The scroll becomes an obligation. A curated feed that once felt like connection now feels like a weight. The decision to leave social media is rarely a loud declaration; it is a quiet closing of a door. It’s a thought that returns to me often, a fantasy of disconnecting that feels both tempting and impossible.

There are a thousand excuses for hesitation. Perhaps the most compelling is when digital platforms become so integrated into a culture that they are no longer “felt” like an optional. Consider the social fabric of a place like Vietnam, where Facebook and Instagram are not just apps, but the primary threads of connection. Daily life is navigated through Messenger; contact is made not through phone numbers or emails, but through direct messages and stories.

To voluntarily remove oneself from this system is to risk breaking a social contract. It brings a sense of guilt, a feeling of deliberately silencing oneself to friends. There is a fear of how it will be perceived: not as self-preservation, but as self-importance. There is the fear of being left behind, of missing the quiet updates and major milestones that are now exclusively broadcast online.

Beneath these social anxieties, however, it’s a fear of true solitude. It is the fear of loneliness, of no longer having a companion at one’s fingertips, of being outside the comforting circle of the network. Social media, for all its faults, offers a powerful antidote to this fear: an ever-present, if superficial, sense of connection.

The space meant for connection becomes a stage. The self becomes a brand. The anxiety of missing out is slowly eclipsed by the exhaustion of keeping up. The isolation we fear from logging off is already here: it lives in the endless, silent scroll.

To quit, then, is not to disappear. It is an argument for a different mode of existence. The path away from the network is quiet, and (perhaps) lonely at first. But it leads toward a different kind of clarity - one that isn’t curated or performed, but simply lived.

With that in mind, I’ve logged off.