Why I Don’t Have (Most) Social Media

Every once in a while someone asks why they can’t find me on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X. The short answer is simple: I’m happier without them.

I’ve had accounts on all three. I’ve deleted them, come back, deleted them again, and at times convinced myself I needed them for work. I don’t. More than that, I’ve found that I just feel better when I’m not using them.

I’m not saying you need to delete your accounts. I’m not trying to start a movement. I don’t think using Facebook makes you a bad person. I don’t even think social media is all bad. I’ve met people online who became real friends. I’ve found music, art, games, and ideas I never would have found without the social web.

I just don’t think the modern social media machine is good for me. And it turns out there’s quite a bit of evidence that I’m not alone.

I feel better without it

This is really the only reason I need. I stopped using social media and I felt better. That’s enough.

But because this is the internet and we’re all allowed to demand citations from each other now, there are receipts.

A 2020 randomized experiment paid people to deactivate Facebook for four weeks. The people who left Facebook spent more time doing things offline and more time with friends and family. They became less politically polarized. They also reported better well-being.

There was another large randomized experiment published as an NBER working paper in 2025. Researchers had people deactivate Facebook or Instagram for six weeks. Leaving Facebook improved a combined measure of happiness, depression, and anxiety. Leaving Instagram had a smaller positive effect.

That’s interesting to me because those are experiments. Researchers didn’t just ask sad people how much they use Facebook. They actually got people to stop using it and watched what happened.

The broader research isn’t as clean. Social media affects different people in different ways. There isn’t good evidence that spending exactly X hours on Instagram will make you exactly Y percent more miserable. But the pattern isn’t great.

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis looked at 182 studies covering more than 1.1 million people. It found links between social media use and depression and anxiety. Problematic social media use was also linked with sleep problems and lower well-being. Another 2024 meta-analysis looked at 209 studies with more than 250,000 people and found links between problematic social media use and several forms of anxiety, including social anxiety and fear of missing out. There’s even research aimed just at Instagram, where problematic use has been linked with depression, anxiety, and worse well-being.

Again, none of that means social media makes every person miserable. It does mean I’m not going to dismiss the fact that I feel better when I don’t use it.

These things are built to keep me there

This is probably my bigger problem with modern social media. The goal is not for me to check Facebook, see what my friends are doing, and leave. The goal is for me to stay. Scroll, watch, click, react, scroll some more, get a notification, come back.

There is no natural end. I don’t finish Facebook. There are no end credits on Instagram. X never says, “Well, Garrett, that’s everything. Go do something else.” Infinite scroll is called infinite scroll for a reason.

This isn’t just me being dramatic about app design. In July 2026, the European Commission preliminarily found Facebook and Instagram in breach of the Digital Services Act because of their addictive design.

The features it called out were not obscure: infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and personalized recommendations. You know. Social media.

The Commission said Meta had not done enough to deal with the risks those systems can pose to the mental and physical health of users, including kids and vulnerable adults. That case isn’t a final ruling as I write this. It’s a preliminary finding. Still, I find it kind of wild that “maybe the machine designed to make you scroll forever isn’t good for you” is now a serious government case and not just something your mom says at dinner.

I don’t trust the companies running it

This is the other big one. Facebook has not exactly earned my trust.

In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion FTC penalty. The FTC said Facebook violated an earlier privacy order and deceived users about how much control they had over their personal data.

Five billion dollars is a lot of “oops.”

That same year, the SEC charged Facebook with misleading investors about the misuse of user data. Facebook knew Cambridge Analytica had misused Facebook user data, yet the company kept talking to investors about that kind of misuse as if it were a thing that might happen.

It had already happened.

Facebook paid another $100 million to settle that case.

Twitter has its own history. In 2022, the FTC said Twitter had asked users for phone numbers and email addresses for account security, then used that data to help advertisers target those same users. Twitter paid a $150 million penalty.

So, no, I’m not very interested in giving these companies more of my personal data than I need to.

Then there’s what the systems actually spread

This is where things get much darker.

Facebook commissioned an independent review of its role in Myanmar. Facebook itself published the findings in 2018 and admitted it had not done enough to stop its platform from being used to spread division and incite real-world violence.

Later, Amnesty International investigated Meta’s role in the violence against the Rohingya. Amnesty found that Facebook’s algorithms amplified hate and content that pushed violence and discrimination against the Rohingya. It concluded that Meta had substantially contributed to the harm they suffered.

We’re not talking about people being mean in Facebook comments here. People died. People were raped. Villages were burned. Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes.

Facebook didn’t cause the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The people who carried it out are responsible for it. But a system built to find and spread engaging content helped pour fuel on a very real fire.

And Myanmar wasn’t the end of the story. In 2023, Amnesty published another investigation into Facebook’s role in Ethiopia. It found that Facebook’s systems amplified harmful content aimed at the Tigrayan community during the war in northern Ethiopia.

At some point I have to ask myself: Why do I want to participate in this machine?

Instagram isn’t the harmless one

I think Instagram gets a pass sometimes because it feels less awful than Facebook or X. It’s pictures. Art, food, vacations, cats. I like all of those things.

But Instagram is still Meta. It still runs on many of the same ideas. Keep looking. Keep scrolling. Compare your life to everybody else’s highlight reel. Here’s another person who is richer, hotter, more successful, better dressed, on a better vacation, with a nicer house than you.

This becomes more worrying when kids are involved. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health.

The conclusion wasn’t “social media is proven to destroy kids’ brains.” Science rarely gives us something that simple. The conclusion was that we cannot say social media is sufficiently safe for children and teens.

That’s a much more careful statement. It’s also not a very comforting one.

X somehow made Twitter worse

I used to like Twitter. There was a point when it felt like a weird global chat room. I met interesting people. I found things I cared about. It was fun.

It also became a place where I could watch complete strangers scream at each other all day about things that none of them could do anything about. Twitter always had problems. X didn’t invent them. In fact, Twitter’s $150 million privacy settlement happened before Elon Musk bought it.

But I don’t see much reason to go back now.

In 2025, the European Commission fined X €120 million for breaking transparency rules under the Digital Services Act. Among other things, the Commission found that X’s blue checkmark system was deceptive.

Which is kind of amazing. Twitter took the symbol that used to mean, “We checked and this person is who they say they are,” turned it into, “This person gave us money,” and kept the same symbol.

The Commission also found problems with X’s ad transparency and access to data for researchers. None of this makes me think, “You know what I need back in my life? Twitter.”

And I don’t need it for marketing

This was the thing that kept pulling me back. I’m a musician. I make software. I write. I run projects. I have things I want people to know about. For years, the advice was obvious: you need social media.

Do I?

I’m not sure I do.

I have this website. I have email. I can write things here and people can link to them. I can talk to people. I can show up in communities I actually care about. I can make things worth sharing instead of spending half my life trying to convince an algorithm to share them for me.

Most of all, I own this website. Facebook can’t change the algorithm tomorrow and cut my reach. Instagram can’t decide that photos are out and short videos are in. Twitter can’t get bought and turned into something I don’t want to use.

If you want to hear from me, you can subscribe to my email list. You asked to hear from me. I can send you something. You get it.

What a concept.

I’d much rather build that than spend years collecting “followers” I don’t actually have any way to reach.

I still like the internet

This is the part I really want to be clear about: I love the internet. I don’t want to get rid of it.

I like websites, blogs, forums, email, Wikipedia, RSS, and weird little sites made by one person who is way too into one very specific thing. I like finding some page that hasn’t been updated since 2007 and somehow has the exact answer I need.

I like online communities. I like talking to people online. I like that somebody on the other side of the planet can make something tonight and I can see it tomorrow.

I don’t want less internet. I want an internet I can leave.

There was a time when being Away was an actual state of being. You got up from the computer. You went somewhere. The internet stayed there.

Now we carry an infinite feed of news, ads, arguments, outrage, memes, strangers, brands, politics, disasters, and people having better vacations than us in our pockets everywhere we go. Every boring moment can be filled. The line at the grocery store. A commercial break. A trip to the bathroom. Five minutes waiting for someone. Every quiet moment.

I don’t think that’s good for me.

Maybe it’s fine for you. I’m not here to tell you to delete Facebook. I’m not trying to convince you that Instagram is ruining your life. I’m definitely not starting a digital detox course.

I just ran the experiment on myself. I deleted most of my social media, and I didn’t lose my friends. My career didn’t disappear. My businesses didn’t collapse. I didn’t become a hermit. I still use the internet constantly.

I just feel better.

So I’m probably not coming back.