I deleted Instagram and TikTok. For good.

A few months ago, I deleted Instagram and TikTok. Not for a week or as some kind of digital detox. I permanently deleted my accounts and have no plans to go back.

Quite a strange choice for someone who had been very active on social media for years. Last year, I created a children's tv show, and I shared a large part of my entrepreneurial journey on TikTok. Some of my videos were viewed more than 100,000 times. I sometimes genuinely enjoyed creating content, and social media definitely brought me some good things.

But at the same time, I noticed myself reaching for my phone more and more often. While waiting, on the toilet, during a movie, or simply because nothing had happened for three seconds. Sometimes I would unlock my phone and not even remember why I'd picked it up in the first place.

It was mostly all those little "just checking" moments that started to bother me. Because somehow, all those tiny moments added up to hours of doomscrolling.

Every day, I felt slightly anxious without really understanding where that stress and restlessness came from. Now that I spend most of my week offline, I understand it all too well.

When I put my children's series on hold and no longer needed to post for work, I realised I had more freedom than ever to say goodbye to social media. So I deleted the whole lot. Not just the apps, but my accounts too.

It felt pretty strange at first. For years, social media had been part of my work and my life as an entrepreneur. So there was definitely a voice in my head asking: isn't this incredibly stupid from a business perspective? Maybe. But I also knew that if I left the door slightly open, I would probably keep walking through it again and again.

Instead of missing social media, I started noticing everything I was getting back. I started reading more, going outside more often, had more room for creative ideas and simply started looking around again whenever I had to wait somewhere.

What I hadn't expected at all was that without social media, I actually experienced less FOMO. You might think it would work the other way around. If you no longer see what everyone is doing, don't you miss out on everything? But if I don't know there's a party happening somewhere that I'm not at, I can't really have FOMO about it either. I no longer constantly see who is where and what everyone is doing. As a result, I focus more on myself and the people who actually matter to me.

And something else disappeared too: an enormous amount of material to compare myself to. On social media, you're constantly seeing what other people look like, what they wear, how many friends they have, where they live, how often they exercise, where they travel and how successful they are.

Before you know it, you're asking yourself questions that I now wonder whether I would ever have asked without social media. Should I have a big group of friends too? Should I look that good every day? Should I travel more? Am I doing enough fun things? Am I falling behind?

I once came across a question that has stayed with me ever since:

What would you wear if social media didn't exist?

I find that such an interesting question. Because how much of what we find beautiful, want to own or think we should be doing actually comes from within us? And how much of it is simply being served to us over and over again?

Since deleting Instagram and TikTok, I'm much less concerned with what everyone on the other side of my screen is doing and automatically more focused on my own life: What do I like?

Of course, I miss things sometimes. I often have no idea which meme someone is talking about, and I see less of what the people around me share online. But I actually find that a surprisingly small price to pay for everything I get back.

If I want to know how a friend's holiday was, I can ask her over a nice matcha on a terrace. I don't need to have watched 30 stories or Snapchats beforehand.

I used to think that deleting social media would mean missing out on a lot. So far, it mostly feels like I've rediscovered my own life. And it turns out there's already more than enough happening in it.