Social Media Stole My Time. I Took It Back.

Social media, specifically Instagram, consumed my life. Disconnecting through deletion allowed me to reconnect with reality.

Playa Avellanas, Costa Rica

I did not get social media until I was sixteen years old, and at that time, it was all I wanted. Four years later, I made the decision to delete social media off of my phone. I have my life back, and I have no regrets.

I learned what social media was in fifth grade, the same year I received my first phone. My parents had not planned on getting me a phone as early as the end of elementary school, but after leaving me stranded at Johns Hopkins University’s ballet studios for almost seven hours during a snowstorm without any way to reach them (in their defense, it had been poorly communicated that the event they dropped me off at was cancelled), a phone seemed like a rational measure to ensure my ability to contact them.

The phone was hardly ever in my possession. The only time I received it was for communication in situations where plans were indefinite, such as when I had long rehearsals with ever-changing end times or had to be picked up early from school. The phone was never meant for entertainment or socialization purposes, and my parents made that abundantly clear at the outset. I did not have anything downloaded outside of Apple’s standard apps, and social media was beyond the scope of consideration.

My parents explained the rationale behind their decision to not allow social media. First, they did not want their twelve-year-old daughter posting online, especially with the frighteningly large population of online child predators there are on any given app. Second, they would rather their children be playing outside and using their imaginations than sitting on their phones, scrolling through pictures and videos of other people. And finally, nothing on social media ever truly goes away, which my two younger siblings and I were reminded of whenever social media was brought up in family conversation. Anything could be screenshotted, manipulated, saved, or shared, and this thought alone scared me enough to never want my friends to post anything with me at all, even when there was no way to tag me.

Because of these reasons, the “no social media” rule did not bother me when I first got my phone; I was just grateful to have one at all. And, at the time, there was no real reason for me to feel left out, since only a few friends and classmates of mine had social media. Throughout middle school, however, more girls began downloading apps and creating profiles, and the number of students without social media started to dwindle. By the end of middle school, I was one of a few students who had absolutely no social media at all, and worse, I began to really care.

In the spring of my eighth grade year, life moved online as a result of COVID, and I was no longer surrounded by people who had social media. The fact that I was not physically around anyone who reminded me what I was missing out on resulted in my adoption of a sort of “ignorance is bliss” mentality. Nobody in my immediate family, who I spent virtually all of my time during COVID with, was on social media, therefore I was not around it and had no reason to care about what others were doing or what I was missing out on. Though I was technically online more than I ever had been in my life, I simultaneously felt a peaceful disconnect from the impact of being around other teenagers who had social media.

When I returned to school in-person for my sophomore year of high school, the digital FOMO I had encountered for the first time in eighth grade came back even more intensely than it had initially hit me. It seemed like everyone around me was referencing Snapchat group chats that I could not be on, talking about Instagram posts that I could not see, and wanting to film TikTok dances that I did not know. Prime communication had moved from lunch table and common room conversations to DMs and comment sections, consolidating social connections into online pockets that I could not access. Regardless of the fact that I was back at school in person, I never felt more isolated. My parents’ “no social media” rule frustrated me to no end, and I constantly pushed for just one app so that I might feel included.

Finally, in the spring of my sophomore year, my parents succumbed to my persuasion and I excitedly downloaded Snapchat under a few strict conditions: I would have a thirty minute limit on the app, my parents would have my account password, and I would only add and accept people who I actually knew. At first, these parameters were no burden to me.

Admittedly, Snapchat quickly became addictive. The more time I spent snapping friends, the more connected I felt, and I was swept up in a cycle of social gratification where the more time I spent on the app, the more gregarious I thought I was. Having Snapchat opened a door into an entirely new world which I had not been privy to before downloading social media, and after spending just a couple weeks on the app, I could not imagine how I had been getting by socially without it. Messing around with various filters was amusing, keeping streaks with people I knew became a daily obligation to fulfill, and I soon found that I was hitting my thirty minute limit with no issue. To me, this did not mean anything. It was just thirty minutes out of each day, right?

Snapchat was like my gateway drug into the realm of social media. The summer before my junior year of high school, I was allowed to download Instagram, which introduced a whole host of new problems to my growing social media addiction. My interest in photography and visual aesthetics was corrupted by an unquenchable desire to curate the perfect Instagram profile. I sought a postable picture out of every beautiful scene, every nice outfit, every outing, and every vacation. In each moment of my life, I scoured for something to photograph with the sole intention of posting it to Instagram. But, just like Snapchat, I only had thirty minutes to spend on the app, so my use was restricted to a healthy degree.

Eventually, I began to rebel against the time limits. A collective hour on Instagram and Snapchat was not enough, and I advocated for an hour on each of these apps, promising my parents that the extension of time did not mean I would be spending the full hour on either app. This was most certainly not the case. I reached my time limits day after day, hitting an hour on both of these apps with increasing ease. Thirty minutes out of each day spent on social media swelled into two hours, and I still did not see an issue with my use.

When I graduated from high school and came to Stanford, my parents and I agreed that I was now responsible enough to manage my own social media usage, and the Apple limits on my phone were set as optional, leaving me with free range of both Snapchat and Instagram. It was disastrous.

My patterns of social media use without limits closely mirrored the cycle of addiction that characterizes substance abuse. The initial experimentation phase began when hard limits came off, and I began engaging in risky behavior by incrementally increasing the amount of time I spent on an app, pushing past the amount of time I had previously been allowed. I rapidly developed a sort of tolerance to the amount of time I spent on social media, an amount that I would previously have considered to be unhealthy. Before I knew it, I depended on social media to fill gaps during my day when I had nothing to do or when I was bored, and soon, the addiction was apparent as I spent at least a few hours on social media every single day. Every now and then, I would crack down on my own behavior and focus on limiting myself, but eventually I would relapse and fall down the doomscrolling rabbit hole after only a few days of being responsible with my app use.

In the height of my social media addiction, every moment became something I sought to aestheticize and post.

This cycle continued throughout my freshman year of college and it affected a number of aspects of my life. I would open Instagram on impulse, going straight to reels, and after a good twenty to thirty minutes of scrolling, it would hit me that I had opened my phone for some other purpose that I could no longer remember. My sole form of communication with many people in my life who were not geographically close by was no longer calling or texting them, but rather sending posts, reels, and snaps to them. I lived to post photos to social media, consequently ruining many of those moments for myself, and I cared immensely about the reactions I received from people who followed me. I was so addicted that I did not even bother trying to give up social media for Lent; I considered it impossible to deactivate my Instagram account for a week, let alone for forty days.

At the end of my freshman year, I eased off of Snapchat almost entirely. My desire to maintain streaks and keep up “friendships” with people I had not seen or had a conversation with for almost a year ceased. However, my obsession with Instagram, more specifically with maintaining an aesthetic profile that I had attached some degree of self-worth to, continued.

I seemed unable to recognize technology-addicted behavior in myself, but I was easily able to detect it as an issue for other people. I saw college students who were chronically on Instagram, obsessing over who was viewing their stories and liking their photos, going so far as to hunt through their own following for people who did not follow them back to maintain a “good ratio.” I observed one of my friends be consumed by Snapchat, bragging about her screentime on the app nearly reaching double digits as she was unable to put her phone down during a coffee outing.

During winter break, I took a step back and reconsidered my own habits and inclinations after watching friend after friend lose themselves in their online presences. Was I like this, too? I wondered. My fixation on the perfect angles, backdrops, and photos was affecting not only me, but also those around me, especially my family, who I irritated in endless requests for them to serve as my personal, unpaid photographers. I prided myself on erasing Snapchat, but Instagram was a legitimate issue for me as I heavily depended on it to maintain connectivity, entertainment, and a warped portrayal of self.

I had replaced the prioritization of genuine human connection with a digital façade.

Finally self-aware, I snapped, resolving to take matters into my own hands without looking back. I reinstated hard app limits on social media that blocked me from further use when time was up, and while the limits frustrated me at times, they forced me to not reach for my phone out of an anxious habit, or to entertain myself the second I was bored. Slowly but surely, I felt a shift in the way I valued my time and interactions with other people, and over the stretch of a month, technology began to bother me as I sought out authentic, unfeigned connections.

The most challenging part of my experience was pulling away from what initially drew me to social media in the first place: the feeling of being disconnected from other people. After I returned to campus following winter break, I had not yet fully gotten rid of my social media. My use was at an all time low, but I desired to be done with it for good. However, what was keeping me tethered to it was losing contact with people who I followed and who followed me.

That was when I found Reconnect Stanford. It was refreshing to be surrounded by people who also were trying to get off of social media in some capacity, and it was even more inspirational to see other college students who had succeeded at what I was striving to do. Stories, advice, and words of encouragement were exchanged, and what once felt like a distant ambition had evolved into a realistic, attainable objective. Former temptations to open Instagram and scroll had metamorphosed into an unshakable impulse to purge all of the social media from my phone.

Shortly after meeting the Reconnect Stanford team, I made the executive decision to delete my social media accounts. I deleted Snapchat for good and deactivated my Instagram account, thinking that after a couple weeks of being disconnected, I may be inclined to redownload the app. Contrary to what I originally believed would happen, my time without Instagram erased a plethora of burdens on my daily life. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders when I no longer felt the pressure to take and post the perfect photos. Without social media connecting me to thousands of people I was acquainted or mutuals with, I focused on the people who truly mattered to me, whose friendships did not depend on likes and comments. I regained precious time that I had been wasting on social media, and I redirected my energy towards doing small activities I have always enjoyed, like going for walks listening to music or picking up a new book to read.

In the time I regained after deleting social media, I started finding beautiful locations to read, without the pressure to post about it.

For anyone reading this who still feels attached to their social media, I urge you to do something that might be challenging at first, but I promise will get easier with time. When you unlock your phone and open social media, whether it be Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or some other app, make the conscious decision to close out of it and do something meaningful with your time, no matter how small. There are better things you could be doing with the hour that you may spend scrolling, tapping through stories, or sending snaps, whether that be meeting a friend you have not talked to in a while, going to the gym or exercising outside, taking time to yourself to go look at art, or beginning a creative project.

Wasting just one hour a day on social media adds up to over two weeks by the end of the year, and if we are being honest, most of us are spending way more than an hour online. Take a second to think about it. Twenty years from now, would you regret the time you wasted, the opportunities that you missed, or the ways in which you could have connected with the real world instead of viewing it through a screen? Today, I can confidently say that I feel happier and more free than ever before without social media. My life is now reminiscent of the blissful years I spent offline before high school. Disconnect from social media to whatever extent you determine is right for you, live with intention and purpose, and regain your time for a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

Founded in 2025, Reconnect Stanford is a Stanford student-led movement & non-profit dedicated to helping people step away from addictive platforms and toward meaningful connection, time, and attention. We build community around social media sobriety through stories, support for students who delete, peer-to-peer mentorship with middle and high schoolers, and events where peers disconnect together.

To learn more and support our cause, visit reconnectstanford.org. To submit a guest piece, email reconnectstanford@gmail.com.

About the author: Raised in Maryland, Sloane Wehman is a second-year pre-law philosophy student at Stanford University. She deleted her social media accounts in 2026.