What I gained by escaping the algorithm

Last weekend, I deleted all the social media on my phone.

Threads? Gone. X? Gone. Instagram? Definitely gone. TikTok already lost its privileges months ago. And okay, so I kept Snapchat for communication purposes, but trust me when I say I’m eyeballing it.

I’ve been thinking seriously about doing this for a while now. I’ve gotten rid of social media long-term before, years ago. I tend to go through this vicious cycle of deleting and redownloading every six months or so: get fed up with seeing the same discourse every day, delete the apps, forget how badly they affected my mental health, redownload, rinse and repeat.

You know what I didn’t expect, though? When I hit those shaky little X buttons on my homescreen, I felt a physical relief wash over me. It was crazy — I actually felt it in my chest, as if I’d let out a heavy sigh after the longest day I’d ever had.

At this point, we all have a vague sense of the statistics, right? I won’t bore you with them: reduced attention span and dopamine release, poorer focus and cognitive abilities, links to depression and suicide rates, etc. Instead, forget about all of that and think about yourself for a moment. What are you doing on those platforms, and is it anything that matters?

It was the answers to these questions (“nothing” and “no” respectively) that pushed me to make my choice, and I feel a finality now with this decision that I haven’t felt before when I’ve gone through that cycle of deleting and redownloading.

When I told my brother I’d gotten rid of everything, his first question was, “How long are you going to do?” Honestly, that caught me a bit off-guard. I hadn’t even thought about it. I think I had subconsciously decided the change was a permanent one. I told him “indefinitely,” but it wasn’t until I’d said it that I realized it was true.

Now, you don’t have to delete every single one, nor do you have to do it permanently. I recognize that I’ve taken the extreme path here. But I want you to at least think about this: As a low-stakes experiment, picture your least-favorite social media. In a year, will you remember anything you’re doing on it today? If you got rid of it, even just for a week to start, would you be missing anything of value?

During those hours that you spend distracting yourself, what are you gaining? Is it anything at all, or are you just losing time?

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve lost anything by deleting those apps. I can still text my friends or — God forbid — see them in person. I can get my news by reading full articles instead of digesting bite-sized headlines every 20 seconds. Jesus, I might even call my mom.

I used to love to read, you know. When I was a little kid, I’d hide under my covers after bedtime and read the Boxcar Children or Animal Ark by the dim glow of a flashlight. I remember my mom once changing my sheets and discovering the pile of novels that I’d finished and shoved to the foot of the bed in my hurry to grab yet another. 

Now, I think she was trying not to laugh.Somewhere along this 15-year road, I lost my love for reading. I still find myself itching to do it — and yet, somehow, I never actually make it as far as picking up a new book. How could I have lost something that used to be a part of me?

The truth is that I fell into a pattern of choosing mindlessness. Scrolling. Watching. Scrolling again. One distraction or another worms its way into my brain, taking minute by precious minute and giving me nothing I’ll remember.

In a world that’s designed to be overwhelming, you need to protect your own brain. No one else is going to do that for you. If you’re not paying attention to the things that might be hurting you, or worse, if you’re making excuses for those things and insisting that they’re positive influences when they’re not, no one is going to stop you from harming yourself. At the end of the day, it’s on you to make that call.

You’re the one who has to look inward and ask if there’s something you’re missing. Was it something that you used to have, like me and the books at the foot of my bed? Maybe it was a guitar, a sport. 

I’ve got bad news: it’s you controlling these habits. If you don’t decide to make a change, no change will ever happen.

There’s good news too, though: it’s not too late to make a different choice. I just did.