r/digitalminimalism

Nuts.

I’ve (23f) truly come to believe social media has robbed us of our basic humanity and it’s not normal and we need to unplug.

i know some might think ”that’s just your algorithm“ but I truly think your feed will Always attempt to raise your cortisol and outrage you.

recently in my city a black man was murdered because of excessive force and suffocation. There’s videos of course - there always is. the comments are filled with my fellow countrymen saying he deserves it, talking about “don’t resist like an animal” and “get rid of all those vermin”. some are certainly bots but a lot of them are real people with families in their profiles, young children, real lives who feel negatively affected by immigration to the extent that they wish death on them.

i have no doubt some of these ppl were always vile but I also believe many of them would be surprised to find out, if they could see themselves 10 years ago that they’d be saying these things wholeheartedly after witnessing a persons final moments. I believe many of them would consider calling for the extermination of vermin or animals would make them sound/feel like a nazi. But now these comments are normal.

many of these people are normal, even largely caring ppl to those in their lives. they work hard and theyre scared of change. I called my mother she said many people in Gen X, who once told their children to be skeptical of the internet have fallen down rabbit holes. My partners mom went from loving organic food and being a SAHM to a full on anti trans conspiracy theorist. My amazing uncle with two daughters is now a full blown trump supporter and we're not even in America nor ever will be. He thinks he’s a saviour of truth and the world.

I know we’re all rightfully scared. im scared of change too, I’m scared of technology and it’s implications. I’m scared of AI being used by men who’ve stalked me in the past to imagine me naked more than they already have, of social media’s anxiety inducing addictI’ve qualities. I’m scared of being filmed and going viral or doxxed, I’m scared of the negative feelings I walk around with towards strangers because I feel like everyone’s out to get me on the street.

im so much less likely to just talk to a stranger the past Couple years.

I say this as a long time social media user who’s been slowly moving my life offline - ie my communication with people out of Instagram etc - and an artist who has missed so many opportunities because of flyers and applications getting posted to Instagram and Facebook first despite being on email lists.

I was recently at an artists residency, with a bunch of Gen Xers who were highly activated and angry. One man who was running it was racist and so scared of the world he was completely threatened by me as a Gen Zer and screamed in my face about censorship and arrogance and “my government“. I was shocked and could not calm him. at that point I hadn’t used social media in thirty days and had experienced huge relief and less anxiety. They all went on about how entitled Gen Z were and never listened to when I agreed or didn’t agree with them, it was not a normal discussion but them taking out their frustrations w their own family members onto a stranger.

He harassed me for the entire thing to where I removed myself from group activities but would post long rants about how triggered I must be in the shared gc meant for logistical stuff. My friend who was supposed to come told me his Facebook was full of anti immigration stuff and he was obsessed with cancel culture. I was stunned by the whole thing about how sensational a simple disagreement and someone not wanting to be around someone they just don’t like became.

our ways of processing events and sharing information have become so strange a deformed. I know many may read this and say “I was with you until you brought up trump/immigration/blah blah” I’m not interested in labelling myself in American political terms, I’m not interested in debating anything. I’m talking about humanity. we all need to reconnect with humanity. Our values as people.

i believe we all need to “touch grass” effectively.

Like there’s always an unspoken standard for what looks successful, respectable, attractive, intelligent, funny, or “worth posting.”

So the real question is:

Are we actually free to be ourselves online, or are we just performing a version of ourselves that other people will accept?

I've tried Notion four times. Different setups, different templates.
Always end up back on a plain notes app and a paper list

I am lucky enough to have grown up before the world got so… smart. I miss it so much. I miss being a human, and the fact that I spend so much of my life on my phone scrolling endlessly is killing me. Ive tried everything from screen time limits (which are not effective at ALL) , using Brick (which is the only effective method ive used), etc. but at the end of the day I just dont have the discipline. Ive looked into a lot of dumbphones but none of them are really convincing me. My only two requirements is that I need to be able to use maps and Spotify. I would PREFER to have a QWERTY keyboard as well. Any recommendations?

initially i used to watch a lot of short form videos just for fun.

memes, edits, random clips nothing serious.

but after some time i started noticing something weird:
i was constantly mentally tired.

at first i ignored it because i thought “everyone scrolls all day, it’s normal.”

later i got into self improvement content.
David Goggins clips, motivational edits, sigma grindset videos, success reels, phonk music with deep quotes etc.

and honestly i convinced myself i was consuming “good content.”

i thought:
“this is motivation.”
“this will help me achieve my goals.”

but months passed
and the mental fatigue never disappeared.

since i’m into books, philosophy, psychology, and human behavior, i started thinking about it more rationally.

then one day i realized:

every reel is not just content.

it’s an emotional transaction.

you give attention + mental energy,
and in return the algorithm sells you an emotion.

humans were never designed to switch emotions this fast.

imagine this:

first reel motivates you to hit the gym

swipe

second reel is a meme and now you’re laughing

swipe

third reel reminds you of your ex

swipe

fourth reel shows a 19 year old making more money than you and now you feel insecure or jealous

all of this happens in under 60 seconds.

4 completely different emotional states.

is that even normal for the brain?
i honestly don’t think so.

for a long time i also fooled myself by saying:
“my feed is educational and motivational.”

but eventually i realized motivation content can become dopamine content too.

a hard phonk song + aggressive quotes + gym edit =
instant dopamine hit.

then your brain starts craving the next hit.
and the next one has to be stronger than the previous one.

that is literally how scrolling addiction works.

and honestly
that is not even the craziest part anymore.

nowadays half the internet does not even feel real.

that CEO you constantly see on your feed?
probably not organic.

there are clipping agencies, PR teams, engagement funnels, repost networks  all designed to flood your feed until a person or ideology feels important.

same with movie edits, political opinions, “alpha male” content, hustle culture etc.

a huge amount of short form content is basically propaganda mixed with entertainment.

not always political propaganda
sometimes it is lifestyle propaganda,
consumer propaganda,
success propaganda,
identity propaganda.

they shape perspectives simply by increasing repetition and emotional intensity.

and once you notice it
you cannot unsee it.

does this mean i completely stopped watching short form content?

yes.

now i can feel myself !! i feel like i am more crreative

more energy

great reflexes

improved sleep cycle

more time to do my work

No judgement to people who are just beginning their digital minimalism journey. If anything, I hope this helps you reflect and motivates you to use socials in a healthier way...

Buuuut I notice that people online act strangely paranoid about those they disagree with being some kind of troll or "infiltrator" who needs to be "defeated." And it's even weirder because it's not, like, a troll coming into specific subreddits/online communities and spreading hate or making dumb meme posts for attention. Many users act this way even when it's JUST a person disagreeing with them or expressing an opinion that's not exactly the same as theirs.

As an example, I witnessed a discussion in the comments of a post here on reddit the other day where someone was comparing the cost of living in one country vs. another. User A was asking a question about it, user B responded in a really negative complain-y manner, then user A was like "I feel you but jsyk the problems you have also occur in other countries, you shouldn't over-romanticise one country just bc you visited it, don't move there without knowing what it's really like there in advance." Then user B got verrrryyyy tangential and ended accusing A of being a troll.

I sometimes read threads like this because they're more entertaining than reality TV lol but the people involved always seem genuinely unwell to me. Like, if you bumped into someone in public and they said something like user A, a response like user B's would make you sound absolutely deranged to everyone else on the sidewalk.

Idk the exact psychology behind this, but I theorize that some people who are very chronically online form their beliefs/worldview from the content they consume, and that kind of content then gets recommended to them so often that they forget their opinions are based on... like 10 randos from the internet rather than an actual community of many real-life humans who congregate together. It's really sad to see people who lack irl community act this way because I know that it's easier to be angry about their beliefs being challenged than it is to just... get offline. Think about the things that matter in the physical world. ykwim.

me and my counselor had a talk and she thinks it’s best for my mental health to cut down my phone use particularly. i told her i switch from app to app between instagram snapchat , and TikTok. instagram and tiktok are my main used apps but id say im more addicted to instagram.

• she recommended to cut down between 1-5 hours of screen time this week.
• replace my phone with hobbies
•she recommended to try to cut out phone usage on weekends.

i just have a hard time when i put my phone down stuff like reading i am trying to get back into but it has been hard for me.

any advice would be appreciated.

I've been thinking a lot about why it's gotten so hard to put my phone down even when I'm using apps that have nothing to do with social media. Two mechanics that, in my view, are driving the growing addiction problem in nearly every app:

1. Endless feed - Facebook helped normalize the idea that getting the next piece of content should cost almost nothing. No searching, no choosing, no waiting. Just one tiny swipe. That gives us unlimited optionality, or at least the illusion of it. There is always something better one scroll away.

2. Dopamine loop of uncertainty - Tinder popularized this mechanic with swiping: every swipe carries a small hope of reward. Maybe the next person, the next match, the next hit. Short-form platforms copied the same psychology. Every video starts with a hook, and you never know whether the next one will be funny, shocking, useful, sexy, or emotionally triggering.

That combination is brutal: near-zero friction plus unpredictable reward.

Look at almost any breakout app of the last few years and you'll find the same pattern. Temu turned shopping into a slot machine: infinite product feed, spin-the-wheel coupons, countdown timers. Spotify turned music discovery into a TikTok clone — vertical autoplaying previews on the home screen. Duolingo dressed micro-rewards up as education: streaks, hearts, leagues, guilt-trip notifications. None of these are "social media." All of them use the same playbook.

The problem is no longer just "social media apps." The feed has escaped into everything and they are getting more and more addicting...

...opened Instagram and I'm just inundated with ads. I am SICK of it. Everything is an ad, everything wants your money, everything is performative.
On top of that, there was a pretty significant fire in my hometown yesterday and the first post I see this morning is an AI-generated image with a fucking praying pig and this melancholy music playing over it and an obviously AI-generated caption. Complete with a fireman's uniform that had a name of a person who isn't even on our squad. It was so corny and performative it honestly just pissed me off so much. I have lived here since I was born and these are locally owned businesses and to turn what actual real people are going through into absolute cringeworthy slop like that just made me so mad. That combined with the onslaught of ads is just too much. It honestly sent me into a rage.

I guess there's no real point to this post other than commiserating and just being fully aware that I absolutely HAVE to get off social media and my phone as much as possible. Like, it HAS to happen.

It also put me in mind of this smart post I saw on Substack a while back (credited to Anuradha Pandey):

"If we stop calling it “social media” and instead said “ad platforms”, many ridiculous aspects surface:

1. We construct whole identities on ad platforms
2. We get the ‘news’ from ad platforms
3. We see ad platforms as a medium to demand positive social change
4. We excuse our usage of ad platforms so we can “keep up with our friends”
5. We let ad platforms degrade our attention to the extent that we insist podcasts and hearing a book are equivalent in cognitive effect to reading an actual book.

Precision when discussing social problems can surface a lot of work that euphemisms do."

how do I eliminate short form content? I’ve tried multiple times, and I feel like, not giving in consumes as much energy as much scrolling sucks out of me! Also, I don’t want to leave or deactivate Instagram for how I can connect with people on it. Anyone who has cracked the code please share some advice…

Deleted Instagram about a year ago. I kept catching myself comparing everything - my apartment, my body, my weekends — to people I barely even know. Knew it was stupid, kept doing it anyway. So one night I just deleted it. After a few weeks I was actually sleeping, reading before bed instead of scrolling, and not grabbing my phone every five minutes for no reason. What app did you delete and never missed? Did anything change after or was it nothing?

My husband and I disagree on screen and video game time.

I grew up in a minimal screens no video games family. After having our son (6 mo) my view on my husband's usage has changed. My way would be only having the TV on after baby is asleep and limiting video games to after dinner and family time or weekends, when baby's older doing a weekly movie night. I'm also frustrated with what streaming services are doing/charging and would cancel all of them if it was my decision.

I am trying to limit my time to when he is napping or asleep for the night. He only gets screen time if I need a break on a tough day, he wants attention and I'm trying to make dinner, or we're facetiming grandma. I do my best to make screens the last resort.

My husband grew up in a gaming family. Screens are the first resort to calming our son when he's spending time with him. He plays games almost constantly: in the morning before work, at work during down time, lunch break, before dinner, and up until bedtime. We typically have some show playing during dinner.

I feel like technology is causing some family separation and I don't think its healthy to this extent. I'm trying to have dinners outside and go on a nightly family walk before he plays video games for the evening. Is there anything I can do to get him more onboard with limited screens?

I have been trying to get off my digital addiction for about six months. I installed JOMO and my screen time went down from about 6 hours a day to a mere 3.5 -4. Still not happy with that. Should I try going 24 hours with no phone on a weekend just to give myself no option? I’d really love to get out of my current career in advertising and marketing at a small creative agency and switch to something that doesn’t require me to have social media of any kind. I want to get off the hamster wheel. I want to read and play guitar and socialize with my one year old son and my wife and my friends in the real world. I just turned 40 and life is going by too fast to be staring at crap other people created to sell ads. And most of it is incredibly dumb.

Could ai counterintuitively help solve the problem? A flood of slop content could finally overwhelm traditional addictive content and people could finally just have enough. Just trying to be optimistic.

What helped you finally break the habit?

Hey, I’ve been wanting to delete most of my socials for a while, but the main thing I’m scared about is being uninformed about stuff my friends are doing and being uninformed on other news in general. Is there any solution to this?

I say that Snapchat is best social media, with it being primarily a messaging service (and it’s what most of my friends have, I’m in high school), but I’d say that my friends most often post on Instagram for stories and notes.
I also like to see the other sides of news, cuz TikTok/twitter sometimes is less filtered than most primary news sources I find and is also faster with information typically

Is there any solution for this kind of dilemma? Do you think it comes down to self discipline to not doom scroll like a lobotomite (even if the app is meticulously designed just for that), or is there like an third party api app alternative that solves these issues? Sorry for the long winded post lol

Edit: rephrased the sentence regarding Snapchat

TL;DR: Sharing my experience as a working pro in 30s who using social media to be relaxed, but ended up having the hallow feeling, and by the end of the day I wasn't productive as I should and happening this everyday made me questioned myself.

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Hey, I'm a working professional aged over 30 and I'm working from home since Covid. I work for a software company, I have good job and comfortable life. When you work inside a room for so long, eventually you'll feel that loneliness. Those who are live in the same shoe will agree to this. So as a solution I tried to be active in social media like Facebook and Instagram. First it felt like helping, but recently, when I looked back I really felt that I'm too addicted to Facebook. After a long meeting I started to pick up my iPhone and started watching 20 seconds comedy. After my lunch when I sit again, the first thing I did was pick up the phone and browse the Facebook app. And just like that I watched tons of content in auto pilot and when I see the clock oh dear it was already 1hr since I started scrolling. First I thought it's helping me to get out of the tired feeling but eventually I realized I was more tired after, actually exhausted and gave me a real hallow feeling. Not just that I had to work extra to cover up the work I should have done in the day time, and it took more time because my focus was everywhere. When I realized, I started researching this topic.

What this does as I understand it, these apps are engineered to give you dopamine spikes that give you an endless simulation in auto pilot. Actually the fake dopamines (dopamine is something that your nerves system gives to your brain when you achieve things in real life to make you happy) and these apps are really engineered well to simulate those just by scrolling. The moment you stops scrolling, your brain stops getting that constant spikes and that turns you empty. That's how the hallow feeling starts.

To be honest I'm not 20 anymore. I'm in my 30s, time and focus really matters to me. I do have things to achieve in life, but mind always try to find the easy path because it's in my fingertips. I tried the screen time option in iPhone and it keep failing me. At least I was able to control myself from scrolling in the bed in the morning as I started going to the gym in the morning, which gives me a real pleasure seeing my transformation. I think that's the way to go isn't it, just replace one bad habit with a good habit? Oh btw, I finally deactivated the Facebook account (after few attempts, TBH)

Anyone else feel like they don't even choose to do it? Like the hand just goes there on its own? Anything that worked to get rid of and be productive?

Like I'm spending 9+ hours daily how is it even possible 😭😭, only one day it was 4 hours, cause I was on a hike for the entire day, but I was on hike the entire day, how did even come upto 4 hours😭😭

I feel like the smartphone is such a major part of our lives these days. I recently deleted my instagram due to: feeling it’s a waste of time, spending years on it trying to formulate the “perfect” caption or post, feeling obligated to post or share about my life when I shouldn’t, bad for mental health. When I talk to my coworkers about it they’re like oh why? And I give them these reasons and they agree with me but I know that they won’t delete it so I’m wondering if people agree with these reasons why do they keep doing it?? I guess it is addicting, I kept it mostly for myself and I have family around the world but not a good reason to keep something that’s bad for you… are we the oddballs for deleting and staying off social media? I know that some people take social media breaks which is good, but I didn’t see the point of keeping it just to go back to it…