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Social media is kinda wrecking my life.

Tony Ramirez

Tony Ramirez

Single. True friend's.
V.I.P Member
Okay it did some good in the beginning like renewing my faith and making it more confidence to talk to girls. Now I have a good friendship with a nice girl.

But it wrecked my sleep more. Gave me major FOMO. Actually made me think of the regrets my 18 to early 20s. All the people traveling I think gave me the paranoia of my fear of flying. Made me trauma dump on everyone I talked too. I think it even contributed to my autistic burnout.

The problem is I just can't stop using it. There are a few good people I do follow like one singer request songs and she plays them live. There is another I follow who changed my life. Also others I follow are useful However many others I follow are a waste if time but I an addictive to watching them.

I still go out and hang with my friends and do yoga. That's the problem. Because if there lives and FOMO I tried to do too much with my friends, going to all the events and masking all the time even though I disclosed I had autism to many of them I got burnout. My burnout has passed now. But my sleep is poor.
 
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One way, if we insist on continuing to use it, is to heavily filter it. I'm not sure which social medias you're using, but the only one I use is Instagram, and I only follow uplifting content. There is very little chance I would have the problems you describe, because I follow very few people. They're mostly accounts that post certain content but nothing personal, like some girl and her coffee or whatever.

I see you use an "advanced profanity filter." So you are aware and used to filtering things. Just apply that thinking to your social media accounts.
 
I follow over 200 people on Tiktok mostly women. I can't even fathom who to filter. Even though only a fraction of them go on live. Mainly Christian and singers with the remaining men who tour NYC and China, two who DJ,one who plays the chelo and two who tour theme parks.

I also use Instagram and only follow my friends, the church and my yoga studio however when I scroll suggestions and go into search it suggests very attractive female super models dressed sexy which I can't resist to keep scrolling. That's Instagram problem I discovered by accident one day.

Facebook is weird. I use it but it just recommends weird stuff so I never stay on it long. I tried X formerly Twitter but Musk butchered it. If you use it just a while you can no longer view tweets for a while which is useless. Pinterest is bad as I look up many women in there too and it just suggests more. That's everything I use.
 
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Do you feel FOMO with, say, someone posting an image of their comic book collection?

Similarly, why would someone posting an image of travel give you FOMO? Travel causes you distress. There's no reason to believe you'd enjoy it any more than you'd enjoy collecting comics.

(In case you are actually a comic collector, replace the above analogy with Barbie Dolls or something.)

If social media is a source of unwanted lusting, that's another problem entirely.
 
Considering how many issues there are just from social media, I'd work on limiting or eliminating it. You could start by limiting it to a certain amount of time per day, the amount depending on how much you're currently using it. For example, if you are now using it three hours a day, you could try limiting it to two hours a day until that becomes easy, at which point you limit it further, and so on.
 
The thing that frustrated me that the two followers that influence me the most that gave me the confidence I have now barely go live anymore. They both have not been live in two weeks. One use to go weekly and the other three days a week. That's why I keep checking which pulls me into a rabbit hole. But they do have busy life's.
 
Facebook feeds my RSD and makes me feel depressed with FOMO. But, at the same time, Facebook is useful to me, as I belong to several groups which are more active than internet forums, and I also love memes and reading through the memes on my favourite Facebook pages. So it has its good points too, which makes "delete your account and then you'll be happy" such bad advice.

But unfortunately it has its bad points too. I've had a many tears and even physical pain in my chest from RSD over Facebook. I focus too much on not how many likes people get but who likes who's posts. For example Jane could be a friend I also know offline who is also friends with Claire on Facebook but doesn't really know her in person but seems to like or react to a lot of photos of Claire's meals, but when I post a photo of a meal Jane doesn't react to it. I know it seems silly but when you have RSD it seems big emotionally, and I start asking myself questions like "what if Jane doesn't really like me? Who does like me, apart from my family? What's so special about Claire to Jane? I'm just as good as Jane. Or am I? Uh, why can't I just belong?" And no, it's something I can't bring myself to ask people why they don't react to my posts, because I know that really it isn't that important, but that still doesn't stop my RSD from acting up.
 
I only follow my church on Facebook and they barely update their page. They update it more on Instagram. I just look at the random content on Facebook and as I said the algorithm it recommended is weird.
 
Misty Avich said:
Facebook feeds my RSD and makes me feel depressed with FOMO. But, at the same time, Facebook is useful to me, as I belong to several groups which are more active than internet forums, and I also love memes and reading through the memes on my favourite Facebook pages. So it has its good points too, which makes "delete your account and then you'll be happy" such bad advice.

But unfortunately it has its bad points too. I've had a many tears and even physical pain in my chest from RSD over Facebook. I focus too much on not how many likes people get but who likes who's posts. For example Jane could be a friend I also know offline who is also friends with Claire on Facebook but doesn't really know her in person but seems to like or react to a lot of photos of Claire's meals, but when I post a photo of a meal Jane doesn't react to it. I know it seems silly but when you have RSD it seems big emotionally, and I start asking myself questions like "what if Jane doesn't really like me? Who does like me, apart from my family? What's so special about Claire to Jane? I'm just as good as Jane. Or am I? Uh, why can't I just belong?" And no, it's something I can't bring myself to ask people why they don't react to my posts, because I know that really it isn't that important, but that still doesn't stop my RSD from acting up.
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When I really want to hurt myself I look up old school colleagues and look through pictures of them at parties that I wasn't invited to and feel thoroughly miserable 😖
 
I feel like a drone who's sole purpose is to just keep scrolling and pressing 'like' to feed advertisers and algorithms to manipulate me.

Soon humanity will evolve to just thumbs for liking and sharing!
 
I've got a couple of thoughts on this here...

Firstly, dont beat yourself up too much over it. Social media is very literally designed to create addiction. That's it's actual purpose. The addiction is very common.

Second, there are maybe some things you could try if you want to dump it. There are apps for instance you could use that effectively lock the sites off when certain conditions are met. You could set one up like, okay, I can only use X site/service for 15 minutes and then the app here locks it off for the day. You could also go for... er... I dont remember what it's called, but it's when you try to replace a behavior with a different one. Like, any time you feel like checking one of those, you get up and go do a specific other thing instead (always the same thing each time, whatever it is). Or, you could try a reward sort of thing... like, okay, if you make it through a given day and dont use it for more than 10 minutes that day? You reward yourself somehow. Didnt make it? No reward. That sort of thing.

Here, have a look at this:

techpp.com

10 Best Apps to Break Social Media Addiction [2024] - TechPP

Social media addiction is real, and it's a problem for a lot of people. Check our list of the best apps to break social media addiction and focus on the things that matter most.
techpp.com techpp.com

Also I have one last suggestion: Try a hard internet detox if it comes down to it. Basically, this is where you just disconnect completely for at least a week. No internet, or anything that uses the internet. No social media, websites, Youtube, anything... even this forum. I actually did this once, a few weeks back, to try to help break a bad habit or two myself. It can be surprisingly effective, but since this is pretty much a "cold turkey" kind of solution the effect can be a bit intense.
 
@Tony Ramirez

You're "trapped" in an activity cycle that's literally designed in to social media to do this to people.

You don't need external help to break it. Especially not an app. You need the kind of change in your mindset that you've experienced "IRL" and has changed your social life. But unlike that one, you don't need external help.

Your brain is wired to take in information continuous while you're awake, most of it visual. You're wired to prioritize "saber-toothed tigers", dangerous cliffs, etc. But also people. This is "hard-wired" at a certain level, but under voluntary control.

All of these "pay attention to useless trivia all day" apps deliberately and maliciously hijack that natural process.
It's an uneven exchange - small dopamine hits in exchange for "clicks".
And they don't care a bit that they waste a huge amount of time per "click" (they'll burn 5 minutes of your attention for one interaction that's worth 1/10000 of a US cent to them). After all, your time costs them nothing - so they'll happily waste USD 5-50 worth of your time for 1/10000 of a cent in income

But it's voluntary.

Try this;
1. For a few days, every single time you click on something, ask yourself - would this be as useful to me if I waited a week before consuming it?
2. After a week, take a week off (no peeking - that literally resets the clock) Remember you're "addicted" to the dopamine.

You'll notice after a week that you haven't collapsed mentally or physically. And you'll also notice you haven't missed anything of value to you. Change your usage patterns accordingly.
Do the same thing every now and then to tune your usage patterns.

BTW: those stupid social apps are useful as a complement to meeting people in real life and phoning them: apps are good for planning and synchronizing for those real activities (RL meeting, talking).

The rest is entertainment. Which isn't intrinsically harmful, but you not only don't need it continuously - it's actively harmful because it messes up the way your brain assigns importance to things.
 
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