One anecdotal chime in: I dropped the Zuck for a year and gradually realised that my city runs all its cultural events through Facebook - unless you know or someone invites you, that was pretty much it.

I think I did miss out on meeting new people or seeing old friends by chance, simply because I didn't know to turn up somewhere for a gig or whatever - and the old addage has some truth imo; often you just need to be in the right place at the right time for things to happen.

I personally don't have any except for a LinkedIn and I never feel like I'm missing out. People don't care, I never ask to follow people. If I care, I'll get their phone number.

But usually, I don't care.

It hasn't for me.

As an introvert who never wanted my business to be out in the open with my real name attached, no. Was always told never use your real name online and how many times people these days had themselves bitten for doing the opposite it should be obvious by now. Not really the masses fault but the standard from Facebook years ago.

Not really. In fact, I did a little dumphone detox a few weeks ago and literally nothing changed other than not having access to apps like telegram until I could access my laptop. Oh, and no video calling. I think now that I'm in my late 20s, married, with my little circle of close friends, and work peers I don't really find a need for social media. Now when I was in high school and witnessed the birth of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, it was a big deal to have an account and I didn't start purging those accounts until a few years ago...

Socially it sucked until my friends figured out how to organize things the way we did in the 90s and before again. Otherwise my mental health improved immensely. It was great not having to see all these people I cared about treat all these other people I cared about so horribly in such concrete and evident ways.

As a teenager or young adult, maybe. But as you grow older less so. Adding someone on social media has never really been brought up in my current social circles. Sure the occasional linkedin invite if it's in a professional setting, but my current group of acquaintances hasn't really thought about adding each other on every social media platform or exchanged contacts other than phone numbers.

Don't think so. I'm pretty happy with my social life and haven't touched any of that stuff in 10+ years.

Depends on a person and their social circle. I hardly have any social life apart from the on-line interactions and infrequent in-person meetings with on-line friends. And it is not like I stopped having friends when the internet appeared, on the contrary.

Social media getting shittier and shittier directly affects my social life. I hope something good for this purpose appears soon and at least some of my friends and acquaintances move there, like they moved to Facebook years ago.

no

My profession generally encourages a LinkedIn presence. You don't need to participate, but it helps in people knowing who you are.

The only thing that Social Media has given me I have a hard time living without us FB Marketplace

And that's just because people have mostly moved to selling stuff there. I miss Craigslist

This is niche, but in dating / not-quite-dating apps, it's not terribly uncommon for people to want to see a social media profile, both as a way to get to know you more and to verify that you're a real person.

Many of my friends organize events and have group conversations on Facebook, and I miss out on a fair bit of it. I still have an account, I just don't use it except to check once a week or so if there's something happening. I hate it.

Looking for work would be tougher. Even when I finally retire I will keep my linkedin just for folks that need a reference or such. Myabe 5 years down the line could dump it.

One example is that some companies will not hire someone with no presence. Not happened to me personally.

Depends entirely on the person and what things they want out of a social life.

For me, if I didn't have social media, there's a lot I'd miss out on. It's how two of my main social communities communicate any of their events, and it's a big part of a third. There would definitely be a negative impact for me if I nuked all my accounts.

You can certainly build your life to have your definition of a thriving social life without it, but you'll have to go out of your way to find those groups that use other methods for communication.

In my experience, massive impact.

I refuse use Facebook and WhatsApp, and yet >95% of this country's population rely on those things.

It means that practically all of my potential social circle excludes me. Most people don't care about reasons to not use those things - "after all, everyone is there and I have nothing to hide."

Most people hardly even know that their phones can send plain sms messages for free, to say nothing of email. If asked to do so, most honestly don't know how!

Refusing to use Zuckware is costing me a lot of social opportunities.

The only reason I have social media accounts under my wallet name is to avoid anyone wondering why I'm not on social media (also: grandparents). Everyone IRL who I care enough about to actually explain know I login once a year in a separate browser (under incognito) and check every privacy setting from my checklist and update if it's important (like job change). LinkedIn I check regularly, but that's because a.) I only connect with people from work and a lot of them do think it's important to have strong networks (and they could be right, no idea) and b.) LinkedIn has an education section that my job really likes because it has free classes and when I get bored at work, I can do a quick class in something (nothing they actually want us to do; I have to work in the nightmare that is Agile, do not make me take yet another class about the benefits of this software development hellscape, thanks).

Honestly, I try to give the impression I'm not into social media IRL; there are like, three people in my daily life who are allowed into my online life and one because we more or less both got the internet at the same time and started a mailing list together. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of nice people IRL, but not the type I want to introduce to the friends I made online.

Well, anecdotally I have no mainstream social media, and also no real friends where I live. But that might also be the Persistent Dysphoric Disorder's fault. Also, people suck and I'm fine spending most of my time with my wife.

I don't think so. It's just a little more inconvenient.

For example: I don't need to see posts from friends to know how their day was. Instead, I just call them or meet them for a coffee and ask about their day.

The old fashioned ways still work well.

It has huge potential impacts. There are kids who get excluded from social groups for having Android

Yeah. You are often left out of group activities, your friends don't chat with you as often (not talking about close friends, but more about those buddies you go out with once in a while), you're left out of local communities (there were very few people from my country on Reddit, it's even less on Lemmy).