Declutter your brain: How to get off social media and go news sober

You won't miss it.

I’ll get right to it: I posit that we all will be happier, healthier, more connected people if we stop consuming social media and The News. For me it started with a goal of not looking at my phone so dam much. With effort and many false starts, I eventually managed to cut down my phone usage by 2/3. But getting off the news and social media was a necessary step so I’ll start my story there.

Question for you. Filling up your brain with:

• every tragedy happening around the world right now,

• cute new pants you may need,

• the name of a high school acquaintance’s third baby,

• wondering if you will ever have the time and money to visit Hawaii like your coworker just did,

• not to mention election anxiety

….doesn’t it kinda seem like clutter? Clutter can create a stuck, stagnant, overwhelmed feeling in our homes, so why wouldn’t it do that in our minds as well?

So let’s do some decluttering! My fave. Normally I don’t have an opinion about what people choose to keep or toss in their home decluttering—hey, it’s a personal choice—but in this case I have an opinion so strap yourself in, you’re going to hear it!

(And just to put it out there: you of course do not need to do what I do. I’m sharing this as a provocation, something you can mull over to see if it feels worth trying.)

How I Quit Social Media

Studies show how harmful social media can be (gift link), especially for young girls. I can’t fathom going through my painful adolescence while navigating social media on top of everything.

But as an adult, I never especially noticed harmful effects of social media. As a deep introvert, I tend to get JOMO more than FOMO. I found real benefits in social media: it was fun to keep up with acquaintances via DMs, I learned a lot about health and wellness, got parenting tips, found book recommendations, and was inspired with funny and aesthetic-focused accounts. It seemed like a net positive….mostly. The downside was I could easily sink hours of my day into scrolling, which did not feel good.

Then a friend posted an image from this book on (ironically) Instagram which made me feel like the time to quit was nigh:

But what finally sent me over the edge was realizing that masterfully targeted social media ads were causing unnecessary spending (hmm, maybe I should be exercising my face muscles every day with XYZ device…). When I launched my no-spend January, I disabled Instagram and was shocked how much money I saved without these ads.

I worried about all the information I’d miss without social media, and to be honest I do miss some of it. But there is a finite amount of processing my brain can do, so even though I did feel pleasure at some aspects of social media, I decided to shut that down to make space for offline and creative idea processing.

Just because I enjoy seeing something doesn’t mean I need it.

So I made the trade. And I got hours of my day back—embarrassing but true.

After briefly reactivating Instagram once my no-spend month ended, and seeing my scrolling addiction resume immediately, I again disabled it, this time for good (though see below epilogue about why this was not as simple as it should’ve been).

The Facebook side was a little harder because I rely on Groups and Facebook Marketplace and truly did not want to abandon them.

I was thrilled to discover the News Feed Eradicator Chrome plug-in, which hides the most addictive part of Facebook and replaces it with rotating chilled out quotes:

Facebook is now blah.

I have to search specifically for what I want, and that has made Facebook absolutely no fun anymore. Success!

I never really understood TikTok (sometimes it’s best not to fight being old) so that was a non-issue. But I like to believe the small issue of Chinese spying would be enough to convince me to get off it forever.

I’m now 4 months into my social media abstinence, and I’ve started noticed while listening to podcasts how often the discussion is about some drama happening on social media. There will be a social media trend that sparks controversy, which then leads to analysis of the controversy. It just seems like clutter begetting further clutter, begetting bad feelings. None of it is necessary — just get out of the game and suddenly you don’t need to think about the game.

Maybe I’m naive, but at least I’m happy.

When Will “News Sober” Catch On?