Over the past couple years, I’ve conducted a series of periodic social media detoxes. Each time, something strange happens: I start hearing from my friends and family a lot more frequently than usual.
Basically, I get more popular, almost overnight. My experience isn’t unique, researchers who study digital wellness and tech policy tell me — leaving social media can actually increase your social activity, in some cases.
Across multiple surveys, a growing number of social media users say they want to get some of their time back, be more present in their relationships and feel less overwhelmed by notification overload. Fewer people use the apps to actually connect with their friends than they used to, and a growing number of people say they “reflexively” open the apps just to scroll and kill time, according to data collected by digital audience insights company GWI and published on Oct. 3 by the Financial Times.
Nearly a quarter of social media users, and roughly a third of Gen Zers specifically, deleted at least one app within the 12 months preceding a 2025 Deloitte UK consumer trends survey of 4,150 people.
Such people could become more social, even accidentally, by pushing their friends to intentionally reach out to them instead of passively observing their lives on social media, says Lizzie Irwin, a policy communications specialist at the Center for Humane Technology, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. The organization advocates against “the detrimental effects of attention-harvesting design” on the internet, according to its website.
