Every Reason you Need to get off the screen and enjoy a digital detox.

Dear Reader,

For the last two weeks, I stepped away from the digital world and into a self-imposed digital detox, an intentional pause meant to regulate my dopamine levels, reclaim thought independence, and reset my sleep schedule.

What I imagined would be a gentle, whimsical retreat into slow living turned out to be something far more confronting.

I had pictured myself baking bread, dancing barefoot, making homemade jam, and frolicking through sunlit woods. And while all of those things are possible during an offline break, what I hadn’t anticipated was this: without social media, without doomscrolling, without constant digital noise, there was nowhere left to hide.

I realized that the rain started beating me the moment I kept fighting despite having forgotten the cause -Ndwiga Alice

Going offline forced me to sit with the very thoughts, feelings, and truths I had been unconsciously avoiding. It required me to face my inner demons head-on, and that, is no easy feat.

On the first day of my detox, I caved.

I turned my phone back on “just for an hour” and scrolled through YouTube Shorts, deliberately avoiding notifications from people who knew I wasn’t supposed to be online.

Days two through five, however, felt promising. I was motivated. Determined. I worked out, danced, slept earlier than usual, journaled consistently, and even watched a few movies I’d been meaning to catch up on.

By day six, though, I was exhausted from trying to understand what I was feeling, what was missing, what I needed, and who I was becoming without digital distractions. So, I escaped to the next best refuge: books.

In those two weeks, I read more than most people read in years. One book every day. Sometimes two. Twenty-four books back-to-back.

Reading became my coping mechanism, because not reading meant swallowing a bitter truth pill. It meant accepting that I was simply a girl, confused, uncertain, and unsure of what she truly wanted.

Silence demanded honesty.

It meant sitting with raw thoughts instead of outsourcing clarity from social media narratives or even ChatGPT’s best-case scenarios.

It meant acknowledging that if I wanted to pursue something big, meaningful, and unfamiliar, I would inevitably encounter failure, more than once. And while that realization might seem obvious, it isn’t particularly pleasant to confront.

Some days, I found the strength to ground myself, painting, dancing, moving my body, choosing presence.

On other days, when I paused the reading and let the silence speak, I cried myself to sleep. Especially when I realized how alone I truly felt.

This digital detox journey didn’t magically fix my life or grant instant mental clarity. But it stripped away distractions and revealed the truth beneath the noise. It reminded me that healing is not aesthetic, it’s uncomfortable, emotional, and deeply human. And perhaps that’s where real growth begins.

In this digital age, social media has reshaped how we think, feel and function. I mean, I love the constant, beyond-borders connection it fosters but I’ve also come to understand that prolonged and unregulated use comes with so many neurological consequences that only get crystal clear when we step away.

Three major effects of social media I've encountered are:

1. Dopamine dysregulation and addiction to instant gratification.

Research shows that social media interactions, trigger dopamine release in the neurological reward pathway.

This dopamine driven reinforcement creates a feedback loop that encourages repeated engagement.

Dopamine means happiness and happiness is great but this type... not so much.

Scientific findings suggest that this pattern of activation alters attention, emotional regulation and impulsivity.

While researchers continue to explore the exact mechanisms, what’s clear is that social media doesn’t interact with the brain the way neutral information does, it engages the reward circuitry and can condition behaviours toward constant checking and instant gratification.

2. Disrupted sleep and Circadian rhythms

One of the most well-documented effects of social media use is poorer sleep quality.

In short, if you’re anything like me, you’ll scroll the night away and spend your days running on 2 hours of sleep and delusion if not caffeine.

Across studies of young adults and university students, nighttime social media use is strongly associated with shorter sleep duration, delayed bedtimes, and greater insomnia severity.

According to the sleep foundation, up to 93% of young adults report sleep loss linked to social media use. Emotional investment and frequent checking before bed are key predictors of these disruptions.

Nighttime social media use increases pre-sleep cognitive and emotional arousal, making it harder to relax and fall asleep.

These mental activations, along with social comparison and emotional content, can keep the brain alert when it should be winding down.

Then there’s the issue of blue light suppressing melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep.

At the end of the day, nothing good comes from a chronic lack of sleep.

 A large percentage of lifestyle diseases can be attributed to sugar and poor sleeping habits.

3. Loss of Thought independence and Autonomy.

Now this is actually what pushed me to take the break in the first place. Social media platforms are powered by algorithms that amplify content to maximize engagement.

The algorithms are designed to keep us online and interacting, so it pushes all of our favourite stuff into our feed. Which is a great feature, save for one tiny fact.

Research from philosophy and digital ethics shows that this attention harvesting and content shaping can undermine epistemic autonomy, the ability to form your own beliefs and make independent decisions. The same mechanisms that keep users scrolling also steer what they see, think about, and believe.

In short, your choices and perception are subtly shaped without conscious awareness.

In essence, the longer you engage, the more the feed feeds you back your own expectations, fears, and preferences, narrowing the range of ideas you encounter, and slowly diminishing the space for self-directed thought.

Your thoughts no longer become your own, and your mind begins to just echo back what you heard from a figure online.

The detox didn't give me clarity, It gave me space. Space to notice my need for stimulation instead of stillness. Space to notice how easily my thoughts are influence and how easily I get distracted. Space to feel all the discomfort I avoided and space to learn that discomfort is information, not failure.

Technology isn’t the villain.

Connection isn’t the enemy.

But when consumption replaces contemplation, and stimulation replaces presence, we slowly lose touch with ourselves.

Our sleep suffers. Our attention fragments. Our thoughts stop feeling like they originate from within.

What unsettled me most during this break was realizing how unfamiliar my own inner voice had become.

Perhaps the real danger of constant connectivity isn’t that we’re distracted, but that we forget how to sit with ourselves long enough to ask honest questions.

To feel without numbing.

To think without being told what to think.

To rest without guilt.

Maybe growth doesn’t arrive as a breakthrough, but as a quiet remembering, of who we are beneath the noise, beneath the algorithms, beneath the endless scroll.

And maybe that’s worth protecting.

Put your phone down tonight without replacing it with another distraction.

Sit in the silence. Notice what you feel.

Ask yourself: Which of my thoughts are truly mine and which ones have I absorbed?

Love,

Me <3

P.S.: It gets better, always.