soft-quit

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A soft-quit (or soft quit) of a silo is when a person temporarily leaves, deactivates, or takes an extended break from one or more social media platforms (AKA a social media break) for any of a wide variety of reasons such as social media fatigue.

Compare with silo-quits which have a more permanent connotation.

Why

People performing soft-quits may fall short of permanently deactivating or deleting their accounts as they represent the only means of contact with other people or groups they want to stay in touch with. Some may use workarounds to mitigate problems or issues they have with the platform while still minimally participating to get the information and contact they desire.

Many soft-quitters aren't aware of other potential methods of communication or may be discouraged by the user interfaces and experiences they may find via other modalities.

Possible reasons for soft-quits

• mental health
  • Social media silos have been shown to cause depression, obsession, anxiety, and other mental heath problems [1] [2]
  • Social media and young people's mental health and wellbeing from the Royal Society for Mental Health (.pdf)
• escape from negative posts
• escape from bullying
• regain time for other activities
• Not wanting to contribute or participate in systems which profit from the harms they're causing
• ...

Methods

• Removing apps from one's cell phone to remove the easy of accessibility
• Piping content into feed readers as a barrier against the gamification of social media (see Granary or tools like https://twitter-atom.appspot.com/, etc.)
• Practicing "digital minimalism" (a la Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport (Penguin, 2019, ISBN: 978-0525536512)
• practicing "slow social"
• Joining the IndieWeb
• ...

2019

Mark Haddon

• Why novelist Mark Haddon lost faith in Twitter: The platform brought the writer closer to readers — but at a cost. Here he explains why he stepped back (The Financial Times)

I need to stop posting on twitter for a while, except for a brief burst of porpoise promotion (out now!). I will check in every so often to send a few replies and reassure people that i'm neither dead nor insufferably rude. pic.twitter.com/XTdPE6OsCR

— mark haddon (@mark_haddon) May 9, 2019

2018

Ben Werdmüller

• 2018-11-23 I'm going dark on social media for the rest of 2018. by Ben Werdmüller
• 2018-12-14 Checking in on my social media fast by Ben Werdmüller

Adam Croom

• 2018-11 Adam Croom, a Domain of One's Own advocate, did a "soft quit" of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

I decided that I would deactivate my Twitter account for the holidays. The holidays turned quickly turned into six months and here I am. I still have access to the Twitter profiles I wish to follow as most profiles are public, and thus I make a conscience effort to check the streams of particular folks (mostly journalists and news publications) that I’m still interested in following. Unsurprisingly, removing myself from punching the Twitter icon and swimming in the often negative environment that the community perpetuates has been a net positive for my health. In a similar fashion, I don’t have Instagram installed on my phone anymore (my workaround here is I’ll occasionally install it and bulk upload a handful of files and then delete it). For Facebook, I actually inactivated that account in November as well, but surprisingly felt myself come back to it quicker for important information I would miss otherwise (my gym uses a private group for all communication). But, for the most part, my day is spent sans social media.

Counter Examples

There are also people who may "soft-join" a platform for either a minimal set of functionalities or specific connections with people.

Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan joined micro.blog for the express purpose of interacting with one friend as stated in his first post:

Literally just here to follow @ayjay 👋
—Robin Sloan 2018-08-18

All his subsequent interactions on the platform (as of 2019-05-06) were solely replies or interactions meant for one user despite some incoming interactions with other users.

Brainstorming

Naming

None of the citations or quotes actually use the phrase "soft quit" which makes it unmemorable to associate with new examples. In reading the examples, few of them have a "quit" intention, more of them mention other phrases.

We should rename this page accordingly to use one of these terms:

• deactivate
• break - LOTS of examples use this literal term, see silo-quits for "social media break" or "break from"
  • Chris Aldrich +1 to this or "social media break" (the original name "soft quit" was to have something and to keep a reasonable parallelism with silo-quits, see also naming)
• pause (e.g. silo pause)
• ...

In some variant like:

• silo break
• social media break
• ...

See Also

• social media fatigue
• silo-quits -- additional examples may be found here
• why
• getting started
• 2019-05-19 "two weeks off posting" - https://www.instagram.com/p/ByI6jtWlZf6/

  … noticed a shift in my IG intentions when my hashtags were banned and I was losing following. I started to get really upset …

  • "Hello friends!!!
    After two weeks off of posting, I’m back! I generally think of Instagram as a positive tool for human connection. But a few weeks ago I noticed a shift in my IG intentions when my hashtags were banned and I was losing following. I started to get really upset and then I asked myself a hard question, is this constant feeling of needing to create serving me or hurting me? When it starts to feel like it’s bringing more negativity than joy, I know it’s not sustainable.
    A few weeks off and I feel 100% better. Instagram is only a small fraction of my life, but I’ll always do the work to make sure my habits here are healthy. Thank you for bearing with me. I’m here for you all. I love you!" @Lexi Reid May 31, 2019
• https://twitter.com/lsanger/status/1143911954072907776
  • "Sign the Declaration of Digital Independence: https://larrysanger.org/2019/06/declaration-of-digital-independence/
    Take back control over our data! Decentralize social media!
    
    Plan for a social media strike July 4-5: https://larrysanger.org/2019/06/social-media-strike/
    
    RT/share/copy widely.
    Also sign on http://Change.org: http://chng.it/KDFYzMGd" @lsanger June 26, 2019
• https://twitter.com/NinanReuben/status/1615767488536395784
  • "This account is mainly used as a POSSE endpoint (https://indieweb.org/POSSE). The interactions I have with my account are mostly write-only and my DMs/replies are checked periodically but not often." @NinanReuben January 18, 2023