Just hit a milestone: 5 years with no social media accounts

I finally made it to 5 years clean from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter after deleting everything back in 2019. Thing is, people keep saying you need social media to stay in touch, but I just use Signal and email for that and I'm honestly way less stressed. Anyone else ditch the big platforms and feel like it actually helped with privacy?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliarodriguez1mo ago

Honestly, I tried that for six months back in 2020 and it just made me feel kinda out of the loop with my friends. Ngl, I get the privacy thing but I'd rather just use burner accounts and stay connected than go totally cold turkey.

jamieb801mo ago

Yeah but the thing about burner accounts is eventually the algorithms figure out it's you anyway. I had like three separate accounts across different platforms and within a month they were all showing me the same stuff and suggesting the same people. It's like they know man. The whole point of going cold turkey for me was to break that cycle of constantly checking who liked what and when. I found that even with time limits I'd still get that little dopamine hit every time I opened the app. The real trick for me was replacing it with something else entirely, like picking up a hobby that actually involves my hands so I can't scroll. But I agree the friend part is the hardest, especially if your whole group lives on there to make plans.

the_olivia1mo ago

Yeah I feel that, the FOMO is real. What worked for me was setting up a schedule. I'd check in for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night, kind of like how you'd answer texts. That way I stayed in the loop but wasn't doomscrolling all day. Did you try anything like that or was it more of a hard cut off?