7 Reasons Why I Finally Quit Social Media

{ I have more than seven reasons, but that would take an entire book. }

Last year I finally deleted all of my social media accounts. It wasn’t something I did on a whim; rather, it was something I’d been planning on doing for a long time. So, in a way, I’ve been writing this article in my head for years.

I’ve been reluctant, however, to put my reasoning into words. My reluctance is, in large part, due to Jesus’s words when he described two men — a Pharisee and a tax collector — in a parable. Jesus said:

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:10-13)

When it comes to social media and folks like me who have officially signed off, I think we can easily sound like that Pharisee, and it could sound something like this…

God, I thank you that I am not like other people who waste an exorbitant amount of time on their phones, doomscrolling and taking selfies. Instead of fasting from social media at regular intervals, I have quit altogether. I don’t even take photos of the generous acts of kindness I do.

Yuck. I don’t ever want to sound like that person. I would much rather be like the tax collector…

God, be merciful to me, a sinner!

Because that is what I am. A sinner.

And as a sinner, I have found social media to be an easy way for sin to creep into the human heart, including my own. But perhaps that’s not true of you.

In any case, before I share my reasoning for leaving social media, three distinctions are necessary:

One, I want to clarify that social media for a business or organization is not the same thing as social media for an individual. They serve different purposes. So, my reasons here pertain to social media as used by individuals.

Two, I want to acknowledge that social media does confer some benefits. I, too, once enjoyed these benefits, like reconnecting with old friends from high school or staying connected with friends who live in another state.

Three, I want to be clear that I am not trying to convince anyone to delete their social media accounts. That is an individual decision, and the timing will vary for each of us.

I was on social media for 15 years, so obviously it’s not something I left quickly. The main reason I stayed on as long as I did is simply because most publishers expect it. But as I have said before, I have come to expect something more of myself and my writing.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the detriments of social media far outweighed the benefits. Here’s why…

1. Social media is not a neutral tool.

Unfortunately, a lot of people want to believe that social media is a neutral tool that can be used either for good or ill purposes. And as Christians, we are easily tempted to think we can harness this tool for the cause of Christ.

For instance, we can post pictures of God’s beautiful creation to inspire others, or we can post memes with Scripture to point others to God’s Word. I have done both of these things. It’s probably the primary way I participated on social media. But if you’ve been on social media for any length of time, you know the algorithms are not designed to glorify God. This has become increasingly evident over time.

In the early days of social media — and I’m thinking here of Facebook circa 2008 — our posts would end up in our friends’ feeds. Over time, however, it became increasingly obvious that “Christian content” was shared less and less by the algorithmic powers that be.

This isn’t a complaint, just a recognition. Mark Zuckerman and the other billionaire owners of these massive platforms can run them however they deem fit. After all, social media platforms are business enterprises with algorithms designed to suit their preferences, and their top priority is increasing ad revenues. Again, social media is not a neutral tool. It has very specific aims in mind, and glorifying God is not one of them.

So, I have left social media, in part, because I realized that it is not designed to be a good means for conveying the things on my heart and sharing the Good News with others.

2. Social media is designed to be addictive, absorbing people’s time and attention.

As a writer, editor, and English teacher, I have a natural love of books. And yet, I had noticed that my own ability to mentally engage with printed text was waning, and this concerned me. I noticed the way my hand would reach for my phone subconsciously, or the way I would check for updates absentmindedly.

In his excellent book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr writes:

The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment. (Nicholas Carr)

Some of the greatest minds in the world have intentionally engineered smartphones and social media platforms to reward us with little dopamine hits to our brains. This technology is designed to make us addicted because the entire goal is to keep our eyes fixed on those tiny screens for as long as possible because that is how the makers of Silicon Valley make their money. But it’s coming at a steep price to social media users.

In another excellent work, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, Johann Hari warns:

Take care what technologies you use, because your consciousness will, over time, come to be shaped like those technologies. (Johann Hari)

In short, social media is rewiring our brains. It’s reshaping the way we take in information. The long drink of wise thought has been reduced to interrupted sips, decontextualized from the real world. We’ve become like those “lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment” (Nicholas Carr).

If you haven’t read

Ted Gioia

’s “The State of the Culture, 2024,” I encourage you to do so. He goes into more detail regarding the intentionally addictive nature of smartphones and social media.

So, I have left social media because I wanted my brain back. I wanted the long train of focused thought to return. I wanted to re-immerse myself deeply in the words of wise men and women throughout the pages of history. I wanted to read whole books again without a million interruptions by my phone and its addictive draw to social media. And it’s worked. Without social media in my life, I am reading so many books again, among other things.

3. Social media is not what it was in the early years.

Take Instagram for instance. A decade ago, I could scroll through Instagram and my feed would be filled with photos from my friends in real life. I rarely followed celebrities because those posts are oftentimes created by hired staff, and I wanted my Instagram feed to remain real. I didn’t want the glossy professional photos or the slick marketing campaigns; I wanted to keep up with the people I actually knew.

Over time, however, my feed changed. I rarely saw the posts from my friends anymore. Instead, “suggested content” dominated my feed. The algorithms were desperately trying to get me to follow more accounts, even ones I had no connection with. Plus, the actual photos were all but gone. Insta-Stories became IG’s attempt to compete with Snapchat, and Insta-Reels became IG’s attempt to compete with TikTok.

The real goal of social media isn’t to keep me connected with my friends; it’s to keep me connected to my phone, so I can follow more accounts and see more advertisements and marketing campaigns.

And that’s just Instagram. Whole requiems have been written about X, formerly known as Twitter. And Facebook changed the rules of engagement so many times it became futile to try to keep up with the ever-changing algorithms.

So, I have left social media because it is no longer what it was in the beginning, and it was never worth the time it consumed.

4. Social media feeds on consumerism and consumption.

Nowadays, if you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, they no longer say they want to be a doctor or a teacher or a fireman. Instead, they want to be an Instagram influencer or a YouTube star. In the world, this makes sense because influencers and YouTubers are those who have amassed a large following, and they now work to cash in on those large audiences.

Simply put, influencers are paid to promote products — or places that sell products. A more accurate name for influencers would be marketers. They get paid to be human commercials. Advertising is their language.

This has turned social media into a marketplace with influencers creating commercials (or being the commercial) to sell stuff. And everybody else is the consumer being marketed to.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with selling a product. But it’s inaccurate to call it social media anymore; it’s just marketing media now but with a social veneer. Some might argue that social media is mostly for personal entertainment, such as TikTok videos, but even there the users are being marketed to.

So, I have left social media because I have zero desire to be an influencer who uses their personal life to make jingles to sell products. I also have no desire to see or follow those kinds of posts, yet the almighty algorithms were increasingly shoving those ads into my feeds.

5. Social media creates a culture of self-objectification and self-exploitation.

Social media creates an illusion of relational intimacy that is not real. Social media is not a venue for genuine community-building or friendship-making, despite what the fancy marketing departments try to say. Rather, it is an ecosystem designed for self-marketing.

For a while, the general consensus in most Christian circles was this: You’re not marketing yourself; you’re marketing your message. Many writers and creatives, including myself, bought this line of reasoning. At first. But it soon became clear that messages aren’t really the big attractors.

Humans are less drawn to messages, and more drawn to other humans. This is basic human nature.

And the very smart algorithm-makers in Silicon Valley know it. This is why the posts that typically get pushed into more feeds and garner more “likes” or “hearts” are not the posts with a nice or even helpful message, but the posts with a human face (i.e. selfie) sharing something vulnerable.

Savvy social media users figured this out pretty quickly, so the race was on to take more self-photos (or self-facing videos) and share more personal details, leading to a culture of self-objectification (i.e. selfies) and self-exploitation (i.e. oversharing).

This may sound harsh but bear with me.

In these online spaces, the everyday vernacular doesn’t include words like self-objectification or self-exploitation; instead, they use words like authentic and vulnerable.

You may object to the idea of equating selfies with self-objectification, but it’s impossible to deny the basic law of diminishing returns at work in these spaces. Very quickly the posts that were once heralded as “real and raw” became so commonplace that each successive post would up the ante. In other words, what was once considered “vulnerable” is now considered boring. This has led to a culture where many social media users now feel pressured to reveal more and more as they mine their private lives for more personal details and more intimate photos. Platforms like Snapchat and OnlyFans are the sad result.

So, I have left social media because I am more interested in sharing the words impressed on my heart, and I could never get on board with social media’s predominant culture of self-objectification and self-exploitation, which I discussed more in this article.

6. Social media is harming young people exponentially.

If you are part of Generation X (like me) or the Boomer generation, it is imperative we recognize that our experiences on social media are not the same as what young people are experiencing today.

If we think we understand the ins-and-outs of, say, Facebook or Instagram because we ourselves are on those platforms, we must acknowledge the reality that for young people, their experiences on social media are vastly different because the algorithms are designed to cater to individual users. And their experiences are far more negative than anything you or I have experienced online.

Whole books are now being written on this subject — like the forthcoming book The Anxious Generation by

Jonathan Haidt

— and I’m grateful for these important works, but for many the information is coming too late. Gen Z has been the unfortunate recipient of a digital experiment on a global scale, and the results have been devastating.

For young people, smartphones in general and social media in particular have…

1. decimated literacy rates (see here and here)

2. saturated countless minds with video-based pornography (see here and here)

3. skyrocketed anxiety, depression, and suicide (see here)

Having previously worked as a public high school English teacher, I have spent all day every day with teenagers, and I can tell you, as someone who can remember teaching teens 20 years ago, young people today are not the same. And they’re not okay. They’re hurting. Deeply. And their smartphones, along with social media, are largely the reason.

Yes, there are other factors too. But the level of phone-addiction I have observed among teenagers is truly alarming. They cannot place their phones in their backpacks for even five minutes. They have to hold it in their hands or tuck it into their sleeves. While sitting at their desks, they will store it in between their thighs or hide it inside their hoodies. Their phones have become a part of their bodily personhood. My students have even reported that they take their phones with them to the bathroom at home for fear of missing a text.

It’s nearly impossible to teach actual literature to young people who feel a compulsion to look at their phones every few seconds. This is not an exaggeration. It’s a sad and scary fact. And any attempt to create a phone policy at school is laughable. Teachers and administrators are powerless to do anything about it as long as parents insist on having constant access to their teenagers. (I’ve had students take phone calls from parents in the middle of class, despite it technically being “not allowed.”)

This is to say nothing of the extent to which young people today are experiencing sexual harassment and cyber bullying through their smartphones and social media. Older people — including all the parents who put these phones into their kids’ hands — would be shocked to hear the stories I’ve heard from teenagers. It’s happening to young people constantly all day long. It’s no wonder they can’t concentrate on the paperback novel in front of them.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the extremely high levels of anxiety and depression reported in young people’s lives today. What they are dealing with is horrible beyond words, and I’ve come to two conclusions:

One, if I stay on social media for whatever “benefits” it may confer to me, then on some level I am complicit with a system that is doing real damage to others.

Two, I can’t exactly ask my own adult children to log off of social media forever if I am not willing to do the same.

So, I have left social media because I hate what it has done to young people. They deserve better.

7. Social media is an easy way for sin to creep into the human heart.

I began this longish tome with a reference to one of Jesus’s parables, with the Pharisee who pats himself on the back for his presumed righteousness and the tax collector who beats his chest and confesses his need for God.

As a sin-bent creature who desperately needs God’s grace in my own life, I believe sin ultimately manifests in one of two primary ways: self-glorification on the one hand or self-loathing on the other. And social media is a powerful means to accomplish both of these ends.

On social media, we observe self-glorification everywhere, with folks posting pictures and stories to create an image of how awesome their lives are. Whether it’s through a series of pictures from an amazing vacation or a cute story of someone’s adorable little kid, the “humblebrag” is a mainstay on social media.

Through social media, we also experience the self-destructive effects of self-loathing. When we compare our insides to others’ outsides, we see the many ways our lives don’t measure up. Then we descend into gloomy ruminations over how miserable our own lives seem in comparison.

Neither is helpful. In both cases, the focus remains on the self, which is not healthy.

We never find peace by focusing on ourselves, but this is what social media promotes.

Thankfully, there is a God whose grace is greater than all our sin.

So, I have left social media because I am not immune to its pull for people to focus on the self and participate in ways that lead both to self-glorifying posts and self-loathing thoughts after seeing other people’s posts.

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There is so much more I could say, but this piece is running too long already.

It is interesting, though, that when you try to delete your social media accounts (as opposed to merely deactivating them for a while), these platforms make it difficult to do so. They clearly do not want us turning our attention to other things.

Now that I have deleted my social media accounts, it’s true that I can no longer use social media as a means to share my heart or any other kind of hopefully positive message with others. But as I’ve stated, I don’t believe those kinds of posts are getting very far with today’s algorithms anyway. I do think, however, that my absence on social media can communicate more than any post might.

My absence from social media can communicate that I hold values that may seem strange to those caught up in the world’s barrage of endless noise and distraction.

My absence from social media can communicate that I believe in a better way to connect with humans.

My absence from social media can communicate that I prefer face-to-face conversations.

My absence from social media can communicate that I cherish local embodied communities over faux digital ones.

My absence from social media can communicate that I actually enjoy living right where I am with the people I love most.

I have reached that age where I am less and less interested in giving away my time to purposeless and empty activities. I want to make the most of each day, and I want to do that right where I am, rooted in a real place and connected with real people, who can see and know the real me.

Again, I am not trying to convince anyone to delete their social media accounts. I understand it takes time to consider these things, especially if you’ve been on social media for a length of time as I once was. But I am growing unapologetically convinced that social media is not doing any of us any good, and I want to help us all grasp a vision for a different way to live.

To this end, there is more to come.

Shalom.

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