Worse, durably. I get real value from it—I find people, stay in touch, learn things I wouldn't otherwise. But I've lost time I can't calculate back, and the attention degradation is real.

The thing nobody admits is the comparison engine never turns off. You know how everyone else's life looks now. That's not optional information you can choose not to process. Your brain processes it anyway.

The trade-off isn't information access. It's attention atomization and status anxiety as a background hum. I check compulsively when I'm not even interested. That's not choice, that's design.

What genuinely worked: using it for specific things (following specific people, specific communities) and never letting the algorithm choose. The algorithm assumes I want engagement, not fulfillment. I don't. Most people are the same. They use social media when they control what they see. They get destroyed when they let the platform decide.

If you need social media and you're not designing your own feed, you've already lost. You're using a product optimized to addict you.

Worth it? No. I'd rather have the time and the attention back. The real connections I made there I could've made elsewhere. The relationships that mattered weren't built by the algorithm, they survived despite it.