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Why I finally stripped social media off my phone and the shift I’m feeling
Posted by on January 9, 2026 at 8:42 pmI’ve recently deleted all social media apps off my phone and have noticed a significant improvement to my mental health and overall well being. I’m not saying I dislike social media—my wife and I wouldn’t even be together today if it wasn’t for Facebook giving us a way to talk after the night we met. I’m forever grateful we had that chance to stay in touch. But I really don’t like the current state of these platforms; we’re letting companies freely takeover our attention spans. It took me until recently to realize how badly these apps hindered my mindset and led to spirals of depression.
I'm writing this because I’ve worked several social media jobs. I currently run all the socials for the store I work at, and I've recently come to terms with how damaging these platforms actually are to our mental health right now. I’ve been having these discussions with more and more people and everyone agrees something has to change. It no longer feels like I’m creating ‘content’ but ‘distractions’. When I go on social media now, it feels like sitting down to watch TV, but instead of ashow, I'm mostly watching commercials.
I first started by deleting the Facebook app and realized I no longer had the impulse to check it anymore. Facebook used to be a fun way to keep in touch with friends, but the site has nosedived and it’s causing people to use it less. These past couple of months have seen an influx of clickbait, AI spam, and pages I don’t follow in my feed. Even when I try to control what’s on my feed by adjusting settings, new pages continue to pop up. I still occasionally use the website on my computer, but the site is becoming increasingly cluttered and lost its original purpose.
Four days ago I deleted Instagram off my phone. This was the hardest one, but it's been the biggest relief. I still have the app on my iPad, and I've been using a free app called Focusly: social media filter to manage how I engage with it so I can still view pages I like without the noise. I’ve grown so attached to the app this past decade, and I didn’t realize how bad the addiction was and how negatively it was impacting my mindset until now. Realizing all the times my mind was thinking “time to check Instagram” and how much time it would suck up for little reward. The past four days I’ve gone out to the bar with friends, a concert, went to a movie and a lakewhere I noticed a significant improvement in my focus and awareness of the world around me. As a result, I’m more present and happier.
These platforms used to be a fun way to communicate, but they are now overflowing with content designed to grab your attention and steal your time. It’s companies curating content to catch our eye, keeping us glued to our phones and distracting us from our lives. Even if you don’t follow these types of pages, the algorithms are designed for them to appear in your feed no matter what. It’s not just seeing what our friends post, but algorithms sucking us in so we can be on the apps for an infinite amount of time.
I wish I could gain back all the time I lost due to social media. It’s not that social media is inherently bad, but it’s clear the current form on our smartphones is damaging to our mental health. Now that I’m free from these apps in my pocket being such a distraction, I feel I’m gaining control of my mind back and feeling less depressed.
To all those struggling the same way I have been or might not realize how much these apps are impacting you, I hope this post helps.
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1 Reply
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I deleted Facebook and TikTok from my phone. In March it’ll be three years.
At first I was worried because social media is loosely connected to my job, but to my surprise, nothing actually changed. And I love it.
What’s funny is that now, when I occasionally log into Facebook on desktop, I can clearly see how bad the platform has become. There’s literally nothing worth scrolling through anymore.
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same here
cutting the apps didn’t make me happier
it made me *present*for years i thought i had focus issues
turns out i just had too many tabs open in my head
most of them weren’t even minedelete to remember who you are
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I have written extensively about this subject elsewhere and you might find my post, and some of the comments including my replies, very interesting. You can find it here –
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1pzj4ne/leaving_facebook_a_strategy_to_free_your_mind/](https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1pzj4ne/leaving_facebook_a_strategy_to_free_your_mind/)
I am absolutely certain that momentum is growing as people begin to gravitate away from not only the big platforms, but from social media more generally.
I am following a trend where people are decamping to smaller tribes on messaging apps. I don’t think a ‘new thing’ will come along in the way Facebook replaced Bebo for example. I actually think that the era of social media is coming to an end as tribes become more fragmented.
What happens next though is uncertain and very hard to predict.
Leaving Facebook, a strategy to free your mind, find peace and create real connections
byu/Dangerous-Regret-358 infacebook -
Honestly, that’s fair. There’s not much to miss out on anyways since social media sites nowadays are jampacked with some genuinely brainrotted stuff. I deleted my Twitter over this very reason, there’s just no amusement from it anymore with all the bots going wild on it.
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Are you saying you’re doing things that you wouldn’t have been doing before the delete, or you’re more present that you would have been in the past?
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I see you, same
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