I Turned 25 and Now I Don't Want to be Online Anymore

Are we done with life? I am still so into it.

I've officially spent more of my life online than I have offline. I made my Instagram account when I was 13. I was on Tumblr even younger, my reserved time in our aptly named Computer Room shifting from Webkinz and Vevo music videos to re-blogging "thinspo" and making posts to no one about how I wanted to die. Twelve years later, I don't want to die anymore, and I actually feel more of a pull to live.

I've written before about my relationship with the internet, and my gratitude for it hasn't changed. Some of my closest friendships, favorite songs, life-changing films and personal style came from miraculous run-ins on the internet, which often feels wider than the earth itself and therefore makes these interactions even more truthfully miraculous. But now, I almost feel like my cup is too full. When I’m at the grocery store and forget to grab a basket, I usually just buy whatever I have space for in my arms and come back another day. This is because if I try to pile it all on, everything falls on the floor, and I embarrass myself at peak hour in the M&S bakery section (and have to pay full price for a shattered jar of dried mint). The things that I collect in the metaphorical abundant grocery store that is the World Wide Web need to be intentional ingredients — for joy, for friendship, for reflections on pain and sadness and sorrow. Perhaps they were, at first. Back then, social media was a supplementary way to keep in touch with friends beyond the intimacy that comes with real-life interaction, but for me (and others like me), it was a way to express passion and build community. Writers were on Blogspot or Wattpad, photographers were on Instagram, comedians were on Vine, musicians were on YouTube. The “algorithm” existed, yes, but it wasn’t the whole point. Social media was an escape from our routine interactions with capitalism: we could come home from our 9 to 5 jobs (or, in my case, my isolated middle school experience) and find relief in creation. You could indulge in communities that wanted nothing from you but the art you were willing to give.

So, what happened? I don’t really know. I imagine it has to do with COVID-19, as everything these days seems to be. It’s likely linked to our isolation and how, from that point forward, the internet became a primary touchpoint for the rest of our lives. Dating, friendship, fame, success – the starting lines for these have shifted into cyberspace. And the more we lean into our digital lives, like newly born moths to a flame we’ve never seen before, the further we stray from reality.

by Zhiyong Jing

It’s not just me — I've seen a lot on Substack and YouTube recently about people deleting social media to reconcile with their creativity. Ironically, those posts tend to go viral. As much as we hate to admit it, this is a social media too. It's got likes and comments and the constant compulsion to post about certain things so you can get more people to pay attention. After four years of this newsletter and a relatively slow, organic growth, this is the first time I've felt such pressure here. I don't like it. On the other hand, how else are writers meant to succeed? Your online presence, in a publisher’s eye, will usually dictate how materially successful you are, and your voice echoing across the planes of the digital stratosphere feels more impactful than someone holding your book in their hands.

From “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac” by Mary Oliver:

3.
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

so why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

I stopped using TikTok when it was banned (inevitably temporarily) in January, though that is my largest platform to date. I've deleted Instagram from my phone and use it on desktop when I need to. Twitter's been gone for a while. Here's what I've done instead: Pinterest, Tumblr, Substack occasionally. I have a YouTube channel with 117 subscribers that nobody knows about. I read on my Kindle, I watch Sex and the City and scribble in a coloring book, I go on walks without my headphones. What a life, you might be thinking. How great that she can disconnect! I wish that were me! I've thought that too, when reading other essays on people throwing their iPhones in a lockbox or going for an indefinite digital detox. The reality is, this analog attitude is taking up only 20% of my life right now. My screen time hasn't changed much. I watch Wood Soup ASMR videos and Vine compilations. I dig back in my camera roll and cry over videos of my late grandma. I read WhatsApp messages from when my boyfriend and I were first dating, like it's the most beautiful and gripping romance novel of all time. His daily Good Morning text is the hit of dopamine I crave. It'll take time, I imagine, to break the habit. I want to, though. That’s new.

Squidward escapes to the emptiness. (Spongebob Squarepants 1x14, 1999)

A friend once told me that you know a relationship is doomed when you make a pros and cons list. Here’s mine:

Pros of Social Media

• making new friends

• keeping up with old ones

• finding creative inspiration

• reading poems everywhere

• discovering new media (books, films, tv)

• cat videos

• moving forward in my writing career

Cons of Social Media

• i want to buy everything

• convinced everything is wrong with me + my life

• algorithm shifts catching me off guard

• comparison is the thief of joy

• shortened attention span

• i struggle to form my own opinions

• an almost overwhelming amount of inspiration

• a deep desire to feel validated

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Before Sunrise for the first time on its 30th anniversary, in a beautiful theatre in Notting Hill with a university friend of mine that I’ve recently reconnected with. It was a late-night showing, and I cried on the District line home. It wasn’t a sad film. I had a notebook on me from work, and I wrote an impromptu journal entry:

I’m writing this on the Overground because the longer time goes by the more I realise how fleeting my thoughts are. I loved the film. But it also made me feel very sad. I never thought I’d be one of those bitter people who are constantly complaining about phones but that’s how I feel today. Mainly, I hate the feeling of looking at someone I love while they do something unimportant on their phone. I hate the possibility that someone who loves me has looked at me while I do something unimportant on my phone. How, in either situation, eye contact could have brought us closer. I wonder what my own relationship would be like if we didn’t have phones. Would we walk and talk all night like Jesse and Celine? I’d like to think so, but the truth is that I don’t know. I miss that version of us, whether or not we would have existed.

There was a point around 2017 when a good friend of mine, who lived across the country in Washington State, became my best friend. This was largely because we messaged all day, every day. I knew what she had for lunch, I knew when she was going to the grocery store or taking her dog to the vet. I knew her emotions before she was able to process them. She knew the same for me. It was no wonder that when she studied abroad in her second year of college (while I was still in high school), I was convinced she hated me. The time difference and the new experiences and people she met meant that this constant communication, which to me became synonymous with don’t worry, I still love you, no longer existed. I became insecure and self-conscious.

Eventually, we fell out and no longer speak. Whether it was because of this mutual dependence, I still don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. In the years that followed, I regained my independence. I enjoyed building sustainable friendships that showed assurance in other ways, like intimate conversations that came few and far between. As with a toy car, the pull-back was so powerful that it fueled our relationship until we met again. I thought my craving for constant validation had faded the older I got. As I entered a serious relationship for the first time, I found myself relieved at how healthy it was. But I was distracted by novelty, and the old habits surfaced as time passed. I didn’t realise it for a while. After Before Sunrise, I reflected and realised how shallow our quality time has become. Our in-person interactions have us digging — I can message him at any time of day, with any thought I have, and I took advantage of it for a while. I wanted the don’t worry, I still love you. The reality is, once I pulled back a little bit, I felt more loved than ever.

Amanda Brown

writes in this post:

Love, once measured by presence and understanding, is now quantified by response times and message frequency. Love shouldn’t be a quiet battle over who cares more. It should be felt in the spaces between words, in the trust that lingers even in silence–even miles apart. The right person won’t demand proof of love; they’ll know it’s there–unspoken but unwavering.

Harsh as it is, maybe we all need to be a little more mysterious. If not to gatekeep, then to build and shape our thoughts into something intentional before sharing them. You wouldn’t fire a raw slab of clay, would you? Let every experience stay a little sacred, if only just to give the moments some space to breathe. Take photos of your coffee and that $6 pastry you bought because it was pretty. But maybe leave them in your camera roll a little longer. Social media has made my life so vertical, as if it can only fit in the 16:9 frame of my iPhone. I want it to expand beyond those borders, into the periphery. That shouldn’t be the whole picture — it should be a cropped version of the broader image I keep tucked away in my memory.

From Rita Dove’s “Dawn Revisited”:

How good to rise in sunlight, 
in the prodigal smell of biscuits–
eggs and sausage on the grill. 
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open 
to a blank page. Come on, 
shake a leg! You'll never know 
who's down there, frying those eggs, 
if you don't get up and see. 

I have never fully believed what they say about the development of the prefrontal cortex. Supposedly, the morning you're 25, you wake up and think of life in some mind-boggling moment of epiphany. My boyfriend, who's 27, has been teasing me about it for a few years, and I've always said I hope that's not the case. I like who I am. To be honest, that was kind of a lie. There's a lot I dislike: from my dopamine addiction to the silly things I say when I'm not eloquent enough to the very stubborn pudge adorning my belly. Still, I woke up on the 30th of March, 24 hours into the second half of my 20s, and felt a very deep sense of peace for the first time in a long time. I looked at myself in a fluorescent bathroom and saw, finally, the potential of my life.

On a family vacation last summer, my mom, who always wants the best for me (as immigrant parents always do), mentioned something about how I'm not "meeting my potential". She meant this in the ex-gifted child way, that there was so much I could have done that I chose not to do, like get a master's degree or study pre-med or make a lot more money than I am. The morning after my 25th birthday, in the moments I was told I’d be battling a nihilistic crisis, I didn't feel the potential as wasted. It wasn't like I was graced with the image of it, old and crumpled in a dumpster with a spotlight from the heavens shining down on it. It was more in the Everything Everywhere All At Once multiverse kind of way. I saw, in a moment, everything I could be from this moment on. A mother, a writer, a dog owner, a cat owner, a PhD student, someone who gives spare change to homeless people on the train. Every hypothetical version of myself, whether I wanted to pursue it or not, sprawled out before me. It was there, in the fluorescent office-like lighting of my boyfriend's bathroom, that I was faced with that decision. I could let this tear me into pieces, or fill me to the brim with hope. I chose the latter.

On the Overground home that same day, a man walked up and down the train playing You Are My Sunshine on a harmonica. I've seen him plenty of times before, often without hearing him, headphones drowning out whatever tune he's playing. This time, I took the £1 coin out of the zippered pocket of my wallet – which I was saving for emergencies, whatever that means, a can of Diet Coke is £1.10 anyway – and popped it in the tweed hat he was carrying face up. He moved the harmonica away for a moment and smiled a toothless smile, and something, something very small, slotted into place.

So many people reference Sylvia Plath’s fig tree metaphor, but I’d like to present my own. Maybe my life, from this moment on, is a giant pinball machine. The drop of my £1 coin in the harmonica player’s hat felt like a gentle cha ching, a touch of a target (I want to be someone kind and generous) before it bounced back to the middle and put the ball’s fate in my hands. I could read my book (I want to be someone intelligent and well-read) or I could hold fire until I get home and work on my novel (I want to be someone passionate and accomplished). I could sit quietly and think about every aspect of my life (I want to be someone introspective and considerate), or I could just sit and stare for no reason at all, because I’m out of coins.

In the weeks since my social media semi-detox, I have come to accept that, as much as I was willing to deny it, my self-esteem and general life outlook have a direct negative correlation with my social media usage. I’ve always tried to remain grounded to counterbalance my tendency to dream and dream hard. Over the past few years, the increase in consumption and sharing online has made me feel like I’m trying to touch my feet at the bottom of an eight-foot-deep swimming pool. Still, I don’t regret any of it. I’m not planning on being offline forever – I’m a writer, after all – but I am trying to take steps to adapt to the Now and slowly heal my relationship with social media. I’m learning how to be more alive in the moments in between, and let them expand to take up more space. That’s what living offline means to me now: not absence, but attention. I’m hoping, with some effort, digital influence will naturally fall to a secondary tier of importance, and then, slowly, my life will begin again.

Ecstasies III by Deborah Landau:

Are we done with life? I am still so into it. 
I like to drink and read and use my mouth 
our bodies constellating in the smothering heat

as the trucks slam by, the song of a siren 
has a sort of infinity in it, so too the poof 
of dove on the sill, dropcloth of sheets, a drench,

the coming dusk, drizzle of sky 
its fading and spanning- 
days become decades and then-

(We belong to a generation of hideous inattention
clutching our rectangles of light like- 
who am I talking to?)

---

This was mostly written in one sitting on the day after my 25th birthday. I’m trying to be more effortless and instinctive with my writing these days.

I’ve been consuming a lot of media on this topic. Here are some of my favorites:

• Your phone is why you don’t feel sexy by Catherine Shannon (Remember this the next time you fall asleep to a TikTok playing on an endless loop: one day your heart will stop beating. The only thing that’s eternal is love.)

• why is social media not fun anymore?

• I hate my phone so I got rid of it

• the end of our extremely online era by Tommy Dixon (I hope we look at social media one day as we look at cigarettes now: "You still scroll? Really?? Like… don't you know how bad it is for you?")

• how to make every day SO fun you don’t even have time to scroll

• things i notice when i’m not rushing by Kitty (To stop and see is to push against the pace of a world that demands constant motion, constant productivity. It’s a way of reclaiming time. It doesn’t solve problems, but it plants seeds of awareness, curiosity, of care.)

• Why The Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore by Kyle Chayka (The Internet today feels emptier, like an echoing hallway, even as it is filled with more content than ever.)

• We all know too much about each other by Serena Smith

Talk soon. Take care. Love u

<3 T