I’ve been trying to meet new friends and new people to hang out with so have been going to a lot of social events.

I noticed that everyone seems to ask for my instagram account and when I say I don’t have one that connection kind of dies, and it feels too personal to ask for someone number when I just met them.

I don’t want to create an instagram because of the privacy invasions of meta but I also don’t want to feel left out when trying to make new connections. Anyone have any advice?

    • Novaling@lemmy.zipEnglish
      8·
      1 month ago

      Am Gen Z, and currently in college. Clearly am on Fediverse, and I was never a fan of using IG (only got it cause my middle school friends made me since COVID was happening) and I have completely deactivated my account as of last winter. I have met several people at my college who don’t use Instagram for various reasons, and while my other friend is a little disappointed that she can’t message them on insta, at the end of the day, we live and move on.

      At my college a lot of clubs use GroupMe (owned by Microsoft unfortunately) and we have an official Discord Hub that a lot of clubs are on also. So there’s two different methods of communication that aren’t Insta that are common on my campus. Some of my friends do have Signal in fact (even my Instagram loving friend), but because more of them don’t we unfortunately don’t use Signal, even when I beg my one friend who has it. She says 'it sucks and who uses it", but I’ve never really had the chance to use it to judge her statement as true or not.

      Anyway, yeah, you could do a bunch of crazy shit and make fake accounts on Insta to have superficial conversations with people who won’t give you the time of day for having an app, or you could just not. It’s not that hard to find better friends/people to hang out with, and if you really make a connection with them then they should be happy with any form of communication you offer. Not all Gen Z are adamant Instagram defenders, some even hate it for various reasons (Suckerberg, being data stalkers, promoting bigotry, promoting mental health disorders, etc.)

    • Seefra 1@lemmy.zip
      7·
      1 month ago

      Just an anecdote, but every time I try to create an account on Instagram I get automatically banned after account creation before even login-in for the first time.

      If I recal they then ask me for a copy of my ID to confirm my name is real (which it isn’t).

      I have no idea how they know, I’ve tried literally with different residential IPs, different emails and even on brand new devices. On my Instagram user friend’s house.

      Maybe it’s just bad good luck, who knows. In don’t need Instagram anyway, just an interesting fact.

      • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
        14·
        1 month ago

        You’re on the ‘privacy’ community of an open source and federated alternative social media system designed to avoid corporate control and surveillance capitalism - and you’re like “wtf everyone here is very privacy focussed and Linux nerds”.

        Do you complain about sand at the beach?