Faith & Inspiration · Personal Essay
A digital detox sounds straightforward until you’re actually doing it. One writer chronicles the boredom, the breakthrough, and the person she found in the silence.
I deleted Instagram, TikTok and Twitter on a Sunday evening in January. I told myself it was an experiment. I told myself I’d be back in a month. I wasn’t sure I believed either thing.
What nobody tells you about deleting social media is how physical the first week is. I kept picking up my phone and putting it down with a specific kind of restlessness — a reflexive reaching for something that wasn’t there. My thumb kept navigating to where the apps had been. The brain is, it turns out, very reluctant to give up a loop it has spent years reinforcing.
“By the end of week two, something quieter was beginning. I started having thoughts that didn’t feel like responses to other people’s content. I wasn’t sure I’d noticed the difference until it was gone.”
— Aisha Barrie
What the First Month Actually Looked Like
The boredom was real and it was useful. Modern life has almost entirely eliminated the experience of genuine unoccupied time. I had forgotten what it felt like. Initially it felt unbearable. Then, after about ten days, it started to feel like something else. Space, perhaps. Possibility. I read more. I started cooking more elaborate meals. I called people instead of texting them. I noticed things on walks that I’d been passing without registering for years.
The Relationship Questions
The detox surfaced something I hadn’t anticipated: a set of questions about which of my relationships were sustained by genuine connection and which were sustained almost entirely by mutual presence on the same platforms. Several friendships became almost entirely silent when I wasn’t there to like their posts. The discovery was uncomfortable and, ultimately, clarifying.
“At day 90, I didn’t reinstall the apps. What I know is that I like the person I am without them rather more than the person I was scrolling through them.”
— Aisha Barrie
I am not arguing that everyone should delete their social media permanently. I am arguing that everyone should try the experiment at least once — long enough for the initial discomfort to pass and for something more honest to emerge underneath. What you find there is unlikely to be nothing. In my experience, what you find there is yourself.
