"addiction" and "just ___" are kind of mutually opposing forces. It can be difficult to understand addiction from the outside, as the solution seems obvious, but the internal world is not straight forward to navigate.
If the only way the poster is going to cure their social media addiction is through government intervention, I would suggest finding alternative means of addressing the issue.
I think even those who came into contact with addiction and substance abuse may fail to realize that social media dependence is a very similar thing.
We can get technical - drugs and booze are psychoactive, while social media is behavioral addiction. Even so, the habit-building loop and the compulsion that stems from it is effectively the same.
So, I don't think it's condescending to say "just quit it". I suspend my Twitter account from time to time when I realize I built a habit loop again, and the "urge" just goes away.
If you delete your facebook and twitter accounts you lose access to the only customer support channel in many places. If you delete faceboom you lose access to local second hand markets, you lose access to information about community events, you cannot participate in group chats, you get harangued at every social event if you try to share another contact channel.
I haven’t found ostracism for using channels outside of Facebook. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances that I keep in touch with via Snapchat, email, and text.
I certainly feel ostracized for not having a Facebook account. Chambers of Commerce, Community Groups, and it feels like most queer people expect you to be on Facebook, and if you aren't your on the outside.
Its very similar to not being a blue bubble in some regards, but Facebook has a much broader scope than just being a messenger platform.
Excited for the EU to fix the closed messenger issue, then I can have 3rd party clients to bridge all my communications securely into one unified view, just gotta make sure that these large companies don't try and open up these platforms by hiding your end to end encryption keys on their servers :D
I'm very much okay with being ostracized by people who don't care enough about me to stay in touch outside of social media. I actually prefer to be ostracized by anyone who'd judge me for bubble color.
I deleted my facebook during Lent in 2017 as part of a social media "time out" and never brought it back.
Interestingly enough, friends started calling again. Quitting social media cold turkey is great because you get to find out who is actually important in your life, and you find it out really fast.
This sounds like addiction?
Just delete the app from your phone and move on?
You'd be surprised by perfectly fine life goes on without Twitter / Facebook / TikTok / Instagram.
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