A year and a half ago, I finally took the plunge.

I warmed up with LinkedIn, my barely-used online resumé. That was easy enough.

Delete.

Then, Twitter (it was still Twitter, at that point). I had tried to make it a more relevant platform for me, but it always felt so cynical and shallow. No big deal there, either.

Delete.

TikTok was a little harder. I knew I did not like how I could lose 2 hours in watching snippets of insane, irritating, creative, or funny stuff. And, I did not like how numbed I felt afterwards. But, I liked how many followers I had there and I felt useful and supportive to them. Couldn’t TikTok be educational too? Couldn’t it help people’s spiritual growth? Couldn’t it expand my psychological, neuroscientific, historical, or whatever toolkit? Maybe if I just exerted more self-discipline on the algorithm, it would keep me in the bounds of wholesome brain-food.

No. I had been through these questions before and the observable fact of my behavior was that I did not turn to TikTok when I was full of self-discipline. I opened TikTok when I was tired, when I was bored, when I was trying to distract myself from something else.

In other words, I was using it as a crutch, not a support.

Delete.

Facebook is where the stuff started hitting the fan. It was tough. I may have shed some tears as I groped my way to closure. Goodbye, college mentors. Goodbye, college, high school, and other old friends. Goodbye, people I knew only through the Internet. Goodbye, artistic meet-ups.

Leaving Facebook took a whole month. I combed through all my old photos albums. I scanned the list of 1K+ “friends,” most of whom I never talked to anymore or barely even knew. I had been part of the first wave of Facebook users, having joined the platform when it was still exclusive to college students. It was part of my coming of age. A play place for college antics, for artsy shares, for online dating, learning, community-building. I had posted hundreds of pieces of art there and sold thousands of dollars worth of things during my KonMari phase. It was a time-portal of people, things, and images.

Could I give that up?

I thought of the hours of upset I had spent as people I respected posted disrespectful content; the concerns about Corporate-level fraud and privacy violations; the disconcerting number of scam attempts who had impersonated friends or family members; the MLM-ing; the political bigotry; the misinformation. I thought of all the times I had been sucked into those things, too. It was an anxiety rabbit hole, a tension spiral, a lethargy-amplifier.

Yes, I could.

Delete.

Last of all, there was Instagram–this one was tough, too but in a different way. I did not have as much history to reckon with there, but I liked it more. Instagram tended to be gentler, more artistic, more inspirational. It was definitely my favorite doomscroll. But, in the end, it had the same problems. I did not feel better after using it. At worst, it pulled me away from creating my own art and pushed me down a tunnel of insecurity and comparison-itis. At best, it left me thirsting for more likes, more comments, and slaving over more ambitious pieces to try and extract a dopamine-induced validation from my followers. And besides that, it seemed like every year brought more of those shady ethical and privacy violations. Still, most of the people I actually interacted with were posting there and how would I stay current if I did not have any social media?? These were questions I could not answer. Maybe I would not stay current, I would have to risk it. Because ultimately, I knew that every week and month that went by was solidifying my dependence, making it harder and harder to leave.

So, I did some breathing. I saged my space. I grounded my own feet. I turned down the volume on my anxiety. I reminded myself that I didn’t know for sure that deleting Instagram would mean I never had friends again. I would just have to wait and see. I reached deep into my embodied knowing and imagined NOT checking Instagram tomorrow or the next day or next week. I felt peace.

Delete.

This was my story. I didn’t have every Social Media platform, and from a purist perspective, maybe I wasn’t thorough enough–I kept my email, after all. But I confronted enough of them to activate my panic and survival responses and I the extraction felt visceral and scary. At some primal level, my brain was wondering, “How will I survive without my herd?”

This was all gave me cause to reflect on how easy it was to join all these services compared to how hard it is to leave. It caused me to notice how every Social Media platform has its own flavor, its own hooks for attention, its own seductive network of performers to keep us “engaged.” Of course, there is nothing wrong with seduction or creators and we all respond to a good punch of comedy or a thrill of suspense at times. But, in my case–my lived experience of using Social Media always ended up feeling like drinking soda: I was imbibing a lot of content, but I did not feel satisfied or nourished afterwards. It also made me think about how breaking up with Social Media is a lot like ending a personal relationship that is not right. Thankfully, there’s no equity to divide and you don’t have to run into them at the grocery store, but many of the questions and objections are the same.

I was not being bullied online and I was not running a business there, but the weight of just these questions alone was slowly sucking at my life force through hours and hours of endless updates. And then, I was preoccupied for more hours about how I wasn’t doing life in a way that looked as good as my high-performing, photogenic friends.

And besides all that, I was curious.

Who was I without Social Media? I wanted to know.

There are plenty of statistics about Social Media and mental health.¹ You don’t need me to quote them. I didn’t quote them to myself, either. I knew it wouldn’t matter. I had read the headlines for years and believed them, but I still signed up for TikTok when it came out and I still checked Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok daily. I knew that those facts were not motivating enough for me to divorce my behavior from the dopamine-kick I was getting from that dumb notifications tab.

I had to go deeper. I had to get a motivation that was bigger, fuller, richer than the shallow spike of hope that I could receive by opening these apps.

I had to ask my body what she wanted.

This process took a few months. I needed help. I brought my Social Media dilemma to my Embodiment Coaches. “I can tell that Social Media is not a very embodied experience for me, but everyone is there and I don’t want to be alone.”

My coaches were empathetic. Most of the time, they were struggling with the same questions, actually. But as they patiently, gently invited my awareness inwards, I found the same answer again and again:

“Let it go. Things that numb me are not tools I can use to build a fulfilling life.”

I cycled in and out of the cravings. I built up to a week of abstinence and then a couple of weeks at a time. I kept cycling in and out until I felt an urgency to be done. Then, the self-discipline practice began. I set a deadline for myself one month in advance, and said my goodbyes. As a failsafe to appease my socially-desperate anxiety, I gave myself permission to reconsider the issue after six months. It was a back door to change my mind, but I insisted first on fully deleting (not just deactivating) every account and really experimenting with the a Social-Media-less life.

One month in, I was pacing myself. This wasn’t too bad, I thought. Weird to not trade info with new acquaintances, sure, but not bad.

Two months in, I was desperate for the six month mark. I had tripled my longest streaks of no-contact by then, and I was wondering if I had made a huge mistake. I had so much history that I just got rid of! Why did I do this? Everyone has Social Media these days. Who was I kidding? And, I needed to start my business! Who starts a business without Social Media in 2024??

Three months in, I could barely stand the suspense. I had already written my “I’m back!!” post in my head. I thought maybe I could re-join, “just for the groups” or “just for business purposes.” I would go to the home screen and just hover there, sometimes, feeling like an outsider, feeling like I didn’t know what was going on in the world, feeling left out. It was very, very tempting to just go back.

Four months in, I brought the issue back to my coaching sessions. “Should I go back yet? Am I good now?” But my body was wiser. “No. Wait. Don’t ask this question until the six-month mark.”

Five months in, I was still checking my watch. “Just one more month!”

Then, six months. Something happened. It’s hard to describe what changed because it wasn’t sudden or even very conscious. All I know is that somewhere in between the five-month mark and the six-month mark, I started to feel more…complete. It wasn’t quite forgetting about Social Media, but I started to notice how calm and centered my mind felt without the nagging urge to check on my notifications. My creative juices started pumping again and it actually felt good NOT to show anyone what I was working on. It was like a delicious secret between me and the creative spark of the Universe. I found that in the in between moments of my day, I had more ideas and noticed more things. When I spent time in line, I just observed the people and places around me instead of consorting with my phone.

And then, there were my relationships. Without the entire world of voluntary updates to check on, I found that if I wanted to check in on someone, I would text them. “Hey, just thinking about you today! How are you?” I also started to enjoy meals and outings with friends without interrupting to take a selfie. “Some memories don’t need to be kept in images,” I thought. When I did take pictures, I focused on what I really wanted to remember, rather than what I thought other people would want to see or what would get a lot of reactions.

Somewhere between those monthly benchmarks, I had transitioned from living through my phone and the other-centric gaze of Social Media to living with myself and my life, again. I wasn’t a brand, I remembered. I didn’t have to have just one style or one tone. My family wasn’t always perfect and we weren’t on a linear trajectory of better-and-better times. On the other hand, I also started dressing up sometimes and realizing that I really enjoyed the experience and didn’t need anyone to heart-like-favorite-whatever in order to feel good that day. I saw wonders and treasures in the natural world and realized that they were just for me–no picture or account was going to convey that moment of splendor to the rest of the world. And what’s more, I didn’t need to.

In that month, a marvelous feeling of enough-ness came in and the anxiety and craving for the Social-Media-based responses faded quickly into the background.

So, I postponed using those platforms again for another month. I wondered what would happen if I waited until the nine month mark.

Then, I did.

Nine months passed.

Ten months.

Soon, I had reached the year mark and instead of eagerly wanting to go back, I felt eager to maintain my independence. The feeling was nearly always celebratory–I didn’t need Social Media! I didn’t even want it anymore! I made it to the other side. I hadn’t know how much of my energy had been draining away until I unplugged and got it back. And though there was some inconvenience in being able to look up any random acquaintance quickly, I noticed that the people who wanted to find me, still found me and that overall, I felt a lot lighter without carrying the expectations of a wide and possibly imaginary audience into my everyday life. It felt like freedom.

I have heard that not everyone feels this way. That some people find Social Media to be a very embodied experience. Others, decide that they must use Social Media and so, find ways to quarantine its use into time-blocks that allow it to remain useful to them or their business. How fantastic! Maybe I will get to that point, in the future too.

For now, though, I find I am more content without more of that content.

¹ If you do your own dive into this rabbit hole of mental health and social media, you’ll find that most of the studies focus on mental health for kids, teenagers, young adults. However, 69% or more of adults also use Social Media and are affected in similar ways. Symptoms of anxiety, depression, appearance dissatisfaction etc may be more subtle or disguised in adult users than a young adult’s, but ironically, this can make the effects even more insidious and long-lasting since most adults will not recognize nor seek support for the imbalances.