Preparing to leave social media

And why quitting cold-turkey probably ain't the way

I was recently on an episode of Becca Syme’s QuitCast talking about leaving social media and building deeper community.

You can watch the full conversation below.

I thought it might be helpful to pair this with some tips for anyone who is considering leaving social media.

(I don’t consider Substack “social media” because of the design decisions of the platform, though I have received some reasonable questions about my rationale for being on here when it platforms very shitty people, including known sex traffickers. I’ve been working on a post laying out how I’ve arrived at my decision (for now) in case my perspective offers new or interesting considerations.)

Technically, leaving social media is as easy as saying, “I’m done,” logging out, and never logging back in again. So what’s all the fuss about?

Obviously it’s not that simple. When you’re an author or other public figure, there are business considerations that make that two-step trickier. And when you’re a human, there are also freezing emotional waters to wade through.

So here are 4 tips to get you started unpacking some of this process:

Tip #1: If you haven’t been tracking social media traffic and conversions, you don’t actually know if staying is helping your business or by how much.

Most people I talk to who want to leave social media but “can’t” are basing that assumption on vibes. Not all are, but definitely most.

If you knew that, say, TikTok was converting to 10 book sales a month for you, and you used your screen time calculator to measure that you’re spending 90 hours a month on the app, would you say that’s an effective sales channel for you? What about 1000 books from 300 hours? What about 1 book from 50 hours?

You would probably feel differently about spending 300 hours to sell 1000 books than you would spending 50 hours to sell 1 book. But until you track where your sales are coming from, fear will tell you that your sales could be coming from anywhere, so no platform is safe to leave.

If your brain said, “Sure, but I could break through any day now!” question that assumption pretty relentlessly and ask yourself how many hours of your life you’re willing to gamble on an unfounded hope like that.

Tip #2: If you’re expecting to have all gains and no losses from any big transition, you’re not living in reality.

Every meaningful transition comes with temporary loss. Choosing temporary loss for long-term gain takes courage, faith, and hope, which most people haven’t been practicing. That’s why most people never make meaningful changes in their lives and live with the same stale grievances and low-level misery until they die.

Moving cities, starting a new pen name, ending a toxic friendship, leaving KU exclusivity, even getting back in shape—these all require a loss of some kind. Are you willing to take the loss for what you’ll gain?

It’s important to notice if we’re waiting to transition to something better until we feel certain that nothing will be lost, even temporarily, in the transition process.

When our core fear is triggered, it shifts our attention toward what will be lost. It gives us tunnel vision on the short-term pain so that we forget about what will be gained over the long-run.

My revenue dipped slightly once I went off social media, but I knew it would (I’d gathered hard data that pointed toward this happening), I knew generally how much to expect, and I kept my eye on the benefits; namely, feeling more like myself again—focused, calm, snarky, quicker recall, improved mood. For me, the loss was well worth it. I’ll part with some money to have a better experience of myself and the world around me.

I also trusted that once I was feeling more in control of my attention, not becoming emotionally dysregulated a hundred times a day, and feeling more connected to myself and others, I would make much wiser business decisions that would make up for the lost revenue and then some over the long-term.

Tip #3: Start building community offline (or off SM) before you plan to leave social media.

You are not going to get your mind, heart, or body on board with leaving social media if you haven’t cultivated fulfilling social ties outside of it.

By the time I left, I had multiple offline communities and ongoing group chats in my life. This is possibly the most important behind-the-scenes info I can offer you. I didn’t start building that after I left. I’d been building it intentionally for years before.

When I stopped pouring my attention into Facebook, Threads, Instagram, and TikTok, it already had somewhere else to flow.

If social media is where all your relationships live, don’t leave it. Not yet. If you want to leave, you have to practice building community and relationships elsewhere. That takes time, so start now. And be a bulldog about it.

Here are some examples of the “community” I have in my life right now:

Online:

-Slack community with small-business owners who are off social media

-Multiple group chats with some author friends who have become friends-friends over the years

-Signal group chat with a bunch of authors from a recent mastermind event

-Friday Zoom meetups with author friends

-Lots and lots of texting one-on-one with friends

Offline:

-Weekly group pottery classes for the last three years

-Monthly potlucks with neighbors

-Monthly adventure/activity with two of my friends from middle/high school

-One-on-one coffee dates and small-group meals with friends throughout the week

I’m not listing off my busy social life to brag or make myself seem popular. If anything I’m vulnerably revealing just how much attention I require from others (something therapy helped me come to terms with).

You might not require this vast of a social net to catch you when you leave social media, but I did. I’m not even an extrovert.

Maintaining relationships takes a lot of work. Relationships are watered by attention, and if you don’t water them, they often dry up and die. So I don’t want to waste attention shouting into a void of people who won’t bother to show up to my funeral.

And yes, a social life can be expensive, and mine often is (a latte in Austin is like $8 a pop), but it doesn’t have to be. Meeting someone in a park for a walk is free. So is a Signal group chat. Making a dish for a potluck is cheap, and you were going to have to eat anyway, right?

I say this with love: your reasons why you, in your Very Special Situation that No One Has Ever Experienced Before, can’t build community off social media are probably bullshit.

I only say “probably” because I’ve heard a lot of them and they have all been bullshit, but I’m always open to exceptions I haven’t heard yet.

Tip #4: The process starts long before you log out that final time.

While I left social media about seven months ago, I’d been considering it for years prior. Ultimately, it hit me that if it was ever going to happen, I needed to move from thoughts into action, and to do that, I needed to pay a visit to my heart.

The emotional work behind leaving social media is no joke. Often, this is the missing piece for those who can’t move from idea into action. There’s terror, sadness, loneliness, powerlessness, insignificance, abandonment, or any other of those unpleasant emotions blocking the way every time you get close to the actions required.

Recognize what emotions come up for you when you think about leaving, and commit to the hard work of feeling those and using evidence to show that you will be okay if you proceed with your exit plans.

Maybe your life was in a rough patch prior to 2006 and the early versions of social media felt like a saving grace. That can be true in 2006 and not true today, because though we still call it a “social network” in 2026, what exists of it today bears almost no resemblance to what it was. It might be time to tell your younger self about that. It is not doing the thing you think it’s doing anymore.

At the end of the day, I was able to harness some of my anger and disgust about the impact social media was having on my body, mind, and heart (as well as the minds, bodies, and hearts of others I care about) to catapult myself into action. But I had to do the unflattering and unpleasant emotional work first. I had to sit with that young version of me who was the only one not invited to Madison’s 15th birthday party and let Young Claire know that while, yes, some people would completely forget I existed once I left, the people who mattered to me would still want to hang out and be my friend.

The odds are, you’re staying not because it’s essential for your business (though if it is, there are plenty of options for transitioning away), but because you have unaddressed fear and unacknowledged emotions about leaving. That’s what I encounter in folks most frequently when they dream of leaving “someday” but aren’t taking action to lay the foundation for doing so.

If you’re looking for an online community of authors that doesn’t take place on social media, great news: I’m building one called the Liberati (read all about it here).

Start the process of building a community for yourself now, and leaving social media will become so much easier for you later. You gotta start somewhere, and I’m offering this up to you on a silver platter.

Enrollment opens in May, so join the waitlist to make sure you don’t miss out.

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I keep all my articles free to read as a service to the publishing community. Each one generally take me 2-4 hours to write and revise. If these articles have unlocked something for you, please consider supporting my labor by either becoming a paid subscriber or buying one of my books for authors at www.liberatedwriter.com/books.

Claire Taylor is an Enneagram-certified coach who guides authors toward building aligned and sustainable careers. She’s also a fiction author of over 45 humor and mystery novels. Read more about her approach, services, and offerings at liberatedwriter.com.

Not familiar with the Enneagram? Here’s a free Enneagram 101 resource.