Firsr off, sorry for your loss, regardless of your history I can only imagine it must have a severe impact on you.
To what you are saying: I agree. But I want to add that there is journalism and there is "news". Social media or not one should only consume news from reliable and responsible journalists.
HN is as much of social media I use. I use to lurk reddit daily, quitting that habbit has helped me so much! I can't believe how hooked I was and I was only lurking! At least on HN there is quality and educational content.
Social media tends to create the kind of person who tends to destroy the kind of place where peace is found. We deserve what's coming to us.
Social media is cancer, what fix you expect.
I realized that I can’t escape social media, or media in general. I am still using social media but made very very deliberate attempt to limit its poison:
- Refrain from commenting 90% of the time. Only when necessary. Even for sites like HN, because HN isn’t immune to the stuffs you described above. This has been the most helpful to me. I now only post on HN using throwaways, even for non provocative comments.
- Create multiple accounts for multiple purposes/subtopics (I love firefox container for this) and don’t get too attached, be ready to throw them quick. For sites like Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The purpose of social media to me is mostly to ask for high quality answers if I need something.
- Some sites allow you to block things. Like Twitter can block people, Reddit can block subreddit. On Reddit I block politics, antiwork, workreform, black/whitepeopletwitter, witchesvspatriarchy, leopardsatemyface, murdererbyaoc, and similar topic subreddits that often show up on hot. The content over there mostly are low quality.
- Never tell personal information online.
- Read more books/articles compared to tweets/facebook posts.
You can choose which media you want to consume. I try to refrain from consuming low quality media in general as much as I can (including avoiding tv, netflix, cosmopolitan, etc)