I’ve written about my war with social media before. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember the posts where I tried to untangle my complicated relationship with apps, scrolling, and the hollow feeling that follows “just a few minutes” online. I eventually took those posts down. It wasn’t that I had changed my mind; I just wanted to streamline my content. Which, in hindsight, is exactly the point of this post.
My social media accounts still exist. I didn’t torch everything dramatically or announce my departure. I simply stopped. Stopped posting. Stopped caring what other people thought or if they knew about everything going on in my life. I stopped performing the ritual of showing up so the algorithm would remember I’m alive.
The truth is, scrolling never made me feel better. Not even good. At best, it made me feel numb. At worst, I was irritated, overstimulated, and vaguely ashamed that I’d donated another slice of my life. I suppose this had been a recurring pattern in my past jobs and relationships: I kept giving up pieces of who I was to feed a system that gave nothing back.
We all talk about it…
Over time, I’ve become genuinely astounded at the stupidity that thrives on social media platforms. And I don’t mean “people have different opinions than me.” I mean a kind of cognitive decay. It’s not just what people say—it’s that so many can’t form coherent thoughts or sentences anymore. People have become parrots or join mobs of zombies, all to feel some sense of belonging.
It feels like brain rot in real time. Like we’ve trained ourselves out of thought.
I don’t say that from a place of superiority. I say it with a creeping horror, because I’ve felt my own attention and patience getting thinner, too. I’ve caught myself forgetting why I opened an app in the first place. I’ve watched my focus splinter into fifteen tabs of half-thinking. At some point, you have to stop pretending it’s harmless.
What I Actually Did
In January, I canceled my blue-check subscription. I deleted whatever social apps were still left on my phone. I didn’t create a dramatic countdown or draft a “new year, new me” post. I just removed the little portals.
And I haven’t missed them. Not once.
I’ve cut back on YouTube, too. Don’t get me wrong, YouTube can be genuinely useful. I’ve learned things there. I’ve fixed problems and found explanations. But I also realized I’ve consumed enough. At a certain point, “learning” becomes another form of stalling. Another way to feel productive without creating anything.
I don’t want my life to be a never-ending intake of information.
My Creativity Was Better Before All of This
This is the simplest reason, and maybe the most honest. My creativity was best in the days before social media, before the constant comparison or the pressure to package and present every idea.
If I want that creativity back, it makes sense to return to the conditions where it thrived:
- reading more books
- writing without interruption
- spending more time in nature
- pursuing hobbies away from the screen
- letting boredom return (because boredom is the doorway)
And nothing about it feels like deprivation.
A Thought to End On
Social media doesn’t just take up your time. It takes your inner life. And maybe that’s the question worth asking: What would your days look like if your attention belonged to you again?
Not to the performance of your page or to the outrage of a stranger across the globe. Just to your actual life—your books, your work, your relationships, your hobbies, your quiet.
I’m not leaving social media because I’m trying to be better than anyone else. I’m leaving because I want to be more fully myself. And I finally realized I can’t do that while handing my mind over to something designed to keep it.
Thank you for reading,
Eliza