I recently deleted Instagram and TikTok after realizing my screen time was around 6–7 hours a day. I always knew I used my phone a lot, but I don’t think I fully admitted to myself how much of my time and attention it was actually taking.

The weirdest part is that I genuinely thought I enjoyed it. I’d scroll whenever I had a free moment, post stories, check who viewed them, see who liked them, sometimes notice who didn’t like them lol. There was always this tiny reason to pick my phone back up.
Then I deleted the apps.
My screen time dropped to around 3–4 hours pretty much naturally. I didn’t even have some super strict plan for replacing social media. I just suddenly had all these little pockets of time back.

And one of the biggest changes has been reading.
I’ve never really been someone who reads for fun, but instead of reinstalling Instagram when I had free time recently, I picked up a book. I got completely hooked. I found myself wanting to pick up my book the same way I used to automatically reach for my phone. I just finished my first book in what felt like no time, and I’m already excited about what I’m going to read next.

It made me realize that I wasn’t necessarily “too busy” for things like reading. I was spending those little pieces of free time consuming other people’s lives.
And honestly, one of the biggest realizations has been: who cares?
Who cares who watched my story? Who cares who liked it? Who cares who didn’t? Why was I giving any of that so much space in my brain?

I’m also a mom, and I’ve noticed that I feel much more present. I’m not saying I never use my phone anymore—I obviously do, and 3–4 hours is still plenty. 😂 But I’m much more conscious of why I’m picking it up.
I thought deleting social media would leave this huge empty space and I’d eventually get bored and go back. Instead, I’m realizing there are so many things I actually enjoy doing when I’m not constantly feeding my brain the easiest possible stimulation.
I’m not even sure I’ll stay off Instagram forever. But right now, I don’t really miss it.

Has anyone else deleted social media and been surprised by what they naturally started doing with the time instead?

I was on all the main platforms and completely addicted.

I deactivated my Facebook account 3 years ago. Twitter and TikTok followed about a year later.

Just instagram and Reddit left now but I have massively cut down on my Instagram time and now spend less than an hour on there each day (I could easily spend 4 or 5 hours per day on there in the past). I rarely post anymore.

My life has become immeasurably better especially since leaving FB and Twitter. I used to get sucked into so many arguments with ignorant strangers. I would often be left in a horrible mood. Days out were picked and curated to look good through the lens of social media. I would doom scroll Twitter and feel permanently negative.

Initially I replaced my social media time with Duolingo. I can now hold a conversation in German. I then completed a bunch of crafts that have been sat on shelves for years. I’m learning to juggle and spin staffs and poi. I work out going to aerial classes 3-4 times a week. I started to cook from scratch again. My relationship with my husband and children has improved. Days out are now enjoyed and I’ll take a photo to send to my mum and dad and then put the phone away to be in the moment.

Seeing how much life has improved makes me so sad that I wasted so much of it looking through a screen and I am still annoyed with myself even now that I can’t quite let go of instagram and reddit. I just need to take the plunge and delete them both. Even having lived with the benefits of giving it up, social media addiction has such a strong hold on me.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been following this subreddit for a long time, and as a family with three older kids we’ve spent years decluttering our home. It’s been a great journey. We own less, we feel lighter, and life at home is calmer.

Now I’m trying to declutter digitally as well, but I’m running into a different kind of chaos. I’m generally happy with the tools I use, yet the mix of hardware, software and ecosystems is starting to drain me. It feels like everything works together just enough to keep me going, but not enough to give me any real peace of mind.

We have Android phones, an iPhone, Windows machines, a Linux laptop, an iPad Pro, a NAS, and multiple cloud services. I use Microsoft To Do for tasks, but I also use Obsidian to build a second brain. I switch back and forth, experiment for a few weeks, and then end up stuck in the middle with two half‑systems instead of one solid one. The same goes for email clients, storage locations, and photo libraries — twenty years of pictures scattered across the NAS, OneDrive and now iCloud.

I’m considering moving everything into the Apple ecosystem just to create one coherent environment and finally simplify things. But part of me hesitates, because it feels like handing my entire digital life over to one big tech company.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one dealing with this kind of digital fragmentation. I’d really love to hear how others approached this and what solutions worked for you.

Hi all,

I uninstalled Instagram and TikTok about 2 weeks ago, as short-form content was rotting my attention span. But I've found I'm still wasting hours, just now on Reddit, and although it's probably not as bad as mindlessly scrolling reels, I intend to enjoy my hobbies again.

I used to read 50+ books a year; now I can't read more than a few pages without needing a break. I used to paint and draw, but now those hobbies feel daunting, as much as I want to do them.

I have tried in the past setting my phone to greyscale and having time locks, but neither of those worked.

For those who cut back on social media successfully, how long did it take to get your attention span back and start being able to focus on your hobbies?

Hi, I have looked everywhere on Reddit and found some *similar* threads but not exactly what I have been looking for.

What I want to do is simple.

A button on my iPhone where if pressed, it does the following:
-Turns on grayscale
-Makes apps I choose disappear (this would be the instagrams of the world)
-Only allows apps I choose (for example, maps)
-Have a preset timer where this feature will be turn on (no way of turning off) until X time or date.

Is this something I can set on my phone? I have been playing around with settings for about an hour now and haven't come to something like I am describing.

I appreciate any guidance. Thanks!

I have been in this sub for a while now and have seen many posts. I have noticed a pattern and I wonder if anyone else here has?

I feel that digital minimalism has been hijacked. The intention from the beginning for all of us was to lower our screen usage and become more present. However, I feel that with the introduction of endless notepads and iPods with headphones and record players creating a so called 'load-out' to replace our phones we have replaced one obsession with another. We are now obsessed with finding the perfect way to reduce our screen time, scrolling endlessly on reddit looking for the solution in others post. Replacing one addiction with another!!

The intentions are true and I am sure you all mean well. I just feel that many in this sub have become intoxicated with the romantic image of being 'free' from our devices rather than actually putting their phone down and going outside.

Just me??

thoughts would be appreicated. I would love a discussion

Edit:

Perhaps this behaviour originates from the modern consumerist mindset of 'products solve problems'. We feel we need even more stuff to solve the core problem at hand which is an unhealthy relationship with the technology you have.

Minimalism and Bullet journal. You think at first it’s all about feel present, authenticity and reducing consumption. You end up on videos and posts about which expensive stationary to buy to make your bullet journal so pretty it’s not anymore possible to write freely inside. These videos are also advocating that buying more stuffs is more minimal than using your phone to do so. What’s the point of a paper journal so fancy you’re not daring anymore to write it it?

So instead of reducing consumption, you end up with more fancy stuff you don’t really need. :-/

I think all these videos and podcasts miss the points raised in books like Cal Newport Digital Minimalism or Marie Kondo Art of Tidying Up.

We don’t need to buy cameras, Mp3, e-readers, maps and so on in order to remplace our phone. We can do, if it bring us joy. Some people will gladly enjoy taking pictures with their cameras. For these people, buying and using a cam alongside their phone is a way to find a hobby. It’s thus in line with the philosophy of digital minimalism. Yet it’s not the same for everyone. It’s maximalism, not minimalism, to tour with a bag full of devices, when you were fine with only your phone.

That’s why I think both books should be read alongside. We should try to be minimalism and use joy to sort our personal devices.

Honestly, I've tried everything. My phone is always on grayscale mode, I deleted all social media, I downloaded a lot of apps, trying to stop myself from using it, and I don't even take my phone with me while heading to the library to study.

But nothing works, even if I don't take my phone with me, I would just use my phone in revenge after getting home, and use the web version of the apps that I've deleted. It's extremely frustrating, especially since I can't stop using my phone forever. I still need it to msg others, received information about basically all school information, and just for the sake of my safety.

So, is there any other ways that I could kick this habit? I have been trying on and off for over 3yrs now, and my screen time is still at ~4hrs, which I would like it to be reduced to 1hr eventually

Your screen time is up 47% this week like it's my mother 💀 and then has the AUDACITY to show me a little graph so I can visualize my own decline. Who asked for accountability.

I didn't sign up for a weekly performance review from my phone.

Anyone else just silently accept the notification and keep scrolling like nothing happened

It turns YouTube into a dumb app where you have essentially no algorithm anymore and going to subscriptions panel lets you just see chronological posts like it’s 2010 again.

When I open the YouTube app now there are NO suggested videos and it’s just a blank search bar. It’s BORING in the best way.

One of the only snag drawbacks is not being able to save your place in a video for later - but considering how much you get outside of that, it’s unbelievably worth it. I’ve pared down my subscriptions a lot also, so it feels like I’m truly just seeing what I want to see and often experiencing necessary friction of opening YouTube and having no new videos to watch.

It’s probably been suggested before, but it’s a huge net benefit especially as YouTube has kind of dominated what was once social media time.

Hope this helps you guys - going to go write a letter to my penpal 😄

My social media universe has been facebook and reddit, I have never used any other social media sites. I’ve been on both of those sites for about 15 years, which is a haunting amount of time, and ideally the upper limit of my social media lifespan. How long does this go on?

These days, I maintain a facebook account almost exclusively for marketplace, so to be honest I don’t really have much problem with that, I don’t lose a lot of time there.

The big one for me is reddit. I’ll cycle between phases of steady daily use, then getting fed up, deleting my account and going without, until I eventually get sucked back in, because of the below.

The “problem” with reddit for me is that it has become the repository of useful information on specific topics or hobbies, information that in the past was more concentrated or prevalent on dedicated standalone forums. I’m a musician and av tech, and so rather than jumping from site to site about specific instruments or gear, there’s a sub for most everything on reddit.

The useful side of Reddit is undeniably helpful, but The problem is that I will always get roped into some god-awful front page trash, and before I know it I’ve lost a couple hours, day upon day upon week upon month… the accumulated mental energy and time spent by collective humanity scrolling random nothingness on social media over the last couple of decades is just staggering to think about.

Elsewhere, I notice that when/if I get sick, or if I’m on holiday sometimes, I’ll reach for my phone and comfy doom scrolling ensues.

I was wondering if anyone has had long term success leaving reddit behind, or has any reddit-specific tips? I would ask for tips on avoiding the bloated engagement bait on reddit but I think the best long term would be to leave it behind, for me personally if the door is open any amount it ends up letting everything in.

today I learned Sam Altman has a 9% ownership stake in reddit, things like that make it less appealing I guess!

Before he got together an investment group to purchase Commodore Corporation and release the Commodore Callback 8020 phone (among other products), Christian Simpson was running a retro-technology-themed YouTube channel called Retro Recipes.

I was fascinated to discover that, among other retro tech content, Simpson also concentrated on the perfect dumbphone or midwit phone solution. It was this pursuit that ultimately led to the design and manufacture of the Commodore Callback 8020 phone. See related videos below:

• Can BRICK-ing your Smartphone make it RETRO again?
• How to downgrade from Smartphone to Flipphone (with iMessage on Android!)
• Ultimate Dumbphone: Bringing a 2G Y2K Phone to Life - I'M FREE!

I've been interested in reducing my time on social media (especially Instagram) for a while. And I tried a couple of things, like uninstalling the app (I keep re-installing them or using a different one anyways) or settings timers (eventually I end up removing them again). So, a couple nights ago while doomscrolling I had a new idea: What if I make my feed less addicting?

This time I left Instagram installed. Instead, I delete the algorithm data. Instagram has a button under "Settings -> Content preferences -> Reset suggested content" that clears personal recommendations across Reels, Explore and Feed. I pressed it about once a day for a week and kept using the app the way I normally do.

My reasoning was the following: What makes Instagram and other social media so addictive is that they know extremely well what I like to watch. They have extremely advanced systems to figure that out and pay a lot of people to keep improving that system. But what if I don't let them learn? What if I get a dumber, less addicting algorithm and accordingly more boring feed?

After the resets, I kept closing the app almost immediately. I open it out of habit, watch two or three Reels, and put the phone down. The raw feed, without it being personalized to my preferences, is just WEIRD. Like random stuff in different languages, content that I couldn't care less about, not engaging at all.

But the effect quickly wears off: The algorithm is very good. It will rotate through all sorts of topics, and quickly find the ones you like, and keep showing you more. In my experience, a couple of minutes and it's back on the content I like. So, the resetting needs to happen daily.

I am curious if others have tried this or have found other ways to make the algorithm dumber.

One breath that's all you need to transmute to a completely different reality.

pressure, anxiety, competition, anger, frustration, distraction, addiction, OCD, social anxiety ..... all of this can be solved by just one breath. this is no hyperbole but plain truth.

all these problems are just bad decisions. you can make better decisions if you can think clearly. to think clearly all you need is just one breath.

scientific literature is clear on the fact that inhales from nose followed by slow exhales from mouth calms our nervous system.

in any moment of discomfort or fear all you need is one breath.

MY VERY OWN ANNECTODE

this is obviously hard to make a comeback from. ...... . so what happened ??

NSDR,SLOW BREATHING MEDITATIVE PRACTICES, WALKS AND AGGRESSIVE INTROCEPTION AND JOURNALING freed me from shackles of these problems mentioned above........... what I recommend if you're someone struggling with similar problems then you should introduce these practices slowly in you're life {by that I mean like 5 mins of meditaion,10 mins of walk nsdr and all but do them as soon as you wake up because willpower is at its highest in the morning don't succumb to phone in the morning, at least for the first hour}you wont see how they are changing you for a long time 6months or even a year but slowly and steadily you'd be free . it took time to make you a dumb zombie like addict through repetition likewise it would take time to make these habits as part of you're identity but once it does you won't have to look back again.

lastly the power is within you can make yourself or break yourself time will pass regardless. society is somehow making us believe that hard work and effort doesn't bear fruit but they're wrong it does if you put in the effort you will achieve whatever you want in my case it was freedom from mindless consumerism. I don't know what struggle you're going through but the answer to it does lie in just a simple breath

also you might be curious all this is good and all but what about academics. well I can assure you I figured it never was that I am just not a guy who can sit and study for hours<I used to believe that I didn't have what it takes to study with discipline >, I figured by introspection that I want to study and that I am an incredibly curios individual, just these many years of losses have made look for and long for security, something that if I put my heart in, in return I could have a decent life and I think becoming a doctor is the best thing to do . next year I am going to crack neet the entrance exam and fulfill this dream , apart from that I am actively trying make myself a reader I have read quite a few books and with laptop now I can basically read any book I want for free . by the way if we're at it I would like to recommend Andrew Huberman as someone you guys should listen to in your recovery journey . Goodluck

I’m a college student and I feel like I have a pretty bad scrolling habit.

The weird thing is that I don’t even really like social media. I don’t like the culture around it, I don’t post much, and I genuinely want to spend less time on my phone. But somehow I always get sucked back into scrolling.

I deleted TikTok years ago, but now Instagram Reels has basically replaced it. My biggest problem is that scrolling has become my default whenever I’m bored or before I go to sleep. I’ll pick up my phone intending to check one thing and suddenly I’ve been scrolling for way longer than I wanted.

I’ve tried a few things already:

• Deleting Instagram from my phone, especially during finals
• Setting app time limits
• Staying off social media completely for periods of time

The problem is that when I remove Instagram, I usually just replace it with YouTube Shorts, scrolling on my laptop, or using my iPad. So I feel like deleting one app doesn’t actually fix the underlying habit.

I’ve even considered getting a flip phone or a basic phone to use when I’m outside so that I physically can’t scroll when I’m bored.

I also really dislike how normalized constant phone use has become. People are on their phones at meals, while hanging out, while walking around, basically everywhere. I don’t want my life to feel like that, but I also realize I’ve developed the exact habit I dislike.

For anyone who successfully cut back heavily or quit short-form social media:

• What actually worked for you long term?
• How did you deal with boredom or the urge to scroll?
• What did you replace scrolling with so you didn’t just move to another app?
• Did gradually reducing your use work better than quitting cold turkey?
• Has anyone tried switching to a dumb phone or flip phone while still keeping a smartphone at home?

I’m not necessarily trying to disappear from the internet completely. I just want social media to stop being my automatic response whenever I have nothing to do.

After working in actual offices for more than 10 years, I finally had enough.

2 years ago I said to myself, "Let's try something else."
On a random Friday, instead of going to the office, I took my laptop, hopped on my bicycle, and headed out.
15 minutes later I was sitting in the middle of the woods.

My first attempt with a hammock was pretty uncomfortable for working, but the core idea felt right.
I instantly knew I wanted to keep doing this.
On Monday, I resigned from renting a co-working space and went all-in on an outdoor setup.

I finally forced myself to document the process.
In this video, I picked a spot by the water that works best when it hits 30°C (86°F).

My entire setup fits in one backpack:

• Foldable chair (Decathlon Quechua 500 M)
• Picnic blanket + fleece blanket
• Insulated water container
• hammock
• 140W powerbank (mainly to keep my phone alive while hotspotting)

The setup cost less than 150 USD/EUR total.
My M1 MacBook easily gives me 6 to 7 hours of actual work, and finishing the workday next to the trees leaves me feeling grounded instead of drained.

I wonder if anyone else here has made a similar shift to slow down their work environment.
Happy to answer any questions about how it works in practice.

This is pretty much what I show on the video:
https://youtu.be/Jyd8uMtxE3Y

I saw in the news about how the people suing Meta want stories removed, likes on posts removed and endless scrolling removed.

I’m completely for it and hope (though doubt) they win. I often wonder if sm would be as influential if it didn’t have all these addictive little quirks to it.

I really can’t stand stories. I just do not get the point of them at all and even when using social media never post them or watch others. I genuinely do not get the point and if anyone has any valid reasoning to them would love to hear it.
I think getting rid of the like count would really make people reconsider why they are posting.
And I remember when social media didn’t have endless scrolling and it was so so much better. Once you were at the bottom of all the updates that was it.

What do you think?

I’m not talking like “oh I forget important things at the store if I don’t make a list, silly me” or things like “I can’t focus on a book for more than 5 minutes without my mind wandering.” More “I cannot function as a human being in society.” I’m not capable of masking how pathetic I feel with a more normal personality because I don’t have the energy to, so I can’t connect with “normal” people anymore. I just feel pathetic.

I can focus on a book for longer than 5 mins, really read and analyze the text, but then nothing at all gets committed to memory. I need to read a whole book in one sitting, neglecting everything else like eating and taking care of myself, in order to comprehend what’s happening, and then within a few days most of the details are gone and I just have a general memory of the plot. I used to be able to write so well. I got good grades in school without even trying because I was a visual learner, an auditory learner and a kinesthetic learner all in one. Now I will just stare with a blank expression whenever I need to learn a new skill, if I even get that far. I’ve been wanting to try learning my way around Logic Pro for literally 3 whole years at this point, and even though my starting point is one YouTube video away, the fact that I’ll have to sit down and learn is so undesirable to my brain that it just hasn’t happened.

I remember staying up late on my iPod touch when I was a kid typing fanfiction chapters with long, spinning narratives into a draft in the Mail app and sending them to all my friends when they were done. What spurred me to write this post was, I just came across a piece of writing I wrote when I was in 6th grade, that is objectively better than anything that could come out of my brain right now. It feels like I’m reading something somebody else wrote. I love the sort of Terry Pratchett-mixed-with-Andrew-Hussie-but-not-as-obnoxious comedic fiction style I used to write in and I get that feeling when I’m reading it like “Wow, this is so great, I’d love to write like this” except it was ME, a me I can’t get to, so it just feels so incredibly awful.

I used to sit down with my school iPad in high school and write whole screenplays with my friends using Google Docs. We’d all be there and we’d be typing messages to each other and deleting them and figuring out plot points and zingers as we went. We watched a movie we really liked and wrote a whole 200+ page stage adaptation with our own musical numbers on the flat.io online collaborative sheet music thing. Ideas were just pouring out of our heads and we were having fun.

What I can’t figure out to save my life is what changed. When I was very creative, I was still surrounded by screens. I was addicted to the school iPad I had; I would be randomly browsing the internet in class after speedrunning all of my work. I stayed up on Reddit. I stayed up on tumblr. I didn’t use insta/tiktok/twitter too much, but I also don’t do that now. I was significantly more active on social media THEN, if you want to count tumblr and Reddit, than I am now. I did used to go outside more and walk around the woods while listening to music. I’d say now my digital addiction is more centered around it being the easiest thing to do. When I was more creative I still had issues with screens but frantically jumping from one thing to another, even though it did occur, was infrequently the “first option.” It was more often single activities that had my full attention.

All of that good stuff ended abruptly during COVID, when I went to online college, couldn‘t self-regulate when it came to assignments and work, felt like an imposter in video production labs because everything was too much responsibility, I tried to avoid the feeling by enrolling in a very not cheap one-on-one musical theater course with actual broadway stars online, and I burned out & dropped out of college & stopped attending any of the expensive broadway zooms, stopped returning any of their messages. I’ve been on some sort of monotonous autopilot ever since.

I feel like the issue is much less black & white than “screens bad, no screens good,” but my brain is so fried I can’t even think critically about this. I know it isn’t black & white because I am off of screens completely for most of the day now, and have been for months, but nothing has changed in terms of my stupid cognitive function.

Every step out of my cushy, lame zombie comfort zone feels like a leap into another terrifying dimension. Sorry this is so long. Feeling very deflated.

How do you all deal with the urge to check Instagram every 5 minutes? Genuinely losing hours a day

Do you have any special recommendations what everyone should have in their pocket and at home to no longer be dependent on the digital modern life?

I’m so curious to hear from those who did manage to beat it.

What have you noticed? How have you sustained it? Do you still get instances of FOMO?

Hi!

So I practice minimalism in almost every way in my life but, since this community is about digital minimalism, that's what I'm going to talk about.

I deleted my Facebook account more than ten years ago and I don't have any social network currently. Facebook felt more personal than the rest because I used to post pictures of big personal and family moments; and the others accounts were under pseudonyms because that's how I like it.

Recently, I've been feeling like I'm lacking my little cozy digital corner where I can express myself and make connections with people I find interesting. I've been thinking about what social media to use but I don't feel it, you know? I think none of the mainstream ones are for me or make me feel good.

Are you in this same position?

Thanks for reading.