Summer break began, and I felt a wave of anxiety. Just four days after graduating high school, I attended freshman orientation. Everything happened so fast. I was thrust into a sphere of unfamiliar faces, after spending seven years in my small town where I saw the same 400 or so people every day (minus the COVID year, but even then, I saw them all online).

A month into my senior year, I deleted TikTok because it had become a major distraction, keeping me from interacting with others and completing my schoolwork and chores. The dopamine rush from scrolling felt more satisfying than real-life connections. After graduation and orientation, I reinstalled TikTok, hoping to connect with new people I had met. Despite my desire for genuine interaction, my brain preferred the instant gratification of social media. This led me to numb myself with TikTok, Instagram, and music, and I became increasingly hostile to anyone who disrupted my screen time, like my parents who became worried as they started to observe the shift. Suppressed emotions caused me to overreact to minor issues. I also stopped indulging in my hobbies and working out.

On July 2nd, it all came to a head. It was around 10 PM, after a long day of scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, shopping apps and Netflix. My mom informed me that I had to do my chores before bed. As I removed my earbuds, which had been drowning out my thoughts with music all day, I began to shake uncontrollably. Quickly, I put them back in and did my chores, washing a sink full of dishes. When I finished, I went back to my bed and continued scrolling, only to notice that I was shaking while doing so.

Suddenly, my eyes were opened. Using the split-screen feature on my iPad, I was watching a basketball game while shopping for clothes. My phone had Instagram open, and I was listening to music. On another open app running in the background was my TikTok “”For You”” page, which I alternated between Instagram, Spotify, and TikTok.

At that moment, I turned everything off. What was I doing to myself?

This isn’t unique to me, though. Gen Z is terrified of FOMO. According to Squarespace, 92% of Gen Z multitasks while on their devices, such as watching a basketball game while scrolling through a shopping app. We crave connection. But from that moment, I decided to do a ‘blackout’: no scrolling, no music, no Instagram, YouTube, or Netflix for a week. The next morning was tough; I felt a strong urge to open TikTok when I woke up. Instead, I went to the gym. The rest of the day, I had great ideas that had been suppressed by social media and shopping apps. I even found and made a list of 31 scholarships to apply for in July.

It’s been 22 days since I woke up to the reality of my FOMO. As I enter college, I plan to implement ‘blackouts’ regularly, maybe half of the week. The unexpected lesson I’ve learned this summer is that social media doesn’t need to take center stage in your daily life. Go for a walk, go to the gym, bake something, call your grandma—staying informed and connected is good, but making time to work out the stuff in your brain is even better for you and the people around you. I no longer lash out at people because the pixels on my screen take the backstage, while the people I can see and the tasks I have in person take center stage in my life now.