TikTok deleted for ~1 month
Alex deleted TikTok from her phone for nearly a month and noticed a significant improvement in her mood and mental health.
Where this was said
Social Media Addiction, TikTok's Toxicity, and the Case for Books
At 30:20 · chapter starts 24:05
Alex shifts from cultural critique to personal testimony, walking through her own social media addiction experiment with the specificity of someone who has run the study on herself. She deleted TikTok for nearly a month and felt better — a kind of ambient happiness she hadn't fully appreciated until she had it. Then she needed to post two work videos and re-downloaded the app [1] — Alex Cooper "Alex deleted TikTok for nearly a month and felt genuinely happier. Then she re-downloaded it to post two videos and within 30 minutes was i…" 30:20 . Within 30 minutes of going to her For You page, she was triggered, in a bad mood, and annoyed at what she was seeing — dopamine noticeably dropping in real time. She deleted it again. A concrete example of TikTok's toxicity follows: she saw a woman making a dumpling recipe, went to the comment section, and found people attacking the creator's hair, shirt, and a supposed hypocrisy about soy sauce. Horrifying. She needed out. Her solution: re-download only to post, then immediately remove the app. And she's replaced the scrolling with rereading the Throne of Glass book series — a pro tip for anyone trying to get off social media: find a long series, because the investment in world-building pulls you in the same way a feed does but builds you up rather than tearing you down [2] — Alex Cooper "Reading vs. scrolling: 5x better mental health: Alex claims that spending time reading books improves her mental health five times more tha…" 32:00 . Her stated self-assessment: spending more than a minute reading produces mental health that is five times better than the equivalent time scrolling.
Alex Deleted TikTok and Her Brain Thanked Her
Alex deleted TikTok for nearly a month and felt genuinely happier. Then she re-downloaded it to post two videos and within 30 minutes was in a worse mood, triggered, and annoyed. She deleted it again immediately. The experiment was that obvious — and she says if you know an app makes you feel like garbage, choosing it anyway makes you the problem.
Social media triggers dopamine crash
Alex says that within 30 minutes of returning to TikTok after her break, her dopamine levels dropped and she was immediately in a worse mood.
Reading vs. scrolling: 5x better mental health
Alex claims that spending time reading books improves her mental health five times more than scrolling social media.
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