i quit social media for 18 months. here's what actually happened.

You know the drill.

You open Instagram to check one message. Two hours later, you’ve watched 47+ reels and hate yourself.

This isn’t a willpower problem. It’s a design problem.

Your brain evolved for 150-person tribes. Social media exploits that wiring.

Let’s talk.

1/ why did i disappear?

Storytime.

I wanted to lose weight and have a sculpted body by May 2021, which led me to create a workout routine that I am consistent with, alongside diet, and I was determined.

I decide to start a new sleep schedule: wake at 7 and go to bed at 11. I wake up for the first three days at 7 while absolutely neglecting when I sleep, thus leading to a sleep debt crisis.

I keep using my phone even until the minute before I go to bed, seeing all these fitness influencers and their workouts. The blue light from that kept me wide awake well into an hour or two after I go to bed.

This crashed my metabolism and led to poor sleep → leading to weight gain (no matter how much you workout) → leading to an increase in estrogen which aids in producing more fat cells in the body → making you gain more fat.

The fourth day of this was the crashing point.

These 3 days of “supposed” sleep routine fixing led me to a downward spiral of worse health for more than a week. I was unable to feel rested, stayed hungry all the time, gained weight (about 2 kilograms) which I lost over the past few months, and constantly hated myself seeing people get what they wanted while I suffered here.

It took me about 10 days to get back to normal and not hate myself.

Sleep debt is something that eats you away in stealth while you neglect your sleep in your teens and 20s, and really comes to haunt you at your 30s. My dad has been suffering from this for a while, but I only have come to realize this very recently.

No, sleeping extra in the weekends does not count.

And boy, if you’re trying to lose weight, not sleeping properly will give you minimal results, even if you go to the gym 6 hours a day and eat nothing except protein.

Speaking from personal experience.

Right now, if you’re still young, you won’t feel anything except the tiredness after not sleeping for a whole night.

the 16-hour cage

I, just like many of you, have personally suffered with social media a lot, and COVID was THE time for all of this to happen.

16+ hour screen times was nothing out of the ordinary.

I thought to myself, “What is genuinely the point of consuming content that I don’t care about, which does not benefit me in any way (because I didn’t make the effort to actually implement what I was seeing) and following people and pages who I barely interacted with?”

This was even people that were very close to me (or so I thought), but I also didn’t get enough time to meet up or even talk to them IRL.

I was quick to realize that I had to change my lifestyle soon, otherwise it would spiral downwards rapidly.

Another thing that interested me was how many would actually care reaching out to me if I went away, because no one really messaged me first, I was the one who initiated conversations most of the time (very pick-me behaviour, I know).

This would be a second experiment for rooting off the ones who weren’t worth it.

the setup

Thus, I set out an experiment to be without social media in 2021, which I initially planned to conduct for a year, and it was fascinating — both the results and the process.

It ended up being a 18-month journey which I’m glad about.

I proceeded to quit Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and VK.

I just used WhatsApp, Telegram (I left recently, see why[!!!]) and the occasional YouTube, without an account.

Would I give in and reinstall them back? Would this be a mistake? Or would I never want to return again?

These were some of the questions that were on my mind 24/7 before I actually committed to it.

–

I’ll start with this beautiful post I found in Reddit.

–

I get it now

I had a realisation. It may be trivial for you guys. And maybe you have heard it many times. And, so have I. But, realising something is different than just reading about it. I finally understood.

We used to live in small communities. The opinion of the other members of the community were very important to us. What they think about us. Our status within the community. And negative opinions were more important, since a potential enemy could harm us. And also we needed to be very in accordance with the rules of the tribe. Being seen as immoral or untrustworthy may have resulted in expulsion from the tribe.

This is where the social media tricks us. It tricks us to believe that the people on these apps are part of our “tribe”. Therefore, we need to know what they think about us. And if they think anything bad about us, we need to fix it. Or keep that information in mind for the future. Hence, doomscrolling. Social media pulls us away from our physical reality and puts us in a fake mental picture of the world. In this world, our friends are fake and so are our enemies. Fear is what keeps this world running. You might think it is cat videos or funny vlogs. But, it is mostly some kind of fear. Fear makes us addicted to this world, and forget our real physical world.

If I look at my life objectively, I don’t have much problems compared to others. But, when I go to social media, it feels like the world is going to end and I need to prepare for it. And that is what keeps me hooked. Because, I need to know the problems in order to prepare for them. And social media provides me those problems on a silver platter, even though in reality I don’t have those problems. Toxicity is the very nature of social media like the heat is the nature of fire.

The current social media designs your trajectory in a way that in order to feel accepted, or respected you must have a huge following, lots of likes and comments, and this constant source of validation from complete strangers.

The human brain was not built for this amount of exposure. Nor has it evolved to go out the Dunbar’s number.

Social media tricks you into thinking 10,000 strangers are your tribe.

As a species, negative opinions matter more to us than positive ones. Ever realise why negativity sticks longer than positivity? It’s a biological thing.

It’s basic threat detection from our evolutionary past. We needed tribal approval to survive and make correct decisions, and algorithms exploit this ancient wiring, making us feel an immense amount of pressure when we don’t get that validation.

Our ancestors didn’t have this much of a hyper-stimulated and hyper-aware generation like ours.

the three mechanisms of control

Attention Engineering

The mind, body and spirit you’re losing to algorithms with each day is unprecedented.

Attention engineering is a branch of study that solely focuses on how to keep you hooked to your phone or a certain social media platform; the same principle that is used to keep people hooked to casinos at Las Vegas.

Social media and video services are not the only manipulators of attention engineering. Even the news is jumping on the same bandwagon.

Most media sources have become ridden with biased, emotional, addictive coverage that elates or enrages its audience.

It is easy to imagine the future of attention engineering. Any digitized screen that can post content has the ability to abuse human psychology.

Attention engineering is probably the most effective scam of this century. It robs people of quality time, quality information, and quality thought, and it is nearly impossible to resist. These methods attack our psyche at the most primitive levels. There is no fix except to stop using these apps, websites, and news sources.

Tristan Harris is a former employee at Google who talks about this and how social media sites deceive you using their algorithms. Check it out here.

Algorithms are training your attention span as we speak, and it’s getting lower and lower by the day.

Thanks for nothing, TikTok.

If you ever think the next time how did so much time go to waste when you used Instagram or Twitter the last time, remember, they want you to sit there wasting all your hours, because that makes them revenue.

Social media is designed to keep you on halt, to keep you scrolling as much as these companies want for maximum retention, which does not have an end. It is designed in such a way that it seems almost life-saving to you and the most crucial, useful tool out there, but it is a curse in the form of a blessing.

IF, you are not paying attention.

The Attention Cage

I find modern social media very distracting.

Very diluted from the quality of thought, designed to distract people for the most amount of profit, even if its philosophy wasn’t to be like this.

This blog is made primarily to avoid the social algorithm.

You should let no algorithm control you, your thoughts or your words. Then again, it’s kind of impossible to live without an algorithm IF you are on modern social media to broadcast your thoughts, so we ought to find a balance.

Substack has the perfect balance so far. I admire how this platform is so peaceful. No kind of rush, just like a smooth, relaxing river flowing.

This is what social media should have been all along.

Algorithms can be great — they show you what you like and support, but they also can get bad very quickly by closing you off to a shortened viewpoint, making you a shallow person with a narrow mindset as an end result.

I did not want that to happen, and especially get controlled by an algorithm that was not designed for my benefit, but for maximum retention time in the platform.

I recall mentioning using YouTube at the start of this piece.

You could say YouTube counts as social media, but once you turn off recommendations, or use it without an account, it quickly becomes non-addictive, and definitely not social media like, which is amazing.

For this to become effective however, I had to clear out my browser history every few days so that I wasn’t catered things according to my taste — thus freeing me from the shackles of the algorithm.

The Comparison Engine

The same TikTok trends, the same dances, the same things said over and over.. And all of this is a repetitive loop of a few weeks or more on end.

The more this becomes commonplace in modern social media, the faker it is going to get, albeit it already is riddled with synthetic profiles and a deliberately showcased life full of people who probably are miserable within themselves.

I say this because modern social media makes us constantly compare ourselves to one another. While it might be a good reminder as to what we can achieve, it has the tendency to quickly spiral towards a negative feedback loop, killing most of your intrinsic motivations and downplaying on your achievements.

You cannot compare your behind-the-scenes with someone’s highlight reels.

I fell off multiple times from my diet plans, my workout routines, heck, even my sleep schedule, which did not do me any good both in the short and long term.

It might be something about me that has made me actively not compare myself to anybody and get into the death spiral of comparison, I mustn’t boast.

But it’s what makes social media so dangerous, because most people get their wall curated with posts that scream perfection from other people, not authenticity.

And that’s because people do and follow what they see getting popular. Not what’s good for them. Nor what’s authentic to them.

That’s where our psychology tricks us.

As a Muslim, the concept of the evil eye is very prevalent in Islam, and we’re specifically instructed not to show off the things we are proud of — our achievements, our successes etc.

The influence of an evil eye is a fact; if anything would precede the destiny, it would be the influence of an evil eye, and when you are asked to take bath (as a cure) from the influence of it, you should take bath. (Sahih Muslim 2188)

This is one of the reasons I particularly refrain from posting much of myself online, and not oiling the social media cog of posting the same generic stuff about “look-at-how-perfect-my-life-is-and-yours-is-not”.

It also acts as a status signal for many to others. That isn’t healthy behaviour to me. What do you think?

–

3/ my disappearance

If you wanted to know the real me from when I was doing this experiment and why I left social media, this article pretty much summarizes all of it.

weeks 1-4, withdrawal

Week 1 was unreal.

I was feeling alive during the day, as if I was free from every notification I had to check. I read books, I did all the chores around the house, I had the energy to do everything and more.

But when evenings hit, my urge creeped up faster than the Twin Towers crashing.

Are my friends going on a trip tomorrow? Did Charlie Puth post a new music snippet yesterday? Is there a new reform made by the Senate this week?

The most absurd of thoughts were coming into my mind all this while. This is pure FOMO in action.

Did I mention phantom notifications?

My phone ringing and vibrating every two minutes: me checking my phone each time to see there was quite literally NOTHING.

Just a blank notification slate, just as empty how I felt back then.

Boredom was at it’s peak. So much so, that I actually found opening and closing the fridge door while seeing when it’s light was turning off entertaining.

It was during this week, that I decided to tell my family and my extended set of family members about this experiment that I was carrying out.

My parents were absolutely disappointed knowing this, while I was expecting a completely different reaction from them.

I used to be an avid phone user in my younger years. 8-10 hours of gaming and social media daily pissed my parents often, but I was on my phone anyway. This social media detox definitely would have made their day.

“You’ll become an anti-social critter!”

Those were the exact words they said.

At this moment, I felt like literally giving up.

I was a very introverted individual before and during COVID, and I always had this side of me that felt shy and incapable of being a social person, thus leading to a feeling of shame at most times. I used to be insecure about myself regarding this.

My parents saying those words struck me badly in my psyche.

But I didn’t budge. I kept going on with the experiment. Months went on.

You might be curious what I replaced gaming and social media with.

I had plenty of chores waiting in my room to be done.

Books to read, things to clear out, writing down random ideas from my head on my notebook, tidying up EVERYTHING in the room, donating clothes that I didn’t wear anymore, what not.

From this, I got to learn another thing, “When a person does not have problems, he invents his own.”

I was starting to find stuff to do when I never encountered them before in the first place.

Silly stuff like coloring my incomplete children’s color books, ranking between my notebooks of which one was the most expensive one, sorting between old plastic bottles and checking which one was newest.

It’s funny of how I spent some of my time on childish stuff like this. But I also started spending more time with my family.

Cooking and baking with Maa, spending more time with my little brother, going out gardening with Pappa, playing more with my cousins at home. It was honestly peaceful. I had never connected with my family members on that level before.

That truly changed how my relationship with them turned out right now. I’m really grateful. Alhamdulillah.

months 6-18, the shift

My sleep started to be much more stable than what they were supposed to be. I slept pretty much always on time, and woke up even later. You could say I slept the most during this experimentation period.

I realized I was able to read books for longer without feeling bored, without having the urge to reach for my phone to check what’s going on in the world. The urge to actually do real world stuff increased.

Did I ever imagine talking to people, or at least attempting to do so, in social and even family events without reaching out for my phone? Never in my lifetime.

And exactly how many people reached out to me during this whole period? I can literally count them on one hand.

It used to be a big deal to me about how many followers I had on Instagram (about 200 at the time) and I obsessed at posting the best pictures and literally paint my Instagram canvas with perfection.

Literally no one cared.

This experiment just proved that.

Since this was COVID, group outings and hangouts weren’t really commonplace, but small gatherings were still common. At least where I lived. Such meetups barely happened, but every time I was invited, I had the genuine desire to go.

Bear in mind, I used to be an introvert back then. This to me was completely surprising. I used to avoid all social connections, and now social media. Did the experiment just flip a switch in me to finally connect with people?

I would generally get asked at times, “Hey, can I have your Facebook/Instagram?” I would instantly be feeling out of loop. A dread in me saying, “Oh, I’m not like them.”

As more time passed, it became less awkward for me to say, “I don’t use social media.”

Some people were really curious in reality, asking me, “Oh, why don’t you use social media?”

I used to tell them all about my experiment and they would glamour at my move. They said that they couldn’t have fathomed to pull the cord like I did, and were impressed that I did so. What’s fun is that I had genuine conversations, and never small talk with these people. I never got to contact them later on, but I hope all of them are doing well. Maybe someone is reading this right now!

Feeling lonely is another common feeling that I can attribute to this experiment. But once enough time passes by, you will realize this is nothing but a construct in your own mind. You never will feel truly lonely. It’s just a void you need to fill and replace with more meaningful things. Find meaning.

I used to think I felt lonely. But it was just that I never really had anything worthwhile to do with my time. Doomscrolling was replaced with physical book scrolling. Shallow snaps and chats replaced with real conversations, getting to know each other on a deeper level. Video games replaced with actual physical games. Digital people replaced with real people.

What’s insightful is that I even started having calmer conversations, and didn’t have this feeling of constant urgency running around inside of me back when I was addicted to social media.

It’s something I would want to feel again, live again.

A lot of my bad habits returned very soon after I ended the experiment. But I was aware enough to bring the change in myself to not revert to the old Kaifi. One habit that stuck was focusing completely on one task at a time. Laser focus. That’s some game-changing stuff when you actually implement it.

My depth of the relationships with people who stayed just flourished from then onwards. We’re all busy with our own lives now, but they’re just a phone call away from a meetup, a world tour or anything in between.

Do you realize how quickly time passes with every single day? It’s like you can’t even breathe properly and you see the day ending with a snap, in an instant. The days I spent during this whole time period were very slow, controlled. It took a lifetime (sometimes quite literally) for a whole day to finish. I loved how I had control over my time.

Albeit I had very less responsibilities at the time, it still felt like I could do SO MUCH in one day. It’s unbelievable with the amount of bliss I was feeling with every single day. Yet, episodes of lamenting for the social media life occurred from time to time. The positives in this case outweighed the negatives. The peace and tranquility I got from this, as if I was in a state of nirvana, was unmatched.

The liberating feeling of not having to track any likes or comments I got on my newest post, and just doing only what mattered is something you cannot replicate until you do this experiment yourself.

Maybe I was missing out on a few events, a boatload of memes and some updates from people or celebrities I liked. I missed that from time to time, but it didn’t feel as overwhelming or life-ruining as I thought it would feel like.

Imagine living in a state of flow, with nothing being able to distract you or disrupt your mood. A state where all you felt was a controlled calmness.

That’s exactly how I felt on the later half of this no social media sprint. But something was missing—and it wasn’t FOMO.

4/ the return of @kaifisahil

After a year and a half of experimentation, I returned back to social media in late 2022. For a couple of reasons.

Not that I didn’t like this isolation, nor the fact that FOMO got the best of me. You wouldn’t see me writing about this if I didn’t decide to return.

See, I could’ve spent the rest of my life like this, without any social media, without any kind of digital interaction with people.

But I saw the value in telling my story to others. I see myself as someone who can bring a force of good, even if it is small. It would’ve been kind of weird to not be on social media while constantly researching about tech and social media.

I am here to bring a resistance. A resistance of a mindful social presence.

how i chose what i chose

I tried multiple social media platforms again, but this time, focusing on only platforms that I cared about and those that stood with my principles. I hand-picked multiple sites, tested them one by one, and stuck with what stayed.

I needed to first figure out what I wanted from my returning. What do I want out of social media? I have a lot of quirks. So bear with me for a moment.

I care about a controlled, meaningful presence and avoid overexposure to several other platforms. I have this urge to join more social networks to see what’s going on, but that directly clashes with my desire to avoid algorithm-dependence and social pressure.

Before choosing any platform, I asked myself three questions:

Does this serve a specific need?
Can I set boundaries I’ll actually keep?
Does this align with my values—minimalism, privacy, intentionality?

I prefer quality and relevance over quantity and hype. I’m not choosing social networks either, I’m choosing tools that serve me the best purpose.

where i am now

kaifisahil.net — Long-form writing. You’re reading it already. This is where I think, analyze, and document what I’m learning. Writing insightful, long-form text is my personal addiction, and something I can do for hours on end. You get to know me and my thoughts better, and I get your raw thoughts under posts like this.

Mastodon — Thoughts in short-form text is something I adore at times, and it’s also a very lightweight, nice way for me to give you small updates and snippets of what’s going on. A privacy-focused community, no algorithm manipulation, decentralized. It’s also European, which is another one of my quirks: to diversify where I am jurisdiction-wise.

YouTube — Future video content will be here. I want to make in-depth, expressive long-form video content sometime in the future, about things that I discuss about here on my blogsite and outside that, like my daily lifestyle or other topics I’m interested about. Drama inducing platforms, FOMO and constant anxiety isn’t something I’m willing to deal with from high speed platforms like TikTok. This is where a slow alternative like YouTube comes to play.

That’s it. Three platforms. Each serves one purpose. None demand daily attention.

what i rejected

X (Twitter) — I tried the platform multiple times, both before and after its transformation. I was addicted to the algorithm and I always had FOMO when I didn’t use it. I didn’t want a liability to be around.

It’s all psychological as I understand it, yes, but I decide not to fight with it for now.

Since Elon’s acquisition, I’ve felt an eerie feeling. As if I didn’t belong there. Plus this guy’s crazy changes every other day to the platform wasn’t something I was comfortable with. It felt no longer like Twitter. I felt like an impostor being there.

Facebook — The platform has no alignment with my values. It is an amalgamation of everything that’s wrong with society. It tries to be everything at the same time while having no identity. This “being-everything” mindset, just how Elon wants X to be the everything app, is what repels me about these platforms. Nobody asked for it.

Neither is it going to be any peaceful to deal with it.

Reddit, Lemmy — Threaded discussions, upvote systems, and debate culture do not appeal to me. I prefer conversational and narrative forms of interaction, which I can do comfortably on Substack and Mastodon. I also have no need for crowd-driven validation or performative engagement of any kind.

Pixelfed — This felt redundant to me alongside Mastodon and YouTube. I can post pictures on both of these. While I can and would like to have a separate photo album, why would I need this when my purpose is being fulfilled by the current platforms I am on?

I chose tools, not networks. Platforms that serve me. Not platforms that demand I serve them.

how i use them now vs. before

I simply dedicate an hour of my time in checking out any likes, comments, updates or insights that I am curious about. Yes, I scroll, but only within that one hour in a day. I’m not going to say I’m consistent with this always, but most times I am.

I do not count the time I read or write articles on Substack, as that is productive to me, unlike scrolling pointlessly on socials. Other times, I don’t even scroll.

I delete the social media apps from time to time to literally not even bother at times. Browser-only access adds friction—makes compulsive checking impossible. Because, I don’t feel the urge anymore to check obsessively who did or said what, where and why.

I’m more selective with what I give my time to.

I sometimes revisit that same wicked sleep schedule of mine pre-experiment. But this primarily, is all due to work—and writing like this (it’s 2 AM as I write this line) !

This, I find, much better than staying up all night just consuming like a braindead individual, with no purpose, no intention.

The difference between now and before is intention. Every platform has a purpose. Every minute has a reason.

I still slip. I still find myself scrolling at 2 AM sometimes. But now I catch it. Now I course-correct.

The resistance isn’t perfection. It’s awareness.

5/ be one with the resistance.

The resistance isn’t about going offline. It’s about going intentional.

You don’t need to disappear for 18 months. You don’t need to delete everything. But you do need to answer one question:

Is social media serving you, or are you serving it?

If you’re reading this at 2 AM, scrolling instead of sleeping—you already know the answer.

Start small. Pick one platform.

Ask: Does this align with who I want to be? If not, delete it. If yes, set one boundary.

Then see what happens.

I’ll be here, writing about what I’m learning. Subscribe if you want to follow along. Or don’t—just make sure it’s your choice, not an algorithm’s.