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It’s the twenties of the 21st century and most of social media is actually toxic.
It’s not just addictive. It’s also downright depressing as studies show.
So how can you deal with it? Throw away your screens?
There are ways to consume less toxic content by choosing your social media tools wisely.
Here are some civil alternatives to the most atrocious anti-social sites.
Don’t waste your time – move on!
Yes, it’s true.
Some of the so called social media sites are broken and a waste of time.
In fact they are not social at all, they are anti-social.
Don’t risk your mental health. Move to services that are less taxing.
Do you face some issues on social media?
- You also get viciously attacked?
- Your content gets deleted?
- Or you get banned for no reason?
Many bloggers and influencers still cling to the past when some social sites have been hailed as a democratic Web.
Those hopes have often been disappointed.
Anonymous raging mobs and top down solely profit oriented algorithms behind the scenes have wreaked havoc to our ideals.
Still there are plenty of social sites that work and do not fall into these pitfalls. They may be less popular or mainstream.
Yet they are also more supportive and rewarding!
So whether you want to get popular there or simply contribute just for fun there are much better alternatives.
Here they are! First the culprit, then the savior.
Facebook vs Linkedin
Facebook has deteriorated more and more in recent years:
- fewer users and less activity
- confusing privacy changes
- flooding with baby images
- growing fake news epidemic
- outrage based algoritms
Personally I experienced some pushing and shoving in semi-private groups. There self-proclaimed experts will attack you for no apparent reason.
Controversial billionaire Mark Zuckerberg have made this site an Eldorado for the exhibitionists and bullies.
Yes, there are still many genuine users over there!
Many of them even share good content. Yet they can’t compete with the obnoxious ones making it an annoying place.
The loud ones win over the attention game.
Just think fake news. After Trump got elected again fact checking got axed.
Do you want social media reach for your business?
Focus on LinkedIn instead. Here you don’t have to fight with self-righteous gurus.
In case you want to go for the search visibility also use LinkedIn instead.
Facebook content is usually not on Google as it’s “private” and Google can’t index it.
Users who are just into sharing news should find their respective niche social news community.
For startups Product Hunt is ideal e.g.
I’m mainly on LinkedIn these days. Most of my clients find me though the business networking site.
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft for a few years.
The site has improved ever since despite fears of getting lost in the Bill Gates empire.
It’s less about anger and who’s the loudest.
As people look for work there so they behave in a more civil way.
Instagram vs Pinterest
Instagram which is also owned by Mark Zuckerberg is the most depression-inducing social media outlet. Why?
Especially kids watching unrealistic beauty ideals and lifestyles can’t keep up with Joneses.
They assume that the influencers they follow are “real” and compare themselves to these streamlined ideals.
As they can’t compete depression ensues.
You can’t even share text properly (you have to put it into an image) or link out.
The infamous “link in bio” workaround does not lead to significant traffic.
Also resharing is next to impossible technically. Thus content can’t go viral through being shared by your audience.
Last but not least once your content had it’s 15 minutes of fame it’s mostly forgotten.
Feed appearances can get you reach bu usually few people visit your profile and view existing content.
To “succeed” on Instagram is a full-time job as influencers admit in interviews.
Pinterest is also a visual social site yet there your evergreen content gets reshared for ages.
It’s not perfect either. Yet you can link out on post level and add sources properly.
You can reshare other people’s content. Indeed curation is the most popular use case of Pinterest.
Also many users check out Pinterest to find fashion, lifestyle travel or wedding inspiration and look for actual products!
There is much less pressure to look cool, perfect and sexy though. All kinds of images get shared.
X/Twitter vs Mastodon
Now that Elon Musk is like a super-villain out of a Marvel movie and a buddy of Trump even the usually ignorant noticed.
Musk owns Twitter which he rebranded as X.
The site lost most of its employees and many users.
Dehumanizing ideologies and hate speech grew ever since.
Like on Facebook rage-based algorithms rule the site and its content.
Bots abound and peddle pron all the time.
So unless you want to get angry every day you may want to quit the site.
I use it much less ever since I’m on Mastodon.
Masto is like WordPress for microblogging.
You can even install an “instance” on your own Web space.
Or – like most people – you can join an existing one. I’m e.g. on Mas.to because the address is so easy to spell, type and memorize.
Mastodon is decentralized to some extent and has more democratic checks and balances.
The community is smaller than the user bases of X yet much more civil. You can have actual debates there like on early Twitter.
I recommend Mastodon also for business use.
The reach is smaller but the advantages outweigh the smaller community.
Reddit vs Tumblr
Reddit is quite popular thanks to Google.
On its own the site is often stale, superficial and hateful.
It’s always been like that. How do I know?
One day I got somewhat popular on Reddit.
I got 47 “up” votes and 46 “down” votes. Thus in the end I got “1 point”.
Guess how many referrers I got from Reddit? 4!
Four people visited me. It means that at least 42 people voted me down blindly!
OK, I’ve been popular on Reddit a few times and you get some visitors from time to time, even if you have just a small blog like mine.
Those visitors do not even look at your site though.
They disappear right away when they see no boobs or something. Reddit has one of the highest bounce rates of all referrers – 94%!
Those who really bother to read will just spit on you.
Reddit has one of the most obnoxious crowds! It’s even vicious. They’re infamous for sexism – so dear women – keep off.
Even now that Google prefers Reddit in search it’s very hard to use Reddit for business.
You have to create and maintain a community Subreddit to get somewhere.
That’s very labor-intensive and require long term investment.
Otherwise even despite the Google Reddit deal relying on the search engine also backfires.
Now the sites gets flooded with even more low quality content.
Consider Tumblr instead! It’s easy to use and content gets viral by design.
Tumblr is basically a micro or miniblogging community. It’s a hybrid of WordPress and X/Twitter in a way.
People follow you and you follow others.
Then you “like” their postings or even reblog them. You only read the stuff by the people you like anyway.
Unlike on Reddit you can simply ignore obnoxious individuals.
Tumblr has hugely successful over the years until it got acquired by Yahoo.
By now it’s owned by Automattic – the makers of WordPress. Ever since it improved again.
SEO is not a popular topic on Tumblr. Yet you’ll find some people from the industry blogging there already.
Tumblr is similar to Reddit when it comes to the topics and media types covered. I go there for the art, photography or cycling stuff.
Don’t get me wrong!
Disclaimer: Don’t get me wrong if you are a genuine contributing user of one of these above sites I criticize.
You can’t ignore the issues there though.
Also you will notice that you can’t change these sites as they are not really democratic in most cases.
Most social media sites are run by profit-oriented companies and you’re their unpaid workforce.
Thus before they ban you like Facebook often did with its highly active users, just use the alternatives.
You can find and follow me on LinkedIn among others. I’m @onreact on most sites.
Do not befriend me just due to the fact that you do SEO or read my blog.
I will only “friend you back” when you’re genuine, contribute and share quality content. Just act like a real friend.
* Creative Commons image by Sara Björk