r/digitalminimalism

That's it. That's the post.

… including myself!

I have been completely off instagram for two months and about five months off tiktok. I used to post so much on both because I crave a lot of connection attention I didn’t get from my family and my so called friends that, to this day, don’t give two flying fucks about me.

One thing I noticed from the beginning of my social media detox was the way I started to see people. Everybody was just mesmerising all of a sudden, including what I saw in the mirror. I’m a 23 year old woman dealing with grade 3 mamarry ptosis, about to get mastopexy surgery next month, and I cannot even begin to tell you how gentle and calming these pre-op past couple of months were to me. I had so much space to love my body as it is now and to prepare for, basically, a new one. Yes, I still hate my chest very much, but I kinda stopped punishing myself for it.

So as I was saying, idk if people already talked about this on here or if I sound totally cheesy right now, but I started to see beauty in so many people I crossed paths with, in ways I never would’ve even comprehended when my brain was putrified by my instagram feed. Everybody is just so beautiful in real life. I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see it earlier. I wasn’t very critical of appearances before either, but I was subconsciously succumbing to the thought that “some people are just attractive and others aren’t, and that’s the objective truth”, while comparing everyone (including myself) to literal facetune/people that have a shit ton of money to invest in their appearance. This is pretty old news, I know, but I failed to see it back then. I’m so happy to be appreciating beauty in different ways now. I am never going back there and I’m happier than ever

How anyone thought that was entertainment is beyond my understanding, but I learned a few things:

-Short form content is extremely staged, and overly annoying, and I can't fathom why anyone in their right mind would find it entertaining.

-It made my head hurt hearing (even if I looked away and tried to talk to people) the annoying YouTube voices and accents and people who are somehow conducting street interviews, and could afford several hundred dollar purses for someone who answered a simple question. I know it's staged but what's the point of staging expensive purchases?

Sometimes it feels like we're in another "gilded age" where instead of giant industry moguls, we have people who make millions making content and flaunt their wealth in their content.

Am I really supposed to believe that two 22 year old twin sisters own three mansions and boast about them, while redecorating? ("We just bought three mansions, and we're going to make over all of them. Follow us for more!) and people still say: "omg, I love them, they're so like me!"

I should have just left, but a part of me felt that shorts wouldn't really be a justified reason to do so.

I work full-time, married and have 2 small children ages 4 and 1.5.

I manage a small business. Heavy on responsibility and also have the heavy responsibility that comes with motherhood. I have diagnosed ADHD and when I'm medicated I am much better and my productivity is great.

I solo parent most weekends after working all week due to my husband's work schedule. He starts around 6:30am and isn't home until 3:30pm. Weekends are a slog. I am exhausted from the work week, my kids don't sleep past 6am and one still wakes in the night. Even medicated, I'm finding it difficult to combat the tiredness and the desire to just couch rot and switch off.

I am the world's worst doom scroller. I have no idea what it is I seek from it. The need to disconnect from what's around me or to find excitement through other people. I have no clue but I hate how much I'm addicted. I need Instagram for work purposes otherwise I'd delete it. Facebook Messenger is my highest form of communication through friends and family so I need it. I don't have tick tock or any other social media platform. I basically just switch from Facebook to insta, to googling things, to Reddit and back to insta again. I can't focus, since becoming a mum I cannot turn my brain off, I forgot how to watch a movie. I can't watch TV on my own, I don't watch TV or Netflix shows or sit in front of the TV at all. But I can sit and scroll on my phone and waste hours. I used to read books and I can't even do that. My attention span is absolutely shocking.

On weekends I feel it can take me away from my kids. Sure I do everything all day for them like cook, clean, get them dressed, teeth brushed, take them to the parks, I even play with them but I hate the idea that they may think my phone is more important than them. I don't know how to break the habit. My husband and I are usually keeping in contact all day, sometimes I'm not even scrolling but I'm talking to him via text.

I miss the feeling of being present and I really miss whatever the hell I was doing or who I was before phones came along. Monday to Fridays I have no time to waste on my phone. I have both kids and myself to get ready for school, daycare and work. I then work all day, drive home and by that time it's straight into dinner bath and bedtime for the kids, I usually haven't even taken my phone out of my work bag until the kids are in bed. So there's no issue for the week. Weekends though are hard. I've tried not being on my phone for the first hour of the day. I try to get up before the kids (before 6am) for a hot shower, get dressed and have a hot cuppa before they get up, I'm pretty consistent with this. I have a morning snuggle with them, but as the day progresses and my exhaustion and tiredness gets worse, I lose all motivation and switch off and end up on my phone. We have no family around for any help so everything is managed and juggled by us alone. What is everyone doing for a screen detox? Do you put your phone in a locked box?

I'd also love to know if anyone else is in the same boat and did life feel much better after detoxing from the phone screen?

It's honestly shocking how the internet, due to the element on anonymity, emboldens people to be terrible at times. Personally I wouldn't say anything to anyone that I wouldn't say to them in real life. Made the mistake of scrolling through random instagram comments on the explore page out of curiosity and the comments... Yikes. Calling someone a c*m dumpster. The judgement, snarky remarks etc. Why? Social media seems to bring out a very ugly side in people and it's so unfortunate. The same people who leave these kinds of comments would be quiet as a church mouse in real life. You can't be mean and also a coward, pick a struggle? It costs nothing to be a decent human being and conduct yourself in a reasonable manner.

?

I’m seriously considering going back to a flip phone and trying to live like it is the 1990s/early 2000s. I don’t like AI or social media (Except for Reddit). I am sick of always having to be reachable all the time. I am sick of all of the apps.
Has anyone gone back to using a flip phone and been okay? I’d be worried about needing my phone during work field visits and for navigation. I guess I could go back to using a gps or printing out directions.
If I did go back to a flip phone I could still use my smart phone for the camera.

Last month I tried to find a recipe I was sure I'd saved. I checked Instagram saves, Safari reading list, WhatsApp "message to myself", screenshots, Notes, a Notion page, TikTok favourites… I never found it.

So I counted: 11 different places where I park things "for later". And the honest truth is that saving has become a way of *not* deciding. It feels like doing something, but nothing comes back out.

What helped a bit: picking ONE inbox and refusing to organize at capture time. No folders, no tags, just drop it there. Sorting later (or never) turned out to matter less than having everything in one place.

Curious how others handle this. Do you have a single place, or have you given up on "saving for later" altogether?

I can handle not doomscrolling, but what I struggle with is not posting. Sometimes I take really nice pictures and I feel the need to share them. I'm thinking of making a physical photo album, but I still want others to see them.

Hi guys i was in mandatory military service in army for 26 days. There i didnt use my smartphone no internet just military drills and conversations with other soldiers. My brain felt like it has been resetted. When i took my smartphone on my hand the 1st time i left the army. I said woww thats so big. In military i used my dumpphone only. However for the last 4 days i have been getting stuck in instagram, scrolling tiktok again. What should i do to not fall on this trap again? In military btw i woke up everyday at 5 am without opening my alarm. I was suprised about that.

When I was younger, I was attracted to the idea of seeing how people think beyond my small circle of friends. Also, because sometimes, my own friends don't experience the same things as I do, and they cannot relate to what I am asking (e.g., using Reddit to check out conversations about buying your first apartment - most of my friends inherited their properties). But I somehow end up in different subreddits, and they're full of negativity about all aspects of life: parenthood, relationships, work, etc. I think the daily life of an average adult is stressful enough, and I don't wanna listen to all of this negativity. I understand there are things where you need to raise awareness (e.g., gov doing shitty things should be called out), but I am just fed up with people complaining and being bothered by everything.

This is one thing that is making me welcome this minimalism (sometimes more successful, sometimes not). And I definitely plan on going full minimalist if I ever become a parent.

I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this too.

I take dozens upon dozens of screenshots everyday, my device is lagging so bad because of it. I can't even reach the bottom of my gallery. It's been going on for 2 years. I can't bring myself to delete enough to actually make a dent. I keep telling myself the random screenshots will be useful one day, that I'm preserving things, it's mostly text, sometimes art that I screenshot, sometimes dumb real photos.

Rationally speaking, I know I don't need most of this stuff, but I just can't. Something holds me back. I have a occasional accident in which I press some sort of reload unknown button that refreshes my gallery, and whenever I see the empty gallery logo I literally began hyperventilating and panicking until a few long minutes later my gallery was fully loaded with everything back.

My physical hoarding problem is another story.

I know one day this tablet will break down, I need to get over it. What can I currently do to fix this issue?

A friend of mine was telling me about how they're glad one of their long time content creators is still making videos, and that they remember watching them and others every day after school when they were a kid/teen. They're only 5 years my junior, and I remember the early days of YouTube, but I never really caught on to watching YouTubers or YouTube stuff like Fred or The Annoying Orange, I mean I knew about them because I'd see them talked about in other places, but I never really bothered to watch them.

I mostly liked (and still do) video game play videos (with no narration) for the purposes of seeing how to get past places I'm stuck in, or music that I can't find anywhere else.

But I can't recall wanting to watch someone talk about something or stream or whatever, and there are times that I feel strange because I can't relate.

I know deep down they are parasocial relationships, and a part of me wonders if such a relationship is wrong and maybe that's why I don't like that sort of thing.

I left social media a couple of months ago. I had a couple of reasons for doing this:

1. I wanted to decrease the amount of time I spent scrolling
2. I recognised the negative influence it had on my mood and self-esteem
3. I realised that the value that I once got out of social media had disappeared. It was no longer a space for me to connect with my friends and it increasingly felt like an advertisement board I carried around in my pocket.

I have no regrets. I also didn't de-activate my accounts first. I deleted them, changed my passwords to something I would definitely forget, and didn't save it in my phone's password manager.

I feel like I've seen a lot of posts praising the decision, and while I agree that it was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made I do miss it sometimes. I miss it in the same way you can miss an ex: You reminisce about the good times while recognising that you'd never go back. Sometimes I get the feeling that I want to join again, thinking it would be like the first time I joined when everyhting felt so exciting. I need to remind myself that that version of social media is gone.

Has anyone else felt like this, and what do you do to refocus yourself on your commitment to leave social media?