Last year, I deleted my social media accounts.

Not because it became fashionable. Not because someone convinced me. And not because of AI.

I did it because, for a long time already, something in me felt tired. Not tired in the sense of needing sleep, but tired in a deeper way. Saturated. Overfed. Slightly numb.

Every time I scrolled, I felt it. That strange sensation of consuming a lot and receiving very little. My attention jumping from one fragment to the next. My mind getting noisier while my thoughts became shallower.

I could not even say I was bored. I was overstimulated and undernourished at the same time.

What bothered me most was not that the content was bad. A lot of it was clever, impressive, well edited, sometimes even beautiful. What bothered me was what it did to me. I could feel my capacity to stay with one thing slowly eroding. Reading became harder. Thinking became more scattered. Even watching a longer video or a film required more effort than it should.

It felt as if my inner world was being trained to never stay anywhere for too long.

I remember thinking at some point that my intelligence felt like it was dropping to zero while scrolling. That may sound dramatic, but it was a very concrete, physical feeling. Not stupidity, but a kind of mental passivity. A state where nothing really lands. Nothing really stays.

Around that time, short form content was already everywhere. Reels, stories, shorts. An endless stream of tiny, perfectly cut pieces of stimulation. And while I understand why people enjoy it, I noticed something very clearly in myself.

I never felt better after consuming it.

Sometimes entertained for a moment, yes. But never nourished. Never calmer. Never clearer. Never more alive.

So I stopped.

Not all at once, not with a big dramatic decision. More like someone slowly realizing that a certain food no longer agrees with them. At some point, you do not need more arguments. You just listen to your body and change what you put into it.

Since then, my days have become quieter. And in that quiet, something else returned. The ability to stay with a thought. To read for longer. To write without checking something every few minutes. To watch a long video or a film and actually be there for it.

I am not saying social media is evil. I am not saying everyone should leave. I am only saying that for me, it was clearly not the right environment anymore.

Interestingly, only now, much later, I see more and more people publicly questioning what these platforms have become. Talking about fatigue. About sameness. About content that feels hollow. About scrolling without remembering what they just saw.

Some say Instagram is dying. Some say AI content is taking over. Maybe they are right. Maybe not.

But for me, the more important realization came earlier and much simpler.

I do not want a life made of fragments.

I want to be entertained or taught by real humans. I want to feel that someone actually stood somewhere, thought something, tried something, failed at something, and then decided to share it.

I want fewer things, but more real ones.

So in a way, I did not leave social media because it changed.

I left because I did.