Over the past few years, I’ve been on a series of regular social media detoxes. Every time, something strange happens. Your friends and family will contact you more frequently than usual.
Basically, my popularity increases almost overnight. Researchers who study digital wellness and technology policy say my experience is not unique, and that in some cases, taking a break from social media can actually increase your social activity.
Across multiple surveys, more social media users say they want to reclaim their time, be more present in their relationships, and feel less overwhelmed by notification overload. Data collected by digital audience insights firm GWI and published by the Financial Times on October 3 shows that fewer people than ever use apps to actually connect with friends, and more people open them “reflexively” just to kill time by scrolling.
Almost a quarter of social media users, particularly around a third of Gen Z, deleted at least one app in the 12 months leading up to the 2025 Deloitte UK Consumer Trends Survey of 4,150 people.
Lizzie Irwin, a policy communications expert at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Center for Humane Technology, said these people could become more social by intentionally encouraging their friends to reach out to them, even by accident, rather than passively observing their lives on social media. According to its website, the organization advocates against the “harmful effects of attention-seeking design” on the Internet.
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The first social media detox I documented was in September 2024. I deleted all social media apps from my phone for 30 days. For the first two weeks, I mainly heard from close friends who texted me every day. I learned about big pop culture moments and the world’s biggest updates after others. It was worth it to give my brain a break from all the notifications.
As the experiment continued, more people started contacting me. Some of them rarely contacted me directly, but followed updates on my life on social media. A family friend told me he was thinking about his own social media detox and wondered what was going on with me. It turned into a deep conversation about her recent move to another state. If I was still using social media, that probably wouldn’t have happened.
In early April, I embarked on a similar experiment. A colleague and I ditched our smartphones for 96 hours in favor of a flip phone to find out why more young people across the country are doing the same. As I prepared, I worried that I would be lonely without messages to send and receive on social media.
Instead, my friends called me more often to talk about the latest movies in theaters and ask me how I was doing without my smartphone. People asked for my flip phone number so they could text me during the experiment, so I improvised and ended up actually going out with friends.
Some social media relationships carry over, and some don’t.
Dr. John Taurus, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of digital psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, says quitting apps won’t make everyone more social.
A small study co-led by Taurus of U.S. adults ages 18 to 24 who took a one-week social media break in 2024 and 2025 found that participants’ levels of anxiety, depression, and insomnia improved. Their loneliness levels were about the same on average, he notes, perhaps because some people don’t use social media primarily to connect with real-life friends.
“If you have a pre-existing relationship that used social media to communicate, it stands to reason that that relationship will carry over even after you stop using social media,” Taurus says. But if you connect online primarily with casual acquaintances or complete strangers, those relationships “will not carry over even if you stop using social media.”
If you had pre-existing relationships before using social media for communication, it stands to reason that those relationships will carry over even after you stop using social media.
Dr. John Taurus
Harvard Medical School
Irwin says social media platforms don’t necessarily encourage users to make real social connections. Staying active on social media these days often requires scouring ads or scrolling through past posts from people you don’t necessarily know, she points out.
“It’s a big departure from what we originally thought of the purpose of (social media),” she said, adding, “It seems like it’s not a connection, but another channel to get content.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an April 2023 earnings call that about 40% of the content users see on Instagram is artificial intelligence-recommended content from accounts they don’t follow. The default view on social media platform X is a curated “For You” tab, and users must manually select the “Following” tab to only see content from accounts they follow. Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It’s request for an updated diagram, and X also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the default view.
Still, the number of users of social media apps is increasing every year. Instagram has 3 billion monthly active users worldwide, up from 2 billion at the end of 2021, Zuckerberg wrote on Meta-owned platform Threads in September. TikTok, which primarily refers to itself as a “global discovery platform,” has more than 1 billion monthly users, according to SEO training platform Backlinko. Snapchat announced that the number of monthly active users exceeded 900 million in April 2025.
“The more you can show yourself what is changing, the more powerful it becomes.”
If you want to know if your social media friends stick with you offline, ask yourself what Torous calls the “chatbot test.” In other words, could the person you’re talking to be a chatbot? If so, he points out, you might not have the deepest connection.
And if you’ve taken a break from social media but are still missing your friends, Irwin suggests being proactive. Text 3 to 5 people to see how they’re doing and see what kind of conversations you can carry on long-term.
Taurus and Irwin point out that you don’t necessarily have to take a break from social media to cut down on screen time or re-engage in social activities with people you actually know. By limiting social media notifications on your device, Irwin says, you’ll be less tempted to open an app when you’re preoccupied with something else.
No matter what you try, Taurus advises tracking changes in your mood, sleep habits, step count, and more. “If you can show yourself what’s changing and why things are getting better, it’s more powerful. And if it’s not getting better, that becomes an interesting data point to consider,” he says.
During my break from social media, I became more alert and less flustered. Life moved on at a much slower, more manageable pace. I found time to clean my apartment and read the novel I’ve been meaning to finish for months. I went to bed early every night because I didn’t have to spend minutes scrolling through my doom in bed.
When the experiment is over, I will return to social media and hope to have a healthier relationship with those platforms and my smartphone. While it’s still a joy to send funny videos to your siblings and friends on social media, there’s nothing like having a hearty laugh together on the couch or sharing your thoughts after watching a movie together.
“Relationships require building,” Irwin says. I prefer to build that in person and with intention.
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