Two Weeks Without the Digital Rage Machine

I hate it here.

It started with a 2 AM moment of clarity. I had picked up my phone at 10 PM "just to check" a few things. Four hours later, I found myself still awake, having binged countless pointless 60-second Instagram reels and X posts engineered to make me scream at my screen. I would go to bed angry and wake up tired. Again.

So, in that bleary-eyed moment before sleep, I did something overdue – I wiped nearly every social app off my phone. Twitter, Threads, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook. Gone. If I wanted to check these platforms, I'd force myself to use their mobile websites, which we all know are deliberately designed to be suboptimal experiences (dark pattern much?).

I should acknowledge the irony: I've built my career around these platforms. But perhaps that’s all the more motivation to step back for a bit. When the beekeeper stops eating the honey, ask what they've noticed in the hive.

The Endless Scroll to Nowhere

For years, I've felt the growing urge to delete these apps. They are no longer fun, I can’t remember the last time I closed Twitter or Instagram feeling better than when I'd opened it.

My typical post-scroll emotional state ranged somewhere between:

• Mildly annoyed

• Legitimately angry

• Vaguely depressed

• Some new emotion scientists haven't named yet that combines FOMO, exhaustion, and mild self-loathing

I challenge you to think about your own experience. When was the last time you spent 30 minutes scrolling through your timeline and thought, "Wow, that was totally worth it!"? When was the last doomscroll that left you energized rather than depleted?

The Anxiety of Digital Ephemera

Instagram Stories became an unexpected source of resentment during my hiatus. It wasn't that I genuinely missed the content – it was the engineered FOMO that bothered me.

The deliberately ephemeral nature of Stories felt like Instagram holding my attention hostage: "View these now or forever miss out." Not just miss the content, but be visibly marked as the friend who didn't care enough to watch. The platform had weaponized social connection against me, creating anxiety from the most mundane digital interactions.

What genuinely sustained me instead were group chats with friends, family, and colleagues. These text threads provided something social media increasingly lacks: connection without the algorithmic manipulation, without the performative aspects, without the rage-bait and outrage economy. No racing against a 24-hour disappearing clock.

Those text threads with friends, family, and colleagues provided something social media increasingly lacks: meaningful connection without the algorithmic manipulation, without the performative aspects, without the rage-bait and outrage economy.

Contrary to what the social media withdrawal symptoms might suggest, I never felt uninformed. My Boston Globe app and Apple News+ subscription delivered news in a way that felt intentional rather than incidental – the difference between sitting down for a proper meal versus mindlessly grazing on whatever's in front of you.

This food metaphor feels particularly apt. As someone who has always had a poor relationship with eating, the parallels between junk food and junk content are striking. Social media platforms, and the content published to them, are engineered like ultra-processed snacks – designed to keep you consuming without ever feeling satisfied. No matter how much you scroll, you're never full.

Compare that to consuming thoughtfully prepared, high-quality information or entertainment. You step away feeling satiated, nourished, complete. The similarities between mindless scrolling and mindless eating don't seem coincidental – it feels as though platforms and junk food companies exploit our same psychological vulnerabilities.

The Utilitarian Exceptions

Interestingly, I kept two apps installed: Pinterest and Swarm (formerly Foursquare).

Pinterest survived the purge because my experience there is curiously devoid of rage. My feed consists entirely of aesthetically pleasing images that bring me genuine joy. Curating boards became a deeply relaxing activity.

Swarm remained because it serves an actual utilitarian purpose. As perhaps one of the platform's last dedicated users, I've logged nearly every place I've visited in the physical world. This digital breadcrumb trail has become an invaluable personal resource – where was that amazing burger spot? Which places should my friend visit in Hawaii? My check-in history functions as an external memory bank that genuinely enhances my life rather than depleting it- and no one is feeding me weird anti-vaxxer information on it.

Facebook, when I did check it via browser, served only as a portal to specific groups. The compulsive timeline-checking had vanished entirely.

The Unexpected Parenting Revelation

I haven't shared this widely yet, but I'm in the early stages of writing a book about fatherhood and the mental/physical health journey connected to it, and was shocked to immediately recognize that social media is something that I’ll need to address. During this two week social media hiatus, something profound happened almost immediately: I became a more present father.

Instead of half-watching my daughter play while trying to write pithy responses tweets that triggered my fight-or-flight response, I was there – fully engaged, mentally present, emotionally available. The contrast was stark enough that it felt like a different kind of parenting altogether.

The Takeaway

I'm not here to tell you to delete all your apps (though I'm not not telling you that either). What I am suggesting is this: the digital experiences we've accepted as normal might be profoundly abnormal for our emotional wellbeing.

The microblogging platforms in particular – with their emphasis on hot takes, dunking, and context collapse – seem engineered to create a deeply unsatisfying experience that somehow keeps us coming back for more.

Two weeks away from the digital rage machine hasn't resulted in me deleting all my accounts, although I did delete all my tweets. It's simply helped me recognize that these tools should serve us, not the other way around.

Your daughter's imagination is infinitely more interesting than whatever's trending right now anyway. Trust me on this one.

Note: The ideas, analysis, and insights presented in this piece are entirely my own. I utilized Claude to assist with editing, language refinement, and clarity of expression.