My screentime over the course of 2025 was abysmal. I spent, on average, five hours per day on my phone. That’s equal to 1820 hours or 75 days of screentime. 20% of my year was spent staring at the tiny LED box in my hand. When it came time to make resolutions for 2026, I knew exactly what I wanted to change. I wanted to spend less time on my phone with the goal of less than three hours a day. My first step to achieving this goal was deleting TikTok. I had already dabbled in not having the platform downloaded during finals season. I restricted myself to only going on TikTok on Sundays. But for the new year, I was cutting it off completely. Here’s what I noticed.
Decreased Screentime
Since deleting TikTok completely, my screen time has gone down to an average of three hours per day. This is a significant drop. While TikTok is a main platform for short-form content consumption, Instagram’s reel feature creates a similar dopamine release in the brain. Due to this, I have found myself watching Reels more often than I used to. However, Instagram Reels are only so interesting; it’s a lot harder to curate a “For You” page. This made it so much easier to avoid getting sucked in for hours. Along those lines, my only access to TikTok is on my computer through the webpage. It requires a significantly increased effort to access and get sucked into the web browser version of TikTok than it does to simply switch to the app on my phone.
Increased Attention Span
Over the past three months, I have noticed a significant increase in the duration of my attention span. I can sit and watch whole episodes of shows on TV without mindlessly scrolling on my phone. Also, I have found myself able to spend more time with the people that I love. I have finished five books so far this year, double what I had completed this time last year. The more time I spend off my phone, the more I notice how much others are on theirs. I became aware of how often the people I was sitting with would pick up their phones and start scrolling mid-conversation. It seems that it isn’t a conscious habit that people possess, but a subconscious urge. The most extreme example of this compulsion is when I recently saw a lady utilizing a suction cup phone holder to watch TikTok while she drove.
Decreased Knowledge of Current Trends
Since deleting TikTok, I have noticed that I understand fewer references made by my peers. This was one of my biggest fears when facing the decision to delete TikTok from my phone. The fear of missing out (FOMO) plagues many of the members of my generation. Personally, this fear was amped up when doomscrolling through the highlight reels of others’ lives. What I called relaxing only led to increased stress. Through removing myself from the platform, I began to branch out more in my own life. I’ve lost track of who is cancelled and uncancelled. Instead of following the latest style trend or the current “It” aesthetic, I found myself more secure in the choices I was making, which were based on what I liked, not what the internet deemed as “in” for the season.
Less Comparison
Since I have been farther removed from the current trends, I have found a sense of peace. There is less pressure to make my life fit the version of people’s lives I was consuming through 15-30 second clips. Prior to my TikTok cleanse, I felt a sense of dread while going through the mundane motions of my daily life. I felt as though I was behind. This was because of the content I was consuming, depicting people my age doing things that I could have only imagined possible for people in their 30s with established careers. I would compare my running times to those of the girls who are running multiple marathons a year, and my college experience to those attending schools in California. All this created was a feeling of dissatisfaction. Since freeing myself from the shackles of TikTok, I have found intense joy in the mundane parts of my life. I have started to romanticize life more, not because someone online told me to, but because I remembered the art of noticing life around me. It’s incredible how fulfilled you can be when you stop comparing your life to those on the internet (majority of the time it isn’t even the full truth they are sharing).
Tips to Get Unplugged
In all, the biggest thing I learned since deleting TikTok is the power of paying attention to life around me. Decreased consumption of others’ lives increases the joy in my own. I want to continue my unplugged journey to find even more freedom and presence. If you feel inspired to join me, my tip for you is to fill the space that you would spend scrolling with other hobbies and plans. Simply deleting the app is not always the most effective option. Short-form content creates fast dopamine for the brain. Replacing this fast dopamine with delayed gratification activities can feel painfully boring at first. Over time, you can train your brain to crave long-form, delayed gratification activities. Keeping a book nearby instead of your phone, practicing meditation, or getting exercise are some good options when you feel the urge to scroll through a short-form platform such as TikTok.