Why I Don’t Use Social Media

I used to love social media. I spent hours every day scrolling, commenting, and posting. Facebook was a constant presence for years of my life. I mostly stopped using it and Instagram around 2019 as the number of ads and promoted content overwhelmed what I saw from the people I actually cared about. The FOMO was intense at first, I was very worried that I would miss out on my friends lives and to some degree that was true. During the pandemic lockdowns and still today for long-distance friendships, I know a lot less about what’s happening in their daily lives. There are two benefits to this though!

First, I am so much less overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of information and trying to remember what is going on for three hundred or more people. Second, when I do get to see my friends, have a phone call, or even text each other… we actually have things to talk about! Conversations have become easier because I’m not constantly broadcasting and receiving everything that happens in our lives. I love when my friends get excited to show me photos of what they’ve been doing along with a personalized narrative for what they’re showing me. The extra depth and meaning that has developed in my interactions now that we can’t cut things short with, “Yeah, I saw your post about that” is incredible.

Of course, these apps and websites are carefully designed to draw us in and keep us there for as much time as possible and I’m still not immune to it. I’ve lost many hours of my life to TikTok and while some of the videos I’ve seen there have been beneficial to me, for the most part it makes me anxious, irritable, and restless — even when I think I’m enjoying it. I’ve tried to convince myself that Reddit is okay because the way I use it is “educational” but it’s still too easy to end up spending hours there when I meant to just look at one post. I had to stop using YouTube on my phone when they introduced Shorts because it’s as all-consuming as TikTok but I enjoy it even less.

In March 2026, I deleted all social media apps from my phone. I still access some of them occasionally from my computer if I have a specific task to complete but I made a choice to stop the scroll. After four months, I’ve noticed some significant differences, including figuring out that I’m in a burnout phase much faster than usual.

1. My attention span is much better. Social media gives us constant bite-sized pieces of information and entertainment. Spending all day jumping from one topic to a completely unrelated one with the speed and agility of a squirrel, it’s no wonder that our attention span for anything else is suffering. Making myself slow down to read books, write on paper, and literally go outside to touch grass instead of scrolling social media gets easier every day. Attention is a skill and we get better at what we practice.
2. My sleep is better! I used to lay down at night to be greeted with non-stop racing thoughts. Since I stopped using social media, this doesn’t happen nearly as much. I assume it’s similar to the attention span problem — if your brain is conditioned to constantly jump from one topic to another with varying levels of stress and anxiety, that’s exactly what it will do, even when you’re not looking at your phone.
3. My body hurts less. Holding my phone in my hand for hours every day was killing my wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, and back. Headaches are a much less frequent occurrence and are usually less severe. I spend more time moving my body in ways that make it feel good and my posture is slowly improving.

There are downsides to not being on social media. I don’t know as much about events that are coming up or projects that I’d like to be involved in because so much of that information is only available on Instagram. It’s harder to keep connections with acquaintances who live far away or who I’ve only met once or twice. The most difficult part is that so many other people are still on there and struggle to imagine a different way of doing things.

These challenges are discussed at length in The Anxious Generation (Haidt, 2024) — how can we get ourselves and our kids offline and engaged in real life when so much of our culture has shifted to exist only inside these sad rectangles? Haidt’s answer — and mine — is that we do it together. It starts with a few people making the conscious choice to retreat from the platforms controlled by billionaires and trillionaires, to recreate our own online and offline spaces for sharing information and community. The more we talk about that with each other and with people who aren’t ready to make that leap, the more creative solutions we can come up with to keep the benefits of social media and leave behind the harmful parts.

This website and these blog posts are part of how I’m doing that. This is me slowing down, choosing a different way of interacting, and sharing my experiences. You might notice that comments are turned off on this blog; that is an intentional decision. I’m not looking for maximum engagement or search engine optimization here, I just want a space to exist. If you want to talk about these ideas more, send me an email and let’s have a real conversation.