I figure a lot of it depends on how you use the site. For instance, are you on Instagram following influencers and people who curate what they post to be just so? Then yeah, maybe it'll make you feel shitty. Are you seeing photos of your friends and their dogs or babies? Maybe not. I still appreciate the way Facebook allows me to stay in touch with folks across the country, who I maybe wouldn't normally write an email to or text, especially on the regular? Like my old college roommate I get to see her cute kids and hear about her interesting career. Maybe I'd normally get a twice a year update otherwise, or maybe we would have entirely lost touch. Who knows.

I used to get my college alumnae newsletter and it always depressed me - people getting married, having kids, having great careers, traveling and doing interesting things. Acknowledging that they only wrote in about the good stuff helped, but still ... I lead a very low key, unimpressive life and nothing in it seemed worthy of inclusion. I don't get the newsletter any more, so no comparisons, which is good ... although I do miss reading about new publications (the, what?, 800th edition of "Pat the Cat"?).

I know the grind involved with many of the great career and advancement stories in my alum notes and realized I have no interest in that, so when it's people I like I am happy for them and when it's people I didn't really know I either ignore it or think that sounds interesting maybe I can meet them at the next reunion and have an interesting talk.

FaceBook I can manage to curate to only be the people I want to hear from 90% of the time. I get no ads, I mute or unfriend people who stress me out and I follow almost no one I do not actually know through life or here.

Twitter is a mixed bag, but I do like the news via there and community following. Still it can get toxic - specifically when someone you don't know and follow and seem to be in agreement on life and culture and whatnot takes a stand you really really do not agree with. A lot of people on twitter have no room in their world for nuance or grey. The are often very passionate about 1 thing and hold it 100% pure. On twitter I follow mostly people I do not know in RL or via here.

Yeah, a lot of cool and interesting conversation takes place on Twitter, but I can't keep up. So I focus my energy on FB and Insta because I can just focus on my friends there, I'm not trying to generally get hot takes or news

my car windows are done and I went to Trader Joes and to Aldi - had lunch and now I should work on the powerpoint, but I think I am going to try to clean up the house a bit - too many things have still not found places and too many things are still in boxes.

also, day drinking has begun.

I'm starting to believe the same is true for twitter. And I'm active-ish (/addicted to being) there.

I take at least one day a week away from twitter. And it's mostly people I know or authors I like. But every now and then I fall into an "everything's falling apart, if you're not storming the barricades you're a capitalist lackey" thread, and that's just exhausting.

I can't keep up with Twitter at all. Every time I follow something interesting back to it I immediately get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tweets. So many!

I have a few FB friends who def do the curated-online-image thing and it gets old real fast. Most of my friends are just kind of random and weird, though, which has legs.

I look at a little bit of twitter at certain times, but I definitely don't try to keep up, and I mostly follow famous/media/internet people. So I like it fine!

I was going to try to wait until 4:30 before leaving, but I'm definitely not doing any more work today and I bet I'm not getting any more emails!

Most of my friends are just kind of random and weird, though, which has legs.

I try to contribute to that as much as possible. (Or, I should say, my kitty tries to contribute to that.)