Collect alternative methods of staying in touch with friends you care about before leaving social media (phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, etc.)

Yea. If your friends will abandon you just because you’re not on social media anymore, then I have bad news for you: they probably aren’t really your friends. When I ditched Facebook about 10 years ago, I lost contact with a whole bunch of people who weren't really part of my life anyway, they were simply "names I recognized."

My social life actually got better after dropping social media simply because I'm spending less time scrolling in front of a screen.

> If your friends will abandon you just because you’re not on social media anymore

That's a very binary view of the world that I don't share. But that's not a topic I want to get into.

Can you keep in touch with a certain group of friends through non-social media platforms? Absolutely. I do it daily, but that's not the point.

The point is that staying away from these social media platforms reduces your ability to have a social life. It's quite like saying that you decrease your chances of finding work without a driving license or cellphone number.

I could probably get away without social media today (modulo telegram/whatsapp). But at what point would I surrender? Most people of my generation use it, and it looks like newer generations will have even higher usages.