67 Reasons to Tune Out the Internet Today

A PSA for people

Nathan N
Jun 12, 2026

Almost a decade ago I jettisoned the only social media I ever had (Facebook) because I wasted too much time on it. That was relative to my busy life, but too much was too much. A few years later, my blessèd son broke my iPhone. So, I’ve had a dumbphone or flip phone for the last 6 years; I’ve never looked back.

I am freer, calmer (still a long way to go), smarter (long way to go), holier (longer way to go), and have seen irrefutable proof of the benefits of tuning out, which I will share in the list below.

For anyone interested in higher learning/education and understanding, prayer and meditation, and deep work over long periods of times (months and years)—all of you?—I would say this is non-negotiable. I don’t think I could’ve made it through a PhD and have written a large academic book if I was still using. But this isn’t about finishing school; it’s about a necessary step in becoming all you can be when faced with so great an opportunity or so large a task.

I’ve never used Instagram, Twitter/X, Tik Tock, or whatever else. But I did/do use Reddit and Youtube, and post on Substack (I explain how to use these in the list while avoiding their social worst parts).

The list is for people who are addicted to the internet, social media, scrolling, etc. You know who you are; I think it is pretty much everyone. Some might apply; some might not. I haven’t edited it, but these things have been on my mind for years so I thought I would share.

When I refer to “using” I mean having internet/social media/etc. addiction as a habit in your life.

1. Your phone is currently plugged into your brain, and there’s only one way to unplug it. You know what to do.

2. Your brain is plugged into your body, so your phone, via your brain, is plugged into your body (see #1).

3. The time you spend on your devices will soon fill a damnable portion of your memories, meaning that you will become nostalgic for lies and fake things. Deathbed reveries should bring wind and grass and laughs and tears to your soul, not screens.

4. Useful tool, terrible master is a lie. Terrible tool, terrible master: brook no quarter.

5. Terrible tool because you are the tool (see #s 1–2, someone else is pulling the strings)

6. You are the frog in the kettle with the water boiling. Dead yet? Some part of you will be if you don’t get out now.

7. If you don’t know exactly what part of you is dying by using this, then you should feel as if your soul has been exposed to unknown radiation. Get out today. Why not today?

8. Your phone/PC is a brothel in your pocket/on your lap/desk. You cannot endure this; your family cannot. We will destroy our souls as the world burns with lust.

9. You will still know how to read, but won’t be able to anymore. Even a drop of this decline seeps into the foundations of your identity and is disorienting (reading to understand goes back to early language development).

10. The better angels of your tradition have laid down stones in the past with which you can build a cathedral-like structure in your inner life; you cannot get them through devices (you can, but the mire is very hard to clean)

11. You cannot live the intellectual life while using. The intellectual life is either a vocation, or an avocation, both of which are predicated on commitments at cross purposes with any unintended brain draining on social media.

12. It didn’t exist in the early 90s.

13. It didn’t exist in the early 90s.

14. It didn’t exist in the early 90s, and you will live longer (studies show).

15. Alarms, notifications, and sirens are like exclamation marks. They should be used sparingly and kept to a guarded class of communication, or they lose all meaning. You don’t need them for 99% of what they are to you. Turn them off now, or just delete the platform/profile. Why not try it today?

16. Using is like being in Plato’s cave. Don’t know it? Read it!

17. Using is like being Narcissus: you mistake for a body what is only a shadow.

18. Using gives you the illusion of a bigger world, but it makes your world as small as your screen.

19. The room you’re in is vastly bigger than the world on your device; so is the family you love, the yard your kids play in. So many of the answers you seek are right where you are, just tune out and look and listen. Why not today?

20. If you stop, you can hear more.

21. If you stop, you can see more.

22. If you stop, you will eventually touch and taste and smell more (I mean, more variety, more often).

23. You will have more friends, eventually. A better friend counts for more.

24. You will have less anxiety.

25. You will be less likely to get into a car accident, and more ready to help someone who does.

26. You can still learn about what’s going on in technology through careful selection of reliable content / plans to improve your knowledge. I’ve been using AI detection tests routinely with sound, images, and videos over the months and have tried to get a decent amount of input here so I can try to train my immediate detection (in addition to learning about ways to detect it).

27. You can spend saved time re-learning the ability to read.

28. You can watch full movies or TV shows. Try anything pre 2010-ish to see how many people filled public spaces in the backgrounds of shows, how closely they spoke, how much eye contact.

29. You can learn more about the political climate in a tithe of the time you waste on political and politically-adjacent content/podcasts, etc.

30. Your workouts will be half as long and twice as good.

31. You will sleep better.

32. Your sleep is tied to health, so you will be healthier.

33. With the time you save, and the portion of that time you devote to deliberate learning/entertainment (see #s 26, 27, 28, 29 etc.), you will for sure have better more prescient takes on culture.

34. Your ideas and concerns will be borne out of your own life and tasks, and not out of what is “going around.”

35. What “goes around” tends to be drivel, based on the principle that what hits the masses via the algorithm is almost always downgraded into a pale simulacrum of what it’s meant to show; don’t be subject to it.

36. You’ll be a better philosopher (learn logic, read art, then think a lot).

37. You’ll be a better historian (read history and historians; watch reputable documentaries; plunge into something and actually learn it).

38. You’ll be a better theologian (learn history, read theology, seek clarity, pray more).

39. You’ll pay attention more when people are speaking to you.

40. You will like better music (this is an entailment from #10).

41. You will begin to develop a taste for what is less ephemeral and more durable, because these things are the opposite of the things you’re getting rid of. You will lose some awareness of the new and gravitate towards the old. This can be a vice, so be careful. But you might end up with a basically brand new 1992 Honda Accord. No rust.

42. You will get better marks in school. School will be a breeze.

43. You will write better, because you’ll gravitate to reading more and better books, and to communicating more in person. I.e., you will be more fluent (have you ever considered that you are not very fluent in your so-called mother tongue?). Fluency will take you places.

44. You will see your children’s faces more, and take in their beauty.

45. You will see your lover’s face more, and take in the same.

46. You will see more (cf. # 21, but now I mean more in the sense of deeper).

47. You’ll know more truth, and be more focused on trying to order your life around it, and “the truth will set you free.”

48. Your life will be a steady, silent protest against an era of rapid descent into technocratic chaos.

49. AI will make you less fluent.

50. AI removes the serendipity of learning; serendipity in learning changed everything for me.

51. AI will make mistakes you will never catch, and these will be very hard to ever rid your mind of.

52. AI is like the One Ring. Are you Saruman? Boromir? Bilbo? Frodo? Elrond? Isildur? You get it. Make your choice.

53. AI will, or has already, utterly ruin the social skills of someone you know (or you).

54. You will feel a rush of awe and excitement when you tunnel into libraries and search for understanding. You will be “alone” there, but will feel much more connection with something real than you ever were online.

55. Most screens have ill effects on your eyes and brains just as a technology; use them less and get your eyes for longer.

56. Careless words multiply in anonymity; but we will be judged for every careless word.

57. Social media is a very bad way to learn theology (i.e., bingeing YT channels debating theology is a very bad way to learn it).

58. Since your reading, viewing, eating choices will be yours alone to make, you will be forced to investigate yourself more, and when exploring, you will feel no need to appease the voices of the critics you’ve let live in your head for so long.

59. Using more means less privacy. It may be futile, but quitting is a stand.

60. Using creates the temptation of sharing private things about yourself and your family to people who don’t need to know. This not only harms them in various ways, but harms your children who did not opt in. This is surely profaning the sacred.

Some tips.

1. https://freedom.to is cheap and can make it so that you can disable social media on your devices, according to any schedule you set. You can turn this off, while active, only once every seven days.

2. You can get pretty good e-ink or reflective/transflective LCDs screens or devices. Expensive, but this can change your relation with your devices physiologically even if nothing else changes.

3. Otherwise, see what happens when you make your phone black and white. Just keep it that way.

4. Need maps, WhatsApp? Buy a mini smartphone ( Unihertz Jelly Star), delete browser, all social media; keep Waze/Maps and texting; make screen black and white.

5. You can go into YouTube, turn off “search history,” and make it so that your YouTube dashboard is a blank screen. No suggested videos. Use as a search engine, diligently ignore the sidebar of suggestions. If you can’t do the latter, consider leaving it behind.

6. You never have to go to the homepage of Reddit, but can choose to only see your subscribed subreddits (I would relegate these to hobbies and sports, etc.). Even so, I think we might be better off without it.

7. Substack has a pernicious social media attached to it. The content is better, but it’s Facebook for yuppies. Interminable scroll; bite-sized comments; very image-driven. You might like this, but just know that it’s running on the same terms as the others, all of which are designed to take your money, time, and psyche (it is the devil who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy). You can get your subscriptions to your inbox, navigate only to your Substack, and post from your dashboard—you never need to see the Facebook/X part of it.

Why not start today?