Yes, it’s the third day of the new year, and yes, I am that bitch coming into your inbox and telling you to get off social media. Listen, I used to go out of my way to avoid this kind of content. There would be no social media slander in this house. Emails that came into my inbox to try to convert me into the cult of social media sobriety would be archived, deleted, unsubscribe me daddy.

I would do anything not to have to read about how some artist (someone more creative and definitely spiritual than me, likely in recovery or recently found God some other way, someone with great hair and so many friends, who seem to only take photos with 35mm cameras—how can they afford all that film or the cost of developing? Maybe they have their own darkroom or intergenerational wealth?) finally decided to get off the socials and go touch grass.

Congrats, hunny. Some of us can do both, I said to myself bitterly, lying on my back up at the park next to my bicycle, staring into the black 6-inch abyss of my phone screen instead of the animal-shaped clouds slowly stampeding across a sapphire blue sky above me. After exhausting all my usual clicks and refreshes—Instagram, email, and god forbid, Facebook, was my unconscious social media habit really that bad that I had to refresh my Facebook notifications to see which part-time acting job some cousin, who I don’t actually think is related to me, just landed?—I got bored. Biked home.

It’s true. I don’t like being told what to do. People who had gone off the socials had a lot to say about how performative the platforms are; they used to be lapdogs of the algorithm, so invested in the validation machine of the internet that they lost touch with who they were or what they stood for outside of other people’s perception of them. It all sounded kind of... I don’t know... performative? Something about it gave me the ick.

It was giving dry January vibes. Like a best friend who can’t stop talking about how good it feels to be alcohol-free or trying to convince you to try somatic therapy while you’re disassociating and sipping a beer next to them. I don’t like cis people telling me how I need to be more embodied when they are the whole reason I ever felt weird about my body in the first place. And I certainly didn’t need somebody telling me how much better my life could be if I got off Instagram.

Spending all your time online talking about how you used to care what other people think online isn’t the slam dunk you think it is. So here I am, riding into your inbox high on the fumes of a digital detox, of less than one month off Instagram, on my high horse, telling you why you should get off social media. Or maybe instead of telling you why you should get off it, I’ll just tell you why I did and what life feels like without it.