Delete Your Social Media Apps
Here’s the deal, folks: the internet kind of sucks now. That may be a bold statement from someone who used to aspire for internet fame, but, in my opinion, the whole thing has gone incredibly downhill in the past couple years. Homegrown communities built on niche interests have transformed into cheap grabs for shallow attention and promotion opportunities for personal branding. Creative and unique content curated by unknown creatives are now overshadowed by tacky AI generated garbage and buzzwords designed for SEO performance rather than authentic connection. Friends turn into enemies as the inner comparison game is played through staged photos and story updates. It’s a dismal environment to regularly engage with.
The solution? Delete your social media apps.
Now let’s not confuse the statement. I’m not saying to delete your social media profiles. By all means, keep those around if they still provide use for you. For me, my social media profiles are an excellent way for me to remain engaged with my long distance friends and family. They’re also a beautifully curated archive of snapshots of my life that I enjoy looking back on when the nostalgic mood strikes.
But do I need to engage with my long distance friends and family 24/7? No. Do I need to look back fondly on my life at all times of the day? Also no.
The truth is that social media is not, and should not, be a tool that requires your immediate attention 24 hours a day, 7 hours a week. Social media companies have tricked us all by designing their apps to be as addictive as possible, forcing users to continue mindless scrolling even after the interesting content is already consumed by promising “don’t worry! Your next serotonin hit is just two more short videos away! Stay scrolling!”. They sell us on the fear of missing out, telling us that if we’re not utilizing their sites to always remain connected to our friends, then gasp oh no! We’re no longer a part of the wider society if we don’t see the pictures of an old college friend’s 30th birthday party from over the weekend right away! We’re pariahs for not getting invited to the happy hour of cocktails clinking against each other in a boomerang on a story! We’re outcasts for not immediately posting our exercise selfies! All to monetize our valuable attention away from activities in life that will actually fulfill us and sell advertising space.
Spoiler alert: we’re already a lonely society even with constant social media use. Making sure you’re one of the first five folks to like a new puppy picture isn’t going to fulfill the authentic connection you’re looking for. Connection is found with intent and mindless social media use doesn’t allow for intent. Mindless social media use just fills bank accounts for social media executives and fuels mindless content creation with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it demands for cheap entertainment to occupy the space required for constant social media use. Meanwhile, your life is passing by without notice.
So in order to use social media with more intent, my recommendation is to delete the apps from your phone. You really, really, really don’t need to have access to social media 24/7. I promise there’s nothing so innately urgent on any social media app that you’re demanded to devote every free second of your life to it. If your social media connection gives birth or has a wedding or goes through another major life event without your immediate notice outside of social media, then maybe your connection isn’t very solid anyways. It’s also more meaningful for any relationship, social media based or otherwise, to be able to choose to engage with the connection because you want to be there rather than just spending time with them because it’s convenient. Connection becomes a joy rather than an obligation when you choose to actively delegate time to it rather than allow it to be a passive expectation for a relationship.
Memes can wait. You can get your news from other sources. Actually, you should probably do that anyway since the social media algorithm is going to curate news based on specific biases to keep you on the sites for as long as possible. You also don’t need access to the news 24/7. The event has already happened by the time you read about it. It’s not super necessary for 50+ unchecked sources to chime in about it every minute of the event before the full story is available. Checking in periodically and with intent through sources you trust is healthy and how humans consumed news for most of history.
Again, social media doesn’t need to be an unforgivable evil we need to rise against and boycott at every turn (although I won’t stop you if that is your prerogative). Yes, I do in fact legitimately find joy in posting pictures of the yummy dinners I make for myself and flowers I find on my walks with my dog. I also find joy in scrolling through memes during slow parts in my day and staying up to date on my friends’ lives. But what I wasn’t finding joy in was opening Instagram while waiting for my tea to boil and then wasting the next 30 minutes of my life on completely forgettable content that made no lasting impact on my day other than wasting my time. Plus, my tea would get cold. That wasn’t a joy either.
By deleting the apps and forcing myself to re-download them every time I want to use them, I’m encouraging myself to only engage with social media with intent. For example, the process to re-download Instagram takes about 5-10 minutes (give or take how many pop-up notifications they shoot at my face expecting me to be a new user to the platform) so I can really only truly use it when I have enough availability to warrant the time spent on it. As a result, I’m pretty much only on Instagram for maybe like 15 minutes a day to catch up on everything. Some days, I even skip my check-in because I just don’t want to be bothered with the re-download process or just have no inclination to check the site. It’s kind of like making time to read the newspaper every day. I even still get the funnies with all of the memes that pop-up in between my family and friends’ posts. In the meantime, I get to spend my extra free time working on other hobbies outside of scrolling, like writing or cross-stitch or chatting with a friend in person or playing with my dog or literally anything else that doesn’t require a screen and an internet connection.
It’s a win for me because I’m no longer needlessly wasting my time on all of the filler garbage that comes with mindlessly scrolling on the platforms without outright deleting my profiles. Trust me, the less time you spend on social media, the more you realize just how much of it is worthless filler designed to steal your time. Identifying hobbies and new ways to spend my time off of social media has been much more fulfilling for me and my free time. Despite what the advertisers who make money off of your attention tell you, there’s no reason to spend your entire life scrolling on social media. Embrace the joy of missing out and delete those apps from your phone. Find some hobbies to engage your attention offline instead. Hit up one of your friends for a real life conversation rather than just liking their post they already forgot about. You really, really, really don’t need social media apps to fulfill your life, but you should enjoy them when (and if) you want to.
At the very least, turn off your notifications. You really, really, really, really don’t need those things turned on to see when I post my next flower picture to Instagram. Your life is fine without it. Go see flowers in real life instead. You got this.
Also if you legitimately have a good reason to have the apps forever downloaded on your phone, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.