Social Media Is the Toxic Relationship You Need to Leave

How to break up with the love story where you’re always the one giving (your data, mostly)

This article is available also in italian here 🇮🇹

Intro — The Trees

There are moments when you just need to pause and look inward — ask yourself if the way you act, and how you perceive the world, is actually good for you.
Sometimes, all it takes is a bit of fresh air to clear your head: sit on the grass, lean against a tree, immerse yourself in the green of a park, far away from the sounds of the city.

1. When Internet Killed the Phone Bill

Unfortunately, the fast-paced lives we live — packed with work and the constant pressure to stay “up to date” — force us to communicate through digital tools, especially social media.
When I was a teenager, about twenty years ago, the internet was a very different place. You connected at internet cafés or from home, but only for short periods — otherwise, the phone bill would hit triple digits, and your dad would start naming Catholic saints out of order (and not in a devotional way).

2. Tom from MySpace Was My Friend

Back then, the term “social network” mostly meant one thing: MySpace. It was like a personal blog you could customize with some basic HTML skills — a place to talk about yourself and, if you were lucky, share your own music.

For almost a decade, MySpace was a launching pad for up-and-coming bands. If you’ve ever heard of Arctic Monkeys, The Killers, or Panic! At the Disco, you probably have MySpace to thank.

Of course, it had its limitations. No instant messaging, and most communication happened via email. But hey, the very first friend you got by default after signing up was Tom.
I wonder what ever happened to him.

3. Facebook: You Have a New Friend Request from “Your Mom”

Then came Facebook, which arrived in Italy around 2008.
At first, it was pretty bare-bones — you could upload some photos, post a status, and that was it. No likes, no videos. But it had a built-in chat that let you message friends or total strangers without installing extra software like Messenger or C6.

Later, Facebook added more features: events, games like Farmville (which turned entire days into digital farming marathons), and “fan pages” — later simply called “pages.” These were also useful tools to profile users based on what they interacted with.

In just a few years, Facebook became universal — your classmates, your extended family, and that one person you met once at a random party were all there. And they’re probably still there, even after death.

4. Agreeing without Understanding: When You Accept Cookies from Strangers

“Profiling” means collecting data on user behavior in order to personalize ads and content. This kind of targeted advertising is the main revenue stream for social networks — and the reason they’re free to use.
Spoiler: you’re not the customer. You’re the product.

Since 2018, thanks to the EU’s GDPR regulation, every site is required to explain how it uses cookies via those charming little banners.
If you don’t accept them, you can still browse — but with limitations (for example, embedded YouTube videos won’t show up unless you consent to the cookies).

And let’s be honest: we’ve all clicked “Accept all” without reading a damn thing, just like in that (now) old episode of South Park back when the first iPad came out. Would you take actual cookies from a stranger on the street? No? Then why do we keep doing it online?

5. Serotonin, Dopamine, FOMO and Other Notifications

Despite privacy concerns and moral grey areas, we keep using social networks.
As I wrote in a previous article, “What I’ve learned not using Facebook for more than two years”, every notification we get — a comment, a like, a friend request — triggers a release of dopamine and serotonin in our brains.
Tiny doses of pleasure. Temporary highs. Digital validation.

But this constant craving for social approval can become a real addiction — the kind that slowly leads to frustration, sadness, and anxiety.

Another issue? FOMO.
The Fear of Missing Out.
That nagging feeling that something important might happen while you’re not connected. Ever read a YouTube comment that just says “First!” under a video? eah. That’s FOMO in its purest form.

6. I Am Leaving. That’s It.

Back in 2016, after years spent managing event pages as a Social Media Manager, I quit Facebook. I used to be online all day, mostly from my computer (I never installed the app, though I sometimes used the mobile browser). And I started to feel like I was losing something — something in myself. I stayed off the platform until 2018. I was proud. I’d kicked the habit.

But quitting one platform doesn’t mean quitting them all.
I still used Reddit and Twitter — sparingly — thanks to the 140-character limit (later bumped to 280), which at least made doomscrolling harder.

I stuck with Instagram too, until Reels turned my feed into a black hole of dancing, trends, and algorithmic time-suck. Around the end of 2024, I said goodbye to that one too.

I even gave X (formerly Twitter) a chance. I liked some of the features, like Community Notes for fact-checking — something Facebook never managed well — but X slowly morphed into a shouty, bot-infested, Republican Facebook clone.

After unsuccessfully muting Elon Musk four times, and realizing 80% of what I saw was about Trump and American politics, I decided I was done with X too.

But here’s the kicker: deleting your account is rarely as easy as it should be.
Most platforms only let you deactivate temporarily.
In 2020, after deactivating Facebook, someone managed to access my account from a random location in Eastern Europe. I had to log back in just to secure it again.

Now I’ve done the same with X. I uninstalled it after noticing there were no more real interactions. My last 20 followers over a year? All bots with blurry photos of women facing away from the camera.

I still use Reddit and LinkedIn occasionally — but in a very limited way.
Hopefully one day, I won’t need them either.

For me, social networks are officially dead.
And if you’re still using them in 2025… well, that’s kind of like being into digital necrophilia.

7. Profile? Fine. Profiling? Hell No.

Let’s be real — imagining a world without social networks in 2025 feels borderline impossible.
And as mentioned earlier, deleting your account isn’t exactly a walk in the park.

Even when users deactivate their profiles, their data remains a goldmine for companies that keep running their profiling algorithms.
And registered users — even inactive ones — are great for showing inflated audience numbers to advertisers and investors.

It’s also been revealed that even after a full account deletion, many platforms store data backups.
Sometimes those backups are retained by third-party companies that previously bought access to your data.

So yeah, you could try to vanish…
But it might just be easier to keep a low-profile account and use it as little as possible.

9. Some Steps I Recommend

• • Don’t go chasing likes. And don’t feel bad if you don’t get any. People who like your posts aren’t doing it because they care about you, but because they want something in return or because they saw others do it (mirror neurons effect). It’s like following the herd. And if you have a lot of likes and followers, don’t focus too much on them, because in the end, you might end up feeling overwhelmed and dissatisfied.
• Talk to real people. Stick to a basic messaging app to exchange essential info, but have actual conversations face to face.
  Look people in the eyes — because that’s where their souls live.
• Using social media to stay informed? Try switching to a feed aggregator like Feedly and cut out the comment sections. They might be funny sometimes, sure — but they’re one of the main triggers of doomscrolling.
• Can’t stop watching TikTok dance videos? Ask yourself out loud why you’re watching them. Odds are, your answer won’t be as solid as you think.
• Go for a walk. Read a book. Learn an instrument. Plant some flowers. Cook something that’ll surprise your friends or family. Take an online course. Clean your house — don’t wait for guests to show up when it smells like regret. Go dancing. Go ride a horse. Go f*ck yourself. Just. Go.

10. Conclusion: Logging Out (for Real)

I’m not saying social media never gave us anything. Just like any toxic ex, it had its moments: the late-night laughs, hoping that a dopamine hit will somehow make you feel better, the feeling that you were never really alone.

But if you’re honest, deep down you know it’s not good for you anymore.
It gaslights you with fake news, love bombs you with notifications, then ghosts you when you actually need real connection.

At some point, you have to stop checking if it changed. It didn’t.

And it’s not you. It’s literally them.

So go on — mute, block, walk away. You deserve better than an algorithm pretending to love you back.

Images and english versione generated via ChatGPT, modified by hand with Affinity Design by the Author.