Social Media Detox Guide

I spent years trying to create a system that could balance the impact of social media on my life. Because, to be honest, I believe social media is a fallacy, an illusion of connection projected through the internet.

People online are not the same as they are in person. There’s a gap between digital behavior and real-world identity.
Someone might seem distant or indifferent on WhatsApp — almost like a ghost — yet when you meet them face to face, they’re warm, attentive, and genuinely caring.

As human beings, we have a deep need to connect.
That’s what social media was supposed to fulfill — in theory. But in reality, it does something else. It doesn’t just disconnect us from one another — it alienates us while giving the illusion of connection, keeping us trapped in a loop that brings us back again and again.

That’s why I’ve been developing a method for digital detox. It’s still a work in progress, but here’s what I’ve learned so far.

Step 1: Delete your Instagram account

This is the first and hardest step.
Instagram is the social network of my generation — for the next, maybe it’s TikTok (and if you’re on TikTok, I encourage you to delete it too).
It’s where everyone is. All my friends use it; a few of them even post regularly — which is rare these days. But the truth is, this app is a dopamine machine, designed to keep you hooked.
Its endless content fuels desire, comparison, and restlessness.

I tried blocking it. I set time limits. But it’s built so cleverly that I always found myself deactivating the blocks, chasing the next hit of dopamine.
So I made the decision to delete my account.

It wasn’t easy. Once you delete it, Instagram gives you 30 days before it’s gone for good. In that time, with just one click, you can reactivate it.
So for 30 days, I had to resist the urge.
There were days I almost gave in — but the goal of detox was stronger.

After the 30 days, I felt free.
Free from an addiction strong enough to dominate my attention.
I could finally study and use my phone without feeling consumed by it. My screen time dropped, I didn’t need to fight the urge anymore — it was gone.

Step 2: Uninstall and Block apps

The only social media apps I still use are LinkedIn and YouTube, but even those I’ve made deliberately harder to access. On my phone, I can only open them through the Google app — not directly through Chrome.
In fact, I’ve hidden Google Chrome entirely, so if I want to visit one of those sites, I have to:

1. Open the Google app,
2. Search for the site,
3. Then tap “Open in Chrome.”

That extra friction adds a valuable layer of resistance — it forces me to pause before mindlessly opening social apps.

Even with those barriers, I’ve gone further. I use an app blocker that specifically prevents access to linkedin.com and youtube.com.

The only way I can access LinkedIn now is from my computer, where I’ve also installed an app blocker to restrict access to certain websites. Whenever I need to make a post or check what’s happening in the world, I temporarily disable the blocker, do what I need to do, and then turn it back on. This adds yet another layer of friction.

Step 3: Use Minimalist Phone

To reduce the time I spend on my phone, I’ve tried different approaches. None of them worked for long — I always found a way around my own restrictions.

In my search for a real solution, I came across an app that finally offered what is wanted: minimalist phone.

There’s a growing trend of people buying old phones — those small, early-2000s models — because they don’t have social media or addictive interfaces. I considered doing that myself, but I couldn’t justify giving up what modern smartphones offer.
They’re simply overpowered tools: music, navigation, messaging, research, photography — all in one. Losing that just didn’t make sense.

Then I found this app that transforms your smartphone into a minimalist device. It changes the entire interface into a plain black screen with only a simple list of apps. You can still access everything normally, but the interface is so dull and utilitarian that the urge to open your phone disappears.

The most powerful feature, though, is its notification blocking.
You can choose exactly which apps are allowed to send you notifications — and it perfectly silences the rest.
This was a game changer.

No more useless alerts from shopping apps, bank promotions, or random email notifications. Now, when my phone buzzes, I know it’s something important.

Step 4: Reduce YouTube to a minimum

After completing the previous steps, the only app I still used was YouTube.
The problem is that YouTube, like most social platforms, is designed to keep you hooked for hours. I needed to find a way to reduce the amount of distracting content it feeds me — so I could still use it intentionally, without losing focus.

Fortunately, YouTube allows you to turn off recommendations, which means I could keep watching the content I actually wanted from my subscriptions, without endless distractions. To make this even cleaner, I unsubscribed from every channel that was too entertaining, viral, or attention-grabbing.
The result? My feed became “boring as hell” — and that was exactly the point.

However, one issue remained: every time I clicked on a video, the right side of the screen still showed an entire column of new recommendations. So, to take it a step further, I installed a browser extension called Unhook, which completely hides all recommendations.
Now I use YouTube only to learn things that truly interest me or to listen to music — nothing else.
It turned the app from a distraction engine into a tool for growth and inspiration.