What I found when I tried to unplug from social media

I noticed the compulsive behaviors first.

The way, at any pause or break in my day, my finger clicked the Instagram or X app on my phone, seemingly without my consent. Eating a snack? Click. Sitting on the toilet? Click. In bed, in the moments before falling asleep? Click again.

Every time the app began to load, I yelped, closed it in a frenzy and switched over to my email or, in one very desperate case, the weather app. Unplugging from social media was proving harder than I expected.

Still, any attempts at unplugging for me would be inherently temporary — I use the apps almost daily as part of my job, making fully disconnecting from Big Tech a lost cause.

But that’s something a number of social media users have been trying to do, especially after Meta and its founder Mark Zuckerberg have aligned with President Donald Trump — foregoing fact-checkers and incorporating two Trump allies into high positions in the company. Many on the left have called for a boycott of Meta products Instagram and Facebook, while others have taken the opportunity to simply re-evaluate their relationship to social media and, by extension, Big Tech.

The movement to boycott Meta is only the latest iteration of an ongoing cultural shift. In November, following Trump’s election, millions of users joined Bluesky, a nearly identical app to pre-Elon Musk X, right down to the shade of blue. Their reasoning was largely due to Musk’s own political alliance with Trump, which had turned the once-innovative social website into a campaign platform for the right.

Which brings us to this moment. While attempting to ditch social media isn’t necessarily a new trend — the potential dangers of these websites have long been documented, from mental health woes to privacy concerns — there is now an increasing skepticism around the politics of Big Tech specifically, leading people to find alternatives (i.e. Bluesky) or simply hang it up altogether.

But in 2025, social media is so ingrained in our society. These websites have woven themselves not only into the fabric of how we socialize, but of how we communicate as a whole. Is unplugging really possible?

I was skeptical. So, at least temporarily, I decided to give it a try.

Social Media Fast: Day One

If nothing else, giving up social media — which for me meant X, Facebook and Instagram, the only three sites I regularly use — was an embarrassing window into all the ways I lean on the apps as part of my regular routine. It wasn’t just to fill the empty space in my days; I reached for these apps to browse discounted vintage furniture (Facebook Marketplace), to send cringey jokes to friends (X), or to check the hours of a favorite pop-up restaurant (Instagram).

It was confusing. On one hand, I could recognize the dangerous way endlessly scrolling, searching for another hit of dopamine, was damaging my quality of life. (In place of social media, I began to spend an unnatural amount of time checking email, finally reading all those Substacks I’m subscribed to).

On the other hand: How else could I get this useful information while also staying in touch with long-distance friends? (Not to mention the ungodly amount of things somehow connected to Facebook/Meta accounts – Spotify?!)

I turned to my friend Marissa Butler, an independent bookseller who, like me, is an avid social media user in her late 20s. After Meta announced changes to its fact-checking policy, she posted on Instagram Stories asking her circle how they were thinking about their social media use. Were they deleting Meta apps or social media altogether? Were they re-evaluating their usage? Or were they just continuing as normal?

Some people said they were going to give Bluesky a try. Others had already left Instagram, having quit as soon as the news broke. But about 90% of her friends, she said, were just as unsure as she was.

“It also made me think, if we could quit social media in general — like we all would honestly probably love to do — what are we losing connection-wise?” she asked.

That ability to connect is social media’s great saving grace, the quality that constantly gets named when defending these apps’ existence. For all their faults, how else could we interact with people from around the world? It’s not just discovering that someone you had a single class with in college just had a baby (although it is for that, too). “Buy nothing” groups help locals trade and barter for goods; people fundraise and share mutual aid opportunities; citizen journalists in Palestine even used it to document the war.

“Social media platforms, in and of themselves, can be seen as intrinsically neutral,” said Daniel Miller, director of University College London’s Centre for Digital Anthropology. While Musk’s intervention in X is a special case, “by and large, what these sites become is determined by users.”

And every user’s relationship with social media can be different. Miller, who has worked with terminally ill patients in hospice, pointed out that having access to social media becomes all the more valuable for patients as they become less mobile. Barred from real-life social interaction because of their health, virtual social interaction becomes a saving grace.

“Social media is used for a thousand different things,” Miller said. “You’re going to like some of them, not like some of them. But what it is now is all of those things.”

Social Media Fast: Day Two

Miller’s words echoed in my mind. At this point, my compulsive reaching for my phone had already begun to decline, but I wondered what long-term unplugging would look like, particularly for my long-distance friendships. Sure, I could always give friends a call, but it’s far easier to comment on an Instagram post once in a while than commit to a 30-minute catch up.

My circle would inevitably shrink. Was that a consequence I was ready to accept?

Jennifer Oaks, a 48-year-old nurse, was one of the thousands who created a Bluesky account the day after the election. Ideally, she told me, she would go ahead and get off all social media. It’s just not good for her mental health, she said. Every time she opened X, she felt like she was being bombarded with things that made her angry or upset. The constant scrolling, she said, was getting to her.

“I just feel like I’m just wasting my life on this social media,” Oaks said. “It’s just brain rot.”

Oaks isn’t alone in her feelings. In the 2019 self-help book “Digital Minimalism,” computer scientist Cal Newport wrote about our increasing reliance on these websites and how to curb our usage.

“Increasingly, (these technologies) dictate how we behave and how we feel, and somehow coerce us to use them more than we think is healthy, often at the expense of other activities we find more valuable,” Newport wrote.

Therein lies the problem, at least as I saw it just 48 hours into my fast. Social media is both brain rot and a source of connection and information. The difference between the two, it seemed, depended on me.

I found myself wanting to scroll during lengthy phone calls and television commercial breaks. But I also wished I could see what my favorite journalists were talking about on X, or check what sales my favorite small, independent brands were having (a very niche thing I use Instagram for: the abundant temporary sales on Stories).

“It’s like a centralized place to get a lot of things, which is an improvement on having to go around and find all these things individually or call and just check around,” Butler said. “There is no real way to substitute that.”

Community bulletin boards have diminished, along with most print neighborhood newsletters. Ironically, we’ve replaced them with Facebook community pages and Nextdoor groups (another form of social media, if we’re being honest).

There’s a growing Luddite movement among some teenagers, choosing — out of frustration with the grip social media has on society — to go without those sites and other modern technology. I admire them. But I couldn’t help but feel like that’s an easier choice to make in high school, when your community is largely confined to school. My friends and family live in other states, even other countries. Keeping up takes real work.

And how else do people find their favorite small businesses? Artists? Brands? Without social media, this knowledge can become more elusive.

I discovered At Heart Panadería, a pop-up bakery in Atlanta that became a mainstay of my diet last year, through Instagram. Chef and owner Teresa Finney, 40, has been on some sort of social media since she was a teen, she said. But today’s social media — with its rapid acceleration of AI and other concerns — bums her out. In recent weeks, she’s grappled with her Instagram usage, but leaving social media doesn’t make sense for her, she said, both personally and professionally.

She’d miss seeing the digital lives of her family and friends. And while she does block Instagram for certain hours of the day, she still enjoys posting updates about her life and the bakery (Finney uses the app almost as an extension of a website, posting updates on menu changes, news about pop-ups and pictures of her cakes).

“Leaving Instagram, though very tempting at times, would leave a big lack that I’m not at this point ready to live with,” Finney said.

Social Media Fast: Day Three

As my period of social media abstinence came to an end, I wondered if three days was too short of a time. It certainly isn’t enough time to break a habit, and while my compulsions had plummeted, I still caught myself trying to open the apps.

Social media is meant to be addictive — that much is proven. From the constant notifications to the stream of never-ending content, there’s always — for better or worse — something new to see.

Did it have to be this way? For years, watchdogs have noted tech companies have the power to control their platforms’ misinformation, hate speech, and other rampant ills that fester on social media. While wellness experts have told us ways to make our specific feeds less toxic (unfollowing people we don’t like; using the mute button), our efforts mean little without systemic changes.

And it’s clear that these apps have intentions beyond just being a tool of connection; one scroll through my redownloaded Instagram, and I was reminded of how much the app has become a breeding ground for brands (ones the algorithm thinks I’ll enjoy) hawking their products.

I knew going without social media would be a sacrifice; I didn’t realize how much engaging with it was, too. I was always going to be fighting the urge to endlessly immerse myself in the brain rotting scroll, probably at the expense of my data. If these big social media apps were truly just a way to stay in touch with people, why do so many people feel compelled to leave? (Few have complained about needing a BeReal break.)

Butler has a healthier approach than I do. She told me she tries to make sure she’s using social media intentionally, like to message someone whose number she doesn’t have or to see what a specific person has been up to, rather than just scrolling out of habit. Instead of sending memes back and forth, wouldn’t it be more fulfilling to get a voice note from a friend, or even just a text? She’s been playing with that, seeing how she can replicate the feelings of being on social media while still regulating her use.

“The solution is going to be uncomfortable,” Butler said. “We’re going to be a little less informed than we were before.”

Seventy-two hours in, I felt a little uncomfortable. A little freer, too. Unplugging is possible.

Here’s the problem: Social media isn’t going away, Miller said. It’s become too much of a part of the way we interact. People (like me) might use social media in detrimental ways, but they also use social media to actually be social. If Miller wanted to announce a conference on X, he has 12,000 followers on the site who might hear about it, he said. How else would he reach those people?

“People who have benefitted, in terms of their access to information or the ability to disseminate information, why would they want to leave it?” Miller said.

But is that access, that potential benefit, worth all of the downsides? Wouldn’t it be nice for my tastes not to be dictated by an algorithm; to find connection not just within these apps, but beyond them?

The answers will be different for everyone. Figuring out how to engage with social media in a healthy way will be a constant balancing act – one that may look different at different stages. (Taking a break from some platforms is a common solution: In 2023, 60% of US adults reported taking a hiatus from X, according to the Pew Research Center, although only a quarter said they were likely to stop using it completely.)

As I logged into my various accounts again, I remembered I meant to follow a friend who was moving in a few weeks to another state. I typed her name into the search bar and hit request, settling in with the knowledge that our current jovial relationship would likely diminish to just this: comments and messages through an app.

Maybe that’s better than nothing. Or maybe I’ll do the seemingly impossible and give her a call.

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