Deleting social media changed my life

It's been almost 6 weeks since I deleted all “scrollable” social media. And it genuinely changed my life.

I feel like I’ve regained my joy of life, my discipline, my confidence, my time… you name it.

Not too long ago, this is how a typical Sunday morning of mine could look like:

Reaching for my phone immediately upon waking, scrolling for 2 hours.

Then making myself some breakfast, but not being able to eat it before finding something good to watch on YouTube.

These kinds of mornings always ended up in me feeling miserable for the rest of the day, while getting absolutely nothing done.

For your sake, I’m genuinely hoping you cannot relate to the experience I just described.

Unfortunately though, I know many of you will.

I’m not here to tell you that social media is bad for you. That you already know.

I’m here to help you realize just how much it might be costing you.

And once I’ve done that, I’m gonna show you how to start living again.

Because the way I used to live, didn’t really feel like living.

I was merely surviving.

I - You are playing a rigged game

Your name is David. Your opponent’s name is Goliath.

The billion dollar social media industry is hiring the sharpest (most sinister?) minds out there, just to keep you hooked to your phone.

Everything you do is being monitored. Posts you like and comment on, who you follow, which links you click on, and your watch-time in certain niches, is all being used to customize a personal feed just for you.

Our own human nature is being used against us. The survival instincts that kept our ancestors alive out in the wild, thousands of years ago, just don’t go hand in hand with today’s digital world.

Our dopamine system was designed to keep our ancestors hunting for food, hours on end, without any real guarantee of results. It helped them push through the uncertainty, because giving up would mean starvation.

But you and I are not hunting mammoths and fighting saber-toothed tigers on a daily basis. What we do however hunt, is the next funny clip, the next informative reel, the next thirst trap. Because as far as we know, the next interesting thing is always just one scroll away.

So we keep scrolling.

And the more time of your life you waste away this way, the more money they make.

This is why I don’t agree with people saying that social media isn’t the real problem, and that it’s all about how much time we ourselves decide to give it.

I think that would kind of be the same thing as clanking down on a heroin addict for not having more self control, right after you put a shot of heroin on the table in front of them.

What outcome do you think a scenario like this would have ten out of ten times?

II - You are being trained to leave the people you love

Constant stimulation from short-form content will wreck your attention span. You will become less attentive and rational, which in turn makes you porous as a person.

A porous mind:

When you’ve lost the ability to control what gets your attention. Instead of consciously choosing what to focus on, you constantly absorb whatever is put in front of you.

I would argue that a porous mind has a hard time sustaining love.

If you cannot handle uncertainty in a relationship, without letting it turn into accusation, or outsourcing an interpretation from total strangers, you are destined to fail.

When you reach for tiktok or instagram reels out of habit, you are not making a conscious choice to start scrolling. This puts your mind in a kind of “numb” state. A state where your subconscious is the most susceptible to external influence.

And with enough repetition, what you repeatedly consume will start influencing what feels normal, desirable, or true.

“This is what I saw” slowly turns into “this is how I see it”.

And that is really scary in my opinion.

Then when your relationship inevitably enters a period of turbulence, do you really think your algorithm is gonna provide you with ways to repair and make amends?

Spoiler: It won’t.

You’ll rather start seeing reasons why you should break up.

“Toxic”, “bare minimum”, “insecurity”, “choosing yourself”.

If your partner expresses discomfort, and your feed is telling you all about how insecure they are for feeling that way, you won’t even try to look inwards. That turns the question from “why are they feeling this way?” to “what’s wrong with them for feeling this way?”

You see where this is going…

After all, relationships with your loved ones require effort on both sides.

Social media is making people think that’s not the case.

III - Your misery is their profit

Let me know if the following feels familiar:

You open social media, see the most drop-dead gorgeous person you’ve ever seen before. Their skin is perfect, their hair is perfect, their teeth are perfectly white… you get the gist.

Now you’re all insecure about how you yourself look. Your skin isn’t perfectly smooth, your hair is a lil damaged, your teeth look kinda yellow now that you think about it…

But wait! They have a link in their bio where you can buy all the products they use!! Let’s gooo, now you can become as perfect as them!

Well, this is how they get you.

They want you to feel insecure about yourself. They want you to compare yourself to others. Because that comparison creates a problem that a product conveniently promises to solve.

The thing is, it’ll never fully work.

Women are for example sold “glass skin”. They’re told they can become poreless, reflective, almost unreal.

The standard is deliberately made asymptotic, keeping the consumer—you—in a never-ending state of “in progress”.

And accordingly, skin care routines just get bigger and bigger, involving more and more products, with the promise of helping you reach a standard you were never meant to reach in the first place.

Asymptotic:

A line, curve, or function that gets closer and closer to a specific value or limit as a variable approaches infinity, without necessarily ever touching it.

“Looksmaxxing” is what men are being sold by the insecurity capitalizers. Their faces are sold as a crisis.

It starts off with simple grooming, which then turns into starvation protocols and “bone-smashing”. And before you know it, there’s talk about surgery and chin implants.

We’re always being kept out of reach of “enough”, making optimization a never ending process. And once you’re in that loop, it’s almost impossible to break free. Because after a while, your “insecurity purchases” becomes part of your identity.

And humans will defend things that feel like part of their identity with much more intensity than they defend a random purchase.

Even as you’re reading this, an identity purchase of yours probably came to mind. And your brain is already saying: “but that’s different”.

Is it?

IV - You are losing your ability to be bored

When was the last time you actually embraced boredom for more than 5 minutes?

Had someone asked me this a while back, I wouldn’t have been able to answer.

Our brains have formed the habit of immediately reaching for our phones the second we feel bored. During the commute. In the waiting room at the doctor. In the line at the grocery store.

Ever since I stopped scrolling I’ve been able to be more present during situations like these. It’s made me actually see for myself how entranced everyone is by their phone. And the fact that I used to be the same has been a horrifying realization.

We are missing out on small everyday social interactions. The little smile and nod to the elderly lady. The eye contact with the cute stranger. The laughter from the little kid.

These kinds of moments are the ones that can leave me cheesing to myself for the rest of the day. But they are becoming rarer and rarer, since everyone is just looking down at the thing in their hands.

But when we lose our ability to be bored, we also lose our ability to be alone with our own thoughts. And if you don’t use your brain, your memory, creativity, ability to plan ahead and reflect, will start to diminish.

If your phone disappeared tomorrow, would you finally hear yourself think, or would you discover that there isn’t much underneath the noise?

• the unpublished room, in we’ve stopped allowing ourselves to be bored

At the same time, we’re not just losing our ability to be bored. We’re also losing our ability to enjoy the things we once loved

I have always been a big movie and series lover. I track and rate everything I watch on imdb, and love to talk and discuss with friends and family about the things we’ve recently watched.

But not too long ago, I felt how that passion of mine started to fade. I couldn’t watch a movie without picking up my phone every ten minutes. Starting a new series, something I usually looked forward to, felt like a chore instead of a pleasure.

But since deleting social media I’ve been able to reclaim my ability to enjoy movies and series again.

You know you’re cooked when watching a movie feels productive

• me

V - How to reclaim your brain and start living again

There’s 4 steps to it:

1. You need to realize that you have a problem
2. You have to want to fix it bad enough
3. You need to know how to fix it
4. You need to take action

I’m hoping step 1 and 2 are checked off your list by now.

Step 4 is what happens after you’ve finished reading this article.

Step 3 is what I’m gonna give you now:

i - You need to sabotage your future self

Always assume future you is going to start scrolling as soon as boredom hits if the opportunity is available, and act accordingly.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve tried doing no-scroll in the past, and failed miserably. It would start with me getting motivated by someone online. I would delete the apps and tell myself I’d never put my thumb through the all to familiar scrolling motion again.

When the following day arrived, my motivation was gone, the apps were redownloaded, and my thumb was back in its usual habitat.

This time though, when the motivation hit, I made preparations for my future unmotivated self. I deleted the apps and made my brother set a password-protected block. I set up a system built to take the decision away from me.

Trying to rely solely on motivation is a bad long-term strategy. You need to rely on systems built to make you stick to your own promises.

ii - You need to tell someone

Telling someone about what you’re trying to do is so important.

This point goes hand in hand with the previous if you decide to take my route of having someone block the apps. But just having someone holding you accountable and whom you can talk to when things get tough makes the whole process so much easier.

If you want to do no-scroll, but don’t have anyone to talk to, just send me a message saying you’re gonna do this, and I will hold you accountable.

iii - You need move your body

Physical training is the most natural and effective way to restore your fried dopamine system.

Unlike scrolling, the dopamine hit you get from working out is actually earned. Which makes it sustainable.

At the same time, you’re rebuilding trust in yourself. The trust you’ve violated every time you told yourself you were only gonna scroll a little, yet still ended up scrolling through half the night.

The confidence that comes from building a strong body is just something different. And that confidence is gonna help you stay true to your word when temptation comes knocking.

Start small. Go on walks. Bodyweight exercises. Build up gradually until training feels part of you lifestyle.

The goal isn’t to become the next Mr. Olympia. The goal is to give your brain a natural dopamine system to lean on, that actually improves your life instead of draining it.

iv - You need to find something you’re passionate about

Having a sense of purpose gives you your why.

Because if you feel like you have nothing to do, nothing to work on, nothing to build…

then you might as well scroll.

So please, find something you’re passionate about. Build something. Learn something. Get obsessed with something.

It won’t only help you with scrolling. It might even help you enjoy life as a whole.

Until next time,

—Joel

P.S.

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