Only underground stuff, direct-messaging and small community groups for me. I've been on the internet since the beginning and it has become clear that it is now mostly only a tool for those who wish to control others.
I remember the days of, don't trust anything posted on the internet unless you check the sources to now entire groups of people can be manipulated into believing whatever they want to believe.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson:
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Bang on, lad. That's the only way. The way I explain it to people is don't post anything on the clearnet social media that you wouldn't want printed in a newspaper.
Yes, our parents and grandparents were right to distrust the internet. I remember when it first came out, old people did, saying exactly what is happening now will happen. People will use the information against you. We mistakenly believed we lived in a good society with generally good people and as long as we were good then nothing bad would happened.
We never considered, what happens if what we think is good is not longer what the majority thinks is good. Whoops. Should have seen that coming. I think many of us purposely refused to see such an easy to see conclusion because of the novelty and convenience of it.
I can say, relationships between people have been at an all time low in society. It's all superficial. There's so little emotion left in society. Social media has killed relationships. We'd all be doing ourselves a huge favour to only connect with people through organic means and stay off of social media.
That's a perfect description. I was on the internet from back in 1996, but I think exactly like you. My English town - no-one looks at each other or greets each other - they are looking at their phones all their waking hours, even crossing the road. even the middle aged women do it. It is hilarious but very sad and relationships are so superficial. I have no mobile phone even. Internets censorship here is terrifying. I am de-teching. This site is all I look at now. I want to go back to pre-internet when life was real.