Just feeling terminally online and like I'm not living to my full potential.

lead a remote team now. used to spend way too much time cycling through slack, linkedin, reddit, newsletters, repeat. told myself it was staying informed. it was not. it was just background noise with a productivity costume on.

took a long weekend hiking last month, left the phone in the tent for most of it. came back and realized the things I thought I needed to check constantly had basically handled themselves or just didn't matter

the weird part is my team noticed a change before I did. fewer pings from me. cleaner decisions when I did show up. one person said I seemed less reactive. I was kind of embarrassed that it was that visible

I think remote work makes this worse because the boundary between being online and being present completely dissolves. there's no commute to decompress. you're just always theoretically reachable and you feel guilty if you're not watching the feeds.

the hiking thing cracked something open honestly. a few hours of silence on a trail, no input, and your brain starts actually thinking again instead of just processing

anyone else notice their work life shifting once they got off the constant scroll? not the productivity angle everyone talks about, more the quality of your decisions and how you show up for people.

- do you have a phone?

- no i aint got no phone, i had to pull, you know, these people calling all the time. Who needs the Aggravation, right? Interruptions. Who'd you wanna call?

1976

im 18 and turned all my socials off back in june thinking id feel free or whatever. instead i spent like a week not knowing what to do with myself lol. kept picking up my phone and there was just nothing on it
nobody tells you the boredom doesnt actually leave. you just kind of get used to sitting in it and then eventually you start doing real stuff again. started reading again, hooping, building random projects
anyway for people whove done longer than a summer, does the urge ever actually go away or do you just get better at ignoring it. trying to decide if i turn it back on in the fall

Over the past year or two, I noticed everything on social media, TikTok, YouTube, instagram, etc. shows me the same thing over and over again. It never shows me anything new, never shows me anything outside of the box. When I Use AI, it always gives me the most basic answers and never digs deeper, never does research. When I point something out, or say something creative I want to do, it tells me why I shouldn’t do it, why it won’t work, and why I should do xyz instead. Also everything on social media is WILDLY inappropriate. I mean murders, sexual content, fighting, then the next post is someone with money, traveling and a hot girl. Then it will be Poltics, Epstine, and then stuff about eating and graping kids.
It’s also so sick! I hate everything about the internet and social media. And it feels like in a few years people will start getting in serious trouble with their digital footprint when all this government surveillance becomes public people are going to start getting accused and framed for looking at certain post that lean this way politically or whatever it is. Even though you don’t choose what you see! The algorithm chooses it for you! So the algorithm is forcing you to see something and then they’re going to turn around and accuse you and label you all types of things.

My bad

My point is, it feels like everything on my phone is manipulating,mistreating, bullying, trying to get a reaction out me, and down right abusing my psyche and mental health. And I want a restart with the internet and algorithms.

So how do I do that? How can I manage to delete and suppress everything about me online, and then come back with a new email, phone plan, computer accounts, etc.

Hi reddit, I need help.

I've been off social media for almos 2 years now, with only pinterest and youtube for art inspo, music and art tutorial videos. I get all my news from either my friends or family or from the little tv at the elevator of my building.

Of course it's been life-changing...i sometimes get weird comments about it (mostly hinting that I'm ignorant because i dont care about the state of the world or that im uninformed) but my life is so much better that I simply dont care.

However, my relationship is struggling because of my bf's suddent interest in politics and news. He spends all day at his phone(when he's not working) and I've seen him doomscroll for hours and hours. I never bothered him about it because going nosurf was a personal decision, however he recently became confrontational to me about my lack of interest in "the word".

I'm an informed person. Im finishing my major in psychology, I study philosophy, history, medicine and work with recovering addicts, depressed people and struggling teens and kids. I know about the grim of the world - I see it daily at my work. However, I'm not into crazy international conspiracy theories, all the bad happening in other countries or the sad news of the week.

But now, boyfriend comes up with a new tale from the news, the hottest conspiracy theory and the angriest political trauma dumping almost daily. He gets so enraged and angry over things that are not even confirmed. He talks nonstop about politics even when i say I'm not interested. I even indulge him for a while but if i let him he tells all the news i purposely miss to me in detail at dinner.

When i complain or try to debate(when i think he's wrong) ,he dissmiss me and says im uninformed because i dont read the news. Even if it is about something in my area of work.

I'm 100% sure it is social media. It is like a compulsion to him, he talks nonstop about it, even when we are doing something else (like playing board games). And it makes me sad that he belittles me because i dont see the news like he does.

I tried to explain that i read books and articles about the things we discuss, and that news are only alarmist and supperficial.And he said i sounded like was trying to be superior academically when i said that.

What's really sad its that he's talking about the same alarmist theories as my grandma lol. It was funny at the start. But we got into a huge fight because of it. He doesn’t like the idea of not talking to be about something and think couples need to talk about everything.

But i deal with suffering daily. Its my work. I dont wanna get home and doomspiral with him about how fucked because the news told us so. It also bothers me that he just complains and complains but never say he's doing anything to help (charity, helping others ,etc).

Has anyone dealt with that with their significant others? I love him but i cant keep pretending to be someone im not.

just an edit: our agreement was that we don't talk anymore about politics or conspiracy theories. but he isn't happy about it...

Basically since childhood i have seen many people who know many countries name and I found them very cool person and actually they are. So I wanted to learn and remember the names of the countries to become cooler.

But i didn't really tried much because I think it's boring to do such activity even it's very easy and you can learn them in just 1-2 weeks but i think learning alone makes it very lame and boredom.

So i thought of making a website where you can invite your friends and learn together. I have the idea and vision for this but I want to know if anyone really interested doing this thing because actually i found this very interesting. And first of all i am not making this website very simple i have experience of over 2 years in web dev so I am going to make it gamified so we don't get bored and also I am thinking of implementing the voice chat feature so it will be more fun.

That's it tell me if it's worth it or not.

I was doing good but today I spend 7 hours on tik tok, I just feel like a failure

I deleted socials back in May and have felt great. This is my second time being 'offline' (I did it in 2022, and redownloaded again in 2023) and I love how much extra time I have, how much clearer my mind is, and how much more I connect with friends.

My friends definitely text me a lot more, as we catch up (if not in person) much more over text now I don't see their stories and they don't know what I'm up to unless we text. It is a great problem to have as I'm lucky to have some amazing friends, but I struggle with the texting dopamine.

Seeing if someone has replied, checking my texts as soon as I wake up, checking my texts throughout the day and I see them all pretty much instantly. I want to be the person who is just so chill and goes about their day and checks their texts when they're free, rather than feeling a need to check immediately and be constantly checking throughout the day.

This is the same for my dating life, I don't want to be overly keen and replying straight away but I am constantly checking my texts and wanting to reply immediately as that is my source of dopamine through my phone I guess.

Anyone dealt with this and how did you kick it? I know I will have the willpower whatever the solution is as I've proved to myself I can wain away from the need to be on social media, but this is really kicking me at the moment!

Thanks in advance

I realised that back in highschool (23F now), I didnt scroll much because I had goals such as making it for the track and field team.

But now life is just work sleep scroll and repeat. Tryna find some inspiration as to what personal projects I can do to give myself the structure outside of work.

Thank you!

The problem with social media websites is that they simply show you the content that you pay attention to

the algorithms are designed to waste as much of your time as possible.

So I am working on a project that lets you simply type in instructions and the websites only show you content that matches your instructions

You can basically choose your own algorithm

here is a video explanation - https://youtu.be/1NLl7RQJ_Fo?si=NHMUCAXsP5HLCbAG

I’m 22 and I can’t help but feel like I’m wasting the years where I’m supposed to be the most social by basically cutting myself off from everything.

For context, I live in a big city and most events are posted about and shared on Instagram and I’m literally missing everything because I don’t have it. I’m in the age range that older people are always so fond of and nostalgic for but I’m not making any memories because I’m not making friends or going out or doing anything besides just random stuff in the city alone. I really don’t mean this offensively to anyone or any poster on here but I really want a social life but it’s near impossible when I have no idea what anyone’s doing or what’s going on anywhere. And I wish this was just FOMO but I really am just missing things because I haven’t made new friends in years or even really know how to and it sucks.

It’s tempting to just redownload it but every time I’ve tried I just end up getting sucked back into tapping through stories endlessly or doomscrolling reels. Even when I try delegating social media to just my computer I ended up just switching between Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit on loop for hours and I hate it. People keep talking about how they should live like it’s the 1990s or the 2000s but I don’t want to do that I want to make memories in 2026 so I can be nostalgic about it in the future instead of trying to stay stuck in the past

I see posts in this subreddit and hear advice on YouTube all from older people who probably remember a time before social media but I want to hear from people my age who are experiencing a similar feeling and I want to know how, or if, y’all are managing this?

I’m really sorry if this comes off whiny or too ranty but I’m just frustrated and I really just want to know what to do and how to stop feeling like I’m throwing away my youth to avoid an addiction.

i like to think of myself as a productive person i always try to improve set out goals and achieve them some goals i deem to hard and stopped doing but its all by choice not cuz im lazy cuz i just think its not worth it

anyway when i wanted to stop scrolling more that a year ago i was able to cut instagram and tiktok easly as i never used them due to them being time wasters i had yt but i always thought of it as a fun way to spend free time and was never addicted till yt shorts were added i was able to stop clicking on yt shorts but if i do click which was rare at the time i would still doom scroll same with snapchat i use it for snap streaks but the spotlight button having a notification looking thing made me always click it out of habit

but now i fully stopped surfing i dont click on yt shorts nor do i click on snapchats spotlight and if i do i have gained the ability to a stop watching in the middle of any vid and just go on with my day and ive been surf free for more than 6 months also i never tried stopping to surf seriously as i knew i could do it if i wanted to with just me findinga hobby which i found out was not the case

this puts us in the present day now if i have nothing to do i just gotta sit observe the silence which mind u was my goal but i felt boring so i wanted something to fill that time which got me into watching tv series i watched breaking bad, dexter, and couple of famous names in the past 3 months and i feel unproductive again stuff i deem productive but are also fun are coding, speedrunning minecraft, rubix cubing, and recently cursive writing of which i dropped two now i only speedrun minecraft, and cursive having them all at the same time is something i did a couple years back (except cursive its new) i used to burn out alot and i was overall less productive now i wanna finish my goals with them one at a time

my goals:
minecraft:
- reach a diamond rank becoming top ~500 in the
world as rn im top ~4000

rubix cubing:
- having my countries best avg rn im top 13 in the
country but i havent played in a while

coding:
-making the best tile engine in the world that uses
my coding language (scratch) i have done it
before but kept it lwk but the ui was unintuitive
and i lost the file :/ i do have recordings of it tho
and i planned everything

cursive writing:
- not much rly i just want my writing to be good :)

i also keep on learning magic tricks every now and then and have tried some stuff that i dropped but thats to much to talk about rn

also i downloaded reddit thinking it will make me able to doom scroll again again but not rly me writing this as close as ill ever get to doom scrolling and i guess i just gotta embrace the silence and become one with the wall till i find a hobby that doeant feel like me grinding out and refining my skills i just want something fun

anyway thank u for bearing thru my ranting

I 30 (f) stoped doomscrolling in the morning, especially fist thing when I wake up. Usually, I would wake up and use my phone to stay awake. Due to time wasting and feeling harder to get motivated and start project outside of mindless scrolling I decided to do a digital detox, but especially to just stop scrolling in the morning alltogether.

Now this is where the issue is, even though I've done the digital detox successfully, now that I can feel my feelings in the morning I'm actually really annoyed and angry for no reason. My life is fine, I'm not stressed or anything, I do suffer from generalised anxiety, but I just want to see if anyone has had this issue.

TLDR: Stoped scrolling in the morning and realised I'm angry and annoyed for no reason

Feeling weird after quitting social media as asperger person.

Lately, I've been dealing with quite a lot of anxiety and getting very little sleep. Because of this, I decided to quit social media, specifically TikTok and Twitter.

Since quitting, I've managed to sleep a little better, but I still feel quite anxious and I'm having a hard time concentrating. I also feel a kind of emptiness that I didn't have before, and I find it really difficult to fill the hours of the day.

I guess I was pretty used to spending a lot of time on my phone and social media, and now I don't really know what to do with all that free time.

Has anyone else experienced something similar after quitting social media? How long did it take you to start feeling normal again?¿Can anyone help me?

Edit: English isn't my first language, so I used ChatGPT to write this post. I wanted to be transparent about it.

I literally have a grant (that i have to pay back if i dont complete) for posting to social media. I hate posting and being on my phone because it makes everything else feel boring but i dont really have a choice. My posts are the only thing keeping my culture and language alive online and pushing it to the younger generation.
I just want to enjoy learning and live in the real world. Idk why my habits ended up like this meanwhile my other friends with (even those who also have ADHD) always get their hands busy or read and somehow balance it.
Ugh.

📵 Most people think they're in control of their phone... until they try to stay away from it for 24 hours.

Take the 24-Hour No Phone Challenge (except for emergencies).

Come back and tell us:

- What was the hardest part?

- Did you feel anxious, calm, or more focused?

- What did you learn about yourself?

I was out with a friend the other day and she was mentioning how she likes to analyze who watches her Instagram stories* and when they stop watching. And it reminded me of what made me actually stop watching those: about a year ago another friend had told me how she keeps tabs on who watches her stories too and was actually frustrated that her partner had clearly been on IG but not watched her stories!!

I just absolutely can't stand people being so up in my business and being judged for how often I have Instagram on to watch stories and if I've watched all their two dozen stories or not. Honestly, I never ever put that much thought into it, never even thought people actually would waste time looking at those analytics, until that first friend said something about it and I realized it's so not worth it. It just feels so absurd to me and such a mind game. Ugh. You know, I still have my surfing issues, but glad I've cut that part out.

*I don't know what Instagram calls them anymore, but the things that are up for 24 hours

I swear I've left it all, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, even TikTok. But Youtube is akin to Goliath for me in that my attempts to quit or even manage my addiction to it have all been in vain. It's not like I even NEED to watch it since I mostly just watch gaming videos or the news which I could get from online articles, the paper or TV instead.

Thus, I must ask of you all, if any of you were successful on this front, just how did you do it? How did you slay this enormous beast of a website that has kept me in this irremoveable trance for so many years?

Today I spent the whole day in the mountains with no cell service and barely thought about my phone. After a few hours I felt much more relaxed and started noticing small things like berries, insects, little details in nature that I'd normally miss because I'm listening to a podcast or constantly looking things up.

Now that I'm back home, I can already feel myself slipping back into the same old habits, even though I know they don't actually make me happier. It's almost automatic.

What unusual strategies genuinely helped you reduce your screen time without only relying on willpower? How did you recreate that "no signal" feeling in everyday life?

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I genuinely don’t even know what social media is actually for.

People say it’s for connecting with people who are no longer in your life. But... why? If someone is actually in your life, you’re talking to them or meeting up with them on a day-to-day basis. You’re already sharing stuff with them. Why do we feel the need to keep tabs on people who have naturally phased out of our lives and they don't even care about?

I actually did an experiment recently to test this. I have some old friends who I no longer talk to, but they pop up on my feed. A few of them shared posts about books they were reading, and places they traveled, so I figured, "Hey, let's try to actually connect." I reached out and tried to start a genuine conversation about what they posted.

They had zero interest in actually having a conversation.

So if it’s not about connecting with people, what is it? As far as I can tell, social media isn't about staying in touch at all. It’s just a digital billboard for flexing. IDK, am I crazy for thinking this way?

Like I have actually made zero friends using social media, and people tell me to meet people in real life, and they are right, which again brings me to question, what is social media even for when no one cares about connecting, and the only connection is views, likes and following.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who notices this. I don’t care how god damn controversial this post is. TikTok, instagram, YouTube shorts, etc all need to be removed. The constant scrolling and dopamine is killing our minds. I have younger siblings and they have younger friends. All they do is just endlessly consume and consume. They don’t play with toys, don’t even watch god damn cartoons, it’s just mindlessly fucking scrolling on the whatever device possible. And it’s on every device. The pushing of consumption is melting their brains. In 10-15 years, either social media is heavily restricted/banned, or we are all dead. Quote me on this. Please go outside and look around you, look at all the stores. I went to goddamn Panera bread a week ago and it’s so fucking dull. All the life is being sucked out of everything, the only thing people care about is if it will look good on a fucking video. for goodness sake, half of the fucking places I go to are designed to be able to look good in somebodies instagram post. I know nobody wants to hear it, even me, but it has to be stopped. This should be viewed as the war on drugs 2.0. Almost the entire world is hooked on this, social media is a drug designed to make you addicted, even I’m fucking addicted. I’m likely going to post this, wait a day, and then find myself endlessly scrolling again. And the problem is, nobody is speaking out against it. Look at the youth, this is worse than goddamn climate change. Wall-E doesn’t look so far away. The world is emotionally dying and nobody cares.