For everyone new to Lemmy, how are you finding the experience?
I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?
I'm a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It's definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it's great to see something that isn't Reddit growing in popularity!
I'm interested to see what this turns into. As a Reddit refugee, I'm trying to figure out if I want to jump right into here or take some time away from social media and wait to see what bubbles to the top.
And definitely taking a mental health break from social media is totally ok! I actually had to do a paper on the mental effects of social media in university so I totally understand where you're coming from.
Social media like Twitter and Instagram can cause you to have self-deprecating/insecurity/generally not feeling good about yourself due to subconscious comparisons that you make with other people. So for example, if all you see is the highlight reel of celebrities/influencers then you're going to compare your life to them and feel bad about yourself.
I think the main point with Reddit is that sometimes you aren't part of the discussion/you're going to be focused on karma as well simply due to how the website works and you're up against bots/other competitors for that karma. The "internet points" are addicting for some and it becomes a major distractor from what really should matter in people's lives.
This goes for other social media as well, the main point of the paper is how by comparing ourselves to other people (even subconsciously) we run the risk of having worse mental health.