Reflecting on a Month of Logging off of Short Form Media Sites

It has been about a month since I decided to step away from short-form media sites. This for me was mainly text-based short-form BlueSky, but I also refuse to click links to Twitter/X or Instagram unless its something my friend absolutely needs me to see for some reason and they sent it to me.

The first few days, or even the first week, I felt a sort of emptiness with my hands. I used to reach for my phone and just scroll when I got bored and when I felt like I was done I would close the browser just to open it back up almost immediately. But after a few days I began to feel relief that I did not have to read so many complaints or misdirected anger from all the posts in my feeds.

I actually have the following in my uBlock origin filters list now:

# Social Media (short form) blocks
twitter.com
x.com
instagram.com
facebook.com
bsky.app
tiktok.com
threads.com

I never used TikTok, and I generally avoid YouTube shorts so these were not actual problems for me. I stopped going to Twitter after the Elon takeover as he Nazi-fied the platform. BlueSky is a much better experience than Twitter but the “terminally online” can rub me the wrong way often, even if I actually agree with what they have to say what feels like most of the time.

I still have chat-rooms that I visit and some people post links from these sites, but I do not have to go to them as the chat applications usually “unfurl” the link and I can read what was written without needing to navigate to the messy places. Sometimes a BlueSky user may have their post set to “logged in users only” and in that case I simply just do not read what was shared.¹

With governments around the world² seeking to ban people under a certain age from using social media platforms due to their impacts on mental health I feel as if I have made the correct choice. Do I feel like I am “missing out” on news sometimes? Yes, I do. I use RSS to get my news often, but up-to-the-minute political news is something I will have to get shared to me in chatrooms for now. Do I need this all the time? No, but it could be important for reacting to things like ICE (F### ICE) and such.

Overall I feel better. I do not feel immediately more productive as one may think with less smartphone screen time, but what I do feel is less stress overall. I do not feel like I have to go full-on fight-or-flight everyday over some minor controversy, just the big ones. Exposing yourself to other ways of thinking is very important, I am just unsure that exposing myself to 500 different opinions on every single topic is that worthwhile.