I have always been a big proponent of these, but I was literally running out of social life because people just plain refused using other means of communication.
I didn't have a cell phone until the summer of 2011, and I only bought it because I was moving to another city. I've had a smartphone for less than one year (with the minimal amount of apps; basically whatsapp, telegram and very little more), and very reluctantly so.
In theory it's a nice idea to let go of the phone and move into a different style of social and personal life. In practice, this makes you the odd one who still refuses to use the medium everyone else uses (and right now, I'm the odd one who only looks at their phone 4 or 5 times a day, so people can't expect me to read a message within an hour of it being sent). The pressure to stay connected is very real even if it's not intentional, and this pisses me off.
A common answer to all of this is that if people refuse to contact you using other means, they are not really your friends. While I see the point, the sad truth is that by avoiding the most common means of communications, you're just putting hurdles between you and your friends, and mildly incentivizing them to stop talking to you.
At least I have successfully removed facebook from my life. That was far easier than I could have imagined, and I didn't even do it on purpose.
> A common answer to all of this is that if people refuse to contact you using other means, they are not really your friends.
People who make this claim ought to stop speaking out loud to their friends, and insist on communicating in sign language only, or by writing things down on paper. They might realize that their friends aren't really their friends, either, when you start insisting on making them jump through arbitrary hoops.
> A common answer to all of this is that if people refuse to contact you using other means, they are not really your friends.
Maybe, except I didn't pick my friends based on the way I want to communicate with them. I dislike Facebook as much as the next person who dislikes it, but I would never expect my friends to change their ways for me or the way I want to communicate with the world. Thinking specifically of one of my friends, we will regularly switch between Google Hangouts, iMessage and Slack, depending on the context. If he pinged me tomorrow and said he was cutting Slack from his life (heaven forbid), we'd have backups, but if not, I'd probably follow to whatever means he prefers, because the alternative - losing one of my best friends - just isn't worth it. So, yeah, I check Facebook once a week for events and general life updates, and I move on. Seems better than the alternative.
I didn't have a cell phone until the summer of 2011, and I only bought it because I was moving to another city. I've had a smartphone for less than one year (with the minimal amount of apps; basically whatsapp, telegram and very little more), and very reluctantly so.
In theory it's a nice idea to let go of the phone and move into a different style of social and personal life. In practice, this makes you the odd one who still refuses to use the medium everyone else uses (and right now, I'm the odd one who only looks at their phone 4 or 5 times a day, so people can't expect me to read a message within an hour of it being sent). The pressure to stay connected is very real even if it's not intentional, and this pisses me off.
A common answer to all of this is that if people refuse to contact you using other means, they are not really your friends. While I see the point, the sad truth is that by avoiding the most common means of communications, you're just putting hurdles between you and your friends, and mildly incentivizing them to stop talking to you.
At least I have successfully removed facebook from my life. That was far easier than I could have imagined, and I didn't even do it on purpose.