Here's the irony that keeps me up at night: as a UX designer, I'd spent countless hours studying human psychology, understanding scroll mechanics, and crafting interfaces designed to be irresistible. I knew exactly how these platforms worked. And yet, by mid-2016, I was doom-scrolling my life away like everyone else.

When did social media stop being fun?

It happened gradually, then all at once. The endless scrolling wasn't a feature anymore - it was a symptom. My notifications were screaming. My feed was an infinite void. And somewhere between the 500th Instagram refresh, I realised my anxiety had a pulse that matched my screen time.

The worst part? I knew the mechanics. I understood the psychology of notification design, the dopamine hits, the variable reward schedules. But knowledge didn't save me.

The Purge of 2016

In a moment of clarity (or madness?), I deleted Instagram. Just like that. Cold turkey.

Then came the domino effect. Facebook. Email notifications. YouTube's autoplay. Viber. Snapchat. One by one, I evicted these apps from my phone like unwanted houseguests who'd overstayed their welcome.

Some might call it dramatic. I call it survival.

Connected yet completely alone.

Here's what nobody tells you: deleting social media doesn't magically fix everything. The isolation hit different. FOMO is real, mate. It whispers: Everyone's doing something without you. You're missing out. You're irrelevant.

But then something strange happened. The silence became comfortable. The missing out started feeling like opting in to my actual life.

We know too much to be innocent.

As a designer, I'd always understood that platforms aren't neutral tools—they're engineered to hold your attention. Every notification, every red dot, every "new features" update is carefully calculated psychology wrapped in pretty UI.

Once you see the strings, you can't unsee them. And once you can't unsee them, staying becomes complicit.

The reset button exists. You just have to push it.

Deleting those apps wasn't the end of my story - it was the beginning of actually having one. The anxiety didn't vanish overnight. But it stopped having a notification sound.

The isolation faded when I stopped measuring my worth in likes. And the FOMO? It transformed into the freedom to miss out on things that were never worth my time anyway.

Sometimes the most radical design choice is saying no to the design.

The irony? I still work in UX. But now I design with a conscience. I think about digital wellbeing. I ask myself: Will this feature add value or just add addiction?

Because we designers have a choice. We can be architects of connection or engineers of habit loops. The power is in our hands, and honestly? That's more terrifying than any algorithm.

What would happen if you deleted one app today?

Not as a gesture. Not for the story. Just for you.

The silence might scare you at first. But sometimes the best content you can create is the life you're actually living.