I think it heavily depends on your personality traits.

So first thing I would do is to take one Big Five personality traits - maybe this one, ranking high on google search? bigfive-test.com/

For background, check out Wikipedia

Big Five personality traits

The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits, developed from the 1980s onward in psychological trait theory.

For example among the Big Five, I'm big on introversion (solitary/reserved) and neuroticism (sensitive/nervous), so while I'm sure that Mastodon has advantages over Twitter, it wouldn't still be good for me.

A big thing is that I like long form arguments. Like a whole paragraph. Maybe more than one. Sometimes I even read books, can you imagine?

It's quite funny to me that people points to the use of screenshots and Threads as a proof of Twitter creativity.

For me those are obvious symptoms of the limitations of the platform.

This is an interesting discussion topic. I honestly don't spend much time outside of Dev and LinkedIn for the most part. I work and spend time with the family and occasionally look at Twitter if something is going on that is trending and I hear about it and want to find more information. Other than that I don't really engage much on social media anymore because people are so damn hateful anymore that it isn't worth sharing an opinion or you get attacked by others that have a differing opinion like they forgot you can still have a conversation about a differing opinion without attacking the other person or group. Social media has gotten so toxic that it honestly isn't worth the time invested in reading through to find the good stuff while scrolling through the mile of negativity that exists just to get to it.

these platforms, over the years, have rewired our brains to crave their patterns and rewards — meaning that leaving platforms or quitting entirely can be really, really hard.

Really? My experience is completely different.

Twitter

For example, I have an account twitter that I visit maybe once every three months, I would not call my usage "craving." I guess could close it.

Facebook

A couple of time I auto-suspended my Facebook account for several months. It was on occasion of some political events and Facebook was full of polemics and discussions that generate more heat than light; I was getting angry every time I went there, so I decided to suspend myself. I spent several months without accessing Facebook feeling neither craving nor freedom... I reactivated it after a friend of mine contacted me on LinkedIn worried if everything was OK.

Why did I not close my Facebook account then? Because I use it to keep in touch with old friend, because there are few groups that are funny and because it allows me to get update about music artists that I like, events organized in restaurants I go to, ...

Honestly, most of the post there (besides the funny groups) could use a one-way ticket to /dev/null

LinkedIn

To round up, I have also an account on LinkedIn that is just for work purposes and keep contacts with colleagues and coworkers. Let me tell you: it is not a pleasure at all to skim through LinkedIn posts, most of them are just collections of "nice stories," superficial politics and the latest trend in technology (as saw by non-technical people, enough to make me sick).

• When it comes to passive doom scrolling, Twitter and Instagram are my guilty pleasures. Professionally, I've been making a habit of content curation on LinkedIn and Dev.to on a regular basis.

• What do I enjoy?

  • Twitter: Access to a real-time feed of the world
  • Instagram: I do enjoy the randomness of Reels, and the network has become a calmer place to stay connected with anyone and everyone from my past. Opinions aren't so vocal.
  • LinkedIn & Dev.to: Rep building
• In terms of ditching platforms, either I'd have to dramatically change my life in a way that negated the desire for that platform, or the platform would have to get so swampy that I no longer think my participation adds meaningful value. Facebook is 95% in this territory for me, I have maybe 2 private groups that I still participate in.

My preferred platform is Facebook because people I know are already there and Facebook is more suitable for longer content. Other than socializing with friends and family, I follow pages that publish news about my tech stack or tech event in my area.

The problem is the algorithm is kind of terrible. I even saw some casino ads disguised as food advertisement, and it is illegal. People you follow heavily determine what you will see. For example, I see people debunking fake news more than fake news.

For social media intake, I probably manage it by using something else such as creating weird projects on GitHub or gaming.

Oddly enough, Discord is the social platform I spend the most time on. Me and many of my close friends and their close friends spend a lot of time talking, posting, chatting there. Collectively there's maybe 20 heavily active users with plenty more slightly active or inactive. For us it works because we all spend a lot of time at our computers, so we're pretty much always available to just chill in a voice channel, talk, stream, play, etc. I like it because it's a relaxed and semi-private space. It's like a virtual living room, more or less. Usually everybody is bringing in the content they like most from other platforms too, like twitter, tiktok, etc

I used to spend a LOT of time on facebook but over the past few years, I noticed my posts are few and far between. I think my last FB post was over two months ago, and it was just a re-share from the "your memories" thing. I don't even use the messenger except for one group chat to keep in touch with some people outside of the aforementioned group.

The closest second for me is twitter, but I only use that to scroll through memes to repost into our discord or follow updates from people of interest I'm interested in (usually gamedev or softdev studios).

For the most part I really don't like being on facebook or twitter. Too much of it is ads, attention bait, or clout/snark farming. Particularly I can't stand facebook's "laugh react anything I don't understand" culture (twitter has the same thing more or less, just in different form). It's something that seems to bleed into most open social "zones"; discord is no exception, but it's easier to avoid them when you can join and leave those "zones" rather than being algorithmically placed into them. Or you can just restrict them to your friends.

Over the past few years, discord has done a good job catering towards this type of "virtual hangout" approach at creating social zones. I can think of a million imaginary horribles they could implement ruin their platform, but I couldn't tell you which would have the biggest impact on me.

Discord is my main squeeze these days. Only the content that's relevant to what I'm working on. I'm too opinionated to make it on the Twitters.