Social Media Almost Ruined My Life
How I fought back and conquered my addiction
It may sound extreme, but there’s no sense in sugarcoating it.
From 2019–2021, I was in a demanding masters program in Math. This had been my dream path — I had fought so hard, as someone who had considered themselves “not a math person”, to get accepted into a graduate program to study the subject. I knew I needed to put in a lot of work to succeed. I had to spend my time reading textbooks and writing proofs if I wanted to catch up to the skills of my classmates.
The problem is that I didn’t. My free time was spent scrolling on Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. I spent upwards of 7 hours per day on social media between my phone and my computer. It occupied every second of my life that I wasn’t in class. Even during classes, I would pull out my phone and place it on my desk so I could continue scrolling, like an addict in desperate need of a fix.
Predictably, my first semester went terribly. I ended up withdrawing from a class and doing quite poorly in a couple others, skating by with a 3.1 GPA. Anything below a 3.0 would result in expulsion from the program, so I knew that I really needed to buckle down for my second semester before disaster struck.
But then disaster did strike. In the form of TikTok. It seemed like a fun little app at the time — I had seen some of the dance trends and short comedic videos reposted on my Instagram feed and decided to check it out. I did not realize that, in doing so, I would be relinquishing control over all of my focus and attention to the TikTok algorithm.
Within days of downloading the app, TikTok had curated my For You Page to perfection. Nearly every video gave me the dopamine hit that I was so desperately seeking. And so I kept coming back for more.
Eventually I was spending over 10 hours per day on various social media platforms. Homework was completely pushed to the side. Studying? I had no time for that — I needed to make sure I kept up with the latest TikTok trends.
I could feel my grip on my life slipping. My goals and dreams were vanishing before my eyes, and I was becoming a worse friend, relationship partner, and son. I was rapidly spiraling into a pit of depression, fueled by my addiction to social media. The horrifying part is: I didn’t care. The dopamine hits from social media were so powerful that, despite knowing I was actively ruining my life, I could not stop coming back. I needed more. And the more my life fell apart around me, the more I needed the dopamine from social media in order to feel whole again.
Slowly but surely, I missed deadline after deadline. I was in danger of failing four classes within the first month of the semester. I skipped exams, neglected homework assignments, and avoiding attending classes. My mental health continued to decline. Depression enveloped every waking moment. My only reprieve was sleep, which I made sure to do as much as possible. Slowly but surely, I was withdrawing from my life and into the void.
I knew this was it — I would be asked to leave the program after this semester. And I deserved it.
Then COVID hit.
In a sick twist of fate, this disease, which has claimed the lives of so many, may have saved my own. As a result of the sudden shift to online courses, my school extended the withdrawal date from classes until the end of the semester, and so I was able to withdraw from my worst courses (which was nearly all of them). In my one remaining course, the professor generously made the class much easier in order to account for the confusion and stress brought on by the pandemic. I ended my semester with four withdrawals and one A-. I lived to fight another day.
During the summer of 2020, after the absolute disaster that I had wrought of my life over the course of the previous year, I knew I needed to make a drastic change.
This came in the form of physically removing myself from my phone and computer. I knew that in order to get work done, I needed to be unable to see my devices. So I bought a desk and positioned it so that it was facing a wall with nothing on it. I then committed to completing all of my work at this desk.
The next semester came and, using this method, I was able to do well and succeed in my classes in a way that I never would have dreamed of during the previous year.
The only problem was this: when I wasn’t working and had access to my phone and computer again, I fell right back into the addiction. My free time was absolutely inundated with Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit. But I was now seeing positive results in my academic career, and my mental health had improved slightly. So, as many do, I was able to overlook the addiction.
Then I lost my relationship.
Losing a relationship has a way of making us take stock of ourselves and our situation. It’s as if a piece of us has died and we now need to evaluate the damage and figure out what’s left. When I assessed my situation, I came to the following realization — when looking back on my life, I will never wish to have spent more time on social media. I decided that I would not allow myself to live with the regret of living my life, but never really living my life.
I would not allow myself to be a slave to social media.
So I deleted them. All of them. I deleted every app from my phone, I blocked the URLs on my web browsers, and I notified my friends that I would only be reachable by texts or calls moving forward. I destroyed every link I had with the world of social media. My goal was to become as close to a digital hermit as a twentysomething can be.
And it worked.
My happiness shot through the roof. I stopped comparing myself to others, stopped stressing about every piece of political news or pandemic reporting, and, most importantly, stopped handing all of my attention over to the tech companies. I finally felt in control of my destiny once again.
I started picking up hobbies at an alarming rate. I began reading voraciously, finishing 35 books so far in 2021. I started to teach myself to dance using online classes. I started writing. I lost 25 lbs.
Everything that I told myself I wanted to do but didn’t have time to accomplish, I was now doing with ease. With my attention and consciousness no longer locked in the cage of social media, I was now free to explore the world.
And that is exactly what I have done. I’ve allowed myself the freedom to explore, using my newly conquered free time to dance (and make a fool of myself doing it), laugh with friends, cry, and everything else that makes us human.
I hope that from this article, you are able to learn from my experiences and avoid the same mistakes that I’ve made. I hope that, whatever happens, you do not allow the tech companies and social media algorithms to rob you of what it is that makes you human.
