If you use Facebook the old fashioned way (an actual network of friends) it's probably very pleasant. If you start joining "Groups" which are similar to subreddits, it's the most toxic thing I've seen. I never really was a real Facebook user with a network in the first place, but one day on a whim I went to the FB site where I still had my account and decided to join some random suggested groups. That's where it becomes toxic. Everything becomes incendiary things about the US president and usually further devolves into trolls saying openly racist things, there's no moderation and it's a real cesspool. And I'm talking about groups dedicated to hobbies and cartoons.

You are clearly have not accepted invitations from high school ex classmates… and you shouldn’t. At least in my case, some of them are the worst kind of strangers: people you would think would grew to be smart, reasonable and/or well intentioned… but they became just the opposite

What nomdep said, but also the friends-of-friends problem. I cut a lot of people out of my life based on who else they associated with.

I don't count HN as modern social media. For me, it's more akin to older phpBB boards and the like. We have no avatars, we come and go on posting, reading. We have only usernames and karma, and no one cares how much karma someone has. There's very little dopamine hit.

If we look at the wikipedia definition of social media, it states: "Social media are interactive technologies that allow the creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks"

I personally view the old IRC (Efnet!), BBS, chat rooms, ICQ as the earliest form of social media. And just as addictive - I couldn't wait to get home from school and jump into a chat room. I checked it as often as I did Facebook later on.

It seems like that should be true, but my observation is that HN causes similar stress in people.

For example, "I'm so stressed out by all these new frameworks" is a frequent comment on HN. That's FOMO, that's keeping-up-with-the-Jones's, that's a negative reaction to social media.

I've been an active member of a particular, very popular, and long-running boating forum. It's been around years before facebook and twitter. FOMO, envy, and keeping-up are just as much a thing in the marine communities as they are on any social media platform, but the one key difference is consumption of info - that forum is compartmentalized. Subscription emails are a thing, but they're throttled. The format of the forums makes for slow, introspective consumption. I've been a member since 2005, but I only visit once a month.

I just think it's night and day different from the firehose that are modern social media.

Hacker news and reddit FIRE subs and wallstreetbets is way more fomo-inducing than instagram or twitter, i have found. Most people live very mundane, unaccomplished lives, compared to people in tech. Average people are not involved in FAANG. "I have $3 million by 30 what do I do?" or "genius scientist discovers new particle" are not posts you typically see on Instagram, Facebook,or Twitter.

I played around with different methods of interacting with these websites and found one that works for me. With Reddit, I deleted my account and simply visit the site on the mobile browser. I just have the subreddits I like bookmarked. Eventually, a little screen pops up and says "get the app or get off", and that's usually about the time I should get off Reddit anyway. It's a shame, I used to be an active contributor to subreddits like /datascience and /<my hometown>, but I noticed on multiple separate instances that I was talking to / arguing with a troll karma farming account. On my home town subreddit. I feel a lot better now that I am simply incapable of arguing on that website anymore.

I also deleted my accounts with all of my other social media sites. I think HN is the only social media site I still have an account with.

I also used to have a Reddit account but, like Facebook, more often than not, when I left it I would feel worse than when I logged in. Once that starts happening with a site, I stop going and delete my account. I'm not exactly sure when it happened with Reddit, but it's been about a year and a half to two years since I've logged on, now. The site just got angrier and angrier, regardless of the subreddit. I tended to stick to the more technical subreddits, and even there squabbles were breaking out and the moderators were not reigning it in =[

Reddit is uniquely toxic, even (sometimes especially) in small communities. Whenever I bring this up, I almost always get a few people telling me to "stick to small communities", but those can be even worse since you can't really 'hide in the crowd'.

There's a lot of alarming behaviors there that are considered normal. There's also real-world stalking, doxing, and violence that happens on Reddit. I've seen people get followed across alt accounts by folks who have a bone to pick with them. Some of the stuff I've seen happen, and have experienced, on that platform is frightening.

Why not stay off of social media entirely? If you think that Reddit is even more toxic than Facebook (which I agree with), then why visit the site?

Because it's entertaining. I don't feel the toxicity there is harmful to me, personally. I stopped using Facebook because I did feel that the FOMO-feelings I got were harmful to me.

I do a lot of things that are unhealthy, in moderation. Certain TV shows I watch are toxic to some extent, but I still watch them.

I'm of the opinion Reddit is the most toxic and hateful website on the internet. It's also the most influential.

Why do you find it the most toxic? Just curious, I personally find Twitter way more toxic, maybe it's because of the subs I'm subscribed to

I would agree that in some areas, Reddit is toxic and hateful, but I think pretty much every other major social media platform suffers from this as well, and most suffer worse than Reddit. There will always be a corner of hatred.

I bet that depends on the sub. The few that I'm active in are helpful and informative - nothing short of awesome. I'm sure some are awful.

I agree with smaller communities being helpful. Because of Reddit's massive userbase and breadth of topics I frequently append 'site:reddit.com' to my searches because I have much more confidence in a dedicated subreddit answering my question than some random blog or webpage that usually ends up being some SEO scheme.

That said, these communities don't represent Reddit as a whole. Looking at r/all, and in theory seeing the most trafficked pages on Reddit, gives an entirely different view than my niche group of subreddits. I think the biggest reason for this is that the thing that get promoted on r/all are the most engaging post of the most engaging subreddits. Sometimes that's something apolitical like a post from r/eyebleach, where people generally agree that cute things are nice. Other posts are things like this one [0] which are meant to inflame you regardless of your side in the matter. If the post's score is anything to go by, this one post gets more engagement then some of the subreddits I visit do in a month.

When someone says Reddit is toxic I usually assume they mean r/all. The platform itself isn't inherently toxic, but it's desire to funnel everyone into the same threads is.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/qpcaeh/just_your_...