All my friends are leaving social media, so why can’t I?

“Watching more people jump ship from this algorithmic Titanic, I felt a panic set in.”

My relationship with social media can only be described as being in a long-term situationship with a fuck boy. It keeps me hooked, gives me just enough attention to stay and, without fail, always leaves me feeling worse than before. 

We’ve been off and on for years. I was 13 when I first made my Instagram account. I followed my friends and Selena Gomez and that’s all there was to it. But lately, the incessant noise grasping at my diminishing attention has been harder to ignore. I’ve been watching, over six hours a day through my phone screen, the ‘Great Flattening’ happening both around me and to me.

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Ruled by likes, comments, followers and the surveillance we willingly put onto ourselves, our world becomes Emily Segal’s ‘taste-slop’. It normalises the idea that we should inject copper peptides and convinces us that friendship is maintained by a few story reacts and an occasional five-minute voice memo.

We spend time antagonising over which shade of pink text we should add to our posts, while on the other side of social media, the alpha-male, red-pill manosphere wreaks havoc on the minds of young men. Everything feels important and clickable, yet nothing is. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han, author of The Burnout Society, calls this ‘Non-time’: a state of endless, fast-paced, ultimately meaningless activity. 

Like the fuckboy, it knows exactly which heartstrings to pull. How can social media be evil when it can deliver writing like Lucianne Tonti’s heartbreaking exposé on Dhaka’s garment workers? Or an engagement announcement from my friends that makes me happy-cry. And the memes, always the memes, that have me clutching my phone to my chest, wondering why I’d ever let go.

While scrolling, I’d been feeling like a starved crow picking at a carcass for scraps. Until, on a random Wednesday, I saw a post from my friend Frankie Anderson-Byrne, Assistant Editor at Beat. Filmed in one take, she announced she was deleting all her social media accounts.

“Amongst all the joy I get from social media, I can’t avoid this feeling anymore,” she says, looking into the camera. “Everything is marketing, everything is falsity, everything is other people’s opinions and trends and consumerism. It’s taking away from my presence in my own life, and that’s really scary to confront. But it’s not worth sticking around for, so I’m going.” 

A week later, my other friend Gabbie was gone from every platform.“Our brains are not designed to process the amount of information and emotion social media pushes to us,” she told me. “You’re laughing at a skit, then you’re learning to cook a new dish, then you’re buying a new serum before you’re watching a genocide play out, and maybe two minutes have passed.”

It’s not just my friends, either. A 2025 study by Deloitte UK found that 29 per cent of Gen Zs had deleted their social media apps in the previous year because of the time it consumed and its growing negative impact on mental health.

Watching more people jump ship from this algorithmic Titanic, I felt a panic set in. Yet I remained, stuck in Han’s land of Non-time. Why can’t I leave? 

I had to admit an embarrassingly hard truth: my itch to remain relevant was stronger than my reasons to give it up. Some of my closest friendships and best work opportunities began within the ecosystem of social media. Leaving now would mean sitting in silence with the person I might have been if I’d never signed up thirteen years ago. 

“Despite encouraging others to do the same, it took me years to reach this decision,” Frankie told me. “Now I really notice all the things that affected me, what’s affecting us all. Distraction, comparison, the traps of capitalism, fleeting connection and a constant preoccupation that takes us away from the present moment,” she added.

That week, I purchased a Brick and thought of writer, podcaster and content creator Maggie Zhou. Despite carving out a career on social media since she was 14, Maggie appears to have the healthiest relationship with it of anyone I know.

“I started taking Saturdays off social media, and that’s really been helpful, just to be grounded in the real world,” she told me. “I want to prioritise the person I am in real life.”

Even then, that sinking feeling of anxiety crept back in. “But what if I miss something?” I asked her.

“Social media makes you feel like you’ll miss out on things if you’re not on it,” she said. “But the truth is, if something doesn’t survive the news cycle after 24 or 48 hours, then it probably wasn’t worth your time to begin with.” 

Gabbie added, “The only thing we’re missing out on is an opportunity to return to what life was like a mere fifteen years ago, when we sought community in real life and focused on our immediate surroundings.”

It’s become apparent that what you give up in leaving, you get back in spades. Frankie said the relief was immediate. “I feel incredibly free, from the minute I deleted the app,” she said. “I no longer have anyone or anything to compare myself to. I feel proud to know it really was the thing holding me back.”

Gabbie has started making physical photo albums. After her next holiday, she wants to host a home exhibition, inviting friends over to see the photos from the trip and share stories. “These options feel a lot more meaningful and intentional to me than curating for a grid, and I am excited to lean into it,” she said.

Challenging the status quo takes fortitude. “Each time I feel disconnected, I remind myself of the human experience now required to fill these gaps,” she reminds me.

With my Brick on its way and a string of poor sleeps courtesy of doomscrolling, I decided an intervention was necessary. I left my phone at home and went for a walk. ‘Nothing changes if nothing changes,’ I told myself, and no one was going to make this decision for me.

On my usual path, I noticed a turn-off I had never seen before. Perhaps it was divine timing, or perhaps I was simply noticing more without my phone in my hand. I followed it and found a wishing tree, its branches hung with hundreds of multicoloured wishes fluttering in the wind.

I wish to fly.

I wish to get a dog.

I wish for peace in myself.

I wish to fall in love.

I wish to dance more.

It seems we all wish for the same things, most of them not found within our phone screens.

For more on ditching social media, try this.