Life after social media – A gen Z perspective
03/19/2025
Introduction
It is no secret social media can be incredibly toxic. It has been linked to contributing to disordered eating, negative mental health symptoms, and political polarization to name a few issues. It isn’t all bad though. Many people find accepting communities of like minded individuals, find new information, and some have even found careers as influencers.
As with many things in life, everyone must weigh the risks versus rewards when deciding on engaging with something and social media is no exception. I have seen many opinions online that say people must stop using social media altogether, and while these arguments have merit, they fail to understand the full scope of how ingrained social media is in all of our lives.
Many people rely on social media for work, communication, and staying informed. It isn’t a moral failure that people are unable to stop using social media since it is so deeply ingrained into our culture and social norms. But some individuals may have the freedom to decide if they want to stop using it or not, such as myself.
I have decided that the risks of social media outweigh the rewards for myself and I wish to explore how quitting social media has impacted me so you can see how it might impact you if you decide to quit. I was born in 1999 and grew up alongside web technologies as they evolved, so I believe this perspective is important to share since the social web has always been a part of my life.
Why I quit using social media
I have been on some form of social media for as long as I can remember. I recall using the family computer to play Club Penguin and watch YouTube when I was quite young. I have fond memories of both, but I also remember being exposed to some stuff that no young child should be exposed to.
I was too young for MySpace, but I remember the explosion in popularity of Facebook and Twitter. I never used these but by the time I was in middle school and had my own iPod Touch, I was using iFunny, YouTube, and Instagram. I have fond memories of these but I also had very negative interactions, which is what tends to stick out in my mind.
Being in middle school, I was just beginning to start developing my own identity. And the information I was exposed to on iFunny and YouTube at the time catapulted me into the newly coined alt-right. I was too young to understand it at the time, but people with nefarious intent purposely used these platforms to indoctrinate young people into a dangerous political ideology.
My young mind was molded by hate and I carried this toxicity with me into college. Luckily here I was able to be exposed to new perspectives and I was able to see how my political identity was garbage. This of course led to an identity crisis. By the time this was all happening, I was very active on Instagram and TikTok. Short form content was growing in popularity and I was hooked.
Once again my political identity was being molded. Instead of the alt-right, I was hooked by toxic leftist content on TikTok and YouTube. I was so disgusted by how toxic the right was that I sling shotted myself into the toxic left, but this time this content was so much more addicting to me (which isn’t a surprise the recommendation algorithms are designed to be addictive).
Short form content was like a drug for me. I knew it was a time waster and I kept trying to quit, but I would always come crawling back. This pattern continued into my graduate education. Here I was taught how to critically think. I quickly saw that once again I had been radicalized politically by social media.
I didn’t like how easily social media put me in a rigid box where I only saw specific content. I grew tired of having the same regurgitated content spit back out to me over and over again. I didn’t quit social media at once in some grand statement. I slowly started using it less and less after these realizations.
I would always come back to it, but when I did I grew annoyed quickly. Instead of watching TikTok videos for hours on end, I would get annoyed by seeing the same garbage and close the app after a few minutes. This new pattern quickly led me to stop using social media altogether. No matter which platform I used, such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or Reddit, I felt like I was being exposed to the same trash. And it felt like the people I was exposed to were all angry all of the time.
This didn’t fit me anymore. I knew I was ready to move on and disconnect.
Life after social media
Working remotely in a town I wasn’t from had me quite isolated. This was definitely one of the driving factors of me heavily using social media in my early twenties. After I stopped using social media, I felt lonely. I would continue to try to go back to social media but couldn’t. It just felt too toxic for me.
This loneliness I felt was hard at first. But quickly I realized how much more time it felt like I had. Instead of browsing social media, I was able to explore new hobbies and interests where I found I really enjoy reading. I also re-sparked my interest in video games that I thought I grew out of.
These hobbies are also solitary in nature for the most part. But with video games I was able to reconnect with long time friends I had isolated myself from and I started feeling more social. I then pushed myself out of my comfort zone and joined a community softball league. I was able to get more social interactions that I longed for. I then started volunteering and started to feel like I was a part of a community once again.
I realized from this newfound sense of community that social media was filling a void within me. It is so much easier to feel connected online but these connections often lack the nuance that comes with communication in real life. If I disagreed with someone online, I could write a mean comment and move on. But I can’t do that in the real world. When I disagree with someone there is so much more to lose by being mean that social media doesn’t capture. I also don’t want to bring my community down. I want to try and uplift it.
The online left made me look at those I disagreed with with disdain. But these people aren’t so different from me. At the end of the day we all want the same things, even if we disagree on how to get there or what the causes are. These disagreements are important though. Compromise is important. Social media made me completely lose sight of how to interact with others who differ from me. I found that touching grass and being a part of my community let me put my walls down and let others in, even if I disagreed with them.
Conclusion
I still miss social media. I find myself often instinctively opening my phone to scroll on one of the apps but they are no longer there. I often look through my camera roll at memes I have saved. I miss the Instagram meme pages that I used to follow. But I know being on Instagram means I will eventually meander my way over to Reels and the cycle will begin again because it has happened so many times before.
I don’t think quitting social media is for everyone. Everyone could probably use it a bit less though I imagine. I think moderation is key and understanding that what we’re seeing isn’t a true reflection of reality. I also think that we all need to be more compassionate to one another and be involved in our physical communities if we can.
I am glad I have had these experiences even though they have caused internal strife. I hope others can see my experiences and apply it to their own situations. We are all trying to get by in a strange and confusing world. We should be trying to uplift one another instead of trying to bring each other down, which I believe social media has caused us to do. We all should go outside and interact with our communities and use social media as a tool to enhance these experiences instead of relying on social media for these experiences.
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