They are optional in the same way how postal service is optional. Sure, you may just drive / sail / fly to whoever you want your package delivered... chances are you'd rebel against this seeing how everyone else simply drops their package by the nearest collection point.

Social networks today provide service beyond simply catching up with friends and family. They serve as front desks of companies' customer support, they provide easy means of feedback to important political figures... they became a public good and need to be recognized by the state as such.

Going back to the OP, if people are voluntarily using social networks because they make it easier to catch up with friends and family, why should we "ditch the concept in general"? Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters?

I think the concept in general has been proven to be terrible on pretty much every count, so yes, I advocate ditching the idea.

> Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters?

Or email, or phone, etc. There is no lack of other communications channels.

That said, I'm not in favor of banning these services. I just think society in general, and people in particular, would be better off if they stopped using them.

I haven't used social media for several years, and my life is in no way poorer for it. I miss out on nothing.

It would be nice if at a minimum we could demand a social network that caters to making meaningful connection points with friends/family/strangers rather than ad serving algos. I know... the people have spoken and they want free stuff and are willing to sell their data/soul for it. I just wish it wasn't so! If a company built a product that was primarily designed to make me love it and find it valuable enough to pay for it I would be all in. But if the rest of my friends/family aren't in... then its pretty meaningless. I'll just have to keep relying on more manual methods of social media like texting, calls etc.

> Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters?

I'd argue so. People put more thought into letters, since producing and sending them involved expense of time and effort. Laziness was its own spam filter.

Communicating with individuals is only a small fraction of what social network provides.

How are you going to communicate with a group of peers who all need to know everyone's responses to your messages... by mail? Do you realize how long this will take and how cumbersome it will be?

How would you make it possible for others, who weren't part of the conversation to come later and rediscover your entire conversation letter by letter?

Letters aren't a good replacement to social networks if you are thinking about a pre-digital age. Newspapers that publish paid advertisements are probably a better replacement... but they also don't quite fit because they lack the function of private messaging...

I don't think we have an equivalent to social networks in pre-digital world.

I think people fall into this delusion, but if you can peel yourself out of it, you’d find it’s not really true at all.

One of the best politically served groups in the US are elderly evangelical Christians - this doesn’t come from being on social media.

Indeed, I think you could actually argue that social networks produce a lot of hot air but very little actual action. People seem to burn themselves out on political discussion and ripping on each other for having different opinions, but then they seem to do very little actual participating in the political process. Places like Facebook and NextDoor suck all the air out of the room for a lot of peoples' political ambitions.

In contrast I'm finding that elected officials, aside from some gaffes here and there, are mostly receptive at the local level to the things we're asking for. If people spent the time they spend ripping on each other on social media instead navigating the bureaucracy and talking to the people that work there they could probably effect some meaningful change.

A lot of people think that social media activity is their significant contribution to a cause. Post or like or share something pertaining to social issue of the day and their little soul can now go feel great about the change they've made in the world!

That's not a delusion.

Specifically, the mechanism by which customer support is communicating with customers on social networks provides a lot of value to the customers because companies cannot gaslight individual customers. This works a lot better than even if you had a lawyer on your side, willing to work for you w/o compensation because the company might just hire a better lawyer.

I've literally been in this situation before: I had intermittent connection problems and had to call ISP to look into the cabling. Once the technician finally came, he found that a squatter took over the entrance to the breaker room on the roof, so he could no longer get access to the switch the company installed there. Because he wasn't able to do anything w/o police intervening and breaking into squatter's illegal construction, he just left... I still had no Internet connection, so I decided to terminate my subscription early.

Well, the ISP wouldn't have it. I had to jump through a lot of hoops, including closing and opening a bank account just to prevent the ISP from charging me for service they did not provide. I did it on principle, even though it would've been cheaper to just pay them few months. Come the end of my contract period, I get a summons to a court because the ISP hired a lawyer to go over cases like mine and try to intimidate individual customers into settling the arguments by paying the ISP (of course, by that time they tried to scare me with a fine that was about ten times the money I'd owe them on the contract).

So, I had to search for lawyer organization which volunteered to provide customer protection, but due to them being an NGO, they had a requirement that they would only provide their services if I could show that my yearly income was below X, which, unfortunately, it wasn't, and so I had to pay a lawyer from my own money to deal with this case. In the end, the ISP backed off, but nobody compensated me even for the lawyer I had to hire. Needless to say that it's not possible to compensate the time spent on this.

This was before social networks were popular enough to do this:

----

I had a very similar situation, which was simply due to me moving into another apartment which didn't have a coaxial outlet, so, I couldn't continue my contract with the ISP. They decided to pull the same trick. It was a single post on their Facebook page describing the situation that got me a phone call from their customer support department and my contract was terminated. Without charge.

Although you can get along perfectly fine without having a social media account at all. You can still reach customer service, you can still interact with political figures, you can still do all of the things you want and need in your life.

careful, nobody is using guns to make people use the internet; nonetheless try to go on living without it

all I'm saying is that it ain't so simple, not when "network effects" are involved

do you realize that roads are optional? you don't have to leave your house to talk to friends.

do you realize that using the mail service is optional? nobody forces you to write post cards.

do you realize that electricity is optional? you can get a shack in the forest and burn wood.

do you realize that water pipes are optional? you can dig for your own ground water.

the world is not made of solipsistic individuals. infrastructure encases, shapes, and forms the possibilities and constraints in which all of us live.

> "let's ditch social networks!"

> "You realize they're optional, right?"

> "Technically so are roads and mail and electricity and water!"

so... are you saying we should ditch roads and mail and electricity and water? Your response is one of the sillier non sequiturs I've seen in a while, and I browse Reddit.

Obviously the utilization of social networks is fundamental to social engagement in modern life. It's not silly whatsoever, it's a natural response when someone quips that a that a thing that's essentially needed but not absolutely required isn't worth complaining about.

How is it obvious? I (and most of my friends) don't use social networks at all. They're not "absolutely required" for absolutely anything (unless your country is significantly different from mine). You'll only "miss out" on things that are only happening on social networks, but that's the point, right?

I literally said they were not "absolutely required" and I don't know why you'd go out of your way to misquote my 2 sentence statement.

My mom didn't have a telephone, she had other friends without telephones, but having a telephone when she was a kid was fundamental to building robust social relationships. The reduction of social bandwidth generally results in fewer opportunities for social advancement, and most people would like to experience social advancement of some type.

> Obviously the utilization of social networks is fundamental to social engagement in modern life.

That is not obvious at all. I think it's not even true.

It's so non-obvious that 60% of the entire population of the Earth uses it.

That doesn't support the thesis that it's "fundamental to social engagement". I understand that it actually may be in some places, but I haven't seen a reason to think that's the most common case.

Roads, mail service, electricity and water pipes are valuable for me and improve my life. I want to use them, and I do.

Social networks are not valuable for me, and they would not improve my life. I don't want to use them, and I don't.

It's that simple, really.

Those things also don't quip at you ever 5 minutes saying 'use me!' and 'check me!'

Social networks changed the world, and are now predominant in the world we live in. It's like when someone pollutes water. Our society and culture are water, and social networks are... pollutants. It's fine and normal and good to want to look at the superfund site that is our global culture and want to push social networks out of the very-toxic pollutant it happens to be, and into something we can all abide, even for those who only drink beer or use charcoal filters. Plus, you never know what the kids next door are doing with the water...

The pollutants are people as they’ve always been.

Social media is a natural progression of society. It has all the same positives and negatives of an local social structure.

Is there really a "natural" progression of society? Especially in an age of computers and advanced communication, it is difficult to know what is natural anymore.

I didn’t mean natural in that sense. Smart-phone-social-media would be unnatural in the same sense that the wheel is unnatural. (In that it wasn’t present for most 99% of our evolution.)

Humans didn’t evolve with access to semiconductors, but the social dynamics in social networks have always been there. They’ve just been augmented by semiconductors.

I doubt anyone here would disagree with me that it’s better having more ways to communicate with relatives overseas. That’s all I’m really saying. These new methods of communication come with serious baggage, but they’re still inherently positive I think.

Social networks are like cigarettes. If everyone is smoking everywhere you’re still affected even if you decide you won’t smoke.

When even local governments use social networks to dispense information, no, no they're not.

I do, I realize that the most important decision to opt out is on me. There is also no denying that this process is a difficult one and it is not made easier by the platforms themselves.