Why People Leave Social Media

The sun is setting on an era of social media — here are some reasons why people are leaving

I’ve been questioning the purpose of this newsletter recently—whether advocating for quitting social media is worthwhile, given its significant role in the election and its ability to keep people connected and politically engaged. Yet I can’t ignore all of the articles and posts that came out the past few months from people who are choosing to delete, deactivate, or simply minimize their time on these apps. If this trend continues, or even if users shift to alternatives that better align with their values, the major platforms will lose influence—once unimaginable. Between early October and December, daily active U.S. users on X have fallen from 32.3 million to 29.6 million, a drop of 8.4 percent, according to Mashable. As a recent Wired podcast asked: “Is this the year everyone quits social media?”

I’ve rounded up some anecdotes from the recent weeks on why people have left social:

Disillusionment with the Owners & Their Politics

The content moderation decisions by CEOs Elon Musk (X) and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), their political allegiances, and Musk’s destabilizing role in the new U.S. administration, as well as wariness about TikTok since it came back online, have been big sparks for many people leaving social or moving to platforms like Bluesky.

Martyn McLaughlin in a piece that has many great reflections about why he’s no longer as enchanted by social media:

In light of Meta’s Trump-appeasing pivot to the right, and the smouldering bin fire that is X under Elon Musk’s watch, it feels like there has been a perceptible shift in attitudes towards social media. What was once regarded as fatigue has hardened into distrust.

Even former Meta employees who once genuinely believed in the value of Facebook, have lost faith:

Natalie Ponte:

My mistake was assuming Mark intended to build a product that made the world more cohesive, not more divisive.

Kelly Stonelake:

I wasn’t giving people the power to build community, but helping inauthentic fence builders accumulate power for power’s sake. [.…] I stayed at Meta in the same way I spent 3 years in an abusive relationship, like a lobster getting boiled in a pot thinking that managing the temperature was her responsibility.

Brian Boland:

The question we all face is: Do we support Meta or walk away? Do you choose to work there? Do you keep your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts? While one person leaving might seem insignificant, collective action can have a real impact. […] For me, the choice is clear. I no longer want to support a company whose values and actions are deeply misaligned with mine. If you feel the same, I encourage you to consider your role in enabling Meta’s power.

Empty Business Promises

Many creators and business owners have found that social media does little for sales or engagement — that in fact, their followers tend to represent the least engaged and interested people in their audience:

Harry Doull, owner of Keap Candles (and a founding donor to my newsletter), has said for years that getting off social media was a great decision for his business, and he recently reflected on that in January:

Being on the business side has shown me just how much of the Internet has become saturated with spam and algorithmic noise. But here's what gives me hope: This tension isn't sustainable.

Anne Helen Peterson in her newsletter Culture Study:

None of my tweets with links to my newsletter were doing much of anything. My precious verified status increasingly meant nothing. Newsletter writers learned that the apparent burial of our links was not accidental. X wanted us there and only there. Its utility, particularly for someone who used it as a means of promoting their work, had diminished. That’s the real reason I stopped tweeting in the spring of 2023. It wasn’t some bold moral stance. It no longer made me feel good about myself or others, but that had been true for some time. Now it also didn’t serve me, or what I wanted to do with my writing.

Andromeda Romano-Lax in her newsletter:

Billie Eilish has over 100 million Instagram followers. The NYT reported that her memoir sold 64,000 copies in its first six months, which for a celeb memoirist is a huge flop. That means 0.0005 of her IG followers bought a book. (This article cites other celeb—>author numbers and the ratios are stunningly similar.) For most of us with IG followers around 2K, that would be the equivalent of ONE follower buying a book, which seems about right.

Lost Real-Life Connections

Amanda Gist, a creator who deactivated Instagram:

I’ve built a beautiful community of ~20k-ish people on Instagram that I actually do love deeply. […] And at the same time, that community I’ve built is responsible for 99.99999% of my social connections over the past few years. Not kidding. And not in the cool meet-up way that I’ve come across people on Instagram and we’ve totes vibed and now we go out to coffee and get our nails done together, although if we lived closer we might. But more in the way that they live across the country/ocean/globe and I (as wildly uncomfortable as this is to admit — I can still admit it because I know I’m not the only one) maintain zero face-to-face, real life relationships.

Seeking News — Not Distrust & Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling—obsessively consuming negative news—gives us the illusion we’re informing ourselves, but it paralyzes rather than prepares us. I’ve noticed that if I’m on Instagram, X, or Reddit, social media leaves me anxious, helpless, and discouraged. Reading a well-written newsletter or connecting in person may still at least seems to lead me to take action and keep going in the dark moment we’re in.

From a great crowd-sourced piece in the Guardian with advice on how to stop doomscrolling, this piece from a reader named William:

I deleted news apps from my phone and now check the news (once a day) by forcing myself to type in the URL for BBC and Guardian news. That extra step has helped resist the urge to check constantly. I have also managed to turn Apple News into an old-fashioned URL feed by selecting “Restrict Stories in Today” in Settings > Apps > News > Today Feed. I now only see articles from channels and topics I choose to follow … and I have carefully selected only non-news content (music, films, TV, etc) to keep me inspired. I also removed myself from social media … and read more paper books. When I have a minute where I would reach for my phone (waiting for the kids, at an appointment), I now carry a book with me everywhere.

There is a lot to be angry about, but X manufactures outrage. NPR’s Steve Inskeep reflects on this:

The way to understand our fractured world is to think more deeply about it, and thoughts take time. Social media demands and rewards the opposite—instant conclusions, biases, instant rage. Its corrosive influence is evident in some of the posts by its richest and most famous users.

The Party’s Over

It’s hard to believe, but social media actually used to be fun. Thom Waite in Dazed (which is an amazing piece if you have time to read the whole thing) on this:

Underlying all this upheaval is the fact that major social media apps just aren’t fun any more. More often than not, their algorithms serve up a torrent of nonsensical, AI-generated slop, boring engagement posts, violent fight videos, porn bots, and right-wing rants. (And that isn’t just a reflection of users’ morbid interests; this content is disproportionately amplified, pretty much across the board.) If you’re still on X, you also have to contend with every dumb opinion that passes through Elon’s brain, while at the other end of the scale, alternatives like Bluesky and Threads are written off as “boring AF” echo chambers.

This is just a sliver of the news about people deleting, deactivating, and minimizing their time on social media. To be clear, there are still billions of users on Meta, and hundreds of millions on X, so it’s early yet to write any eulogies on these tools. But it’s clear we are entering a new phase that I’ll continue to explore. As more people recognize the downsides of stepping away — and alternatives like Bluesky and Substack, with more decentralized or pro-user models become available, quitting social could continue to feel less radical.

The sun is starting to set on the era of social media we’ve come to know.

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For a full list of articles, books, newsletters, and more about leaving social media, check out this Resources spreadsheet. And submit your own.

Finally, please, share your reasons for leaving or cutting back on social media either in the comments, or contact me directly. I’d love to hear from you.