Healthy gums don’t bleed, and are not painful to floss at all.
I’m in my 30s and only recently learned flossing technique and got my gums healthy. Flossing used to take so long and always involved a lot of bleeding no matter how delicate I was.
These days I’m absolute savage with floss and interdental brushes and never have any blood or pain.
Once you get your gums healthy you’ll be disgusted at yourself for ever not flossing. The amount of disgusting I can floss out on an almost daily basis is insane.
Plus you’re breath will not smell gross anymore.
It’s worth committing to the habit of flossing. Trust me.
I imagine that a floss pick is better than nothing, but string floss is the best way to go about it. Proper flossing technique requires you to be able to have a small amount of slack so that the floss can wrap around the contour of your tooth and slide past the “triangle” between your teeth. The floss picks are too taut to be able to do that adequately.
I’ll also say that I completely agree with OP: picking up a good flossing regiment helped my mouth health immensely. It also helped improve my gum health and made my teeth feel “tighter” in my mouth, not like they were always a little bit loose.
My main issue with flossing is that when I try, the floss always get stuck and it becomes super hard to get it out and it makes me feel really uncomfortable. I find using water flossing a lot easier for me, even if it isn’t as effective
I’ve had it get stuck in my teath before. A second string of floss seemed unable to find the right spot to go between the teeth to attempt to clear it. A trip to the garage to get some needle nose pliers did the trick.
The cheap ones I use do go a bit slack, but maybe that’s just because the plastic is cheap and soft.