Breaking Free from Tech Addiction: A Personal Journey to Reclaiming Presence and Purpose

How I'm Tackling Social Media Overload and Rediscovering What Matters Most

It would be easy for me to say something like, “Social media is the devil!” In my head, I hear Kathy Bates as Mama Boucher screaming it while wagging a finger.

Obviously, It’s not that simple. But after taking a huge step back from social media (and other forms of tech addiction), and then coming back, I can definitively say that — for me — technology is adding more issues than it’s solving right now.

There are obvious exceptions. ChatGPT is a huge advancement that I’m a big proponent of. Laptops aren’t going anywhere. I don’t want to go back to corded, Bakelite phones or paper maps or having EVERY book I read be a physical tome.

But I also haven’t proven to be reliable when there’s something palm-sized, that I carry at all times, and that has the power to distract me entirely.

In the short time that I’ve reinstalled Instagram (my chosen digital opioid), I’ve seen my screen time increase by 30-50% on average. Some days, it’s more. I give absurd amounts of attention to an application that provides me with little in the way of genuine fulfillment, and it’s not the app’s fault.

Sure, I love to share memes with my wife, and to see what she sends me, and to see the cute pictures shes posts with her hilarious captions. I work with organizations that post daily or semi-daily, and who often tag me in those posts so that I can share them and increase exposure to that content. There are some things that I find genuinely useful and that I save to be able to reference later.

But that’s not how I spend the majority of my time. To be honest, I mostly doom-scroll.

I find reel on the “For You” page, and start swiping up, endlessly rolling through AI-generated crap, advertisements, and reposts from TikTok. I do so helplessly. I’ll often close the app, only reopen it, sometimes moments later.

It’s automatic. I’ve conditioned myself. And I don’t like it.

I’ve tried app blockers like Opal (highly recommended), but find myself abusing the settings in Screen Time that allow me to turn off Opals control so that I can browse. I’ve tried removing the app from anywhere visible. on my home screen. To be more accurate, I don’t even really have a home screen. This is what I’m rocking:

That is — for real — what I see when I open my phone. I use an app called [Blank] to set that up, with the goal of making only the essential apps my go-to, but that’s also too easily twarted, because just a left-swipe away is the app library:

Anything I might have tried to “hide” is often among the most available icons, and thus easily pressed. Instagram is always among them.

The issue with the whole situation is not the direct negative effect it has on me, but direct negative effect it has on my family, specifically my boys. More than once my wife has had call my name because one of the boys is trying to get my attention, and I’m absorbed in a device. I wonder to myself, “How often do they look at me when I’m in the room with them, and instead of seeing my attention on them, they see it elsewhere?”

This isn’t me bemoaning the fact that I don’t smother my kids with attention. But this internal conflict to me is a sign that I’m not present in the way that I could be. It is absolutely within the realm of reasonable thought to imagine a situation where, while I am engrossed in something that almost certainly cannot be called important, my youngest son decides to stick something in an electrical socket.

It gives me a little shiver just thinking about it. Lexapro and therapy have helped make it so that I don’t obsess over it. But it’s still possible.

And when I phrase it that way, that trade — digital dopamine fix exchanged for abdecated fatherly responsibility — isn’t one I’m willing to make. Isn’t one that I can make.

So. I’ve proven untrustworthy enough with self-regulation that, despite my best efforts, I still experience negative outcomes from my tech addiction. Enabling intervetions hasn’t helped, since I simply thwart them on demand. One of my favorite concepts from Alcaholics Anonymous is that of, “If I’ve never before shown the abiliy to control my drinking, what gives me the right to imagine a future where I suddenly discover how?” The liklihood is slim to none.

So Instagram had to go.

I still have an account, for all the reasons I listed earlier. And I’ll still check it. I’ll just make it super cumbersome: everything will be done on my laptop. I’m going to try to reduce my smartphone usage to a minimal amount per day (goal is 1 hour). I’m going to rely on my Kindle as a substitute for doom-scrolling.

Hopefully, if you struggle with this too, you can find something that works for you. And if you do, I’d love to hear about it, so please leave a comment.