quitting social media is not, on its own, going to fix your social life. and being on social media can make you more connected, or more miserable. the responsibility is yours
YMMV, but my quality of life increased in ways I can't even begin to describe by severing all the dozens or perhaps hundreds of shallow connections social media was encouraging me to cling to.
With the saved time and energy, I've been able to cultivate far fewer-- but much deeper and more (mutually) fulfilling-- connections with those who are _actually_ important.
I think this advice is generally harmful to networking as someone grows, which is vital in today's society
GP mentions "severing" those connections, but I think that's even too strong a phrasing. There wasn't really anything there in the first place, so there wasn't anything to sever. Simply not reading someone else's social media posts anymore, when you didn't really interact with them outside Facebook (or for some people even inside Facebook) isn't really severing anything.
I don't miss any of that. Those connections were beyond shallow, and weren't adding anything positive or useful to my life.
You make it sound as if something was lost, maybe recently. In the grand scheme of things I'm not that old (41) but I don't even remember how that would have worked out, because I wasn't old enough to have people's parents die before social media, at least in my social circles. Yes, of course you'd hear about grandparents and such from your immediate friends but that's usually a handful and people would maybe not be shaken as much. I agree with you that social media doesn't have to mean "blasting it to hundreds or thousands of followers", but it's a thing where I actually liked Facebook. Not only techies, and getting enough updates from people who are not your closest friends that you have things to talk about (as in reference) when you met again (or talked synchronously, or privately).
What I see over years is that, especially in developers online groups, any usual and normal way of socializing is stigmatized. I remember reading comments about how lazy people who socialize with friends are and how we are better if we code every evening. I remember people being proud about spending christmas coding supposedly being superior to the rest of the family that is socializing.
Now we are proud if we remove ourselves from social media.
It is always the same - however other people socialize is wrong, they are stupid and lazy. We remove ourselves, because it is superior to not participate. Eventually those places die out or change, but we do not like the new places either.
And in each iteration, we expect other people to do work of keeping and managing relationships while feeling superior over not doing that.
The role social media plays is in encouraging large numbers of superficial relationships, rather than a small handful of deep ones. It stands to reason: I don't need facebook to keep in touch with a dozen close family and friends. I can do that perfectly well in person, or over phone calls/messages. What the various social media apps did was kill the close circle of friends in favor of having 1000s of followers and turn everyone into a one-way broadcaster.
2. Keep the other accounts, just in case.
3. How exactly are remote connections helping? In the Western world, for example, people you haven't interacted with for months and months in real life for sure won't help you financially. For jobs stuff like LinkedIn is probably better, plus regular chats on 1 instant messenger. You don't need Instagram to keep up with them.
You are not characteristic for the population at large (neither am I, don't feel sad :-) ).
Developers are not typical of regular people. They're, basically by design, outliers.
If someone's goal is to achieve CEO and/or the top 1%, certainly every single connection could hold extricable value. I'm perfectly fine hovering somewhere in the middle, even knowing I have the capability to achieve much more. My future is uncertain; I probably won't retire when I would have liked. I've accepted that, and choose to live in the present rather than focusing on the future. I know at least I won't die miserable tomorrow.
I don't deny I could have done better financially by maintaining the status quo. Now that I think of it, I'm doing worse financially than when I was using facebook & twitter. I had more money, and my career was progressing at a much higher rate, but I was inconsolable. Without the money, and without the accompanying social media-imposed drag, I see the world more clearly. My relationships are stronger with my wife, kids, and close friends. I am much happier.
With GitHub and Discord, these 3 are really hard to boycott for programmers (even more to publicly shame people for using them). And yet, we must dissent.