. I know a former friend that said she couldn´t bare to log into Instagram and FB because of the "must" of liking friends and family photos, she said she just didn´t do it even if she had alot of close friends there because she didn´t care what the hell they uploaded anyway.
But I discovered pretty soon that they also did start to ignore her pictures in return so it was not so funny for her anymore to be on social media. She just wanted to have comments and likes but she didn´t get the reciprocate-part and that´s the whole idea that many people are missing. She didn´t want to give anything so she got nothing.

This sound a bit childish but this can cause alot of distress and disharmony in relationship when this things accure, even in true old solid ones.

I think I also have the sociopathic traits sometimes when I don´t feel a thing when I see someones 3 year old for the 20th time or whatever. But I know I have a big heart but I don´t feel connected to the mother of the child anymore, she was a friend before but are just a ghostfollower now. It´s that thing again, some people are just chosing to ignore instead of deleting, to me it´s not kinder.

The problem with social media is the lack of REAL authentic connection meeting face to face or at least talking on the phone sometimes. If you don´t have that, I think the relationship is soon to be ended anyway because there is too much misunderstanding online.

Instagram is the worst out of all of them for mental health, according to empiric research. It's so "narcissistic" and attention focused. It gets people addicted to likes and comments by releasing Dopamine (that's what gets one excited over every time he gets a new like/message/share etc. whatever). Notably excessive amounts of Dopamine are related to positive symptoms in Schizophrenia such as delusions, just FYI.

I never used Instagram. And for the reasons you listed by FB has 49 friends on it and I keep deleting people from time to time. I do have YT as it is not as hazardous as the latter two. But seriously, Instagram is the worst social media platform... pointless. Even NTs don't wanna socialize anymore LOL.

Instagram is awesome.

I'm really into photography so it's a great way to share my photos, express myself artistically and see other peoples photos. You can see beautiful images from all over the world.

Also... there are dogs. So many cute dogs, and cats, and rabbits... and most importantly quokkas.