It’s been a week since I decided to step away from social media, and I can’t lie—the first few days were strange. My fingers would hover over my phone, instinctively searching for apps that weren’t even there anymore. It was like my body was reaching for something familiar, something comforting, but also, something that had quietly been draining me—and as hard as it was to admit: it was an addiction.
It shocked me to see just how deeply ingrained this habit was. I wasn’t just checking social media—I was fully plugged into it. And unplugging myself from it felt… unsettling and brought up many fears for me. It felt like I was walking away from a safety net that once held me when I needed it most.
It also doesn’t help that we’re constantly being told that we need these platforms to succeed. That without them, our businesses, our dreams, or our own voice won’t survive. But now being off the apps for a bit, I’m beginning to really see through this consumeristic lie.
And here’s another thing, most of us aren’t creating for the algorithms. We’re creating for something deeper—for the chance to express the raw, unpolished, and messy truths of who we are.
And yet, somewhere along the way, that creative expression gets swallowed up by the noise. The likes. The brain-rot short-form content and the endless game of trying to crack the algorithm. So what happens? We start to mold ourselves to fit into a system that was never designed for the kind of creative magic we hold.
But this week something started to change. Without the incessant stream of noise from other people’s curated lives, I started to notice something else—something quieter, but infinitely more important. My own creative voice coming through.
In this void, I’m finding space I didn’t even know I needed. Space to think, to feel, to dream—to ask myself what I really want to create—not for metrics or algorithms—but for the joy of creating my own authentic expression.
And you know what? I’m excited. Excited to see what happens when my mind isn’t filled with everyone else’s highlights. Excited to rediscover the quiet pull of my own ideas, my intuition. And most of all, I’m excited to find new ways to fill the time I used to spend doom scrolling.
I know I’m about to make a bold statement while saying this but social media doesn’t define us. It doesn’t hold the key to our success, our worth, or the impact we’re here to make. We do.
And maybe that’s the scariest part of all—learning to trust that what’s inside of us is enough. That we don’t need the noise, the approval, or the constant validation to create something beautiful or meaningful OR to leave our own legacy behind.
So if you’ve been feeling the pull to step back, to unplug and to tune out the noise, maybe this is your sign. Not because it’s easy—it’s not. But because in that quiet, you might just hear the whisper of a voice that matters most: your own.
