Social media exit strategies: beyond "Delete Account"

 

We're not even a month into 2025 and headlines are assuring us this will be a year of heaving, chaotic shifts. After tech industry execs scrambled to prove fealty to Trump, we're seeing the platforms we've spent the past two decades building our lives on laying their agendas bare. When I first gathered the most alarming headlines of the past few weeks, my gut reaction was to run. Dump the apps! Get offline! Break free while you can! But when I started actioning what I knew needed to be done, I quickly realized my online tangle had grown much more complex than it was a decade ago. 

A few of us have known for a while that this choice would eventually come. I'm not the only person who's been warning against the dangers of social media for as long as it's existed. But even now, as I tap through my friends' Instagram stories and get quick peeks at what they're up to, I feel pangs of grief. I don't want to go.

I'm a creator; an art school grad with an excitable brain and lots to say. I never went to school for communications, but it came naturally enough to me that it evolved into my professional path. I'm also neurodivergent and the social order of online spaces makes more sense to me than the chaos of interpersonal relating. I love writing, I love creating, and I love connecting. I want to share! I want to get people stoked about stuff I'm stoked about!

My online communities were built over two decades through genuine care. I've made real friendships, felt real support, and even briefly held real influence. I built businesses that succeeded largely thanks to those communities. Those same communities carried me through some of the hardest and darkest times of my life. Those connections meant something. They still do. It was never about building a monetisable following or validating myself via "influence". It was the delight of connecting and feeling a sense of belonging. We were raw and real, and for a time it was safe to be. 

And then an ugliness crept in. Social media became a sort of inescapable infinity mirror. Feedback loops of likes, comments, dunks, pile-ons, trolling—all enabled through algorithms intentionally designed to ping dopamine-reward pathways—amplified and distorted our deepest insecurities. Instant gratification, reassurances, superficial validation, and individualist enablement were easier than ever to come by.

Overall I made a choice to keep my "real life" out of my social feeds, with occasional outbursts of oversharing punctuating spans of emotionally-distanced shitposting. And when I did reach out in real ways, it felt good. Real friends saw me and responded, and I've definitely benefited from mutual aid more than once (before we called it that). Again, the care was real.

The machine as it ran for those years wasn't perfect, and it didn't lead us to a great place, but it was more or less "real". We could easily reach real people, and notifications still came from real interactions. 

Then a bigger shift came and I realized that if I stepped away from the machine, it kept running. Like the Westworld intro, where the hands move away from the piano keys and it keeps playing. The notifications kept pinging—from who? No one. You could turn them off, but the settings mysteriously adapted and new notifications inevitably followed. "People you knew" were doing things you needed to know about, except, they weren't. Every notification was bait of some kind. "ENGAGE. ENGAGE."

And at the same time, influencer culture and personality-followings broadcasted an explicit message to "ordinary" users: Your life isn't that special. Your opinions are not important. Shut up. People stopped posting and instead populated their feeds with big accounts, pundits, and personalities. Content that spun out, amplified doom and anxiety, and rarely shared calls to feasible action. Local communities weakened or fractured due to rigid self-interest. Everyone's attention was anywhere else except where it most needed to be.

Honestly how fucking dare these spaces reduce our lives and value to "noise". So many people are carrying around this totally unnecessary variety of shame, "I'm not cool or important. If I was I would have more followers". What happened to just hanging out with pals online? How did the principles of content capitalization seep so deeply into our lives? In the same way we feel guilty for "unproductive" relaxing and having hobbies we don't profit from, we're now made to feel shame for having lives unworthy of engagement? Bullshit. Unacceptable.

So before I get into social media exit strategies I want to dig deeper into empathizing with what I'm guessing are some common social media experiences. We're not weak, lesser, or broken for "needing" social media. As I see it, and based on my conversations with others about it, any of us might approach social media in the following ways:

1. "My life is insignificant, I have nothing to share." *Scroll scroll scroll*

This user is filled with a vague shame for "lurking" and passively consuming content without "contributing". They think they're doing social media wrong. But listen, we know *good* engagement typically runs around 5%, which means you, the unengaged user, are actually in the 95% majority. So take heart, you're not doing anything wrong. The spaces have intentionally deprioritized your needs as a user. That's on them, not you. You've been crowded out by ads, bots, sponsored content, gamed algorithms, and shady privacy policies.

2. "I look at my friends' content but I don't post or share my life and that actually makes me kinda morally superior to the shallowness of social media." *Scroll scroll scroll*

Again, y'all are in the majority, and for the same reasons as above. And as long as you're scrolling, your behavioural data is the bulk of what's being harvested and monetized. You're not doing it better or worse—you're there, and that's all they need.

3. "I post because I like to share but I'm worried people will think I'm a narcissist or I'll say something wrong and people will dump on me so I keep it as chill and as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Also privacy."

Hi, this is me. I don't actually know how many others share this approach, but since I know it exists with me, here it is. I LOVE sharing but am deeply self-conscious people will label me as needy, narcissistic, unhinged, contentious, or any other grumpy judgement that when expressed via comment even once will spiral me into an existential misanthropic/self-loathing tailspin. Our spaces stopped feeling safe a while ago, imo.

4. "I post a lot because I struggle with impulse control and the dopamine is really hard to wean my brain off of."

I have a lot of empathy for ADHD-types who are legitimately more vulnerable to the algorithmic mechanisms of social media. I think this position is more common than "narcissistic" usage, yet calling people narcissists for using social media a lot is kinda the thing? Maybe it's time we eased up on that take. Most of us feel trapped in these spaces. Good for the people who've been able to leave without issue. I know someone who left a few months ago and did so with so much self-righteousness it actually made me want to post more (especially selfies, because he said they were vain. Good luck with your psychology degree, buddy).

5. "I try to be mindful of what I share and I make an effort to limit my screen time."

Nice. Teach your ways to the people around you.

6. "Fuck it I'll share all day every day MEMES PERSONAL SHIT ALL OF IT".

See now I'm conflicted because on the one hand U DO U and on the other hand there might be something worth examining there with a supportive therapist? Also holy god please protect your data and stop posting children who can't consent.

7. "I'm on social media because I am... so tired. Life is demanding and irl socialization is a luxury I no longer have."

Yes. As a solo parent with two kids, working full-time with side-hustles, I feel this. But I can also say that when I took the small step of moving my socials to desktop-only it opened up a TON of mental energy. Once I could string more than a few thoughts together without interruption, I actually found I had some capacity/energy/interest in reaching out and going out— energy I realized I had surrendered to the apps. That one small change has made a huge difference in my mental energy levels.

8. "I share because if I don't become famous someday what is the point of my life."

Okay. But just know the desire for status is a poison and fame is a prison. Just fyi and whatnot.

Okay so if you don't fit into one of those personas that's fine, because guess what there are tons of different people in the world. My point being that we all have relatable experiences within these spaces and overall, the platforms we've spent twenty years on are no longer serving us in any valuable way.

So let's talk about exit strategies. Finally!

How to leave social media

Step 1: Switch off your home's main power breaker. Leave it off forever.

I'm making this joke because the reality is that we exist in an online era. Aka the Information Age aka The Third Industrial Revolution. And eras don't revert. They don't go backwards. In fact we're so solidly immersed in this age that we're already progressing firmly into the Fourth Industrial Revolution aka the Imagination Age, dominated by the AI boom and enhancements in virtual reality. 

So telling people to "get offline" isn't it. At this point telling someone to live offline is about as helpful as telling someone in the 1950s to live without electricity. Choosing an offline life is something people with very few barriers get to do. For the rest of us, the world is online, and we have to be there too.

This is why our current lack of online social spaces free from corporate surveillance is so unacceptable to me. As a society we have a right to exist freely within our communal spaces. And I'm not exaggerating when I say it is imperative that we find or create those spaces as soon as possible. Our *actual freedom* depends on it. Denying this is resigning our future to complete corporate control.

Step 2: Review your privacy settings and make some changes.

Especially on Facebook, which recently updated its Terms of Service in a bad way. 

Here's a great guide re: all the privacy settings you can and should update. Do it yesterday.

Step 3: Review your device's privacy settings and make some changes.

Here's a great guide for iphone and one for Android. Most of them mention turning Siri and other Ai assistants off. Start there, then do whatever else makes sense to you.

Step 4: Install a VPN on your device(s).

Lockdown Privacy was recommended to me by a very smart person, so that's the one I recommend. On my iphone it currently blocks about 1000-7000 data pings per day, mostly from Google and Facebook. And it's worth noting that since I deleted my primary Facebook account two days ago, the majority of the pings are from "graph.facebook.com", a data query API owned by Meta. So there's that.

Step 5: Use social media only via browser or desktop.

This is more to break the habit of constantly checking the apps. As I mentioned above, after I moved my social media onto my desktop, I suddenly had tons more mental space.

Step 6: Start getting reeeaaaaally mindful about what you post.

Until you've found a platform where your data is truly safe from monetization, try to share as little as possible. Remind yourself how it felt when you realized you had two decades of data tangled on a platform owned by shithead oligarchs who were actively trying to exploit you. Let's not do that again.

Step 7: Once the addictive urges have died down and you realize life without those spaces is quite lovely, delete them.

No need to be counted as a user. A better space will surface eventually, and in the meantime you've learned some valuable lessons. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again. (Not sure why I decided to close with a George W Bush reference but there it is). Mission accomplished!

And I'm probably missing a few tips. Feel free to comment and add yours.