For years I have defended the use of social media. It’s allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family for nearly 20 years now. But social media in 2025 is not the same thing as it was back in 2005 or even in 2015. The amount of information that I am shown in my feeds, whether it be targeted ads, or autoplaying videos, or suggested posts is such a high percentage of my feed that it has stolen away much of the purpose of why I was ever on social media in the first place.
We have changed the way we use social media. People used to mock people who talked about their vacations or posted a photo of their cappuccino or gave a simple “status update.” But that’s the content I want to see now. Instead, I’m shown all sorts of monetized videos, some of which have ads under them or on them or played before the video I was being shown in the first place.
And watching the billionaire tech overlords bow to the power of Donald Trump and kiss his ring over the last year or so, it’s made me feel gross when I use the products of these companies that do not actually care about us or the planet we are collectively ravaging to keep our eyeballs glued to our expensive glowing screens.
The reason I have enjoyed social media in the past was because it actually enabled the ability to connect with others from different eras of my life. It’s also allowed me to meet people and connect with them in real life. But those moments have happened less and less as time has gone on. And so I find myself on social media mostly watching videos from content creators I have no true interest in or desire to see. Yet, there I am watching videos stealing away my time — which is my most precious commodity.
These companies know what they’re doing. They know how to keep us hooked and engaged. They know the research. They study the data. They are capitalizing on knowing how to manipulate our brains and use our brain chemistry to line their pockets.
I recently saw someone describe social media as cigarettes for our eyes. And that analogy has stuck with me for a while now. Social media is obviously bad for us. I think we all know this. It’s not good for our mental health, especially for teenagers and younger children. That being said, I also think we focus too much on it being bad for teenagers. We do this with other products we know aren’t good for us too, but we say it is especially true for teenagers — alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, etc. Adults will say these are bad for teenagers as if they’re not really all that bad for adults. Yes, the effects on the teenage brain has proven to be more detrimental, but let’s not kid ourselves: they are bad for adults, too.
Meta has been pushing Instagram accounts for teens recently, and I saw a parent post a tongue-in-cheek response about how they can’t wait to sign their teenager up for a teen instagram account, “It would go well with their Marlboro Juniors!”
I say all this to say that I’m going into 2026 differently. I’m going to be stepping away from my use of social media. For years I’ve tried to resist and do better. My approach to posting on Facebook and Instagram has been intentional and oftentimes fairly long form for this platform, but that’s not really enough for me anymore. It’s time to leave.
The last twenty years of my life are on these platforms. They contain pictures of my kids, important life milestones, funny moments, heartbreaking moments — lots of the ups and downs of my life. I think that’s one of the hardest parts of stepping away. But the scales have tipped enough for me recently that I can’t defend my use of it anymore. I have too many people that rely on me and need my time. And social media is not so much a place to connect or create anymore. It is purely made for consumption and converting the time I give these companies into money for themselves. That’s a terrible investment of my time.
I have always had the desire to connect outside my bubble, though. So I will move to different methods of creation and connection. I plan to use my blog more again for posting reflections and life updates and insights. I have started to use Substack more often to read blog-style posts from writers and creatives. The quality of these posts has been remarkably high and I really like that. I am wanting to use Substack better to connect with others in ways I used to when blogs were popular and social media was a tool to share creative content.
I’ve thought about using Substack as my main social media platform moving forward. The posts I would typically share on Facebook might fit better in the Substack world anyway. I might experiment there and see if it works for me in 2026.
And I am planning to make more photobooks/zines. I have photo projects that I’ve developed and put together over the years. I have published three of them now. I want to do more of that in 2026. So the time I would have spent mindlessly watching short videos on Instagram and Facebook, I now intend to use towards photo projects that get published physically.
My faith in the longevity of digital media is quickly evaporating, and I find myself turning more and more to physical content. So that is what I intend to do more of this coming year. Follow along here on my blog if you’d like, or maybe find me on Substack.
Stepping Back 