Yeah it feels amazing.
So much new tech only works in English (for example: image generation like StableDiffusion) and using ChatGPT in your native language and it works great, almost as good as in English (and actually even better for lots of people because they can express themselves better in their native language than English) felt unreal
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.
They found a way around: accept all cookies or pay 2€/months. And it was decied legal by GDPR authorities