This is our first in an occasional series we call Thought Experiments. Instead of always talking about how the world is, we’ll talk about how the world could be. Sometimes all we need to step into a new future is a compelling vision of what it might look like. We hope you enjoy this departure from our typical format.

You’ve just woken up on a typical morning. Your alarm sounds, seemingly too early as always. The first thing you do is reach for your phone and turn off the alarm. The next thing you do – perhaps even before getting out of bed – is check your notifications.   

You have several new texts and emails. Netflix and Disney+ want you to know about some new shows. Some other apps want your attention, but you don’t give them much thought.  

Something seems off. Then you realize that all of your social media icons are missing. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. They’re all gone.  

It seems like a glitch, so you restart your phone. Maybe that will fix it.  

Nothing.  

You text a couple of friends to see if they are having any problems with their social media too. All of them say “yes”. One of them says something about Mark Zuckerberg believing the metaverse was real, going insane, and shutting down the company to concentrate on accumulating more fake real estate. That part is probably made up.  

Ultimately, it’s a mystery why the apps went away. At least it’s a mystery you share with everyone else.  

You get on with your life, thinking your social media apps are only temporarily gone. Later that evening, you’re texting friends. It works just as well as DMs, so you don’t even notice the difference.

The next morning you wake up and do the regular phone check, curious if anything’s changed. Nope. So, you get on with your day.  

After a few days without social media, you notice you’re losing the twitch to check for notifications. You’re not sure when it happened, but you feel lighter. Less anxious. It’s like you’re living life “out here” instead of inside that device.  

The next day, your phone is in your gym bag and you forget to take it out when you get home. It doesn’t even occur to you until bed time. Surprisingly, you don’t have many text notifications (you thought there’d be a ton). Maybe your friends left their phone in their gym bags too. Either way, the tether you had to your phone is clearly breaking.  

Over the course of the next month, some strange things happen.  

You start having more phone and video conversations with friends, even short chats. It’s fun. You spend more time with friends at coffee and dinners. The best part is fewer people have their phone sitting on the table. You’re face to face with real people talking about real things with real meaning. You feel a sense of connection you haven’t felt in a long time. Maybe years. You’re less lonely and isolated. And you’re losing that sense of lack that seemed to haunt you whenever you scrolled through your feed.   

You also notice things that passed you by before. People walking their dogs. The leaves changing colors. The burst of sun through the clouds on a cool winter day. You’re much more present. Living life.  

Multiple friends express feeling the same things. Not one of them feels burdened by the mysterious disappearance of social media. Not one. It’s the opposite. Everyone feels relieved that it’s gone. 

Since you used to get most of your news from social media, you’ve basically been on a news fast. So you decide to pull up a few of your favorite news websites to get caught up. Wait, are these the exact same headlines from two months ago?

Literally, not much has changed except that you weren’t getting regular updates on everything wrong in the world.  

It seems you’re already losing your taste for that bite-sized content. Instead, you find yourself seeking higher quality media. Long-form podcast conversations and in-depth articles with more thoughtful analysis. It makes you want to get back to reading more books on your favorite subjects. Ones about history, your favorites hobbies, and personal growth. Those deep dives where you spend hours reading and walk away feeling like a new world was opened up to you.  

The biggest surprise comes when you pull up your budget app and realize you spent about 20% less last month. How could that be? You didn’t make any commitments to lower your budget and don’t remember cutting anything out. Then it dawns on you the thousands of advertisements you didn’t see because you weren’t endlessly scrolling through a feed designed steal your attention and sell it to the highest bidder. Big tech and their vast network of advertisers could practically read your mind and offer you a product before you even realized you wanted it.  

You don’t miss social media and now wonder if you ever needed it. You love nature photography. You love reading about culture and arts. So, you simply visit blogs and sites that cover these things. They aren’t automatically pushed to you in a feed. But you’re reminded that clicking on a series of bookmarks in your browser simply isn’t that tough. And you’re in control.  

You still listen to music. You text and call friends. You track your nutrition. You track your spending. You use turn-by-turn directions. The smartphone technology you need is still there. You’ve lost nothing.  

This newfound freedom sparks some other changes. You turn off all push notifications, including Netflix, Disney+, and all your other apps. A week later, you start wondering why you have these apps on your phone in the first place, so you delete them altogether and feel even lighter. After all, you can still access everything on your computer. But you’re no longer carrying them around in your pocket, and soon you’ve lost the urge to check them at all.  

You’re no longer a slave to your phone. Your world isn’t filtered through an algorithm built by neuroscientists and marketers to capture your mind. Your friends feel like real friends. The news you see feels more balanced and less urgent. And you’ve gained a sense of control over your time and your thoughts.  

And best of all, you feel more rested. Less screen time and blue light in the evening is helping you sleep better.  

It’s been a little over a month and you would never go back to the way it was. You can’t believe your mind was held captive that long in such a superficial, anxiety-producing state. It all seems so ludicrous now.  

You read a story about a small high school in Massachusetts that banned smart phones. One senior said,  

I’m a lot happier being on social media less. I think I’ve been a lot more aware . . . Will I ever go back to having a phone with me all the time? . . . . I don’t know, but I hope not. 

And you 100% agree.   

After another refreshing night in bed, you get up and prepare for the day. You walk into the kitchen where your phone now sleeps – you can’t imagine that phone ever sitting on your nightstand again.  

You check to see if any texts came in last night, but you’re surprised by what you see. It takes a second to register, because you had practically erased them from your memory. But there they are – the icons for all the social media apps you used before they disappeared. They’re back. Right where they were a little over a month ago.  

You move to click on one of them, then you stop. Do you really want to go back to the way it was? 

There you are, sitting in the kitchen with your phone in hand and those familiar app icons staring back at you. What do you do now?