Quitting social media as a travel creator - Follow along 1000-day journey

Reason why I have finally decided to quit social media for good 31.7.2025 is:

My time is wasted there

It keeps on affecting negatively my mental health

I can’t focus on anything

Posting there makes me feel like shit

Come follow along my day-by-day journey for (hopefully) 1000 days without social media.

What makes this weirder - during the same time I am aiming to become successful full-time travel creator.

Yes, without social media.

I found at our cottage in Finland my old notes from 5 years ago about wanting to quit social media.

And back then, I didn’t.

Back in 2020 I had done a proper pros and cons list of quitting social media. 

Back then I had some collaborations on Instagram, but mostly for free stuff, and affiliate deals instead of exactly paid collaborations.  Sure, I had some paid stuff as well, but we're not talking about huge money.

I remember thinking back then how I sucked, as I got so few likes and comments. 

Now that I look back, I think I got loads of likes and comments back then for my stuff. 

Instagram is just built so that you are never satisfied. 

Anyway, now I have decided to quit Meta platforms and TikTok.

With this I mean browsing and posting.

I’ve been posting quite often to my Instagram @sinimalism .

In other social media platforms I haven’t been so active, but rather just browsing. 

As a blogger, platforms without the opportunity to add a link are quite useless. 

So Instagram and TikTok aren’t great. 

Although I know on Instagram you can, with ease, share links in stories or use Manychat solutions, but I just don’t want to play that game anymore. 

I guess Instagram does not ruin everyone’s mental health, but mine it really does. 

But the platforms I will stick around at are Pinterest, YouTube, and my own website, obviously. 

I might still occasionally use Facebook groups if I have something relevant to share.

Only thing is that I will still post a few things a month to Instagram, as my income depends on it. 

So I can’t afford to quit it completely now. 

But I will only post and ghost, and I don’t want to waste any more minutes on browsing there. 

So here starts this, hopefully until the rest of my life, lasting journey of life without Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. 

It kind of feels crazy and sounds odd, as my dream is still to become a full-time travel creator.

But that is literally one of the reasons I founded this blog; slow travel corner of the internet without the algorithmic BS.

Today, I have felt relieved not to browse.

But also, I am constantly about to press social media apps open on my phone without even thinking what I’m doing.

I know, I gotta remove the apps completely, but as much as I don’t want to be the dramatic person who has to announce their leaving, I think I gotta do that. 

As I have been quite active there throughout the years, and let’s admit it, I still want people to find to this blog. 

Sooo I will do some kind of post.

But it is different to do a post with intention, than browsing and acting like I’m “searching for inspiration”.

But I will keep on posting here how does this progress. 

And I’ll be honest if there will be setbacks and failures on the way. 

Well, I’ve had quite a lot going on in my life in these days, as my car got broken into, so I had to figure out fixing the window and fighting the insurance company about the stolen stuff. 

So I didn’t have too much time to think about the social media at all. 

I do feel though that I have much more time now. 

Now that I am not wasting 3 hours a day to nonsense browsing.

It makes me feel like I can take my time writing, reading and researching during work day, whereas earlier I was rushing between many tasks with dozens of tabs open. 

Today I really wanted to create visual content, as I took nice pictures and videos from one of my favorite coastal points in Alicante.

But I stuck with my promise, but created some pinterest pins.

And started the Alicante Travel Guide article here.

I am only tempted to check my DMs. Actually I know I have unread messages there, but they can wait.

Other than that, I really don't miss IG at all.

Today I had to wait for a long time, which made me tempted to browse. (At police office to file a crime report of my car being broken into - oh the glory of living as an expat in Spain.)

It turns out it's quite boring to browse phone when you don't use social media.

Next time, I will take book with me.

Almost a week done, and I feel like the general level of brain fog and anxiety has gotten lower.

I really don't miss the social media. I love the peace of mind and calmness.

During this week we started a two week roadtrip across Spain to Portugal.

I loved the trip, but as I also love visual storytelling from travels, it was hard not to share stories and posts on social media.

I still loved not browsing, but I did miss the creation and sharing live all the cool experiences during Spain Portugal roadtrip.

I decided anyway to keep on photographing and taking short film clips as well, waiting for a moment when I find a great outlet for that creativity and stories from the trip.

After two weeks, I had one collaboration post to be shared on Instagram, so I spent a good hour creating it on my phone, and then logged in to Instagram to publish it.

I also had quite many direct messages there waiting (as I had left Instagram quite dramatically with an honest Instagram story of how I've felt depressed lately and that I close social media for now).

So I spent some time mindfully responding to these messages.

For me, it's normally hard after having published something, not to go back every 15 minutes to check if I got some likes or comments.

But now I had decided that I will not repeat that pattern of behaviour anymore.

I'm not going to lie, it did take willpower, and painfully showed my how addicted I had been on that behaviour.

Day after I had published the collaboration post, I decided to take a 5-minute peak on Instagram, to see my notifications and in case there is something new from the partner I did the collaboration post for.

There was not anything special, some likes on the post, but nothing extraordinary.

However, I instantly had anxiety and discomfort creep into my body, and I realized, even this mindful Instagram moment at 11 am was a bad idea.

Of course, Instagram pushed random posts on the top of the feed when I opened the app, and I instantly got the ick feeling.

After this break, everything there just felt so fake energy, stories, posts, and reels so desperately looking for validation and seeking recognition that their content and point of view matter and are interesting.

I would so like to know do others have the feeling of ick as well when opening Instagram, or is it just me?

I don't hate these people, I don't hate the thoughts, just the way of being, and posts on Instagram just give me so inauthentic energy.

And just these two weeks have revealed how deeply stuck in that inauthentic energy I've been for years as well.

So I decided to close the app again.

I will get back there to do a collaboration post next week.

Before I continue this blog post, you can read posts about: