Solitude vs. Loneliness: What I Learned from Logging Off

Why I left Instagram, why I came back, and why I’m leaving again, for good this time.

I logged off Instagram for more than 3 months.
At first, it felt like I was missing a limb.
Then, slowly, it felt like I got one back.

Yesterday, I logged in again just to test the water.
To see if I was being dramatic. To check if anything had changed.
It hadn’t.

Ewww.
That’s the only word I have for it.
Everyone, everywhere, talking and performing some filtered, half-sincere version of themselves. It gave me actual anxiety. Like walking into a party where everyone’s shouting, but no one’s really listening.

Now I’m just waiting for the 7-day reactivation period to end so I can disappear again—for real, this time. I’m not built for it. Not anymore.

This isn’t just social media fatigue. It’s something deeper.
Something existential.
The internet has become a mirror — distorted, pixelated, always demanding something back.

Post. Perform. Engage.
If you don’t post, did it even happen?
If no one saw it, are you still real?

We’ve built digital versions of ourselves so carefully, so cleverly, that we forget where the persona ends and the real person begins.

It’s not that people aren’t listening.
It’s that everyone’s shouting at once.
The algorithm rewards volume, not value.
Noise, not nuance.

And when you spend too long in that noise, you start to believe that your worth is tied to how well you can be perceived.

You start to feel fake.
Even when you’re being “real.”

There’s burnout from working too much.
And then there’s the burnout from being perceived too much.
You’re always “on.”
Always one step away from packaging your pain into something aesthetically palatable.

You’re not just tired.
You’re emotionally exhausted from constantly presenting a version of yourself that’s palatable, pleasing, and perfectly uncontroversial.

And for what?

We’re constantly consuming and being consumed. And in that process, something breaks. You forget what it feels like to think a thought just for yourself.

We’ve confused visibility with intimacy.
We think likes equal love.
We think followers mean friends.
But real connection? Real presence?
That doesn’t live inside an app.

We’ve all felt it.

This sense of detachment even while being hyper-connected.
We know everything about people we haven’t spoken to in years.
Meanwhile, our real relationships feel hollow. Expectations build. Disappointments follow.
We crave attention but starve for affection.

Logging off taught me that I wasn’t lonely, I was just overstimulated.
I thought I was missing out.

We say “I miss you” in comments.

We send hearts and fire emojis.

But we haven’t heard each other’s voices in months.

Turns out, I was missing me.

Solitude is where you meet yourself again.
It’s quiet. It’s awkward. And then, it’s peaceful.
The kind of peace no algorithm can replicate.

So What Happens If You Stop Performing?

You feel irrelevant.

Then bored.

Then... calm.

Then, finally free.

It’s not an easy shift.

But I don’t want to perform anymore.

There’s a difference between self-expression and self-marketing.

One is freeing.

The other is surveillance dressed up as personality.

I don’t want to optimize my life for views.

I want to live it.

I want to exist without turning everything I feel into content.
Without feeling like silence is a branding mistake.
Without needing strangers to clap for me just to feel worthy.

If that means logging off forever, so be it.
Let the 7-day countdown begin.

If your brain feels foggy, if your heart feels tired, if your feed feels like a lie, you’re not broken. You’re just online.

And it’s okay to log off.

Even if no one notices.

Especially, if no one notices.

If this resonated, reply.
Or forward it to someone else who’s been feeling tired of performing, too.

Ciao,

Fathima Ashab