Digital Compass

Navigating Off the Digital Highway

Opinion - How I escaped social media and found my own way

Jake L, 11/06/2025

Right now I’m sitting here on my laptop after a rather substantial YouTube binge. it's worht noting that I am rather unwell and so I wasn’t going to be much good at anything else today. It got me thinking about how slippery a slope it is when consuming content for the sake of it. Obviously there is nothing inherently wrong with this, especially in moderation. But it is quite easy it is to watch one video after another, after another. Then there's the FOMO that is inherent on these platoforms due to the sheer volume of content avaialble that are always in the corner of your eye or a swipe away. I’m sure this feeling is not unique to myself, and it is well established that this is by design.
Once I managed to unstick myself from my bed the thought ocured to me that I hadn’t really learnt anything watching these videos that was useful to me. I mean, I watched a video about the rehabilitation of arad desert areas in Iran which was deeply fascinating but equally pointless. While this isn’t inherently a bad thing, the quest for knowledge and curiousities is indeed important and fulfilling in it’s own right. It was about now that I realised that this was probably the best case scenario of brain rot. It became clear to me that the type of content I was consuming was not so far removed from the average TikTok video or Instagram reel, just in a longer format and with more referenced sources. It got me looking back on the digital journey I have made of the last year or two, where I have slowly distanced myself from the digital world and the internet. It wasn’t some great epiphany or defining moment. I would even claim that it happened independantly of the growing trend towrds switching off. It was simply born out of a desire to be more present, less focused on blindly consuming and more in touch with myself. I didn’t really know what I was setting out to do or fully appreciate why I had to do it, I just did. Now with the advantage of hindsight I can piece together a picture of why, and why it is a growing trend amongst even the most chronically online individuals.

So far I've made it sound like I’m some enlightened digital hippy who’s achieved perfect balance and harmony between my life online and the real world. Unfortunately, the truth is far from it. As with everything in life there is no binary answer to any of this, journeys are seldom linear, and often times it meants choosing between freedom of self and connection with others. I could never have expected the existential impact the vacuum left behind once I abandonned social media would have on me. Overnight I felt like my life had absolutely no meaning or direction - despite the fact I had just as much as I had before. I had been barreling down a highway with easy access to dopamine and I was facing the painful and unsettling truth that my lifes direction had been largely set for me.
It was as if I was waking up every day with a virtual GPS, specially curated for me by the algorithm and years of conditioning bad habits. I would check the socials, watch reels sent to me by my nocturnal friends, get engaged in whatever the latest hashtag was, get distracted by the latest ad for tech I didn’t have, etc. etc. Large parts of my personality, my beliefs, my interests and my goals were set out before me with next to no real input on my behalf – save a thumb swipe and a double tap here and there. I just followed the road, followed my guide. I didn’t realise that I was in an echo chamber. Nor did I realise that I wasn't seeking out anything, I was just reacting to the stimuli coming at me out of the dark. I wasn’t engaging with anyone overly different to me, I wasn't learning all that much about the world around me either.
Then one day my iPhone screen usage report popped up on a what was any other regular weekday and for whatever reason this time it hit me like a truck. I had somehow spent 11 hours on my phone. On what? I hadn’t really done anything except look up a few things I discussed with people at work, sent a few snaps on Snapchat to keep my streak going with some old friend, and scrolled. Oh how I had scrolled. I needed to know where all the time went so I decided to go digging. Well, I actually didn’t have to go digging. I just went to the chat for the person I had most recently shared a video with. 20+ reels since the last time he had messaged me – which was just more reels. That's just the reels I decided were worth sharing. Timestamps revealed that I had been watching reels while making dinner, while in the shower, while lying in bed when I should have been sleeping. I wondered how I got here, but decided that it didn't matter. I messaged everyone I actively spoke to on each social media platform saying I was deleting the app and to message me elsewhere, then I deleted the apps from my phone. In an instant I felt a relief. I locked my phone, plugged it in and went to sleep. I thought I had it all sorted out.

The next day I woke up and checked my phone. A few emails. Refreshing. Lonely. I was so used to a number of notifications from people overnight which was how I started my day. I also quickly realised that my source of news had become social media, something that seemed so natural I didn’t question it until now. I opened up my web browser and began actually looking up news sites. I had no idea where to go, but it was almost like I'd forgotten how to use the internet. I was unsure of who I should be trusting but decided I had to start somewhere. I started reading through actual news articles instead of the shorts and posts from social media. I was reading the same stories from different perspectives, not just reading the comments to get someones hot take. It felt like I was learning a lot but it also felt like work, something I didn't anticipate. It had become an assumption of mine that staying informed would just happen to me if I curated my feeds appropriately. I also didn’t realise how much of the news I was focusing on was not local or even relevant to mu country, I’d given large amounts of my time to international concerns that while valuable on the periphery of my awareness were not directly linked to my own concerns or wellbeing. Here was another opportuntiy to focus myself. The journey had begun.

Throughout the day I found myself reaching into my pocket to see what was happening on my phone – it was eerily quiet and I kept thinking I had missed a notification. I would open up news sites as if I would open up social media when I had five minutes. It was purely out of habit, I had to open something. Obviously I had shaken things up, and it would take time to unlearn all the bad habits I had developed. Despite the phantom notifications I was genuinely more engaged with work and when I had time I would go to the kitchen to make a drink and exchange a few works with colleagues instead of sitting at my desk scrolling. When I did get notifications it was far more engaging and I was far more motivated to respond appropriately. I was unsubscribing from emails I didn’t want rather than ignoring them, and I was far less likely to dismiss things as something to do later – which really meant I would never get around to it. I ended up not knowing what to do with myself when I got home so I played some computer games for the first time in a while and after dinner I ended up watching a show with my partner. I was taking steps in the right direction, I was making active decisions about what I was doing with my time.

Over the coming months progress came slowly. I had a lot of relapses, it's too easy to reinstall apps these days. To make matters worse it became obvious that I was replacing old addictions with new ones unintentially. I was playing a lot of games, I was snacking a lot more and I was still not taking care of myself. I replaced doomscrolling in the morning with getting more sleep – still an improvement but only a slight one. I was replacing my wasted time with other time sinks. I had accumulated hundreds of hours in multiple games and was obviously not going in the right direction. I was getting sucked in by MMOs that were giving me the same dopamine hits and dangling the same carrots in front of me. I had presumed that if I got rid of the problematic things in my life that things would work themselves out again. I had been naive enough to believe that I would not simply seek out more easy entertainment and that I would go back to where my life had been beforehand. It was a rude awakening when I realised that I had no plan and no real goal, therefore I wasn’t able to effectively dismantle the habits I had formed. It was time to make that plan.
My objective was a simple one: Replace unproductive time with productive activities.
Of course, that's useless without defining what that means, so I came up wiht the following:

There’s a phrase in corporate land known as the "North Star" which is a fancy phrase for stretch goal. I realised that it was unlikely that I would be able to be an all powerful productivity machine, although if I got half way there I would be in a better place than I am now. This plan still had one fatal flaw in the form of a question. What now? What am I going to invest my time in instead? It was easy to say that things should be “relevant” or that I should “learn a new skill” but I had no idea what that would be. Revisiting my GPS anaolgy, I had turned off the car and stepped out into the wilderness in the middle of nowhere, I had realised that this highway didn’t have an end to it. But I had neglected to grab my compass or even stop to think what my desination might be. Now it was time to really look inwards and see what (if anything) I had in mind, only then could I hazzard a guess as which direction to take.

In the end this wasn’t as simple as it sounded in my head. It turns out when you spend a decade without any real direction outside of your job then it becomes hard to decide where you want to go and what you want to achieve. So I tried to (among other things)

None of these have stuck, but they haven’t been entirely lost causes. So many of them have helped with my writing skills and given my mind problems to solve that gave me mental stimulation I wasn’t getting previously. I could feel my brain starting to work again. Slowly but surely I have started to understand what I want to do. Aided and inspired by others along the way - whether it be friends or creators, I have found (or rather, rediscovered) my love for creative writing and realised that I can utilize my constant desire to learn more about the world. I've found a way to find purpose in going down the rabbit holes, regardless of how niche a topic or how far off course the wind blows me. If I turn it into a creative outlet then it’s absolutely worth the journey, even if I'm the only soul who reads it, it’s nice to be creating and putting back out into the world instead of just being one who consumes.

Since then I have adjusted my target somewhat to make it more realistic. I watch action flicks and occationally play games, however I have made it cumbersome to play them so I don’t get sucked in again. I detoxed my phone use completely with a Nokia that led me to move a lot of my consumption, research and other such activities to my laptop instead. This gave a physical seperation and had to make logging in to things like the news a concious decision. No unlike the days of old. I’m back on my Samsung now, but it doesn’t get touched unless I need something urgently or I’m doing regular old phone tasks. YouTube now exists almost entirely on my TV, meaning I've escaped having to have videos open all the time regardless of what I'm doing. The biggest thing I’ve done too is now I take time out as much as possible to read, go for walks or even just sit and have a coffee. I’ve come through the other side realising that doing nothing, or doing things to relax is not just desirable, it’s required to be a healthy and happy person. It no longer feels like a waste of time to be present.

I’m still bouncing between ideas, trying different things and getting lost down rabbit holes. But it’s nice to know I’m doing it on my own terms. I have the compass in my hand and I’m drawing a map as I go of the wilderness. It’s not looking so wild anymore, and I’m starting to realise where I want my journey to take me. I see now that I don't have a set destination and maybe I never will, but I’m now comfortable with the journey. I don’t mind if I get lost from time to time or have to retrace old steps. I’m just happy to be existing again and growing as a person rather than just floating through the days. From time to time it can be inconveinient, I do get weird looks when I ask people for their phone number instead of their username. It can also be straight up boring from time to time, but I take pride that I can be bored now without the need for constant stimulation. There’s a whole world that I now see on my walks or when sitting at the window at work that I missed completely when I was glued to a little rectangle in my pocket. Technology used to feel like a burden, the expectation to be constnatly up to date with everything, everywhere, all the time felt like work. Now it's a detour on my own journey, a destination on my own map again.

Further Reading

While working on this I discovered a great video from which I repurposed the dirving analogy because it worked so well. It's a good starting point on the subject: Johnny Harris - Why Everything Is Making You Feel Bored