91. How 100 Days Off Instagram Gave Me My Brain Back

You can also read this article on my Substack here

I recorded a podcast episode back in October of last year, sharing my field report “from the wilderness.” The wilderness being my new life off of social media, three weeks in.

It has now been over 100 days, and things have changed.

I initially thought I would be only *taking a break* from social media. It would be a nice little digital detox for the final quarter of 2025, and then I would get back on. But as time has gone on, I haven’t felt the pull to return... Or I should say my higher self has not felt the pull to return.

Permission to change my mind later, but as of now, my mental landscape has improved in such a way that I don’t foresee myself going back.

I feel like I am the architect of my life again in a way that I had no idea I had lost until recently.

I want this essay to serve as inspiration for someone who may stumble upon it at the right time, because I was so grateful for the essays and videos that inspired me as I contemplated this change. I also want it to be a sort of time capsule that I can look back on from the future to see where I was.

What I am not trying to do here is convince someone who doesn’t want to get off of social media that they should.

But if you are reading because you have felt a pull, a little curiosity, then you’re in the right place.

My Instagram story:

I loved Instagram for a long time; it felt like a place where I could share my message. I built my entire aesthetics practice from Instagram. It was a place where I could express myself, get inspired by others, and stay in touch with friends. I started using Instagram pretty soon after it launched, so most of my adulthood was spent with this platform as a part of my life.

I won’t lie, there are things that I miss. I miss the dog videos, the recipes, the beautiful accounts sharing historical homes for sale, accounts sharing gorgeous inspiration interiors and gardens, all of the highly curated aesthetic content.

But pretty soon after quitting as I was feeling sad about missing out on this type of content, I realized something. I can just make my own life beautiful. I can just play with the dog I have right in front of me.

Aside from using Instagram personally, I used Instagram to build my business. I’m an esthetician and I have a physical studio where I see clients for facials and skincare support. Instagram worked amazingly well for that.

Between Instagram and word of mouth, I built a thriving business.

So much so that I was turning clients away because I didn’t have capacity! It was a wonderful vessel to share my message and teach, which are both important to me. I build the foundation to my community there and was able to network and share ideas and I am grateful to the platform for this.

So why did I leave?

I’m a very active journaler, and every week I do a weekly review, going over challenges and wins from the week before. A few years ago, I started writing about Instagram quite often in the challenge section. This piqued my interest.

Why is this thing coming up so often?

I would write about how I had spent too much time on it and how annoyed I felt about it, or whatever. I didn’t give it too much thought, though. Aside from that, I needed to have more self-control and work on focusing better.

At some point, I started noticing that I was always feeling this tug to “keep up” in my industry, and it was stressing me out.

I was putting myself in debt to constantly take the newest and hottest class because I needed to show everyone online that I was on the cutting edge. I wanted to appear as a leader in my field because I knew the most and had the most certificates. On the flip side, I felt like shit about myself when someone else seemed to be doing better than I was.

For a long time, pop-wellness absorbed a disproportionate amount of my attention... and my money.

But as it escalated, it began to wear on me. The fixation on toxins, perfection, and doing everything felt unsustainable and exhausting. And then the tone in that space changed. Influencers who had spent years amplifying fear and optimization began urging people to stop obsessing and overthinking as their collective content shifted to focusing on the nervous system.

That gaslighting left me with a deep sense of unease.

I don’t think this is isolated to the wellness side of social media. I think there is a structure to amplifying fear and then pretending it never happened. I didn’t realize how central this was to my disillusionment with social media until I stepped away.

The political landscape has become increasingly prominent on social media.

I am grateful that over the last few years, I have been exposed to information that has made me rethink things I previously believed. Social media, in its healthiest form, can be a great place to share ideas and discuss nuance (which is why I still use long-form platforms like Substack, YouTube, and podcasts).

But things have gotten so polarized, and it has felt difficult to navigate - what used to be a social platform- without seeing pithy political outrage reposts from people I otherwise enjoyed following for different reasons. I started to wonder every time I logged in whether I was going to step on a landmine or see the content I actually signed up to see.

As a business owner, the crushing pressure to constantly post was an entirely different story.

Over the last year or so, I started feeling like I’d missed a memo on how content was supposed to be created. What used to work no longer did, and I couldn’t just show up and share what I felt called to.

It was getting no traction and started to feel like a waste of my time and energy.

So what’s a girl to do but buy courses from business coaches selling the promise of making money, telling me that if I followed their plan, I’d get my message out?

But I didn’t feel excited to share anymore.

I felt like I was clocking into my unpaid shift at Mark Zuckerberg’s factory — a creativity puppy mill.

Even a lot of the content I was consuming started to feel saccharine.

Totally phony.

At some point... this tiny seed of a thought started to unravel in the back of my head...

What if you just didn’t do it anymore? What would it feel like to let this burden go?

I started consuming content from people who had quit social media. I read the book Digital Minimalism, and began to believe that maybe there was a different way.

This past fall, as I was watching one shit-show news cycle after another, I felt myself being hypnotized by more and more polarization.

I complained to my sister, telling her about the latest disturbing post I had seen from some nut job I didn’t even know. I don’t know what possessed me, but I said, “Ok, I seriously think I am just going to get off of Instagram for the rest of the year.”

She replied, “Ok, I will too.” And with that, I was like — oh shit, now I actually have to do this if she is going to commit also.

So we did it together, and it was the greatest gift I could have ever given to myself.

What has changed in my life in the last 100 days that has made me feel like the good things about social media aren’t worth it anymore?

1. Without constant input from others, I have reclaimed full authorship over my life.

   I’ve stepped into truly being the creator and director of my life again, rather than being shaped and formed by the images, words, and videos of others. I’m no longer just sharing what the crowd shares or responding to the collective conversation. I’m living from my internal world first, rather than constantly responding to a version of the world presented to me.

2. My attention span is entirely different from what it used to be.

   I feel like I’ve healed my attention span! I used to be so distracted and overwhelmed by constant input that I couldn’t watch a movie without my phone, or sit down to read a long email or magazine article. Another fun thing, I’m reading physical magazines again!

3. I’m more productive without feeling burnt out.

   I asked my boyfriend how he thinks I’ve changed since leaving social media, and he said he’s noticed I don’t procrastinate as much as I used to.

   I’m more productive in my work, more consistent with my art, and I get more things done at home. It’s grounding to hear that the change is noticeable from the outside.

4. When there is a news story, I’m no longer being bombarded by hundreds of posts telling me what I should think.

   I feel like I have my brain and inner authority back. I’m also less informed, and I used to think that was bad or wrong. But when you’re not fretting over everything, you can make a more meaningful impact in the areas you can actually affect. It’s just too easy to posture from an ivory tower online and then close the app and go back to brunch.

5. I’m able to harvest more joy from regular life.

   Social media is structured like a slot machine, offering intermittent rewards. Maybe you’ll get a lot of likes, a big headline, or something outrageous is happening. Or maybe nothing at all. Constant exposure to this creates low-grade depression over time. Without it, my brain just feels better!

6. I have more resilience to boredom and am forced to actually experience my emotions.

   I used to pick up my phone to numb and avoid feeling my feelings. When writing felt hard, when I felt lonely, when I was annoyed, or when I felt like I wasn’t living up to my potential. Now I actually have to sit with those feelings, experience them, and address them.

7. I changed my relationship with my phone

   The most recent shift is that I removed all scrolling apps from my phone — including email. After Instagram was gone, I realized my new addiction was chronically checking my inbox. I’ve essentially turned my phone into a dumb phone while keeping the essentials like banking and my work calendar. I had thought about getting a dumb phone for years until I realized I could simply delete the apps. Who knew you could just do that!?

That said, it has not been all butterflies and rainbows.

I’ve been walking through the greatest valley of self-doubt I’ve experienced in nearly eight years of owning my business.

It’s been tempting to blame every problem on leaving Instagram. Podcast downloads are down. In-person bookings have slowed. Online sales are down. It would be easy to say it’s all because I’m not on Instagram anymore.

The more complicated truth is that while some of that may be true, it’s also an invitation into radical responsibility.

I don’t believe that these lower numbers are to be solved by re-entering the factory.

From where I stand now, they are solved by building stronger infrastructure and stronger foundations, and it’s ok if the analytics look worse now. I’m still uncoupling from the conditioning that if a ton of people don’t see and love my work immediately, it doesn’t matter.

I want to play the long game, and letting go of instant gratification is uncomfortable.

I spent so much time doing what I like to call “performing work” on Instagram, that I wasn’t building the strong foundations within the business like funnels and other foundational systems for a healthy business.

All of this to say, this experiment has catalyzed several ego deaths and more than a few nights lying in bed wondering WTF I’m doing.

But as I write this, I still believe it’s worth it. Having my brain back and my own inner compass back is one thousand percent worth it.

My advice to anyone wanting to make this change

• If you are even somewhat curious, I think that you should run an experiment, take some time away, and see what happens. You might be surprised. We have this one wildly precious life, and I think it would be a shame to spend so much of it sucked into a false world.

• For me, a 30-day detox wasn’t enough to make a meaningful change. I have needed this extended period of time to let my brain recalibrate and get my full sense of wonder back.

• Read the book Digital Minimalism and check out other work from the author Cal Newport. He writes and shares about living a deep life in a digitally distracted world.

• Find other things to replace social media with (preferably things that are not on your phone). I wanted a deeper connection with others, so I started writing handwritten letters. I even joined an international pen pal club where you communicate only by snail mail! I also took a botanical illustration course and keep my art supplies and sketchbook around so I can easily access them when I want something to occupy my attention. This could be your chance to finally pursue all the hidden interests you have been secretly longing to do, but think you don’t have the time!

• Be aware of your interaction with other apps.

  I have been very careful about the way I interact with Substack and with YouTube because they both can function as social media and have the same effects that all other social media has on your psyche. But they don’t have to. I am very careful not to scroll through notes on Substack and Shorts on YouTube. Having awareness of how it uniquely affects you, and then making appropriate decisions for yourself is key.

• Journal about it. I have been so grateful for my journaling practice during this time that has been a great place to write down what I am noticing- like how it’s felt so similar to when I quit drinking, or how I’ve had dreams about accidentally loggin back in and what I think that means... or even just a place to write about how I miss some of the dogs I used to follow. But now I can spend that time giving attention to my real-life dog in front of me. The realizations that have come up have been very interesting!

And the biggest question I would ask myself is, who and what are you giving access to your brain, time, and energy, and is it a worthy exchange?

Mentioned In This Episode: 

Episode 79. Field Notes From Leaving Social Media

Want more?

✨ Moonday Notes — my weekly love letter with seasonal rituals, skincare wisdom, and herbal support.
Sign up here: https://stratumaesthetics.myflodesk.com/newslettersignup

✨ Stratum Aesthetics Apothecary — herbal skincare, castor oil packs, body oils, and tools I use every day.
Shop here: https://stratumaesthetics.com/collections