This is part four out of four in a series I’m writing about my life since deleting TikTok almost a year ago.
If you missed them:
Part one: my nostalgia for what TikTok used to be
Part two: what ultimately pushed me away from the app
Part three: what I’ve gained in this past year without TikTok
It’s almost the end of August, and if you’ve been reading my posts weekly, by now you’re probably tired of me talking about TikTok. I get it. The past three weeks I’ve been writing about it almost obsessively, like it’s my toxic ex that I swear I’m over before thinking, “but what if?”
I promise: this is the last post this month pertaining to this subject.
I think the reason I obsess over this topic is partly because I sometimes can’t even believe that I’ve been able to function without the app. I fed myself a lie for a long time that I wouldn’t be able to survive being cut off from culture, news, and online inside jokes that everyone shares, but, of course, to my surprise, I’ve been completely fine. But, I shouldn’t be surprised. Phone addiction is just as bad as any other addiction (there’s not many other companies that call the people who utilize their products “users”), so what I was most afraid of was the withdrawal.
Maybe that’s what you’re worried about too; those symptoms of not knowing how to get through the day without TikTok or other forms of social media. If you’ve read my posts and thought, I wish I could be like this too, don’t worry. You can. Let me guide you through what I did, tell you what worked and what was difficult, and give a step by step as to how I prepped myself for ending my addiction.
A quick disclaimer: I know that deleting an app with the snap of your fingers doesn’t work for everybody. When I deleted Instagram several years ago, there was virtually no thought into how I would go about it. If I’m being honest, the app wasn’t something that I found myself spending a lot of time on, and I rarely posted. I was frankly tired of it and seeing everyone else’s nicely curated photos, so I thought about deactivating my account with the thought of maybe going back eventually.
That’s what I did. Randomly, without thinking much about it, I deactivated my account and removed the app from my home screen so I didn’t have to look at it. What I thought would be a few weeks away actually turned into six months, and by the time I remembered it existed again, I logged back in to my account to delete it permanently. My rationale was: if I didn’t need it these past six months, why do I need it now? Or really, ever? This isn’t to say I might not go back at some point in my life, but it’s also been two years since I’ve deleted it. I haven’t felt the need to return because it honestly hasn’t been a top priority, and I haven’t missed anything by not having it.
I understand that this approach doesn’t work for everybody, so that’s why I’m suggesting that you don’t go about it in this way. Quitting cold turkey is what worked best for me at the time with an app like Instagram, so if you feel like you can do that too, go for it. But, with something like TikTok, I sort of had to wean myself off of it. I think this will make the most sense for the majority of people, because quitting something addictive is a hard thing to do.
But I knew that I had the patience to do it. Here’s what I did to get rid of TikTok, and how you can do it too.
1. Setting Time Limits on Apps
This is not something new. I’m sure many of you already know that on iPhones you can set a limit to how long you can view an app. My protocol was to have all my apps turn off at 11:30 pm. This would ensure that I couldn’t look at things like TikTok or YouTube when it was clearly time for me to get sleep before the next day.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t. iPhones, because their devilishly smart, have an ignore option where you can continue looking at an app for a minute, fifteen minutes, or the rest of the day (so in my case it would be until midnight) before it shuts the app off again. Not hitting those ignore buttons is genuinely very hard. I was guilty of always thinking …just fifteen more minutes. So this has to be a personal practice. When you lay down to bed, your phone goes to bed too. If it helps, you can literally personify your phone like that by thinking it’s been up for a long time doing a lot of stuff. It needs to sleep and get recharged as well as me.
2. Going Through Your Bookmarked Videos
In case you’re unaware, on TikTok you can like and comment on videos, but you can also bookmark a video, meaning it will save to a bookmark folder on your account. Most people do this if they want to remember specific videos for specific reasons; for example, I used it often for recipes, travel destinations, and edits that I liked.
When I finally told myself that I’d delete TikTok, I had a sudden fear that all those videos I’d saved would be gone. What I did was methodically comb through the one hundred and fifty some videos that I had bookmarked over a series of days and wrote down things I wouldn’t want to forget. All the recipes I hadn’t tried I wrote down with my other already attempted recipes so I wouldn’t forget to try them. I made a note on my phone titled “Places Around the World I Need to See” and wrote down everything I’d saved from travel videos, down to every restaurant, book shop, or hotel people recommended. And the videos I’d bookmarked because I liked them? I saved them to my camera roll in case I ever wanted to watch them again. (I realized later I didn’t watch many of them and deleted a bunch to free up storage haha)
Here’s one that I saved from sarahtheseven because of how cute I thought it was, and I still pull it up sometimes to make me smile. (I’m also in love with how this little boy’s voice sounds like Charlie Brown and that he whispers to himself “nice!”)
3. Follow Creators You Love In Different Ways
One thing I knew I was really going to miss was seeing my queen Drew Afualo on TikTok. Her videos gave me life every time I saw them, and I remember seriously being disappointed at the thought that I wouldn’t see her videos anymore by deleting TikTok.
But, she also has a podcast on Spotify, another podcast with her sister Deison, and a book that she published (that I devoured because it was such a good read). There are still many ways that I enjoy interacting with her content, and ways that I can support her if I wish.
Same goes for many artists I followed. A lot of accounts I liked on TikTok were visual artists, and I knew that I was going to miss seeing what they created. But, many of these people had things like Etsy pages or websites, so I made a point to write them down or follow their accounts so I could stay updated on their new works. Some examples are Elisha Zepeda, a book cover designer I followed, and Ivy, a lampshade designer that I was obsessed with. Zepeda has a website and an Etsy shop, while I save a lot of Ivy’s designs on Pinterest as a reminder that I would love one of her lampshades one day!
4. Don’t Fill Time With a Different Screens Instead
The ditching of the smartphone and emergence of the “dumb phone” has been a big thing the past couple of years, especially among people in my generation. Here’s my hot take on that: getting a dumb phone (like a flip phone) will not cure your phone addiction. Sure, it will definitely tone down a lot of the dopamine hits you get from a smartphone like an iPhone, but even with a dumb phone, you might still have a laptop, a television, or even something like an iPad or Smartwatch. You will find other ways to spend your time. If you’re not looking at a small rectangular screen, you will probably fill that time with…other screens.
Don’t make the same mistake I did! Even without something like TikTok, I ended up watching a ton of YouTube on my computer while I would eat meals. It was like I just pivoted now that I no longer had the app. By deciding to get rid of something like TikTok, or any app that has short form content on it, you have to make a conscious effort to not watch that content on other devices. Make a deal with yourself: my laptop is for getting work done, my TV is for watching movies or shows, my phone is for contacting others and taking pictures, etc. You catch my drift?
And that’s not to say that you can’t watch YouTube. I still often have videos on that I want to listen to like a podcast if I’m working out or cooking sometimes. But more on that later (see number seven).
And as a quick disclaimer: I sometimes link TikTok videos into my Substack posts. This is purely if I remember a video I want to include because I think it is good supplemental material. I never use TikTok on my laptop recreationally.
5. Telling Friends and Family
This is, weirdly enough, a big one on this list. Many members of my family got a TikTok account to follow and support me. And almost all my closest friends had TikTok accounts, and a main way I would communicate with my friends was by us sending videos back and forth in the chat function on the app. It almost felt like you were saying, “I thought of you” when sending a video to them that made you laugh. Naturally, many of my friends (and even some of my family) were disappointed when they heard that I was choosing to leave TikTok. But we just continued to do what we did when I had TikTok: call, FaceTime, text, and check in with each other.
That is something that has become incredibly interesting to me in the age of socials taking up so much of our lives. We honestly don’t need things like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat to keep us connected. Sure, it makes connection easier, but we need to remember that outside of those apps, are we actively reaching out to our loved ones or are we just liking their posts? Are we checking in with our friends and sending messages saying, “hey, I was thinking about you” or are we just commenting heart emojis on their feed? Without these apps, we can still be connected if we make a point of reaching out.
6. Become Comfortable With Silence
As people, we’ve become accustomed to a lot of sound all the time. At any time, we can listen to music on our phones while we get ready in the morning, shower, go to work, drive home, etc. We can watch videos, short and long, at any time of the day. If there are any moments of the day where it is too quiet for our liking, we can fill it with noise.
Something that I tried to do once I deleted TikTok was spend moments in silence, whether that be while eating, running outside, or getting ready in the morning/night. I wanted to see if I could get accustomed to the lack of constant sound. This doesn’t mean that I excluded music from my day to day. I still love putting a record on while cooking or listening to a playlist while taking a shower. But it would be in the moments after (washing the dishes, getting dressed and drying my hair) that I would choose to not have anything on.
It actually, in a strange way, made my brain feel physically relaxed. I say strange because I often am a person who needs some sort of white noise or background music while working on tasks or writing. But I genuinely felt a sense of calm, allowing my mind to become bored and look for stimulation, which fostered my creativity.
7. Get Apps or Subscriptions That Will Feed a Need
This is also a big one on this list. Part of the withdrawal symptoms of not having an app like TikTok is trying to find ways to fill your time. It’s hard, once we’ve trained our brain to never be accustomed to boredom, to suddenly expect it to be okay with no stimulation. What I did was get Substack. Around the time I deleted TikTok, I replaced it with the Substack app since I was interested in starting a blog. Well, here I am, months later, still writing every Tuesday!
Getting something like Substack was beneficial to me because it caused me to really sit and read long form content from other creators. Before, I wasn’t able to watch a video that was longer than fifteen seconds. With Substack, I can read a single post for ten minutes.
And I’m not saying that you have to get Substack (although, you’re already here so….), but find things that will fill your time in beneficial ways. Maybe it’s getting a subscription to Criterion to build your film knowledge and train your brain to watch long movies. Maybe it’s reading more books off your shelf, joining a book club, or getting a mail subscription service with new books each month. Or maybe it’s using YouTube to learn new things, try some crafts, or listen to long video essays like they’re podcasts. Whatever it is, try something that you’ve always wanted to learn, consume things that are good for your mind, and find something that can take an app’s place in your brain.
8. Learn to Do Things Without Checking Your Phone
This, I think, is the most important thing to learn if you’re considering deleting an app like TikTok. You must learn how to do things without constantly checking your phone. Without even realizing it, I would be on my phone while standing in line, waiting at a crosswalk, watching a movie, or even while talking to someone on the phone while they’re on speaker. What was I doing? Looking at emails, going on Pinterest, checking the time, God knows what. I would always be finding reasons to be on my phone when I didn’t need to be.
So, once I deleted all my social media, I started practicing not constantly reaching for my phone.
At first, it was kind of uncomfortable in public spaces. I remember one of the first times I tried this it was in the lobby of the doctor’s office. While I waited for my name to be called, I just sat there with my own thoughts. Of course, the whole time I was thinking is anyone staring at me? Does this look weird? But then, after about five minutes of looking around, I noticed that pretty much everyone else was on their phones or minding their own business.
People are often too concerned about what’s going on in their lives to worry about what you’re doing. This was something I had to learn.
With all of this being said, I also understand that for many people, the thought of deleting forms of social media is unattainable. Or maybe some of you just frankly don’t want to. And that’s okay! I’m not condemning anyone if they want to keep apps, like TikTok, on their phone.
I only wanted to share my experience this month, since I felt like I wish I had someone writing about this for me to read over a year ago. I felt like I was in a black hole, unable to crawl my way out of the ether that was my phone. But, I promise, it is possible.
Thank you for reading this week. I hope you’re taking care of yourself! I appreciate you <3
- Lillian
You are very strong!…