I hope I’m not out of line here, but I would really like to give some thoughts on this. I’m 32 years old and married. So not that young to you probably.

But everyone around me is also on all social media platforms. The people I work with, family and friends. Except my wife who doesn’t care for social media at all.

Anyway. None of them thinks about that. At all. I tried to convince them to just drop Whatsapp and use Signal instead, but even that was like I was trying to get them in some kind of church.

I just pre ordered the fairphone5 (I just like what they are doing) and plan to flash e\OS.

20, and last year they made a poll in English class asking who have no social media, I was the only one. Also de-googled. They were even more chocked I don’t have a gmail account and they have to send me the link for each Google docs

(No YouTube account, I used newpipe on android, now Yattee on iOS, and piped/invidious/cloudtube/yt-dlp on desktop)

I didn’t felt like missing something (still don’t think, I’m better without social medias)

I used TikTok like two evenings on my brother’s device because I wanted at least to test about the app everyone is addicted and it’s way too addictive, both times I slept way too late, I’m glad I stay away from this

I had instagram but I stopped 5 years ago and don’t miss anything from it. From time to time a friend tells me I’m not in a specific group chart for a party but they tell me information so I don’t care

My class forced me to (re)create a Facebook account because we also have a discord server but they wouldn’t use it (I’m fine with that), but even for things like announcements which I really miss, so I created a new one But my profile is blank and I never go to Facebook, and I only use messenger for their group, not anyone else. I will delete it when I’m done with university

I used text messages to chat with friends, and finally got them (and siblings and parents) into installing signal by lying and telling I would pay for text messages and voice calls abroad (it’s still free in other counties in the European Union) where I lived for several months

Idk if Reddit counts as social media, because my use case was not really social (mostly lurking, and using it for news) but when they killed third party apps I stopped and I don’t really miss it, more free time. There is one specific subreddit I miss, not on lemmy but I can live without it

About degoogling, I did that for four years and it worked great. My phone died (suddenly one day no OS, then I failed reinstalling one. It’s bricked, no OS, no custom recovery, no fastboot only xiaomi recovery I don’t know how to unbrick, everyone tells to use fastboot which doesn’t boot) which made me exhausted of android Android, I wanted to try Apple, but I think my next phone will be a degoogled android, I miss so much apps on android

Conclusion: less convenient, but I don’t feel like I miss a lot, nothing really important*, and I felt better mental health wise after stopping social medias.

*except announcements for this class, this class sucks, but I don’t count using messenger as social media, and I have blank unused Facebook account only for messenger.

Im 28 so prob a bit older than you are looking for, but all my friends are the same way yours are. Addicted to tiktok, snapchat, etx. I only use lemmy and mastodon and i never take pictures with anyone for any reason. I dont even take christmas pictures with family because 2 seconds later they are on facebook. No thanks.

Lemmy is social media :)

It’s user generated content, and you can talk to other users.

I’m an old fart, bit I did it a few years ago. It was followed by a sharp increase in my wellbeing

I’m 16 and I dont use any social media exept lemmy and Youtube. I degoogled my phone and quit social media 1.5 years ago and I cant really complain

Hey, I am 23yo and I have left instagram ~5 years ago because it was such a waste of time. After school, I’ve gotten more cautious in terms of what happens with my data, but even though I was using DuckDuckGo and FF for everything, I was still hooked on YouTube and my phones stock ROM. YT is my absolute favourite Social Media platform to this date. Only a few months ago, I had a good talk with a friend of mine, who is also into privacy. He told me about how awesome LibreTube is, and showed me, the import feature of it. Since the, I only rely on Gmails servers for K9-Mail, and Google maps. (Any suggestions besides OSM?) Since 2020, my entire friend group, and my close relatives all switched to Signal, and I’ve never been happier with a messenger app. The only thing that bothers me and my privacy friend, is that we still hang out on Discord, but there’s no way, we get our friends to migrate to another service, especially because there are no good alternatives with privacy in focus.

Since 8 months, I am running LineageOS with microG on it. When you’re a tinkerer, I can absolutely recommend microG, but I understand, that its not for everyone, especially when you rely on GPay.

How do you do, fellow teen?

Yeah I’m degoogling too, it’s freaky seeing everyone staring at tiktok and Snapchat… Although I get distracted by other apps too so I can’t really complain lol But yeah it’s so jarring when there’s not really many people to share your privacy journey/knowledge with

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I’m 15 and I have been trying to degoogle but it’s hard. The school insists you use Google services. You need to use a locked down Chromebook and use Google Classroom. Google Slides or whatever. If you want to access your school email you need to use Gmail and the services that are not provided by Google you need Microsoft for such E-learning classes. They don’t use any FOSS whatsoever.

32 here, so definitely not your age, but I just want to let you know that you’re not as alone in this as you think. I’ve also degoogled my life, I don’t use any social media outside of kbin and reddit (just to keep up to date on my city via its subreddit), use Signal as my messenger, Proton for email, NewPipe for YouTube, InnerTune instead of Spotify and GrapheneOS with aggressive app permissions instead of Android, all sitting behind Mullvad VPN and a privacy focused web browser.

I’ve never felt so free of corporate bullshit, and the ‘convenience’ I’ve given up hasn’t affected my life anywhere near as drastically as I thought it would. I just wish everyone could realize how easy it is to ditch the surveillance machine and still retain an easy, convenient digital life.

I started caring about privacy at the tail end of high school. I started running LineageOS with microG then. Now that I’m in college, I’ve quit most mainstream social media, and I run GrapheneOS.

Yes I bought a Pixel 7 and installed graphene without the google play services. Only social media I use are Lemmy and YouTube (in a browser)