How I got here
It started at 11. I didn't even have a word for it — it was just there, and then it was a habit, and then it was years. I only recently realized how much it had quietly taken from me. The most obvious cost was sleep: I'd cut an hour or two almost every night without really thinking about it. And focus — I'd lose whole days half-thinking about it, which pulled me away from friendships and the sports I actually cared about.
It ate my time and my head
Looking back, it's staggering how much of my brain and my hours it consumed without me noticing. An hour or two would pass and I'd have no idea where it went. Worse, I'd quietly bend the rest of my day around it — when I ate, whether I bothered to meet up with friends. It became the thing everything else scheduled around.
What actually helped
The turning point wasn't willpower. What actually moved the needle was simple, almost boring stuff: spending less time on my devices, exercising, and getting outside. Once I was doing more in the real world, I could see how much happens outside the screen — and the online version of everything started to look small.
Where I'm at now
Right now I'm about a month and a half clean. I won't pretend it's been a straight line — I've had plenty of relapses over the last couple of years, and getting back on track after one could take a while. What's helped me hold it lately is cutting the internet distractions that used to ambush me: I got off Instagram, filtered Twitter, and cut way back on Reddit, where it could surface on my feed and quietly redirect my whole evening. I made this site because I wish it had existed when I was 11, or 15, or last year. If it gets one person to close the tab one time, it was worth building.