Because it’s making us stupid and destroying our brains.

That’s why I deleted my Instagram at the beginning of 2026 despite being a creator with 30k followers.

I realized that the longer I was on Instagram, the more my brain was getting fried.

Whether it was spending hours of my life every week as a creator tapdancing for the algorithm, or as a consumer and letting it dictate what information it puts in front of me, I’m seeing Instagram, TikTok and other short-form social media platforms as the dystopian experience that’s hiding in plain sight.

Those words were written 40 years ago in 1985, in Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” where he warns us about modern media’s impact on our individual lives.

Postman goes on to say:

For the past few years I’ve been sensing that the digital age, and Instagram especially has collectively turned us into a shallow society.

Every time you open social media and scroll, its like drinking a two-liter Coke and eating a tub of ice cream.

That may be okay every once in a while, but what if you’re doing it every day? Well that’s essentially what’s happening with social media.

We’re feeding our minds constant brain candy, and we’re wondering why so many people can’t stick to a diet and fitness plan, or why 90% of people quit their new years resolutions within the first two months of the year.

Because Instagram, and similar platforms are literally reconfiguring our brains for instant gratification.

So we end up struggling to do anything that requires discipline, or consistency, or discomfort.

I get it. This might sound alarmist, but when you’re in the middle of the ocean, it’s impossible to perceive the changing tides.

And the tides have definitely changed.

I decided that 30k followers wasn’t worth my brain continuing to be fried, so I deleted my Instagram. I deleted Facebook and X too, but I barely used those anyway so I’ll just focus on IG here.

And if you’ve ever had thoughts of doing the same, or taking a break, then stay tuned because I’m going to take you along through my journey.

Back in 2021 I also deleted all social media.

Because every time I logged onto social media (IG in particular), I came away from it feeling worse.

It made me seriously depressed quite frankly.

At the time I was going through a breakup, and every time I logged on, it made me feel significantly worse. It opened my eyes to how the platform creates false perceptions of closeness and connection with people because access to everyone is just one scroll, one click, one DM away.

And when access to something becomes more abundant, it also becomes less valuable. There’s value in scarcity. When you have to actively put effort into connecting with your friends, and they have to put effort into connecting with you, it does two things.

And to take things a step further, around the time of the pandemic, I noticed that algorithms started to deprioritize content from actual friends, and started pushing random people’s content to my feed.

So the “social'“ element of social media really stopped existing.

I’m scrolling, I’m giving my time and my attention to people who I don’t even know. And since I was deep into a fitness transformation at the time, I realized that while I was physically in amazing shape, Instagram was one of the main things causing me to be mentally unfit.

So I woke up one morning and deleted my social media. I deleted Facebook, I deleted my X account, and I deleted my Instagram. And for 365 days I was offline.

And it changed my life.

Instead of scrolling I started consuming way more educational content. I put different things I learned about fitness, and finances, and living better into practice..

That was the most productive time of my life.

I bought two homes in six months. I started my YouTube channel. I got insanely ripped. And my calisthenics exploded.

In 2022, exactly one year after I left, I came back to Instagram and it instantly hooked me.

After a full year of living a quiet life with no validation from online connections or followers, I posted once again, and immediately got a flood of “likes.” I know it means nothing, but validation is still rewarding.

The dopamine was flowing.

My primary reason for returning was to share my calisthenics with the world and potentially create some sort of online brand around it, and within just a couple months of returning, my following on Instagram really started to take off.

I went from maybe 2k followers to over 20k followers in just a few months. A few celebrities followed me.

I found myself investing more and more of my time into trying to understand the algorithm — how to unlock that same success.

Posting as a creator is when I really started to see how much of our behaviors are controlled by algorithms.

I was learning all of these strategies about how you need to keep people entertained with bells and whistles, and colorful words that pop up on the screen.

Basically, the more you dumb down your message and feed mental candy to people’s brains, the more the algorithm will reward you.

And with there being so much competition to stand out and to be a slave to the algorithm, it’s essentially a race to the bottom when it comes to grabbing people’s attention with cheap dopamine.

On IG, substance matters far less than entertainment value.

After spending countless hours learning these algorithms, it was obvious that not only was I a slave to the algorithm as a content creator, but what’s even worse is being on the consumer side of Instagram.

There’s so much information out there about the direct effects of social media (especially the IG and TikTok-style platforms) that I don’t feel a need to go into detail.

But in short, repetitively consuming massive amounts of content made by strangers, one post after another, is literally causing people’s brain to not function properly.

There’s a special term for this, which you’ve probably heard before:

I think this idea of the brain not functioning properly captures basically all of the problems with short form content:

I genuinely started to see Instagram as a sort of malware that corrupts my mind and puts me into a perpetually suboptimal state of existence.

On Instagram, it’s not uncommon to have an entire DM conversation of reels sent back and forward between people with virtually no words being exchanged. This makes people think they’re actually interacting with other humans when there’s actually zero interaction taking place.

Social media is replacing basic social needs, with platform engagement disguised as human interaction.

I have personally felt this. I find myself becoming more and more frustrated with how low-effort some of my friendships have become.

And it’s so painful because here I am with this massive network of people, yet I feel disconnected from almost everybody.

As someone who really champions the idea of self-mastery, and human connection, and living intentionally, I see IG as something that is a net-negative on my business, my life, and basically everything that I truly value.

Since having these revelations, I’ve been on a crusade against all varieties of short-form content and digital distractions in general.

I’ve published multiple articles and YouTube videos on how big of a problem this is.

And after growing a following of 30k on Instagram, I decided to completely remove myself from the platform so I can focus on better things in life.

Now as a content creator I have more time to focus on long-form articles, YouTube, and LinkedIn, all of which value communicating more well-thought out ideas that, to no surprise generate better business because they connect me with people who are more serious about the products and services that I offer.

On top of that, the nature of longer-format platforms that allow you to express more complete thoughts makes it easier for me as a business owner and content creator to build trust by differentiating myself through depth.

Yes there is still an instant gratification element on those platforms too. That will always exist.

But in my experience, Instagram (and maybe TikTok?) is the worst when it comes to that.

As a content consumer, since I’m not scrolling on IG anymore, I consume more books, and lectures, and other long-form sources that are way more beneficial to my creativity, and my brain overall.

But most importantly, I spend a lot more time offline, thinking, writing, working on my business, working out, staying connected with friends, learning new things, etc.

And in my opinion these are the elements that make life truly satisfying.

I genuinely encourage anyone reading this to seriously reconsider their relationship not only with platforms like Instagram, but also with short-form content in general.

I realize a lot of you are probably not trying to leave social media altogether, so I just created a protocol to kill digital dopamine and reset your focus in 7-days.

It’s interactive with a structured framework that you can follow to break your unhealthy relationship with digital distraction, and shift that energy into focusing on higher life priorities.

You can grab it here.