For more than two decades, my online life has consisted of endless scrolling and been measured by numbers of likes, comments and reposts.
From the internet message boards of the early 2000s to the social platforms of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Bluesky, I have surrendered a number of hours it would pain me to calculate to the glow of a screen. I guess many of you are just the same, but when I take a step back and reflect honestly, much of that time was spent chatting about nothing with people who were, for the most part, total strangers.
But that relationship has finally ended and this time, it’s for good.
The rot first set in back in 2016, a year defined by political earthquakes. Hugely upset by the Brexit vote and, later the same year, the election of Donald Trump, I watched as platforms like Facebook transformed from fun digital spaces into vehicles for targeted misinformation. The revelations surrounding Cambridge Analytica confirmed what many of us suspected: our attention and our data were being weaponised by state-of-the-art algorithms. Realising that Meta had little appetite for protecting users’ privacy, I binned my Facebook account and my Instagram profile swiftly followed. If there had been a widespread alternative, WhatsApp would’ve been deleted for good too.
Twitter became my refuge, proving to be a lifeline of human connection during the isolation of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Yet the experience was often compromised by an increasingly aggressive, algorithm-driven feed. Then came the final straw: Elon Musk bought the platform. Almost overnight, Twitter’s “digital town square” degenerated into a hive of right-wing conspiracy theories and vicious abuse.
Seeking sanctuary, I migrated to Bluesky in the summer of 2023. Initially, Bluesky felt like a breath of fresh air. The minimalist, text-based micro-blogging platform that Twitter was always meant to be. It was chronological, quiet and blissfully free of algorithms, video doom-scrolling and direct messages. But eventually, the worm turned there too. In more recent months (probably even the last year) Bluesky has slipped downhill a long way.
Though its culture is distinctly centrist or left-leaning, it has also been filled with unsubstantiated claims, reposted content from other platforms, single-issue shouting and factional infighting.
A few months ago, I’d finally had enough. Exhausted in equal measure by the blandness and outrage, I deleted my Bluesky account as well.
The sole survivor of this purge (for now) has been LinkedIn. While it has many faults, it remains a useful tool for my professional work and has never been a social playground for me. For now, LinkedIn stays, but only for what it does well.
When I look back at the digital world I’ve left behind, I’m struck by how little I actually miss. I no longer see what my family are doing in real time on Facebook and Instagram. Yet I still manage to stay connected with them. I may miss breaking news events as they happen (tending to check news apps only infrequently), but I still remain abreast of the state of the world.
In return for missing the immediate noise though, my headspace is far clearer. Social media platforms are specifically engineered to be addictive. Watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix if you need any proof. They are designed to trap us in a doom-loop of checking back for the next dopamine hit (a like, a share, or a comment). Your eyes on the platform are worth a lot of money to the big tech companies and they’ll do anything they can to keep you there. Even when I attempted to practice strict online discipline, the gravitational pull of the app was too strong. Inevitably, I would find myself unlocking my phone every few minutes just to see what had changed. That in itself is exhausting.
Stepping away has helped me to reclaim a lot of mental energy. I finally have time for the things that genuinely enrich my life, like reading good books or listening to music without distraction.
Thinking back, this shift was in no small part inspired by Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and the author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. Despite his field, Newport has never held a social media account. Neither is he a stuffy old University “Don”. He is a sharp, engaging, modern scholar whose arguments forced me to question whether these platforms served any real purpose in my own life. If living social-media-free was good enough for him could it work for me too?
Newport advocates taking a thirty-day “digital detox”. A complete cessation of Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram and any other such digital platforms. After a month, participants are meant to reintroduce technologies selectively and only if they serve a specific, positive function. I understand why some people choose to return to them for their livelihoods, but my own detoxes revealed a simpler truth: when the noise stopped, I didn’t miss a thing.
This brings me to the post you’re reading now. I prefer to spend my online time productively or creatively, crafting pieces that demand more than 280 characters and take longer than thirty seconds to digest. I have also returned to reading and engaging with a small, curated selection of other writer’s blogs. Keeping up with them is a calm, manageable experience because blogging represents a slower, more considered form of media. It does not drain energy in the way the major digital platforms do.
Best of all, it restores human agency. If the tone of a blog takes a turn for the worse, I can simply choose not to visit any longer.
Ultimately, leaving social media hasn’t isolated me; it has simply changed the nature of my connection to the world. I have traded the frantic, algorithmically engineered outrage of the timeline for something far more valuable. Being intentional. I’ve come to realise that my attention is a finite, valuable commodity. And one that I’m no longer willing to auction off to Silicon Valley just to keep up with the noise.
Living free from social media hasn’t been a loss; it’s a massive gain. I am finally back in control of my own headspace and for the first time in over twenty years, the online silence is golden.
That Richard Bloke 