I had been thinking of quitting social media for long and I even disabled my account quite many times. But every time, I came back again. I had started feeling negative effects of social media but I was unable to quantify them into words and list them. Then came the Netflix Stream Fest. I watched the documentary 'The Social Dilemma'. Then, I went through the book : "Ten reasons why you should delete your social media accounts' by Jaron Lanier(creator  of VR). Everything became crystal clear. I realized I had been sinking in a deep marsh without even knowing.

Here is a summary of what I learnt through that book and my personal experiences:

• Do you know what is the product that social media companies sell? Okay, leave this. Do you know who are the customers on social media. It is any business or any individual who wants to target an ad to a group. So I guess you've figured out what is the product. It is us, our attention and at a deeper level, our behavior. Success for any social media algorithm is when user 'engages' with it for a longer period of time and buys their customer's products. As long as profit maximization goals are met, the algorithms will not care what you're actually seeing on your feed. If algorithms recognize that you tend to spend more time with sad, depression or hate related posts, then you'll get more of them. The algorithms cannot and will not distinguish.
• The social media recommender algorithms(the algorithms that prepare your feed) work on exploration and exploitation principle. Exploitation means they'll use your past activities(likes, comments, shares, etc.) to select posts for your feed. Exploration uses randomization and experimentation. Every now and then, the algorithm will provide you with a random post(out of your usual domain) and see how well it does. If it grabs your attention, they'll show more of it to you. If it doesn’t, a new experiment! This thing is a real evil. This random experimentation results in evoking of some hidden, dark sides in individuals. Have you ever suddenly felt sad after using social media and you didn’t even know the reason? Have you ever felt hate for someone/something after sometime of scrolling? Or does your inferiority complex suddenly increases? Then it is probably randomization at its work.
• I realized that my attention span decreased. I found it difficult to focus on something without immediate rewards. The information consumption capacity, reading and comprehension temperament reduced. This reduced my ability to retain knowledge and gather it in the first place. The dopamine hits were getting linked to very futile things, which won't even exist if some lines of code are removed.
• I was losing my individualism. I started setting standards and judging myself based on others instead of being myself and doing what I do the best. I was trying to get social attention and appreciation from a circle which doesn’t matter and I was seeking happiness in things which won’t do the world or me any good, which don't exist out of a few computers. Have you ever smiled on seeing someone's story? Or by a meme that felt 'relatable'? If yes, you are not alone my friend. Such happiness is very brittle and cannot sustain in the long run. It’ll only lead to frustration.
• It just so happens that we humans engage more with sad, depression and hate related posts. Our inner troll comes forward, we try to impose reasons of our perils on society(as all others are, and we find that relatable). Now imagine, if you're engaged more with dark content, what will algorithms do? Feed you with more and more dark content. This is called mob amplification. It has led to serious riots, attacks and false movements. We have seen a recent example in US Capitol Hill mob attack. This is how behavior modification at individual level culminates ultimately at the societal level.
• We have lost shared experiences in communities. Algorithms always show a different feed, a different picture of reality to different people. We have lost the feeling of connection and empathy.

I've felt all this myself and decided to quit social media at once. Leaving something you're addicted to can be tough, so just try to take a break at first and see if things change for you.