I deactivated my instagram 3.5 weeks ago and feel like a little kid again

thoughts on being offline, while being offline

I saw a TikTok the other day of a dad “grounding” his child by locking him outside of the house and telling him to go be a kid. All this kid wanted to do was to “watch Youtube shorts and take a nap,” and he couldn’t at all figure out what was more interesting about being outside with not a screen to stare at… And of course, I wondered at what point in my adulthood did I become this kid? With no imagination, no drive to discover something new, no desire to be anywhere other than in bed with my phone in my hand.

I deactivated Instagram 3.5 weeks ago, and haven’t been on TikTok for almost a week — which sounds like such a ridiculously short amount of time, but any other recovering addict would agree that every day feels like a lifetime when you’re trying to rediscover what life is like without this thing that took up so much of it.

“Brain-rotting” as modern nervous system regulation

It’s embarrassing how many cumulative hours I must have spent having a “brain-rot” afternoon, cradling my phone in my hands in fetal position in bed. Or how many times I’ve had a moment of minor distress or anguish, and without even realizing it, have pulled up right in front of my nose the Instagram story of some person I don’t even remember ever meeting. How many hours I’ve spent in the bathroom not going to the bathroom. I feel shame, but also am not uncomfortable sharing any of this because I know how unfortunately universal this experience is of turning one’s phone into a adult pacifier.

Every time I tell someone that I’m off social media, they immediately hit me with the, “Oh, good for you!” There is never a single moment of hesitation, questioning, wondering why in the world I would do such a thing — everyone knows why. Because we are all experiencing the same inability to function without it.

When a whole generation shares a vice as damning as the eternal hamster wheel that is the online hellscape, it’s a remarkable quirk that our adherence to the collective suffering only further enables the collective to continue doing it. The hardest addictions to break are the ones around which we have found our sense (or illusion) of community and/or the ones that have replaced more traditional (and less immediately satisfying) means of regulating our nervous system.

I think of all of the most common vices in our world that have created epidemics of addiction — cigarettes, alcohol, food, work, sex, hard drugs,… social media. The things that keep us hooked seem to be the very things that our bodies crave when we aren’t willing to face the feelings of discomfort that are so common to the human experience. Social media feels like a hard drug disguised and marketed as a means to connect. But how can any form of connection be justified if it requires a disconnect from our own bodies?

How many times have I caught myself looking for my phone when I have a momentary wave of nausea, or a disorienting thought I wish to push away? How many alcoholics, chain-smokers, and binge-eaters can say that they have had the same urge? And at what lengths are we willing to dismiss discomfort’s place in our lives to the point of normalizing a “Sunday afternoon brain-rot” as a means to sustainably deal with what is an inevitable and grossly overlooked part of our humanity?

Where did all of our curiosity for our internal life ever go? Why do we continue to allow corporations sell us a “way out” of our anxiety? And can we really still convince ourselves that there is any “way out” at all at this point?

The addictive illusion of online community (FOMO)

So why else do we continue to do this thing that we know is not good for us? Avoidance of confrontation with our internal life, sure… But also, the fear for what the alternate might be: a life in the physical world that may just be even more lonely than that of the internet world. But was the world such a scary place before all of this? What did my internal world look like when I was a screen-less child? It’s scary to think about this next generation not even being able to imagine that.

When you’re not plugged into your screen in the physical world, it creates a vacuum destined to be filled with real in person interaction. When I choose not to wear headphones at the gym, I end up chatting with the person next to me. When I keep my eyes up waiting in line, I share an exchange with another doing the same. I've always been so obsessed with the idea of missing out on something online that I haven’t given any thought to what I’m missing out on in the world offline. The little moments of real connection, joy, and honesty that as a child were so abundant, and as an adult are equally so, if we dare give the same amount of thought and care to attend to them.

I loved my social media for the ways in which it allowed me to reach so many people in a way that I would never otherwise be able to — such as even to share my zine from my last post. But the more I thought about my presence online, the more I realized how it continued to further the need to be on it more, and to need others to continue to be on it more. That never sounded like the kind of world I wanted to be in, nor create. How can I speak so poorly about how incapable people are of existing without their phones without being able to do exactly that myself? I don’t want to be a participant, nor a co-creator of this world we’re all unconsciously being pulled into. Everyone else I speak to agrees… The difference, then, is in the action.

Filling empty space

My roommate shared a saying with me the other day:

“The universe abhors a vacuum.”

which upon Googling is also known as horror vacui and is actually a philosophical/physical hypothesis by Aristotle.

What does one do with the time, space, and energy that is left when one is not on social media? What does one do when they’re grounded and have nothing but the whole wide world in lieu of the world wide web to entertain her?

If I’m being completely honest, I don’t really know what’s taken up the space of my vacuum. At least not without really thinking about it. Life seems to chug on as normal. I notice the moments where my thumb wants to hyperactively scroll through the motions to get to my Instagram app (I still keep the app on my phone, funnily enough), but I don’t quite notice, at least immediately, the ways in which my life has filled the holes that social media’s absence has left. I don’t wonder what I’m missing out on, and honestly, I don’t know what I was so eager to check up on when I was on it.

But now that I’m writing about this, I’m realizing that, well, for one, I’m writing on this thing! I’ve literally started blogging. Lol. I’m making soooo much sourdough (and also watching soooo many sourdough making videos on youtube). I’ve re-learned how to knit. I’m on Pinterest being inspired by recipes and patterns for bread and knitting. Ha - so basically I’ve turned into a housewife of 1.

No, in fact, I’ve turned into a kid raised with no phone. This was exactly the type of shit I used to do when I didn’t have a laptop, didn’t have any siblings to play with, and my parents were never home. I found ways to entertain myself, which always ended up being some kind of discovery and self-investment in a new hobby, skill, or interest.

(Oh the pure, child-like excitement of making and listening to bread’s crunch.)

Learning how to hold a handstand. Making little hand-sewn felt stuffed plushies. Teaching myself songs on the piano. These were the afternoons and evenings that filled my screen-less childhood. I thought I’d lost this childlike wonder for learning new things as a natural progression into adulthood — but really I just have cluttered my play space with so much random “content” (ahem targeted ad content) that there was no more room to know what I really wanted to do if I could. Having space in my head for things that I actually cared about instead of stuffing it so full with shit I don’t! You don’t know how precious that space is until you realize how much of it has been eaten away by cat videos and badly edited memes and birthday videos filled with 20 other people recording the same moment.

What kind of person would you be if you gave yourself the time and space to be a kid again?

It feels impossible to do a hard good thing for yourself sometimes. But honestly, it’s a whole lot easier to do it when you don’t have an easy out to distract yourself from even considering it at all. This was the 1st hard good thing that I’ve done for myself that has made every other hard good thing start to feel more just like … a good thing.

It no longer surprises me how I was able to do so much as a kid growing up — when you don’t have a distraction as easy and built-to-be-addicting as a phone screen, there is nothing else to do than learn something new. The universe abhors a vacuum, and when you make the space for one, you give your life an opportunity to expand in ways that previously felt exclusively reserved for the life of a child. I am convinced that no-one grows out of their infinitely adventurous and creative child-selves; they’ve only forgotten how much room we’ve always needed to play!

Ground yourself sometime, and dare to see what happens.

<3!!!

Sophia

ps: I surprised my roommate with these toasts I made special one morning on our patio and she gasped so loud I could have CRIED from how sweet her response was.

She said it was like Christmas morning, and it honestly was :”) What simple joy!!!