The social networks are still there. I just don’t carry them in my pocket anymore

I haven’t deleted my social media accounts.

I did something much less dramatic: I deleted the apps from my phone.

I still have X, Instagram and the rest. I can open them whenever I want from my computer. I didn’t post a farewell message and I have no intention of becoming a digital hermit.

The only difference is that I no longer carry them with me all day.

And it turns out that difference is not so small.

The automatic gesture

For years I have used social media for plenty of things I genuinely like: following the news, discovering projects, keeping up with interesting people, seeing what is happening in tech or stumbling across ideas I would probably never have found otherwise.

The problem was not opening social media.

The problem was opening it without deciding to.

Picking up my phone to check one thing and ending up on X. Waiting five minutes somewhere and opening Instagram. Watching TV and reaching for the phone almost automatically. Not because there was something specific I wanted to see, but simply because it was there.

I’m obviously not discovering anything new here. What surprised me is how normal it had become. I was so used to it that I barely saw it as a problem anymore.

Until I removed the apps.

Now, if I want to use social media, I have to do it from my computer. That tiny bit of friction changes the relationship completely.

I no longer open it because I have thirty spare seconds. I open it because I actually want to.

I don’t want to disappear from the internet

This is not about declaring social media evil.

I still think it is an incredible tool. Through it I have discovered technology, projects, people and opportunities I would probably never have found otherwise.

I don’t want to stop knowing what is happening in the world either.

What I wanted was to regain a little control over when I consume all of it.

And while thinking about that, I noticed something slightly contradictory: we use the internet more and more, but we seem to own fewer and fewer places on it ourselves.

We post on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube… but almost everything we write or create ends up living inside somebody else’s platform.

I had been doing exactly that for years.

Having my own website again

That is why I made this site.

Not because I think it is going to become a huge blog, and not because I have a personal-brand strategy. In fact, that is exactly the kind of thing I want to avoid.

I simply wanted a place of my own again.

A place where I can write about Buclea, NinjaNote, KickBio, Mosaic, or whatever idea I end up getting obsessed with a few months from now.

But also a place to write about the parts people usually leave out.

Projects that do not work. Weeks wasted trying to solve something ridiculous. Ideas that seemed brilliant until I actually built them. Emails nobody replies to. Changes of mind. Things I learn from teaching. Technology that fascinates me for three days before I realise it does not actually solve the problem I had.

Without having to turn everything into a thread, a short video or a post designed to generate engagement.

Using the internet on purpose

I have no idea whether this will last.

Maybe six months from now I will reinstall every app and this post will have aged terribly.

But right now I like the balance.

The social networks are still there. I haven’t closed any doors.

They are simply no longer waiting for me every time I take my phone out of my pocket.

And maybe this website is the other half of the experiment: consuming a little less internet automatically, and creating a little more of it deliberately.

For now, one thing a week.