A few days ago I had one of those rare conversations where someone actually thinks the way I do. No small talk, no surface-level clichés — just two people dissecting how inefficient the world has become. How most people drift instead of design. How the systems we live in push us toward distraction instead of creation.
Somewhere in that conversation, without planning it, I deleted Snapchat.
It wasn’t a big dramatic decision. More like a quiet switch flipping in my head. One moment the app was there, the next it wasn’t. And what surprised me was what happened afterwards: I kept catching myself unlocking my phone out of pure muscle memory. Thumb swiping, brain empty, and then… nothing to open. The habit was still running but the reward loop was gone.
That moment — the blank home screen — tells you everything about how these apps work. They don’t give you anything. They just give your brain something to do.
Over the next days, I noticed how many people around me are stuck in that same loop. Not “using” their phone but being used by it. Scrolling, tapping, switching apps, checking again, never actually doing something meaningful. Watching it from the outside feels almost surreal. Like seeing people trapped in a bubble they don’t even know exists.
Right now I only have Instagram left. And even that’s a double-edged sword. It distracts me, no question. But it’s also where I communicate with some of my closest friends, and it’s the only place where I share my photography — something I don’t want to cut out of my life just to win the purity contest of “no social media.”
So I’m not trying to become a monk. I just want my tools to be tools, not cages.
Deleting Snapchat was step one. Not because it was ruining my life — but because I want to be the one deciding how I spend my attention. Not an algorithm, not a notification loop, not a habit.
I’m starting to like the feeling of the empty home screen. It’s a reminder that I’m supposed to build things, not consume them.