Same here. As a tech-interested kid growing up in the 90's, a very significant amount of my formative years and social development has happened online. I'm now starting to realise what a mistake that may have been (not that I could have avoided the temptation, even if I knew it for what it is).

I have recently completed a digital purge, and now have no social media accounts at all (except HN), and no smartphone. Fortunately I live in a country where that is still viable, but I am excited to re-build my life in "real life".

This is a double-edged sword. I'm definitely in the same boat as you, in that I spent most of my formative years online. But the people I interacted with, and the skills I developed, really had no parallel in the real world around me.

While other kids my age talked about sports, which they'd likely never go on to play, I got some real-world project management experience by helping work on a Web browser.

While other kids my age developed cliques and bullied the kids that weren't in them, I got to help build communities, and facilitate repairing divisions when they did occur. I still do. Community building is important to me.

Very importantly: while other kids my age, not to mention family members, acted with outrage (as per the article) when it came to people's differences, I learned that straight and gay people can be best of friends, there are political leanings other than "conservative" and "Communist", climate change is probably a thing I should take some steps on... The list goes on. These are probably not things I'd have learned if my upbringing had skewed heavily towards real-world.

I understand that your situation might be different - for others, the real world may be more palatable and practical. But I actually see the fact that I did this as a strength.

One of the forums that I post on has a thread specifically designed for requesting a suspension of your account to either take a break or cool down. It's recorded as a requested suspension, and moderators do not use it when factoring any future suspensions for breaking rules.

I generally take a three month break twice a year, several months apart, when I find myself too sucked into what is going on there. Sure, I miss some of the "drama", but those sabbaticals are what makes sure that my side projects are productive.

One of these days, I'm going to ask that they upgrade the suspension into a full on ban, but we're not quite there yet. There's too much nostalgia in that place for me to be ready to completely let go.

Social media "vacations" are a good idea, "engagecations" or "disengagecations".

Another comment mentioned in this thread is "enragement is engagement" and really that is true with most algorithms. The algorithms and addiction patterns are created not necessarily for nefarious reasons but from a macro level look nefarious, human nature just reacts to salacious/divisive content more probably for survival reasons. Too much fear/division/misinformation out there.

Repeat after me: "social media is not reality".

The problem is it is leading people to be real world divisive and dividing themselves. For instance, Facebook has broken up many friends and family over some post or opinion, everyone knows people that this has happened to. We're almost too connected and tuned in.

Nintendo had a feature that if you played video games too long it asked if you wanted to take a break, "You've been playing for a while. Why don't you take a break?". That is a feature that will be more seen in the future from platforms that do care about their users and the dopamine addiction cycles, less is more sometimes.

Much like privacy, cool down periods or engagement "vacations" will be a popular feature in the future.

I find it helpful to go back and read my old content on social media and simply ask myself if this is the type of person I want to be.

This is a great thing to do. I've found some old chat logs from 20 years ago, and I don't want to be the person who said some of those things. Why didn't I realize at the time that what I said was wrong to say? Life in an echo chamber warps us, and it's good to step away sometimes and see it from the outside.

This is commendable. The rest of society also needs to be compassionate and understanding and not ostracise someone just for a couple of edgy tweets from a decade ago. But now such messages are a time bomb, and can be used against you at any point if you cross someone.

Don’t forget slashdot