Deleting social media - 2 years later 

As a relatively new RU-vidr, the amount of views/support this video is getting is amazing. My mission is to use this platform to spread authentic, realistic self improvement content for normal people who live normal lives. If you like the sound of that type of content then check out my other videos. PS. Thank you for watching !!!

I'm at rock bottom right now and social media is worsening my mental health issues. I am planning to quit social media but I work in Digital marketing and can't decide how to slowly quit, and this video strikes me. I need to save myself before it's too late. Thank you so much for making this content. This is so helpful.

I’m an 88 baby and I don’t use social media because we never had it to begin with. Very grateful for those early years, kids nowadays will never know what that’s like

I will never come back to use social media..enough is enough.. We should all live in the real world.. and in the name of mental health..leave social media

I was debating on and off deleting all of my socials but held on for the last couple years because I like to laugh at memes when I'm feeling down. But then the algorithm started showing me emotional stuff and things that related to actual issues that I was having in my life. That really began messing with my head. That's when I knew I had to leave. I don't plan on coming back either. I have the same thinking, real life is EVERYTHING and so precious. I'm going to spend it doing things that will make an impact and help my future. So far the only "social media" sites I still go on are RU-vid & Reddit but they are highly informational for a lot of things so I appreciate that. Best of luck to everyone deciding to leave, it takes a lot of strength to do so and then stay off, but the benefits are endless.

I deleted IG after almost 17 yrs today. Have been searching/listening to videos like this all day. It's been very motivating ❤

Your very mature for your age- I quit social media in 2021 and I literally felt everything you did! I feel mentally free and its nice to have little moments to yourself

I’m 39, I grew up in the era you longed for pre-social media. It had its vices too. Though not nearly as accessible to a teenager in general. Having said that, I too deleted my socials a little over a year ago. The 2nd-4th months were the most difficult. I really felt like I was missing out on connections. But after enough self reminders of how nasty those apps made me feel, I now laugh when people ask me to add them on blah-blah app. See you in the real world brother!

I deleted my Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok 3 months ago. It is hard to move on when you see the people you want to forget and have trauma with. I am more peaceful now and can focus on real life. It is about freeing our soul in social media. It is uncomfortable when many people know the important details of our lives, it feels uncomfortable when we have no privacy. I only have LinkedIn though for professional connections. I just get all my pictures and videos from Facebook but that's all it was.

I am 40, and long sometimes for the 2000s or early 2010s when this matrix of social media wasn't in effect to this extent. One thing that works for me is to keep socials only on a laptop, but never on my phone. By doing this, I only check socials at end of day after work

Couldn’t agree more with everything you said! I really wish everyone would delete social media and we could all live in the real world I know everyone would be much happier.

I just deleted my social media accounts I’ve just couldn’t handle it anymore, the anxiety the stress the FOMO is destructive and time consuming

So glad I came across this video! I'm around the same age & I can relate to a lot of what you've talked about here. At the end of the day, social media needs us - we don't need social media ;) I've deleted it all for 3 years before & never missed it. RU-vid was also an exception for me because I didn't/don't have an unhealthy relationship with RU-vid & I find it to be very resourceful as well. I only recently created social media accounts after moving away from my hometown about a year & a half ago, but lately I've been considering getting rid of them again for the same reasons I deleted them before. It's encouraging to see other people in my generation going against "the norm" & unplugging to focus on their offline life - their real life. Thanks for sharing! :)

Great video, thanks for this! I’m glad you talked about the difficult parts as well as I’m nervous about that! Weird to say but I’m deleting everything for my 37th birthday present to myself next month. Reclaiming my life back. So clearly put, thank you!

I think a lot of people will just have everyone they've ever known on social media, too. So instead of just seeing what their main social circles are up to when they go onto Facebook or Instagram, they're also seeing what the guy they had two or three classes with in high school and the guy who lived up the street from them for six months when they were twelve is up to. So instead of just seeing what the people in their life are up to, they're also comparing their life to the lives of people they barely knew ten or twenty years ago. This is the big reason why a lot of people really struggle to differentiate between what a person is actually like and the highlights reel they put up on social media--without that in-person context, there's no way to know. I think this is also why people's mental health improves drastically over the long term once they quit social media. They're no longer competing against what they think other people might be like; they're just focusing on the things they can do to make their lives better today.

Im 21 now and I've properly quit social media for the second time a week ago (I deleted in in November but started to use tiktok a bit on my old phone and I had to intervene), Nothing helps more than videos like this one so thank you!! I totally relate to what you said about yearning for a life with no social media, I do feel sad that I am alone on this journey but its better than being stuck in the cycle of negativity from socials. Great vid :)

Thank you, I started my journey this month, and I hope to stay out of social media for at least 2 years, social media destroyed my relationship with my bf and my best friend, I’m 100% not a social media person 💔

This was great! I love that you related it to blood sugar spikes. I’ve been hypoglycemic since birth and more recently started treading the line for prediabetes. Food was just as addictive for me as social media. I started keto around the same time as limiting my social media ( I have an art business on there so I have to use sometimes for now. But plan on getting a Light Phone so it’s easier to stay away from). I was starting to notice that both addictions were very similar! Feel so much better now 😊

You speak so perfectly about this, i look up to you a ton. I thank you for sharing this and being vulnerable. Also your voice is super soothing and yes i had a cup of tea 🤍

Awesome. I'm looking for the same as you with the same reasons and also having those issues with been afraid about been lonely. Your thoughts helped me to look foward, thanks

I don't watch Shorts on RU-vid anymore because it is a scrolling trap like tiktok and instagram. I would not stop scrolling otherwise

Social media is destroying my mental health and my relationship with God I’m done

Actually the reassurance i needed to open my eyes man, thanks

Deleting the apps off your phone is a key step if you’re serious about cutting back/quitting. The instant access is a killer its so easy to pick up and scroll whenever you’re bored if its not there and you can’t get on it easily - that half the battle.

Sadly to admit you have a problem is not easy it is easier to make an excuse and when you have a problem like social media it’s really alluring you can’t put it down because there’s the next post and then the next one I admire the people like this gentleman that had the strength to leave it and do something more productive my congratulations sir and keep it up !! I am also in the detox moment right now and it is HARD !!

I love this so much!

I loved this video! I’m here to see you grow on RU-vid!

During the last year or so, I gradually gave up on social media - YT not included. I still keep the various accounts for business purposes and I log in on the desktop about once a week to do what needs to be done. The urge to start scrolling is entirely gone. It's been such a mental relief with virtually no downsides.

Great video mate, I've been considering it for a while, you're post motivated me to remove the apps from my phone, you view on RU-vid is identical to mine which is why I guess I didn't take the step forward to remove all the other social media apps as I treated this in the same category. Keep up the good work!

Great video! Yes! It makes sense. That is for this timely video friend.

This is a very helpful video. I’ve come to terms, with myself, that my excessive social media usage is due to trying to avoid the feelings of loneliness. The weird thing is social media exacerbated those emotions. Like you, I’m not happy with the way my life is heading and I want to make those changes now. Thank you for this video.

Hello that's really a good video and also thank you for your advices and sharing your experience ❤️❤️❤️

I’ve recently deleted all my social media and I plan to do it for good. I’ve done it for short amounts of time but I think I’m in it for life now😊

Hi joe :) I decided to quit social media and came across this video! Your video is very helpful! I hope my life will be better without social media 🌷

Well done young man. Spot on.

It's glad to find another personal around my age. I subscribed. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the video!

good video Joe cheers

I'm 41, born in 1982 - I'm SO GRATEFUL that I had no mobile phones and minimal internet access due to a landline in my high school and Uni years. But now, I just feel like I'm wasting SO MUCH of my precious time on stupid stuff. There are TONS of "creators" on RU-vid, but they create an illusion. Moving your life to an online screen and spending hours on end, shows how lonely we are even living in relationships.

Very good video!! Great job. I’m “clean” for almost a month and it’s been awesome

I’ve been weaning off the socials for years but I wish I went cold turkey 2 years ago or never started …. I’m 22 now ❤❤❤ thanks for sharing ❤❤❤ we can always self improve & focus where we are spending our attention on our goals

I hope so much that MORE young people and teenagers get inspirated by videos like this and quit or minimalize social media and then the world starts living without many hours at home and with mobile, but live with more hours with people

Excellent video, Joe! As you say Social Media is not real life ...

thank u for this video!

Thank you Joe :)

Great video bro

thank you for this video

awesome you have much more better headspace when not engaging to much on screens

I never really used much social media. I never got into Tiktok or Instagram at all ever. However, I have been using discord arguably too much for the past 3 years since quarantine. I'm ashamed of that fact as I could have used my free time to change myself from the wimpy little 13 year old to something else, something better, but instead I wasted it all, on the internet. Recently some drama happened on Discord and only then did I realize that this needs to god damn end. I recently went back to school, but I didn't talk to people much at all. I just thought it was something else and that I'd fix it eventually, but now I realize that it was my obsession with just escaping to discord with my fake ass online friends instead. Only after getting into drama again did I realize that this has no god damn point. It's just a temporary unstable source of happiness. I decided to do what I should have done ages ago and quit discord. I didn't just stop using it though, I went all out and locked myself out of my main account. I made a burner email, left every server, blocked everyone, deleted everything else, set my 2FA on, smashed my hand on my keyboard without looking and set the random jumbled mess to my password, locked everything with 2fa and then deleted that email and deleted the auth key to log back in and then logged out for the very last time, leaving my account and everything on it to rot as a digitally fossilized relic for eternity until it's eventually taken out of its misery by being wiped off the database for inactivity. I had so much stuff on that account, but oddly I don't regret anything. Oddly enough I feel wonderful after deleting it. I started working out again and started eating healthy. I want to gain back control over myself, and it seems to be going well. Deleting the app that held me back was only the first step. Long ass paragraph, I know. I still feel absolutely wonderful. Why didn't I do this ages ago though?

Hi Joe, just came across your video on my journey to work. I’m 26 years old too and recently deleted my instagram since it’s the only one I really used and was addicted to. I was also addicted to twitter from a young age as a Justin bieber fan account (a bit embarrassing now I know😂) Thank you for this video and update, it’s beautiful to know how it’s positively affected you. I wish you the best in everything and I hope I can stay off social media for as long as you have❤️

10:03 this is what keeps happening to me all the time unless I ask few friends I’ve had for years 😅 also something that I found is that people very rarely are looking to make new friends or open to meet and keep in touch with new people

I think that 100% abstinence is rarely the solution but at the same time social media has a very high threshold (or activation energy) for only using casually. It has such high addictive potential that it just draws you into a constant state of euphoria.

Social media is effecting me badest way, I always find myself in situations where I compare myself to others , but I just can't delete it yet , it's kinda hard for me to quit it

Was off of Facebook for 4 years. Hopped on only to keep in contact with Family back home as it's the only way I can keep in contact at the moment. The amount of self loathing and narcissism is what made me quit. Nothing changed and honestly as a nearly 30 year old Indigenous man, I think the younger generation should embrace authenticity and actual irl experience over idealization/fantasy of experiences. Life is too short to be caught up in petty drama that won't matter years from now. Don't waste your time on external factors you have no control over.

Lessssgooooo 🔥

Hey I totally agree with your every single word

I was never on social media other than Facebook and haven't been on it for years. Definitely made me a lot happier

This is one of the channels that gave me the courage to start my RU-vid channel 6 months ago about self development. Now I have 544 subs and > 100 hours of watch time. I know it’s not comparable with others but I’m still proud I started because I’ve been learning so many lessons that I could haven’t learned without getting started in the 1st place.

I quit for 2 years and now back iccasionally because I need to market my business. But now I am in control :)

I struggle with maladaptive daydreaming so his journey will definitely be interesting but I’m looking for it

Yes I deleted all social media 6 years ago. BEST DECISION EVER! Also I never had twitter and Tiktok. At first when I deleted all social media I began to watch movies more. Until the end. Before that I watched movies and stared at phone at the same time. But afer few months movies and video games bored me so I finally realised. Hey, now you have more time at home to read books. So Ive read 28 books just in first 4 months. Great deal. To be honest the only reason why I kept social media in last couple of years was because I wanted to meet some cute girl since Im in sport and dont go out to party as before. But as it was useless I gave up.

quitting social media in 2021 is the best thing I've ever done in my life

I left social media earlier this year. Best decision of my life! i have more time to read and enjoy life

I've deleted instagram and Reddit last week. I've hit my lowest mental wise and the scrolling just doesn't help. I totally get the 'addictive personality' type, I think I tend towards it too. Having a time limiter on my phone didnt do anything as I raised it up whenever I hit my 1h mark. If people wanna communicate, they got my phone number or know where to find me. So yeah, we'll see how it goes. (I'll keep RU-vid as it is much less an issue for me. I just dont watch reals like at all bc of the same addictive potential)

I quit it this week i feel myself happy and free it did it for me to make my life better

Nice to be here

Love this - Have never had any self-discipline on my phone so have deleted all my social media on and off before but now it's permanent - to avoid looking like a dickhead ahaha

Dope outro

Social media is great if you’re making money on it. If you’re not making money on it, get off of it. It causes FOMO, jealousy, self hatred. Sometimes I wish the internet as a whole didn’t exist, I think young people would be soooo much better off without it. Our social skills in real life have gone to shit, and we’re all overstimulated. We’re all miserable but we’re missing real life! As in - what’s in front of us in real time.

Everyone should delete social media!!

Hi I just deleted my instagram today thankyou for the videos !

It's been 5 months since I quit Social Media it feels good.

I’m back on day one. I’ve done several social media detox’s before 3 - 6 months. Longest I did was a year. It was great. My mental returned back to normal. The reason I returned was mainly fomo. I had told myself if I return back to bad behaviors I would do another detox. Those bad behaviors were comparing myself to others, checking my followers and checking up on other people. I was not living in the moment I was too busy looking down at my phone, so that is why I’m doing another detox and hopefully for good. I don’t have a certain time limit right now, but I did disable deactivate all my profiles except for RU-vid. I don’t consider YT social media. It kind of depends on how you utilize it whereas I use it for research in school. Anyone considering it I’d say do it. It’ll be better for your mental health and life all around. (Sidenote, the reason why I’m doing it again is because I compared myself to another person and it made me depressed. That’s when I knew I needed another detox)

Unsocial media… I deleted everything and I think it's an ego cult. If you are not promoting a brand then It’s something very unhealthy.

I have managed to delete all my social media but I hav'ent been able to delete one(Instagram) becsue I am a first year university student and so the only way I can communicate with my high school friend who go to different schools is by Instagram. what would you suggest? I love your vids btw you are doing great!

I deleted Facebook in 2022. Although I did go back in late 2023, I got irritated all over again. I was getting nothing but messages from random guys asking for dates. I never considered FB a dating site. Fed up, I decided in January this year to leave FB for good and haven't looked back.

I just deleted facebook which is the only social media I used.

Huge respect to you Joe. I am 35 and have been off this junk for some years myself. Once you cut ties with it and you realise the insanity of it, you can't easily go back. I'm so glad to see the younger people of today realising how social media is stealing their life from them and limiting them from becoming the person they want to be. Well done.

I’m 7 years Facebook free. I was off insta for a long time. I’ve been back on for 18 months and now I’m ready to delete the app again. It’s time. See you all in the real world 🎉

The apps make it harder to delete them like I've tried deleting Snapchat and it goes"try again in 72hr"

Hey Joe, really nice video ! I was wondering if I could help you with Best Quality Editing in your videos better than your Editor with good pricing and also make a highly engaging Thumbnail which will help your videos to reach to a wider audience ? Pls let me know what do you think ?

RU-vid is social media too, and in my opinion it’s more addictive than Instagram and Facebook etc.

did you permanently deleted instagram and Facebook or just deactivate? i put in a request to permanently delete all social media two weeks ago and although i never really used it just know it will be gone forever has me going through withdrawals.

Im 19 and i just quited social media feeling great so far no instagram, snapchat and tiktok

Amazing video joe I have a question to ask I am running a social media marketing agency and I also want to decrease amount of time on social media plz help me in this

What I do is, I log out my accounts to slowly reduce my time on social media

Brother im trying to delete my social media accounts but they make is so complicated Its like they don't want u to delete the app!

This video made me realise that I'm addicted to the exhaustion of my brain watching RU-vid or consuming myself into a fictional universe until i can't no more same as video games I just forget everything around me and I play until my brain is tired until my head hurts so my real problem is being a consumer

In my case Reddit is the absolute WORST. I'm in a love hate relationship with it because it has taught me so fking incredibly much. Not exaggerating. I learned so much about technology, improved my english by like 2x since I've first started using it and it changed my life to the better in terms of intelligence. But at the same time I'm so highly addicted to it and it stresses me out. I have these heart skips (PACs/PVCs) that according to doctors are harmless but they are also very debilitating mentally. Whenever I'm stressed they happen more. And sometimes I can feel them showing up whenever I open up Reddit. It's just really addictive and in my opinion doomscrolling on it feels way worse than on Instagram because your mind needs much more computational power to process what goes on there, especially when browsing technical stuff. Also the FOMO is so strong when not using Reddit. I think this is the worst part. You're so afraid of missing out the newest trends in Python programming or news of incidents that happen worldwide. So yeah, be cautious with Reddit too.

On this topic I highly recommend reading "A Life Unplugged: Reclaiming Reality in a Digital Age" by Theodore Blaze.

Social media use can work if you limit your use that's the tricky part cuz the apps are made to be addictive

How did people invite you to events, did they just text you or message you on fb messenger:)?

People seem to struggle to understand that RU-vid may be a social media, but it's more of a accessible streaming service than anything (if you watch the right channels, of course). It's like saying Netflix, Prime and Max are social media too. We're just here to watch and learn, not be stupid like tik tokers. Get a grip.

My 2nd month i feel beast already

It’s soooo harddd

I put 20mins for my daily RU-vid too and 8-10mins would be nice :)

I deleted it for good yesterday I don't want to have to keep up with anything like you said I tried to detox but my brain said delete it

I have cut back

It’s a complete distraction from real life. I swear it’s more addictive than actual drugs. I never post much on those platforms but I look at it all the time. It seems like everyone on there is living a great life, and I’m not, and it makes you feel like you’re missing out. But am I? I’m probably just missing out on real life, the here and now. I’m seriously addicted to RU-vid as well. There’s so many cool things on there and people giving amazing advice, but does it really help us though?

Here is your medal