I am 19 years old and deleted all social media from my phone three years ago. I consciously went against the general trend – and now I know that it was a good decision.
But from the beginning. At the beginning of 2023, when I was 16, I deleted all social media from my phone from one day to the next. More specifically: Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat and BeReal – all very common apps that I used for a long time and on which most of my friends were also active.
If you look at the figures on media usage among young people, you can clearly see that without these apps you are more of an outsider. And I too was the absolute exception at my level.
Avoid using certain apps
That doesn’t mean that I don’t have any social apps anymore, because I still use WhatsApp, YouTube and streaming platforms. I also get bored from time to time and can’t resist the temptation to pick up my cell phone. I wasn’t primarily concerned with reducing my screen time, although that also went hand in hand. No, I specifically wanted to avoid certain apps.
I often had a diffuse, bad feeling after using Tiktok and Instagram. I had wasted so much time watching random people do something that, if I’m honest, didn’t really interest me. It was a pastime, a distraction. Whenever I was bored, I would open the apps and see what was being posted.
And the way I felt is the same for many people. Instead of studying or doing homework, you’d rather spend your time scrolling around and watching videos. You hardly notice anything about what you look at. That’s not even possible, the brain wouldn’t be able to do it. According to the DAK addiction study from 2025, a quarter of children and young people have a problematic relationship with social media.
And besides, even if you don’t like to admit it, you’re constantly comparing yourself to others on such apps. What a great vacation they are having, who is traveling with whom and where am I not there at the moment? You constantly feel excluded, alone and jealous of others. This feeling, colloquially known as FOMO (Fear of missing out, author’s note), is not good for you. I consciously didn’t want to feel like that.
Suddenly more time for other things
So I decided that I wanted to use my time more wisely. I still went to school and had my high school diploma ahead of me. I had more fun with my hobbies again, tried out new things and put a lot of time into school, which really benefited me when I was studying for my Abitur.
And the amount of comparing has also decreased. Who gets how many likes on which picture has become irrelevant. I focused more on myself and what I enjoy.
What strikes me is that everyone always talks about how great and disciplined it is to avoid social media, but very few people actually change their own behavior. The fear of missing out apparently outweighs reason. And I can understand that. Even today, I still sometimes feel like I might be missing out on something.
But if there’s one thing I can say after all this time without Instagram, TikTok and the like, it’s that I’ve never missed anything really relevant. I may not be following every trend, but is that so bad? I don’t want to hear a lot of things anymore. I simply lost interest in it.
Real contact instead of stories
Even now, after graduating from high school, I have often thought about what it would be like to find out from everyone else via Instagram what they are doing after school. It is a phase in which everyone goes their own way and many contacts and friendships fall apart. Through social media you can at least keep track of where others are at the moment. On the other hand: If people are important to me and I am important to them, then I manage to stay in touch. You don’t need a public Instagram story for this. There are discussions and a personal, two-way exchange.
What helped me a lot is that my friend took the same step as me. We deleted all of these apps together on the same day. So I was afraid of missing something, but I knew he would miss it with me and then it didn’t seem so bad anymore.
To this day, neither of us have ever had a serious need to download these apps again. I can now use the time that I previously spent on social media differently. I don’t mean to say that I think social media is fundamentally bad. I think there are great opportunities there too. But as a young user, I wasn’t able to use these apps sensibly at the time. And probably most young people feel that way. I can definitely say: It’s good to take a break from the overwhelming mass of videos and images. It was so good for me that the break continues to this day.
