byuri.moe 
Commit Social Media Suicide.
I mean it, literally. In the current year, people behave as if their online persona is their personality. The profile that you cultivate, that you carefully construct, is more than just a profile.
I’ve had multiple conversations with good friends on this topic:
- What if someone wants to reach out over Instagram?
- What if someone is offering me a job over Instagram?
- I need to stay in touch with what my friends send me.
It’s interesting to see people come up with good reasons to stay on social media. I don’t want to be judgmental—I get it. In the 21st century, for Gen Z, having social media is often a requirement. People don’t ask for your number if they’re interested; we have already moved far away from that early 2000s Hollywood image. Now, people ask for your Snapchat or Instagram, so it has been accommodated for and seen as the status quo.
What’s also the status quo is social media addiction, the decay of social communities (and I’m not talking about your Discord server), an increase in depression, an increase in body dysmorphia, opinions becoming more extreme, and, overall, it feels like the world is getting crazier day by day. That is the new status quo. Nobody is questioning it because they might not even realize it—a lot of people do not live in the present moment.
What is the present moment? Funnily enough, the term, for me personally, was coined by Fulcrum, a weed YouTuber who walks around in public and, in a very respectful manner, “pranks” people, always politely leaving when told to. He himself brings up this “present moment” in every video as a core message, telling his viewers that success and happiness exist in the present moment (this is the only isolated clip I found, sorry for it being a short).
Ok Lars, Grass is green. The sky is blue. Tell me something new!
Well, people listen but don’t truly understand the real meaning behind living in the present moment. I still keep track of memes from time to time. For a short while, there was a trend called “Hopeless Core,” which was a counter-trend to “Hopecore.” LIMC (Lessons in Meme Culture) gave a great explanation. It ironically tells people to continue to doomscroll and consume endlessly.
The personal anecdote I can give to this is that people irony-poison their problematic usage of social media to the point of not taking it seriously or not caring enough about it. They think they are in charge of their media consumption, but are they really?
Recent data has shown a decline in student academic performance. You might argue that COVID-19, lockdowns, missing infrastructure, etc., are reasons for this, and I won’t disagree. It’s very rarely the case that only one contributing factor influences anything. But in my opinion, it is reasonable to assume that social media is a massive factor in this trend. When I talk to everyone my age, they say they feel like they have ADHD. I am not a therapist, nor do I feel comfortable diagnosing, but I think that social media and its fast-paced content are definitely factors in this development
The Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2024 is “brain rot” Once again, everyone acknowledges it, but nobody is doing anything about it.
Statistics have proven that ADHD very often results in depression, but not the other way around. Statistics have also shown that if you perform worse academically, you will have a higher chance of being depressed. ADHD results in a much greater suicide rate.
For me, personally, I have decided to step away from it. Dramatically, I would call it “social media suicide” since most people nowadays live on social media. The average time spent on social media right now for Gen Z is 4 hours daily, 2 hours 31 minutes globally, and TikTok users are on the app for an average of 52 minutes per day. Daily social media usage has increased by 6% year-over-year. 70% of users check their social media accounts within the first 10 minutes of waking up.
So yes, it’s not just deleting your app or your profile—it’s suicide, from the social norm, from the identity that you craft, from the people you meet.
“So how do I do that??” Very simply put, delete everything. The people who care about you will still talk to you over messenger apps.
A lot of people try to go the moderate “middle way.” I will never oppose it, but always keep in mind that it is you against a multi-million dollar company that has multiple scientists with the sole goal of getting you as addicted as possible. The game you are playing is not fair; it never was, and it never will be. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes!
If a Gen Z person spends 4 hours every day on social media, over an average lifespan of 80 years, they will have spent approximately 13.33 years purely on social media. That’s more than a decade of life consumed by scrolling.
Now start smoking, and you lose ~20 years of your life.
It’s time to commit social media suicide—not to kill your social media personality, but to save your real self!
“Alright… I will look into it.”
I have to say it one more time—you have to do it now. I know it might not appear urgent, but it is. If you don’t do it now, then you know damn well that you won’t do it tomorrow, or in two days, or in three days, and so on.
Last thing! Once you delete your social media, your brain will not be pleased. It will try to get the closest thing to the original source of dopamine, such as watching more YouTube, more Twitter. Your addiction will shift—that’s totally normal. Try to observe and act quickly and urgently. If you are unsure of how to start, use an app blocker! A screen time password anything that takes you out of the picture. Ask your roommate, friend, or family member for a password that they will never show you again.
If you feel some resistance within yourself, something that opposes this message, if you did not want to continue reading this comment, then it’s time to be honest with yourself. I greatly appreciate you spending time to read this post! I am proud of you for being open-minded and able to push through a hard-hitting message that hurts to read. Give your future self a gift and commit online persona suicide! (aka delete every social media app).