Honestly, I'd stick with the Fediverse. At least on here you have some rights and no one (probably) will sell your information to advertisers. LinkedIn is an okay platform if you're looking to grow your career through social media.

Unless you are expected to engage with others on social media, you can circumvent them by creating a blog under your name. Tailor your essays to the crowd you want to appeal to - family, friends, potential employers - and publish a few articles every year.

That's essentially what I've been doing. I used to be on Facebook (left a while ago), and I'm still on LinkedIn (due to its toxic positivity, I'm not engaging there, just keeping my CV up to date). But if you googled my name, the first few pages of results would be my blog articles, my Flickr profile and a few other things not related to social media. This also gives me far more control over what I want people to know about me, and how that information is presented.

Get LinkedIn. I understand where you're coming from. I don't have any other social media either and I've gotten weird looks. Especially when it came from dating in the past with people trying to make sure you're you, but having LinkedIn helped significantly. Also shows the maturity of having a social media account that can possibly help you in the long-run.

The problem I'm having is that I don't exist online when people try to look me up.

Is this referring to job applications or interpersonal relationships or both?

If you do create a social media profile, just remember two things: you control what you share, and anything you share is out there forever.

If I don’t have anything nice to say I don’t say anything at all.

It's not standard to still expect to find anyone on social media these days. If someone mentioned they couldn't find you and that was important to you maybe you should ask that specific person for advice?

In my experience the expectation these days is for people to be available in some chat apps online (depending where you are: WhatsApp, signal, telegram or iMessage).

I turned off all social media almost 3 years ago. Reddit was the only thing that I subscribed to, and I got rid of that last June. I haven’t missed Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or anything else for even one second. Don’t do it!

LinkedIn isn't a terrible idea if you just want to come up in search results. It's quite useful for a lot of different professions for networking. You'd likely just make a profile and never look at it again.

Facebook can be almost mandatory depending on where you live. I currently live in a city where Facebook is the only meaningful source of networking, local news and information on events online. It's not uncommon for businesses, even quite larger ones, to have their only media presence online be a Facebook page. The city is also kind of infamously hard to break into socially so you want any advantage you can get.

I don't currently have any social media but it's become a hindrance and I might need to reactivate. I end up using social media by proxy through family and friends anyway.

Quite late for that. The fun time is in the past.

Don´t, it´s fucking horrible. Yes, this also includes a major part of lemmy. If you really wan´t to, I would advise to only focus on nice little communities that are specialized in one of your personal interests. Generally, the larger a community becomes, the more toxic and stupid it gets in my experience.

If you really need to, I'd recommend social media within the Fediverse.

First, a Mastodon account with your real name, photo and a small bio. Post your thoughts or quotes or whatever; repost memes, art, etc. Leave an option for people to send you messages, with whatever privacy you see fitting. In case you worry about it, Mastodon is a known alternative to Twitter, and Twitter is very toxic nowadays, so people will find it reasonable that you have a Mastodon account instead.

There's also Pixelfed, if you like photos. It is an alternative to Instagram. If you have a hobby, post often about it. I don't know, cooking, skating, painting... Anyway, make it a beautiful gallery of your life and fewer people will question why Pixelfed and not Instagram. You can always excuse yourself saying you don't like so many business accounts on Instagram or whatever excuse, and that you like to give new things a try.

Finally, a WordPress or Plume or WriteFreely blog may be a great opportunity to write and share your ideas. It is kind of retro to have a blog, I guess, but it is a good way for people to get to know you better. You may even find something you're passionate about and create a community. Some people start with two or three pieces of advice about something (like gardening) and end up with a blog full of useful articles and a community that follows them. Blogs usually have an option for private e-mails and a redirection to other social media, so you can have your Mastodon and/or Pixelfed account attached.

Why the Fediverse? You don't sell your soul to corporations, you help it grow, you get a better community.

But give it a second thought, though. Having a social media profile can be exhausting. I personally obsess over it being a good reflection of who I am, respectful in the things I say, with beautiful images, with colors and themes that reflect my personality, with enough of my real self so that people know me but not enough that they cringe or judge me negatively. My objectives (and perfectionism) make it chaotic after a while, and the profile gets more and more inauthentic. That's why I don't have any at the moment. It can also bring some social drama, so, yeah, ponder the pros and cons.

About 7 years back I joined everything there was, Instagram, SnapChat, Facebook, Twitter. Then I started using Reddit, honestly the best social media at that time. Amazing repository for information (still is). I can tell you now that all those platforms are all garbage. They're like 70% bot content and 20% reposts by actual people, maybe 10% are actual original posts. It's so hard to find something that is authentic and new on the internet nowadays.

Lemmy, Mastadon, the Fediverse as a whole at this point in time, has some of the best content every. Although small and not vast, the content is top notch. I scroll everyday and very often find some of the most engaging discussions in any of the subs, AskLemmy for example.

Now, if you're going to start using social media, I suggest you use it containerized (vm) or use a new computer with a burner cell number (redpocket is like $30/year on ebay). Just to see garbage for yourself.

Edit: oh yeah, at some point I did use TikTok. You can check it out on proxitok I think. That shit is poison. I personally sifted through and saw the shit for what it really is (spyware that is coated in social media). Dancing girls everywhere, reddit voiceovers, people pointing at things over original content, some of the most cringe content known to mankind.

I've been thinking about it as well, I think if I were to do it I'd probably post and immediately close the app, and disable notifications, to prevent addiction. Go for it, it might be fun who knows.

what kind of roles are you applying for and at what level (entry, factotum, assistant, specialist, manager, director...?)

that will help what kind of presence you can have

It's better if you filter out and moderate the usage. Just because social media it's bad doesn't mean there's no good part.