feature request for potential social media sabbaticals
flbn opened this issue · comments
hi nat, this is my first time ever contributing to an open-source project, so my apologies if i've done anything wrong. i found your blog post about ethical anti-design fascinating, it's something i think about a lot. in fact, i wrote a case study myself that considers some of the possible angles a company like instagram could to take to alleviate social media addiction. it sounds like we share some similar thoughts! here's the link: https://ovrs.medium.com/gone-fishing-a-case-study-on-screen-time-and-instagram-a425cddda9a2
in the case study, i outline the idea of taking a sabbatical/break from social media and how i would go about designing it. i hope that it might give you some ideas or help this project in some way!
If this is the first time you've ever contributed to an open source project, you'll be happy to know this is my first time ever seriously trying to organize an open source project 🙃
I really liked your article and it does sound like we're on a very similar wavelength. Interestingly, I'm exactly one of the kinds of people you described in your case study: the person who only uses Instagram to talk with their friends. The thing that's always killed me about trying to take time off Instagram was that when I got a message from someone, every time I'd open the app, it'd bring me straight to my timeline. Maybe when the person's "taking a break," and they've indicated that they still want to receive DMs, the timeline/discover could be hidden and the user would be taken straight to their inbox.
The other day somebody messaged me with an idea that was similar in spirit, where people would get the option to opt-out of the continuous stream of push notifications and instead only get a summary of what's been happening at the end of every day or so. I think that, along side with your idea of designing a social media detox directly into the UI could go a long way towards reshaping our relationship with social media in a way that doesn't feel so invasive
I think this is absolutely worth doing. Thanks for the suggestion!