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Are there any fellow teens that have de-Googled and removed all social media? (midwest.social)

submitted 1 year ago by clark@midwest.social to c/chat@beehaw.org

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Hello.

I am part of the younger side of Lemmy, and I wonder if there are any teens or otherwise young people that have de-Googled and/or removed all social media.

I notice, that everybody around me in real life uses Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, what have you… hundreds of notifications and messages from other people… and I cannot really relate. I deleted Instagram for my mental health, as some posts were greatly affecting my self-esteem. If somebody were to ask me for my social media, I’d probably just give them my number.

I don’t really know a lot of people around me that have this interest of online privacy (let alone people my age). So, will the (young) users of Lemmy enlighten me?

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[–] ecamitor@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago

20, and last year they made a poll in English class asking who have no social media, I was the only one. Also de-googled. They were even more chocked I don’t have a gmail account and they have to send me the link for each Google docs

(No YouTube account, I used newpipe on android, now Yattee on iOS, and piped/invidious/cloudtube/yt-dlp on desktop)

I didn’t felt like missing something (still don’t think, I’m better without social medias)

I used TikTok like two evenings on my brother’s device because I wanted at least to test about the app everyone is addicted and it’s way too addictive, both times I slept way too late, I’m glad I stay away from this

I had instagram but I stopped 5 years ago and don’t miss anything from it. From time to time a friend tells me I’m not in a specific group chart for a party but they tell me information so I don’t care

My class forced me to (re)create a Facebook account because we also have a discord server but they wouldn’t use it (I’m fine with that), but even for things like announcements which I really miss, so I created a new one But my profile is blank and I never go to Facebook, and I only use messenger for their group, not anyone else. I will delete it when I’m done with university

I used text messages to chat with friends, and finally got them (and siblings and parents) into installing signal by lying and telling I would pay for text messages and voice calls abroad (it’s still free in other counties in the European Union) where I lived for several months

Idk if Reddit counts as social media, because my use case was not really social (mostly lurking, and using it for news) but when they killed third party apps I stopped and I don’t really miss it, more free time. There is one specific subreddit I miss, not on lemmy but I can live without it

About degoogling, I did that for four years and it worked great. My phone died (suddenly one day no OS, then I failed reinstalling one. It’s bricked, no OS, no custom recovery, no fastboot only xiaomi recovery I don’t know how to unbrick, everyone tells to use fastboot which doesn’t boot) which made me exhausted of android Android, I wanted to try Apple, but I think my next phone will be a degoogled android, I miss so much apps on android

Conclusion: less convenient, but I don’t feel like I miss a lot, nothing really important*, and I felt better mental health wise after stopping social medias.

*except announcements for this class, this class sucks, but I don’t count using messenger as social media, and I have blank unused Facebook account only for messenger.