“A chestnut rolls past me in the garden. I follow it with my eyes. It stops, staying put, looking like a small carapace. Determined to prevent anyone from entering, I take a step forward. Stretch out my hand, but hesitate. If I want to reach the fruit, it will prick me. Leave it be. I’ll not harm it. Yet I know that sometime its protective casing will crack. The husk lying there is just an advance guard. If the chestnut is to become a tree, it will have to permit itself to be touched. If it is to live, it will have to open up sooner or later. But the husk hesitates. So I wait as well. And gradually I realize that its strength does not lie in its spikes, but in its fragility. It’s all a matter of timing. If it bursts open in time, it can take root. If it remains closed, it will die inside. Before my eyes, the chestnut hesitates: to touch or be touched?” – Marlies de Munck and Pascal Gielen 

I have to resist the urge to write a two-sentence ‘article’ that says, “I left social media. I feel great.” and leave it at that. Not because of laziness or a false sense of superiority, but because in its essence, my experience truly feels this simple to me. But of course, there is more to be said. Albert Camus (insert angsty teenage self here) said that freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. How I interpret his words is that being free (and not being on social media, to me, is like being freed from something) has the potential to be generative. Freedom, he might conclude, is not only about the absence of constraints but an opportunity to grow and acknowledge your responsibility to shape yourself and society. What would that concretely mean in the case of a social media exit? 

Most of us know that big tech is evil and we should avoid using its platforms, yet we still do. Some would call it laziness, addiction, or apathy; some would call it dependency, exploitation, or coercion. I could write about how the platform alternatives are not accessible enough to attract enough people to make a difference and about how it is a privilege to have the time to think about alternatives or leaving in the first place. I’m not so interested in that. Not because people have done this much better than I ever could already, but because I want to focus on the emotional what, not the practical, moral and strategic how and why for a moment. What happens when you are (not) perceived (anymore) online, on a human level? The fact is, there is no mass big tech boycott (yet). So what does it mean for someone to individually leave (in this case, me)? Especially in the time of looming apocalypses and much-needed social organising. There was a time when digital media were used as tools that could be picked up when needed and put down again, as Geert Lovink noticed in one of our conversations. Now, in the age of platform capitalism (or dare we say platform fascism), their ominous omnipresence has changed the game.

I’ve written quite extensively about how digital media shape social movements emotionally. When individuals organize together and try to mobilize more people to join their cause, naturally, tensions and conflict between them arise during that process. This has always been the case throughout history, however, our current digital communication landscape in which movements organize and mobilize, is influencing these processes in new ways. The current (semi) digital public sphere, if we can even call it that, consists of various intertwined digital communication platforms and tools; private messages, group chats of varying sizes and goals on which information, call to actions and opinions are shared in various forms of interaction. How this happens is deeply influenced by the platform’s viral nature, which often makes showing the correct moral opinion as quickly as possible more important than contemplating and forming an informed, critical argument and caring response. The tensions that arise while being perceived online are often driven by what is being made visible and what gets hidden. But what if you decide to stop exposing yourself and you stop being visible in this ecosystem completely? 

The emotional energy it took reflecting on what it means to be perceived and be visible made me feel tired, isolated and stuck. It made me feel as if I was stuck in a hyperreality where Instagram stories, group chat messages, screenshots and comments are seen as more “real” than reality itself sometimes. It made me want to break free from being frozen in the emotions that belong to digital media such as paranoia and guilt. 

So I decided to leave. Because I needed digital media to become tools again. 

You could say my decision to leave was purely ideological in nature, but it was mainly a personal one (even though the personal is political, of course). I just wanted to be free. I wanted to free up emotional space for IRL life and live. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people who can log in once a week, scroll for 20 minutes, and leave it at that. If I’m on there, I have no self-control (which is, of course, because the platforms are designed that way, but still). The difference between being chronically online, mainly on Instagram in my case, and off the grid was quite large when I went cold turkey around April 2024 (or at least that’s when I think it was). 

(Not) Being Perceived (Anymore)

Some interesting things happened in my period of withdrawal:

• My world became bigger. More space: smelling the rain, noticing a light coming in the window just so, and the wind through my fingers, smiling at strangers with kind eyes in public transport, appreciating the beauty of an abandoned citrus fruit on the street, reading more books and deepening existing relationships. This was the goal. I’ve been indulging in a new type of presence and stillness that I cannot put into words without sounding obnoxious.
• My world became smaller. Less space: no way of staying in touch with acquaintances or sharing low-effort moments of affection. I miss exchanging animal videos & memes. I miss being able to see what people are up to on a daily basis, without the effort of having to have one-on-one communication (because let’s be honest, we’re all overstimulated). Some friendships have not survived. Parasocial relationships cannot exist anymore either, which is a relief, because they have always made me feel a little weird. Meeting new people has also become a more intentional process. If you don’t want my phone number or e-mail address, because it feels too intimate or too formal, then we won’t connect until they do feel appropriate. There is a sense of power in this, but also a sense of loss of spontaneity. 
• When I ran into a few people I had not seen for a while and don’t talk to regularly, their first impulse was to ask if I was doing okay or if something was wrong. To them, my decision felt drastic and apparently signaled some sort of mental instability, whereas to me, my choice signalled the opposite. This difference in perception felt confronting to me in a way I can’t quite place. Perhaps because what I was trying to escape, the dissonance between how I experience myself and my digital self being perceived as something else, is still there.  
• Some people started defending their choice of being active on social media platforms to me, in a similar way people sometimes feel the need to explain why they eat meat or drink alcohol to someone who does not. I understand the urge, but it is not necessary. There are many valid reasons to be on social media. I (respectfully and lovingly) don’t care if people are on there or not. Leaving freed up emotional space, but these questions cost a different type of emotional energy. 
• Obviously, as a digital media researcher, it became more difficult to be inspired by the things I would notice online and then decide to research them further. I have not yet solved this problem. Sometimes I use LinkedIn (lol) or YouTube a little to lurk. I’m not sure how I feel about this. 
• I am also aware of the privilege of having a stable job. If I were to consider going back to freelance and/or artistic work, I might have to come back online.
• Another obvious, but essential, one: it is much harder to stay up to date with events and protests. I miss more and, even though it’s a slightly different type of guilt, I still feel it. Am I selfish and detached? I feel this especially when I run into people who have a better-suited nervous system than I do to attend frequently, and are still fighting the online fight. But I am also more present and embodied at the things I do attend. 
• The other side of this coin is, of course, that you cannot accidentally dox yourself, people can not digitally harass you and your profiles cannot get hacked. This very practical characteristic of privacy – safety – played a part in my decision. DM’s from strangers who disagreed with some of my political views, alluding to knowing where I live, felt unsettling. And I know others have heard way worse and much more than I have. I admire those who do not let people bully their visibility away. In this regard, I do feel like I gave up and let something win that doesn’t deserve it.
• In an attempt to stay up to date and help political organisations where I can, I am currently in multiple Signal groups, which, especially combined, are extremely chaotic and overstimulating. Leaving platforms has not solved the problem of information overload and emotional overwhelm; it simply changed shape. I am trying to find my place in the ecosystem of political change, but am still searching for a way that fits. I got back into doing IRL volunteer work, appreciate flyers & zines even more than I did before, and I find (the revival of) the newsletter and mailing lists hopeful. The more people leave, the more we are forced to experiment with new ways of organising, I guess. 
• I now have to read news articles without the much-needed critical comments of individuals I respect and enjoyed following. It also becomes harder to share information that I find important with a larger group of people, which makes it harder to help organisations that are trying to mobilize others.
• Perhaps most interesting yet obvious is that my sense of time has completely changed. Ever since I deleted my account, I’ve lost track of when that was. A year? 3 years? I’m honestly not sure. I do know my days feel twice as long (in a good way).

Yes, I lost things; some people, information, the lightness of a meme, the casual flirt of a stranger, the togetherness felt when outrage is shared, something that once was part of my identity that I cannot really grasp and put into words. I do feel a sense of grief around that. Saying goodbye to something, especially in the world of permanent crisis, where everything seems to change every second, is not easy. But the cost of keeping these things was becoming too high for me. And most importantly, what I gained in return is still validating my decision every single day. Maya Angelou said that she has “learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Words that have been quoted over and over again because of the universally felt truth they hold. Similarly, you could say that people will forget your Instagram story, people will forget your comment or DM, but people will never forget how you made them feel in real life. And I think that is what I wish to focus on for now. 

But is that the point I’m trying to make? Not really. Writing this was challenging. It’s clear the platform lingers and I am still in negotiation with it, even though I left. I am not sure what it is I would like to say exactly or that I am sure my thoughts add much. There is no clear argument. No theory proposed. No suggestions for practical or reflective tools. And perhaps that’s the point. I hope my ponderings are helpful to those who are considering leaving or staying, and contemplating what type of freedom works for them, too. De Munck and Gielen write that a public online image can have a protective function, but in turn can also make you feel detached from yourself. “Here we have the ambivalent essence of husks. They protect life […] but can also stifle it.” For me, it was the right time to break free from my husk; to choose life and be touched. The reward of this choice was the relief I still feel and the consequence was the grief I had to sit with. For others, however, the husk might be exactly what they need in this current moment to be able to live. It all depends on your preferences, skills, external circomstances and personality. I don’t believe there is a right or wrong choice here. To be free of perception and to enjoy the privilege of privacy can feel like freedom, but the looming alienation hidden behind it can be its cost: we were never promised rose gardens.

Works Cited 

Florence + the Machine. “Sympathy Magic.” Track 4 on Everybody Scream, 2025.

Greenberg, Joanne. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.

De Munck, Marlies, and Pascal Gielen. Fragility: To Touch and Be Touched. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022. (This book was gifted to me by Anielek and Salome at exactly the right time <3)