I've found that the alternative sites below have the promise of what people pretend social media is. You know: a means for actual connection.
Next Door
This site groups you according to your actual, physical address, so you are put in touch with your actual, physical neighbors. Want to escape the political screaming online? Go here. Sure, people will still argue politics but in my experience the level of decorum on Next Door is somewhere around office watercooler rather than ancient Roman bloodsport. Remember, you can't actually block that guy who lives across the street when he mentions who he voted for. You have to live together.
The site is a great reminder that helping a neighbor move or volunteering for the local library book sale impacts the world far more than tweeting about Trump or Brexit.
You can find a pickup soccer game after work, help someone locate their lost kitten or get a heads up on free loot from a nearby garage sale. I have my account set to email me the daily posts, so I don't scroll on any app (although an app is available.) Today I saw pictures of baby peacocks down the street, I learned that one of my neighbors wants a tennis partner and found out someone is getting a Trivia Night BBQ together for the weekend. This is actual social media and I love it.
Good Reads
Okay, so it's not social media in the traditional sense, and I suppose you could have FOMO reading someone who has finished more books this year than you have, but Good Reads is a great way to connect with people who, well, READ BOOKS. You can keep track of what you are reading and have read, join online book clubs and read some really great reviews. If you have to scroll something, scroll this. (Good Reads helped me break my own compulsion to check social media.)
Stellar Stories
You'd better be a pretty great photographer and/or storyteller to use this beautiful multimedia platform. I've barely experimented with it, but I love how it inspires you to tell real stories and make art instead of brag, argue and trawl for likes.
HitRecord
Thank Joseph Gordon Levitt for the creation of this amazing collaborative site. Lend your talents to all kinds of art, narrative, film and multimedia projects to create things you never would have been able to do on your own. I adore this website, and want everyone to join in. All types of artists and all skill levels are welcome.
Stack Overflow
More technical than artistic? Share your coding expertise and build your software engineering career on this open platform site. (And please use that skill to make better, less toxic, less addictive, more human-oriented technology.)
Blend
Is music your thing? Pick projects to collaborate on from a global community of musicians. You can find other, similar sites for music collaboration here.
Okay wait, just hear me out on this one...
If you're old enough to remember early 90s newsgroups, you'll understand why Reddit is so great. Sure, you can get lost endlessly scrolling cat memes here just like Instagram, but there is something great about an old-school message board. You can find all kinds of highly specialized subreddits -- and some truly scary ones if that's your thing -- and if you make sure to avoid the political ones, you're free of a lot of the noise and toxicity of social media. Pretty much anything you are into has a designated place here.
Reddit isn't where you go to post highly curated pictures of your life. (At least not the subreddits I look at.) If you look, you'll find a lot of great information, conversation and community-building.
Discourse
Why not make your OWN forum? If you've got a group of likeminded others, then create your own social media for it. I happen to love Discourse most, but there are others.
One thing you should NOT do is make a Facebook group. Some of us refuse to ever go back to Facebook, and the numbers are growing. Facebook is a problematic platform at best, so we should stop choosing it as our go-to place for online meetups. Break free! (I feel the same about Twitter group DMs, too. If you've got a group, there's no need to assimilate it into a hive.)
If Discourse doesn't serve your needs, try ProBoards, Boardhost or Bravenet for free. I've used all of them. For really gorgeous, simple and clean design you can pay bucks for Muut.
Blogs!!!
As an old-school blogger, I still recommend starting a blog -- which in the age of social media feels a little like telling buggy wheel makers in 1912 to just ignore the Ford Motor Company. I understand that social media killed the golden age of blogging and corralled everyone into corporate megasites. But there is still something to be said for blogs. Remember, they said paper books would be obsolete and sales are actually booming.
Blogs are more than forwarding memes or shooting pictures of your meals -- although there are plenty of those things too. (Hello, Tumblr!)
Maintaining a blog requires that you produce far more than you consume, and I think that's a good thing. It also gives you a chance to share what you know instead of just posting drunk selfies, humblebrags and videos from the Dodo. (Guilty as charged.)
Make a simple blog or grow an entire online business with Wix. (I like it better than Wordpress or Squarespace.) You can incorporate a forum right into the design.
Or, use Blogger (with unlimited pages allowed) for free, and allow comments on all posts. Yes, you can attach a Blogger blog to your own URL and yes, you can create a personalized design. You can even send blogpost links to all your social media accounts to bring people over. (See my other blogs here.)
Rabb.it (Now Kast)
If you have loads of friends or like-minded peeps scattered around the globe, you can still invite everyone over to watch a movie. Rabb.it offers you a way to set up an online meeting room (Think Skype or Google Hangouts or Zoom) and use that space to watch anything streamable. I love the chat functionality and the simple way of getting people together in online space that so greatly approximates what it's like to do it in the real world. Oh, and I suppose you could use it to invite one special someone to Netflix and chill -- you do you.
Get in on Rabb.it before media companies figure out how to shut it down.
UPDATE August, 2019:
Looks like Rabbit lost its funding in May, and now Kast has taken it over. As of this writing it looks like Kast is inundated with new users, but they appear to want to please the former Rabbit base. Stay tuned for more as this develops!
Get Inspired:
For more than enough reasons why you should get rid of traditional social media and be more intentional with your technology, watch three of my favorite authors below. (Get links to their books in my library.)
Dr. Cal Newport, author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism discusses quitting social media:
Watch Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains discuss the (deeply troubling, dehumanizing, dystopian) findings in his book:
Watch Nicholas also discuss the perils of artificial intelligence in his latest book The Glass Cage: How Computers are Changing Us:
If you're not convinced that maybe, just maybe, we should all log off more often, then watch Adam Alter discuss his book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping us Hooked:
