A life less posted

I agree with the broader message. Especially on vacation, disconnecting is important; it lets you take in life and experience it untethered, away from work email or other daily concerns. And if Facebook and other social networks make you feel that way, you certainly should disconnect from them.

But I wanted to call out a couple of things:

I woke up yesterday morning to a few Facebook status updates from people who don’t like Halloween, and who would never let their kids participate in the evils of trick-or-treating. I was immediately filled with guilt because I allowed my daughter to enjoy herself so much the previous night by letting her dress up in her self-chosen mermaid/fairy combination.

Why on earth would you feel guilty because you let your daughter go trick or treating and she had a great time?

And then I realized that I feel like that all the time on Facebook. Guilt, anger, envy… Those are the emotions that fuel all social networks, but perhaps Facebook more than the others. They’re the emotions that make us share/like/comment on things.

I don't really use Facebook that often, but when I do it's to look at photos someone uploaded or read a funny comment someone left.

So I guess I disagree that guilt, anger, and envy fuel all social networks (exclusively, which is what this seems to imply). It's a really strange worldview to me.

Really, it sounds like you just know a lot of unpleasant people.

The problem with wanting not-facebook is that we don't really have a choice anymore. The social systems that were in place before facebook and mobile devices became so prevalent have all been destroyed, so there's no going back to the way you lived in 2002.

People don't make plans anymore, make fliers for their parties, etc. So if you decide that you don't want to participate in social networks online, it essentially means that you're opting out of society offline as well: you simply won't be included in those social plans.

And even if you managed to stay a part of society, you find yourself standing in the metaphorical elevator where everyone else is looking down at their phones.

If you manage to make it out to dinner with people, they'll all inexplicably be taking photos of their food, posting them on facebook, and then only relating to each-other at the table to explain who has commented or liked or whatever'd the things that are happening right there. And that's pretty uninteresting if you are not also invested in the likes, replies, etc.

Basically, it's a network effect, and we're in it. To characterize it as a choice only legitimizes this thing as something we have control over and have opted into, rather than something that has happened to us.

This reminds me a great deal of the insights of Susan Sontag in her essay On Photography. To wit:

"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it -- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs... Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture."

The whole essay is really worth reading - looking specifically at photography, you could make an argument that our other tools like Facebook are growing to fill a similar aggressive, certifying role in our culture...

You can find it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/On-Photography-Susan-Sontag/dp/0312420...

Am I the only person for whom snapping a photo of an experience and uploading it to Facebook doesn't ruin said experience? Am I the only person with the capacity to engage in social media at-will, without feeling compelled to do so because otherwise my experiences "didn't happen"?

I don't understand either of these sentiments.

Humans are social creatures. We always have been, and always will be. Engaging with people face-to-face is great. But when we're separated from others we care about, we'll resort to whatever means possible to share our experiences with them. In the past, that meant writing letters, talking on the phone, having film developed, etc. Today, it means whipping out your phone, snapping a photo, and touching your screen a few times.

Has the nature of how we experience life really changed that much? I can't help but feel that complaints of this nature are really just nostalgia in disguise.

You feel guilty, angry and envy because of what you see on Facebook? That problem is with you. I have never felt more in touch with more people through social services of this kind.

These services enhance my capability of keeping in touch with people. I didn't know how to use them correctly at first, and probably ODed on Facebook and made fun of how much people use them, but once you master yourself—or at least become better at it—you can live a much richer, fuller life by staying in touch with people you never could have before. My great-grandmother left Spain after the Civil War and did not have contact with her sisters for over 50 years. Personally, this alternative of being connected is much better than the other.

Learn about yourself. Learn how to use them for your benefit. When you get distracted, don't blame the technology, blame yourself for not knowing that you need to disconnect. It's hard. But it's doable. A life less posted is a choice we want to have sometimes, but being connected is something that I think we want more.

This article represents a much-needed big-picture view of how social networks have affected how we live. It seems like those with smartphones in their pockets, and social networks with connections, have the always-on ability to make an impression on others—and they are expected to. That manifests itself as a nagging feeling to always share and make an impression.

I'm backpacking through Europe right now as well, and not having cellular service and being more disconnected allows me to live with the intention to live. Whereas before, living in NYC and constantly being connected always allowed me to ask questions like: Should I check in here? Should I Instagram this? Am I expected to be active on social networks, lest I be forgotten?

All I can say: delete your Facebook account and travel to whatever country you want.

Not using Facebook doesn't mean you cannot share your photos (emotions, experiences, ...) these days. I traveled Central Asia and some other countries and uploaded photos and videos to a password protected folder on my webserver where my family and friends could watch them. Sending physical copies still would also work.

I never had a Facebook account and every time I read articles about FB, I'm thankful that I'm not addicted to this company, like so many people seem to be.

I feel like many of these posts present a false dichotomy. I hiked over 600 miles of the appalachian trail this summer, and I did use social media - a little. I posted about one photo to instagram a day - a faun a few days old, a chimney in the middle of the trail, a view of two side by side mountains, one drenched in sun and the other in a thunderstorm. This helped my notice the most beautiful moments of my day each day, and now I can look back at a gloriously curated story - ~35 pictures from 30 days. I put those photos up for my friends and family, and now I am so happy to have them. And they were happy to take a moment while flipping through their instagram feeds to see them. I guess I don't understand the fear, hatred, and jealousy people feel when confronted with moments from other people's lives.

This all hinges on our personality.

I go on Facebook, like what I like, ignore what I don't, and refuse to dwell on things.

I liked and agreed with the thesis of the article.. until I saw the tweet graphic at the bottom.

I "got" facebook in 2005 as a freshman in college, and deleted (not deactivated) my account in early 2009, as an experiment, and have been off ever since. I wanted to see if it would have a positive or negative effect on my social life.

1000% positive.

Now, if I want to know about one of my friends, I call them, text them, email them, or hang out with them. If someone wants to communicate with me, they do the same. I get texts all the time that start similar to "hey, facebook-challenged friend, theres X going on next weekend, come hang" or a phonecall/email saying the same, which leads into actual personal communication.

People might call it selfish, but my response would be: why am I obligated to use facebook to organize my social interactions? I don't make anyone contact me, and if they don't want to, they won't.

Also, I became really sick of baby pictures.

I find that the social networks are the modern version of being forced by an aquaintance to stare at mind-numbing out of focus holiday slides for 2 hours, except it pokes you every time that someone wants to force some more upon you.

I live a private life and don't want all the social crap bound to it.

As a point with regards to photography, I still use a mid-80's Praktica 35mm SLR and develop my own film and print by hand.

I want to remain attached to the memory, not where I exhibit it.

I traveled for nearly two years right out of college - pre email. Central/South America/Turkey etc. I went through an incredible array of emotions relating to not seeing or speaking to friends and family for weeks on end. Yet I also felt this incredible sense of adventure - being truly disconnected from all I had known. Those lessons in independence have paid dividends over and over again during tough times - knowing that I've faced a lot of challenges on my own and come through. Within a year of settling down I had my first dial up modem and the rest is history.

I'm incredibly thankful now in hindsight that I got to do it when I did. You could still do it today but you'd have to very actively decide not to be connected to people. That in itself would open up awkward questions/dialogues "Dude, you couldn't check your email/FB like even once a week?"

I certainly am not alone in having done something like this. I wonder what it means though for post College kids doing it now. We're never not connected to our larger ecosystem anymore. It's almost moved from the notion of "I'll be totally separated from friends and family' to "Everyone will be following my every move as I do one exciting post after another"

Post like these assumes no one has enough willpower to take pictures and then upload them when they get back from the vacation. To boot he seems to be romanticizing 2003 as a much simpler time... what?

The statement, "I used film so all my pictures really counted" is really annoying because it's as though he believes people nowadays just hold down the shutter button.

If we're talking about phone shots that people post to Facebook and Instagram; I think people spend way more time than they ever would have with film to setup the best shot (because it's going onto Facebook/Instagram!).

On the SLR front, just as there's a cost with using film (not enough exposures so you can't make mistakes) there is a cost with going digital: having to sort through a large amount of photos that are time consuming to look through, process, and edit. And these photos are actually quite large so there's also a much larger time cost.

So believe it or not, digital photographers have to be choosy as well lest they spend another 30 minutes trying to delete the pictures that were unnecessary.

I had a similar experience.

At the beginning of summer I was in Ireland for 7 days with my girlfriend on a Contiki tour. The first time I've ever been in Europe. I didn't bring my phone, on purpose.

Everyone around me was sharing, emailing, texting, and whatever else. I was relaxing, enjoying, and living the experience. I refused to nap, because I wanted to see everything, hear everything, experience everything.

Of course, when we got back home, I saw all the 'likes' that people had amassed on their trips. It was a weird feeling, that I could have updated my friends during the trip or whatever. But after the trip now, whenever I see people check-in when in big trips to europe it just seems like rubbing it in the face of your friends who might be stressed out, grieving, or whatever else.

I agree with this post. It confronts a big problem with the Internet, and the whole cheap-and-easy-creation, mass-consumption, turbo charged information vortex it spins.

People (and companies) are too busy crafting the meta-perception of themselves and their products, rather than spending serious time crafting themselves and their products. And who can blame them for such short sighted thinking - it is such an easy option and provides real short term benefits. For companies, ad-revenue and growth potential (growth is very important you see, because once you grow big you can...?). For people, self-validation and attention (a real chance to sway people your way! - until a few seconds later when someone else lures them away with a new post).

The future is now, tomorrow is gone forever.

I agree that many people "overshare" and misuse social media as he describes. This is a very subjective area where some people prefer to share more and others prefer privacy. If sharing is compulsive/addictive it can be a lot of fun but perhaps also a problem.

I use hootsuite to share via social media (twitter/facebook/linkedIN etc) as channels for sharing interesting news, and perhaps 10% of my posts are vaguely personal (sunset photo I took that evening for example).

In my experience online and social media (including HN here) are like a flowing river - the conversation is always flowing... it's nice to take a swim once in a while, just don't get swept away.

I don't share anything personal I do online. I haven't had a Facebook account for 8 months. Best decision I've made this year.

Another root cause:

"I started to compare my life to others, hating people based off of their status. All it brought me was anger and a lower self-confidence. Almost immediately after deleting it, I felt better. I'm mostly ok with how I live my life and I don't need to compare my life to that of others."

via http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/11wm5w/to_those_w...

I've done both. Me and my wife did a very similar trip in 2007 - 19 cities in 45 days, carrying DLSRs. I spent a huge amount of time taking pictures (~2500) which I still haven't managed to tag and organize 6 years later.

Just last month I went to LXJS and extended my stay into a month-long trip, carrying a DSLR and and iPhone. I rarely took the camera out of my bag, and shot maybe 500 pictures total, most of those using the iPhone.

Aside the fact that the phone actually takes better pictures in low light than my professional 3-year-old DSLR, I couldn't bother to use the camera for a couple reasons: 1) more hand work 2) a bit more difficult to share; taking SD card out, importing to the iPad 3) 90% of the time someone has already taken a nicer picture of whatever I'm looking at.

I had 3G for almost the whole trip, used Foursquare, Facebook, Path, Twitter and Skype a lot, and don't feel that this has taken out anything from the experience. In fact I believe I spent less time overall messing with tech than when I was intent on doing photography, and being able to effortlessly keep in touch both with my family at home and people I met along the way was really nice.

Facebook can improve your social life, you need to put some effort into it

When I used film, this is exactly how I felt. Like each moment was precious and worth saving. Now that I use my phone and DSLR more, it's much easier to share, and therefore I do it more. There's a lot to be said for adding a barrier to sharing. Shameless plug: my startup, Backspaces, is doing exactly that.

Here's an idea: moment quota. Set up a social network similar to those that exist, but implement a cap. You then have to choose what really matters.

A good example is Dribbble. To prevent excessive posting you have a cap (per month) that you can use. At the end of the month, you're topped off with more posts (or "shots" in their language).

This would make people not only enjoy networks more (and be conscious of what they share), but make the experience of taking in other people's content actually exiting.

I've skimmed through the comments and I (at least from that) haven't seen anyone mention what I think's the most interesting question:

Is there a way we can improve social media tools (or replace them with something different) that helps minimize their negative effects and maximise their potential?

In the scheme of things, computers are a very new technology and Facebook and the like even newer still. I wouldn't be surprised if there's still a lot of room left for improvement.

Putting aside the issue of posting about oneself, I wonder if there is research data whether not keeping track of others/society makes one less achieving or more...

perhaps try facebook w/o the metrics? no likes might make you less envious. http://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/

".....and got this idea that the value of a moment is directly proportional to the number of likes it receives."

LOL I cannot agree more to this.

You can't stop progress! ;)