The Silent Exit: Why I Am Ghosting My Social Media Feed

It’s been almost a year since I ghosted Twitter—poof, gone like a bad date. One random Thursday, the endless posts just stopped mattering. I closed the app, and nothing exploded. I simply decided to move on. The relationship I’d nurtured with this social media platform for over a decade finally whispered, “Go silent. Take a break.”

Social media had been my go-to for everything: news, laughs, rants. It carried me through COVID like a digital life raft. But once the world reopened, I didn’t belong in that virtual world anymore. I withdrew, not out of anger, but because I no longer saw the need to post, play along, or be there.

People like me didn’t quit social media. We just stopped auditioning for it.

Think of it this way:

2018: “Here’s me at brunch.”

2025: “Here’s me muting another influencer who says ‘healing’ 47 times in one reel.”

Why fling your life into strangers’ feeds? The so-called “contented” souls who broadcast every breath—they’re the ones chasing validation with their morning coffee. For me, Posting Zero is the silent exodus.

Remember when your Facebook feed was a scrapbook of friends’ milestones? Now it’s influencers hawking collagen water and ads for homes in places you’ll never pronounce.

The deal we signed in 2012: post your avocado toast, maybe stay relevant among friends. We all chased that dopamine hit. The fine print? One old tweet or post about politics could cancel you tomorrow. People are quick to unforgiving judgments.

In 2025, social media is not a social network anymore; it’s a slot machine dispensing fake news, products, hate, serotonin and credit-card debt.

The influencer industrial complex wins hands down. The whole social media playground was created for influencers to perform. If you don’t have a business, you aren’t an entrepreneur; you’re secure in your social and professional world. Why would you go outside to fetch validation and likes? 

Fast-forward to 2030, and what would your phone’s social tab look like? A ghost town of brands screaming into the void. The real action has migrated to:

• Hyper-private apps: WhatsApp on steroids—group chats that auto-delete drama, with AI nudging you to actually call your mom.

• In Real Life (IRL) Nostalgia: We’ll drop 500 bucks on “unplugged coffee shops” where phones vanish into Faraday cages and conversation flows like it’s 2003.

• Professionalised doomscrolling: YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix fuse into one algorithmic abyss. You’ll watch a 45-second sourdough clip, then a three-hour documentary on its role in the French Revolution, capped with an ad for sourdough futures. Blink and you lose.

The silver lining?

Peak social media was a fever dream—every taco a press release, every human a broadcaster. We’re waking up, hungover but wiser. Gen Alpha’s already over it, posting to private Finstas with 12 followers. They’re not ditching tech; they’re ditching the stage.

They have traded public squares for cosy backyards. They choose music evenings over mindless scrolling. The real world is non-negotiable. Doomscrolling lingers (it evolves, never dies), but the stakes are lower—no one gets ratioed in a group chat.

There’s something heartwarming about sending a photo to five friends or family and calling it a day. Their reactions matter because they’re genuinely happy to see you happy. 

Social media promised connection and delivered a Times Square billboard with your face plastered on it. We’re not logging off—we’re logging in to smaller WhatsApp groups. As one wise group chat declared: “Pics or it didn’t happen… unless it’s just us, then it’s fine.”

Keep it small. Keep it real. The loneliest people I know boast endless followers yet have no one to share a glass of wine with on a cold, dull Friday night—when all you need is to vent.

Authored by Radhika Dhingra, freelance writer | Views expressed are the author's own.