I Spent a Week Without Social Media—And Realized I'm Just Another Junkie

24 Feb 2026 #misc

One LinkedIn post pushed me to quit social media for a week.

I’ve been writing on LinkedIn (and other social blogs) for two years. And to “grow” my account as a creator, I’ve been following common advice: “be your own case study” and “engage after posting.” I questioned that advice, yet still spent an hour a day engaging.

I had two wake-up calls:

1. Noticing my phone time. 2h18min on average the week before.
2. Finding a post inviting people to disappear from the Internet without apologies, announcements, or guilt. I did that—kind of.

For a week, I stayed away from anything with a feed: Medium, LinkedIn, dev.to, YouTube, Reddit…But I still scheduled my weekly content for the platforms where I write.

You need an intention and a replacement

Ignoring my own productivity advice, I checked my email and socials before work.

When planning my feed-free week, I thought I needed an app/website blocker. But starting the first day with an intention was enough. “No social media today.”

Instead of scrolling, I read.

That week, I finished Papyrus by Irene Vallejo and got halfway through Financial Freedom by Grant Sabatier. In fact, I’ve been replacing my phone time with books in the last month.

Lesson #1: Don’t simply ban social media, replace them with conscious activities instead.

Don’t make scrolling your go-to activity

I hadn’t realized how scrolling had changed my behavior.

On day two, I was on a weekly meeting with a contracting client. “Another meeting that could be an email” kind of meeting. Nothing unusual until I noticed I wanted to fire up my LinkedIn account to make it until the end. I wanted a feed to scroll, like an addict.

Those moments made me realize scrolling was my default response to boredom.

Lesson #2: When procrastination comes, start with an easy task and sustain for 5 minutes. That’s enough to keep things moving forward.

Lesson #3: Find a boring activity instead of scrolling on social media. I’m doodling on the back of old receipts.

Social media looks like any other addiction

Even with an intention, books, and doodling, my monkey brain often popped up trying to trick me back to social media:

• “What if my account got suspended for lack of engagement?”
• “Did my posts generate visits to my book landing pages?”

To quiet the monkey brain, I learned to distance from it and refute my thoughts with rational ones:

• “You received a notification of your scheduled posts going live. The system is working.”
• “Let your content system run. You don’t need to refresh stats every 5 minutes. Let the Internet do its magic.”

Lesson #4: Social media tricks (whistles, notifications, bells) work. We need a lot of effort and intention to fight back.

“Warming up” the algorithm isn’t worth the time

To finish the experiment, earlier today I logged into my social media accounts.

In some platforms, my impressions suffered. Maybe it was just coincidence. In another one, one of the two scheduled long-form posts was a hit.

As usual, my best posts still spiked in views and thoughtful comments.

“Warming up” the algorithm with hacks (engaging before posting, like and reshare your own posts) isn’t worth the time and the addiction it creates.

Lesson #5: Good posts stand out without hacks.

Handling them with care

After my feed-free week, here are some long-term changes I’m adopting, both as a reader and writer:

1. No email notifications from social media.
2. Zero feeds before creative work. Timer on socials for conscious use.
3. Weekly posts scheduled in advance. Have 2 or 3 weekly slots for engagement.
4. Feed-free mode when working on creative projects or experiments.

I thought I wasn’t an addict. I thought I used social media consciously. I thought I was a dealer who didn’t use their own drug. Stepping away showed me I was just another dopamine junkie. Social media, like every billion-dollar industry, thrives on keeping us hooked.