Daily Zey

During December 2025, in the middle of vision boards, trendy TikTok wrap ups, Spotify wrapped and advent calendars, I felt my chest tightening and my mental space being overloaded by notifications, FOMO and ads. Although the digital burnout was creeping in, I was consumed by my phone. I would deactivate Instagram, only to switch to X. If I stay away from both, I would find myself in Pinterest searching trendy aesthetics and making collages. Eventually, Chess.com prove itself to be the only thing that stopped me from going overboard with social media. It was fun, stimulating for my brain and felt… better. Still the unease continued.

Funny enough, I remembered a video I saw on Instagram, of a girl sharing the travel videos with the caption: “maybe our mothers were right, it was the damn phones.” For a few days it lingered on my mind. Surely traveling and being offline is therapeutic, my experiences aligned with it as well. Still, issue remained when I came back to my everyday life. Those few days, each time I reached out to my phone I repeated the phrase – damn phones. The idea of this challenge was starting to form itself.

The kickstart unexpectedly happened when I saw my MP3 player from 2008 in a messy drawer while I was looking for band-aids. Then it was almost if stars were aligned in my favor. My sister had this old wired earbuds in her room. After half an hour of USB-charging I was dancing to 2008 Britney hits in my bedroom. It only had 108 tracks downloaded to it, there were no ads, no algorithm suggestions or notifications. Just a little piece of metal, filled with music I used to love as a kid.

I was genuinely happy. Like reading 600 pages teen dystopian novel in a single night type of happy, or owl necklace type of happy. So basically, “before life happened” type of joy. It felt so good, it was like being home. Maybe it is a zillenial burnout or nostalgia, I don’t care. I just wanted more of that.

So I said, let’s make it a challenge. For January, I will do my best to go back to analog habits as much as I can, and I will actively leave my phone out of my life to the best of my abilities. – and this post will serve as an update log!

I already keep a journal as long as I’ve known myself, and prefer hard copy books instead of e-books. So there is a bunch of stuff that remains unchanged with this challenge. Some others, well let’s say there are some changes.

So far I’ve taken a few steps for this challenge:

1. Calendar in, app out:

2. Goodbye to Spotify and AirPods

3. Retro as ever, hello Nikon my old friend!

4. Not the TikTok but tic tok

5. Social life without the social media

• I deleted them all. X, Instagram, Pinterest. Someone should’ve taken a picture of my face while deleting Instagram. But I found the courage after realizing 5 hours of daily average screen time. only. for. insta.

So basically I looked around the house, trying to find anything that can replace what I use my phone for and tried to make it work. Then, I got rid of the primary attention seeker – social media.

I have a few other things in mind, they are just a bit harder:

• Replacing Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. – I don’t watch cable TV, so every movie I watch is from these platforms. At home we have bunch of CD’s and DVD’s but the DVD player is broken, I will try to fix it or find a replacement.
• WhatsApp – I will encourage my friends to a phone call or a quick coffee date instead of texting.

But why? – you can ask, and you would be very right to question the reason / or my sanity at this point.

I feel like we all have been preyed upon. It is almost if our conversations are mostly around the content we encountered. “Oh did you see the cat video I sent you?” or “There is this girl on TikTok…” Saddest part is, we are not in control of what we come across in social media. It feeds on us, constantly gathering data and playing bets and A/B tests on how to hold us captive longer each time we step in.

It is not just social media. It is “techno-feudalism”. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it is basically capitalism 2.0 with some updates such as maximized consumerism, control over resources – including our attention, psychology and behavior, being polished currencies. It is the fact that we have to pay subscription fees almost every aspect of life, and never owning anything anymore.

The MP3 player? The songs from 2008 are still there. Mine and ready to be listened anytime I wish to. The DVD collection? Also mine. What to we get when we pay for these subscriptions – only the access. Access to the algorithm outputs they feed us with.

I don’t know how this month will pass, or whether or not I will be able to succeed. But if even the thought of it feels refreshing, I think it is worth a try.

Let me know if you have similar experiences, or any ideas to add to the list.

With love,