What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
The article talks mostly about e-mail and search, but you know what&#x27;s still the best social network on the interwebs?  E-mail.<p>When I dumped social media two years ago, I gave my &quot;friends&quot; my e-mail address.<p>Now, instead of getting an endless stream of reposted political image captions and photos of people&#x27;s lunches I get messages about the things that are actually worth seeing: news about family, friends, life events, funny stories — all without the dross and anger-inducing cruft of a social media &quot;feed.&quot;<p>E-mail has all of the benefits of social media: photos, group chat, near-instant delivery; with none of the drawbacks: tracking, advertising, stalking, third-party influences.<p>More importantly, what happened is that I found out who my actual friends are.  I think the whole social media &quot;friends&quot; button has cheapened the word.  We don&#x27;t make a distinction between friends, acquaintances, associates, and people we just know.  Your real friends will e-mail you.