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?
Privacy is subjective. Use it but dont use it for things you don’t want Facebook to know about. Don’t use it on your phone. Don’t use it on a computer with things you care about. Keep it in a container tab in your browser but don’t keep it open all the time.
It’s kind of a pain but you can definitely be mindful and only give meta crumbs where others are giving them truckloads of data.
Sadly there is a lot of good content on Instagram
There’s also the option of using Private Space (Android 15+) or its multiple clones in manufacturer OSes. It effectively creates a new user profile which can be deactivated at will. The new user profile also has no access to any data from the main profile that can’t already be controlled by permissions, like the app list. It has its own instance of Play Services, so AFAIK it shouldn’t be linkable to the main profile. It’s the best middle-ground I’ve found this far if the app needs to be installed in one way or the other.