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For a tech writer, being very offline is sort of like being a marathon coach who doesnt run. So in 2025, I tried to reverse years of studied avoidance towards the most ubiquitous technological phenomenon on earth I got back on social media. The change was short-lived. My first exodus from the feeds took some work disabling notifications, removing apps from my homescreen and then deleting accounts entirely. This time, the phone put itself down. The whole thing has simply lost its luster.I started with Instagram. Every experience went like this: Id see a single post from one of the rare family members or IRL friends who are active on the platform. Next, I was fed a sponsored post, followed by suggestions to follow randos. After that, a series of influencer videos that, admittedly, appeal to my taste (funny/absurdist women and dissertations on urban planning). That was followed up with more sponsored posts, mostly from brands Id looked up for work. Then itd circle back to the influencers. My eyes glazed over and I tossed the phone aside. Years back, the platform gave off a jolt of quasi-social connection that Id spend hours sucking up. I fed on pointless thoughts from an ex-coworker, vacation reels from a college roommate, a half-baked loaf of bread that an old friend dropped on the floor but took a picture of anyway. Now its a bare sliver of that stuff, shoehorned between towers of sponsored content and posts from people who make or promote their living on Instagram. The real people have left. The connection is gone. The FOMO is no more. I experienced some variation of the same disappointment on every platform I rejoined. When I got back on TikTok a few months after the ban, it felt like a frenzied shopping mall. Every video seems to be about four seconds long and most are promotional and/or shoppable. YouTube Shorts is drowning in AI-generated videos, and I dont hit up social media to watch fake footage of desperate wild animal babies clambering onto the boats of helpful humans. My life has no need for simulated toddlers admonishing their pets. Occasionally, Id hit on something compelling: a clip from late night TV, a stupidly decadent dessert recipe, people from other countries explaining cultural subtleties. But for me, these social media platforms are no longer velcro for the eyes. I remember losing focus, spending long hours on YouTube Shorts and IG. Id look up bleary-eyed and shame-faced after hours scrolling TikToks For You Page. Now, after a few minutes, a bored ickiness sets in. I feel like Im trapped in a carnival of bots hawking shampoo at me and I just want to go home. Its not a mystery how or why things feel different; The answer is always money. These billion- and trillion-dollar companies have shareholders who prize year-over-year performance over anything else. So we get more sponsored posts on Instagram. TikTok purposefully, enthusiastically overloads itself with shoppable content (which isnt going to change no matter who owns it). YouTube is obsessed with engagement so it ends up rewarding people who flood the platform with AI slop. These platforms arent about human connections and the spread of creativity the stuff that used to draw me in theyre thinly varnished ecommerce sites sprinkled with brute-forced AI oddities. Id be sadder about the whole thing if I thought it could be any different. These companies are among the most valuable in the world. The fact that I cant connect with my fellow common people using their services is not surprising. The change isnt even driving everyone away. Instagram reported more users than ever this year, to the tune of 35 percent of the panet. Billions of users still scroll TikTok and watch YouTube Shorts. So maybe its just a me thing. And I have options. Over-monetization may have made me not want to engage with a few social media behemoths, but things arent so dire everywhere. Bluesky reminds me of Twitter before X. I take comfort in seeing posts that prove most people are as dismayed as I am over a government and wider economic system that are nakedly uninterested in serving the public. The hot takes arent quite as funny as they were on Twitter years back maybe its just all been said before or perhaps things have gotten too dire for levity. I still dont end up spending a lot of time on the platform, however. Its not as weird as it was before the defection and I get tired of the stream of news headlines contextualized with tut-tutting and handwringing Im perfectly capable of doing that myself. Itd be easy to say that social media just isnt my thing, but thats not true because I cant quit Reddit the shining exception to my social media ennui. It feels filled with actual people. Ads exist, but in a subdued, manageable way. And every contributor, commenter and moderator Ive come across on the app is militantly vigilant against the onslaught of artificially generated content. I also like the organizational structure. I know my Home tab will only expose me to my chosen subs and I derive great joy from happy cows, greeble-chasing cats, enigmatic night feelings and freaky abandoned spaces. I use my local subreddit r/Albuquerque daily to answer questions and keep tabs on the world (directly) around me. Sadly, Reddit is an outlier, a misfit exception to the rule, and now that its gone public, it may follow a similar monetization push. Bluesky is tiny, new and not yet profitable, so who knows where its financial journey will lead it (though the world without Caesars shirt gives us some hope). Theres something lamentable about the loss of the connections we gleaned from platforms that were once compelling, engrossing and rife with the creativity of our fellow humans. Ultimately, any public-facing company that prioritizes profits over everything else has no incentive to look out for its users. So I dont expect any of the larger social platforms to pull back on their monetization marches. For now, Ive decided Im comfortable with my admittedly narrow interaction with the world of social media. As a Gen-Xer, online-first wasnt how my relationship to the world started out. And Im pretty confident I know enough about other tech-related stuff to be useful to my editors and readers without a black belt in social. (Ed. note: She is.) Besides, Karissas got us covered. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/in-2025-quitting-social-media-felt-easier-than-ever-140000374.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
You may know Bosch as a home appliance brand (via its partnership with Siemens), but the German multinational is generally more focused on providing underlying technology and engineering solutions to auto, home and manufacturing partners across the globe. It's fitting, then, that much of what it's showing off at CES 2026 is more intended to be licensed to other companies versus Bosch-branded products you'll be seeing on store shelves. Case in point is Bosch's automotive plans at CES. The company will present "AI in the car," or more specifically, in the cockpit of the car. "Bosch's AI-powered cockpit makes driving more comfortable, intuitive, and safer for all occupants," Bosch board member Markus Heyn said in a press release. We'll get into all the details below, as well as how to tune in to the press conference on Monday. How to watch Bosch's CES 2026 presentation You can livestream the event on Monday, January 5 at 12PM ET via the Bosch press page. (If the stream is embeddable, we'll also include it here.) What to expect Bosch will be setting up shop in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (booth 16203), where the company will be focusing on its three big themes mobility, smart home integrations and manufacturing all of which will include hardware, software and AI solutions. Like many other CES 2026 exhibitors, look for Bosch to emphasize its partnerships with the big dogs of the AI space at the show. For instance, that AI-powered car cockpit mentioned above will feature integrations with both Microsoft and NVIDIA. For instance, Bosch is touting the ability to use voice commands to join a Teams call, while the car's system will automatically activate adaptive cruise control. And it's noting that NVIDIA's software suites will help manage "real-time sensor processing and vision-language models." Here's a glimpse of what the booth will look like: This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/how-to-watch-the-bosch-ces-2026-press-conference-live-130020898.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The start of a new year always feels like a reset button. Everyones talking about moving more, eating better, sleeping longer or finally taming their digital chaos. But resolutions rarely survive on willpower alone. The right tools or piece of tech can make those goals easier to keep by turning motivation into a habit. Whether youre trying to close your rings, track your progress or just build better routines, these smart picks make self-improvement feel a little more achievable, and a lot more enjoyable. Gear that can help you stick to your New Year's resolutions This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-gear-to-help-you-stick-to-your-new-years-resolutions-130000389.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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