I recognize this feeling.
It took me a while to accept that Instagram (quit in 2021 after this post) had basically become my new Facebook (quit in 2016).
I need to accept that Reddit has become my new Instagram.
And I’m really not willing to live with a distraction in my life that is as tempting and mind-numbing as any of these platforms, so it is time to say a firm goodbye. Every time I’ve left one of these platforms I have done it under the guise of a break, and each time I found that once I was free life felt significantly and objectively better, so I made the breaks permanent.
Two podcasts on my run inspired me this morning:
- Shunta Grant’s pep talk for those leaving social media
- Monica Packer’s interview of Catherine Price – who has the following motto on her webpage:
“Scroll less. Live more. Have fun.”
Seriously, yes.
Will I need to eliminate another time/life suck in 3-5 years? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.
Steps I have taken:
1- Told Kae/Coco of my intentions and promised them daily reports
2- Told my kids and Josh of my intentions (A in particular will be good about holding me to this)
3- Identified a little negative reinforcement strategy which I will not share here (and hopefully won’t have to share here!)
4- Logged out of the app and deleted my account
5- Written this post 🙂
Okay I feel freer already.
13 Comments
So proud of you!! Keep us posted, your success is a great encouragement!
Great job! It is hard to be a moderator of something that is built to be addictive! I know you are otherwise a moderator but it’s hard to moderate social media usage! I am an abstainer and going off social media in dec 2021 has been nothing but positive for me and I credit you for inspiring me to do that!!
I very recently developed a Reddit problem too! I noticed that Google seems to feature Reddit posts high on search results now, so whenever I search something, it sucks me back in.
Solution: I used an ad-blocking app that I already had on my phone (1Blocker) to block the Reddit website.
I feel so much better!
Oooh thanks for this tip! I read Reddit in my browser and without logging in so I can’t deactivate an account or delete the app to reduce my time on there. This may be the way to go! I used to spend way too much time on Twitter but also in my browser and not logged in. Elon Musk solved that problem for me by making it so that you need to be logged in to read. I haven’t been on Twitter/X since that change but it didn’t take long for Redddit scrolling to replace my Twitter scrolling. Sigh. (I’ve also noticed that about Google results and it’s really annoying!)
Agree about adding a blocker on the domain on your phone and computer. Then even if you cave you will be stopped.
How do you balance decisions like this with creating new and interesting content or even just trying new content outside of your usual circles? As an aspiring content creator I also find myself in circles (spirals) of consumption and not really creation. But I do see a lot of new things on Instagram and TikTok in particular and use both as an outreach mechanism to redirect back to a ‘business’. Currently, I do try to divorce the two spheres of my life. Going so far as to have a branded account and a personal and have specific hours for browsing one or the other and then limits enforced on how many hours.
podcasts, longer form articles, other blogs, and people texting/emailing me to share things have provided more than enough . Trust me nothing I was reading on Reddit helped with content . . .
GREAT move to post it here. I find that having a blog provides so much accountability (well- and also your kids. Setting a good example there is also great accountability.) Although I AM curious about the negative reinforcement strategy, ha ha. Hopefully you won’t have to use it.
That’s awesome. I deleted all social media accounts and have had to block news sites on my phone too as they just become such a black hole of time wasted for nothing productive. I get much more from receiving a curated set of blog posts via email such as yours.
Okay this is inspiring me to delete Reddit too. It was my last social media holdout and I never really used it much until getting into the Advanced Running sub while marathon training. I always find the first few days are the hardest in the social media breakup! Good luck!
Substack is like this for me. I delete it constantly and just need to stop completely. I love how you describe knowing the feeling. I know exactly what I’m doing and can see the negative patterns.
I just blocked reddit on my phone today too! I am the same as you. I blocked facebook and instagram years ago. Then reddit sucked me in. I would read /cats, /awww, /taylorswift, /realhousewives, (really? It’s not enough to watch HW?), /crumble (ugh torturing myself with cookies), and subreddits for my career and my religion. Those were probably fine or at least interesting.
I started getting *obsessed* with Reddit back in March, and it took me a few weeks to realize why: it reminds me *so* much of OG Internet, way back in the early to mid-1990s when the web was mostly about bulletin boards and alt forums, where you could meet genuinely interesting, random people and have great conversations with them that dug into topics you never thought other people cared about. It’s easy to engage, easy to drop in and out of, and the text-heavy format encourages less clickbait crap than FB, IG, and X.
But yes, early web inspiration or not, it’s still a *lot* of scrolling, so I removed it from my phone recently and refreshingly haven’t missed it. It’s there, will be there for a long time, it’s not going anywhere, so I know that if I ever feel the itch to return, it’ll be like I never left.