Living In 2025 Without Social Media

“Mom, why are you and dad almost always on your phones?” The one gut punch I’d been dreading, yet expecting to hear for years landed promptly at my doorstep. A gut punch because, what does one say in response? Do I say what science knows to be true; that my brain is addicted to the dopamine rush that instant gratification provides through swipes, clicks, & comments? Do I pretend instead that I am an adult, and as such, I have complete agency over my choices and actions, and that for some reason I keep choosing my own destiny, which currently equates to living within a TikTok shop? What does one even say?

I saw somewhere that Maya Angelou smiled at children because she knew how important it was to acknowledge their presence, and for them to feel the warmth of love when they engage with their adults. Now, most adults don’t even look up from their phones to acknowledge that a child is even in the room. That notion, of ignoring a person, let alone a child, for a screen to which I have zero emotional attachment and has no sentience left me heartbroken. Is this what my children have grown up with all their lives? Thinking they are never as important as a phone? The tears that I’ve fought all day at the thought are welling up once again. How could I? How could we all? How have we gotten so far off track? Addictive algorithms? A lack of empathy? A need to escape? Maybe a little bit of everything. Despite the reason, I know it is something I desperately no longer desire.

So today I began the ever important job of burning it all to the ground. Every last piece. WhatsApp? Gone. Pinterest? Dead. Discord? Unplugged it. Threads? Unravelled. Instagram? Nothing but a memory. Love always comes first.

Deleting Instagram was the hardest, second to Twitter, which I was forced to delete over a year ago after Elon Musk took it over and promptly do what white, male billionaires do: turned it into a flaming white supremacist dumpster fire. Instagram was the first space where I tied photos into my storytelling. A place where I shared my love for nature and humanity through brilliant photos and words of joy; before it became the ultimate influencer paradise.

Strangely, as I perused Instagram, anticipating the need to save all of my data - something incredible happened. Seeing glimpses of who I used to be, photos of a youthful, cherubic face with bleach blonde hair, I suddenly went limp. No longer was I that girl in the photos. More importantly, I found that I didn’t want to be her.

There’s a strange phenomenon in going through all of your old content. Essentially, you’re doing a digital life review up until the present. Everything you once were, all laid out bare. It’s almost a reminder to the soul, whispering “Have you been living the life you say you want? Are you embodying the version of yourself you say you are, the one you want to become?” At the same time, there are these ghosts of you. Ghosts who are desperate to suck you back into the vortex of the past. “Embody me, embody me,” each of them screams. Memories are desperate not to be lonely. The versions of you that you were before ache for more company. It was then that I realized that holding onto all these old versions of myself was doing me no favors. In fact, it was only chaining me to the past.

Clicking the delete button was difficult, but also wildly thrilling. An unexpected wave of relief washed over me as I saw that everything would be permanently wiped away within 30 days. Sweet relief, the kind that sinks into the very core of your bones, swept over me. It was as if I’d been carrying the world’s largest knapsack on my back unknowingly for all this time, and suddenly - it was empty. It felt so good that I had to stop myself from deleting it all: from burning away everything.

Still, I have several other social media accounts to contend with: many of which I have no plan for escape. Yet spirit has been whispering to me for quite sometime, “These spaces are not for you. They are holding you back. It is time to fly.” 

I don’t know what a life without social media will look like, exactly. I joined my first social media site, the immortalized Myspace, at age 17. I’ve grown into adulthood with social media sites. I’ve been the primary demographic - which, unfortunately, also means I’ve been one of its greatest victims. To have lived alongside this phenomenon longer than I have not, is unsettling to say the least. There’s still time to reverse the ill effects, and for me to leave it all behind.

Life, for the first time in a long time, has an uncertain nuance to it. The world around me somehow seems brighter, effervescent again. Without an algorithm to continue to tell me how to feel and how to think, I’ll begin the transition back to free-thinking and free-feeling once again, just as it should be. I see a future where I have more inner peace, more hope in humanity, and more faith in myself. I see a future with more magic, more creativity. I see a clearer path to myself.