I recently saw a comedic reel on Instagram where a young man went around the house confiscating phones from his entire family — his mom, dad, and grandma, because they were all glued to their screens.
It was one of those jokes that made me sad about the world we live in right now.
Our addiction to technology has no age limit. As the young people like to say these days, we are all cooked. Old, young, millennial, boomer, we are all scrolling, swiping, refreshing, and checking. The constant dopamine hits have fried our brains, and breaking free from it feels nearly impossible at times.
But what if 2026 was the year we actually did? What if this was the year we unplugged, not completely but intentionally?
We Are Overstimulated
It is a fact that the bombardment of information that we consume daily has a huge impact on our mental well-being. We wake up, and the first thing we do is reach out to our phones. We fall asleep to screens and doom scrolling. We have completely lost the ability to stay still. The result is predictable: we are more anxious, more distracted, more exhausted than ever. We know this. We feel it. And yet, we cannot seem to stop.
So what do we do?
The Solution You Don’t Expect
Here is the irony: the same technology that is overwhelming us can help us escape it. Artificial Intelligence can become your assistant in unplugging.
I know how counterintuitive that sounds, but hear me out.
Instead of scrolling through forty-seven articles to stay informed, you can use AI tools to give you the key points. Get the information you need without the endless and needless rabbit holes. If you are a content creator or business owner whose income depends on being online, you need to be intentional about how you use your time.
I understand that as a content creator, you need to be chronically online. Trends change with the speed of light. Miss a day, and you are already behind. These platforms are specifically designed to keep you on their platforms as long as possible. Everyone is competing for your attention and money. The more eyeballs your stuff gets, the more money you make. It never ends. However, there are tools you can use that will help you optimise your time better. If you don’t have a team that can take care of your tasks, create AI agents to handle emails, scheduling, and research — all the things that keep you tied to your devices. Set up AI-powered news aggregators that deliver only what matters to you, once a day. No doomscrolliing is required.
Free up your time to actually live offline.
The goal isn’t to become dependent on AI. The goal is to use it strategically so you can be less dependent on being constantly plugged in.
Let technology serve you instead of enslaving you.
Why Are You Really Here?
Before you can reduce your time online, you need to be honest with yourself about why you are spending so much time there in the first place. Take a moment and think about every social media platform you are on. Are you really using all of them? And if so, why? What are you using each platform for? Are you promoting a business? Making money as a content creator? Staying up to date with news? Keeping up with friends and family? Or are you just killing time and dissociating? The cheap dopamine that we get from doom scrolling can be addictive and prevent us from making important changes in our lives. It is easier to watch a million TikToks in one hour than work out for 15 minutes. You have trained your brain to see this as important, so now it keeps asking for it.
Here is the hard truth: most of us are on social media out of habit, not intention. We open apps without thinking. We scroll without purpose. We check notifications that don’t matter. And hours disappear.
My challenge to you is this: delete at least one platform in 2026. Pick the one that adds the least value to your life and remove it. If you are a content creator, pick one or two platforms maximum and focus there. Not all social media platforms are beneficial for content creators and business owners. Pick the one with the highest ROI. Stop trying to be everywhere at once. The pressure to maintain presence on every platform is exhausting and ultimately counterproductive.
If you are using social media to stay up to date, ask yourself what you are actually staying up to date for. Is it serving you, or is it just keeping you anxious and overwhelmed? If you are using it to keep up with friends and family, consider this: when was the last time you actually called or saw them in person? We tell ourselves we are staying connected, but we are often just watching each other’s highlight reels from a distance.
What Unplugging Actually Looks Like
You don’t have to go completely off-grid or move to a cabin in the woods. Although that would be a dream come true for millions of Americans, including me. Unplugging in 2026 can look much more practical than that. It means setting boundaries that actually protect your peace. No phones at the dinner table. No screens for the first hour after you wake up or the last hour before bed. These are simple rules, but they are revolutionary in practice. They make a tremendous difference once you actually practice them.
Delete apps you don’t need. If you are not using something intentionally, it shouldn’t be on your phone, taking up space and tempting you with notifications. Turn off notifications for everything that isn’t truly urgent. Almost nothing is urgent, if you actually think about it. You don’t need to know the second something happens. The world will not end if you check your phone twice a day instead of two hundred times.
I am a millennial. I remember the time when social media and smartphones were not around, and life was beautiful back then.
Create phone-free zones in your life. Your bedroom should be one. Anywhere you want to actually be present deserves to be protected from the constant pull of your device. And here’s a radical idea: schedule your online time. Instead of being online all day, set specific times. Check social media twice a day for twenty minutes. Then close it and move on with your life. Find a hobby that will keep you occupied. And no, it can’t be on your digital device, like playing games or doing Sudoku on an app. When I say hobby, I mean more like knitting or gardening.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is progress. Even cutting your screen time by 30% will make a massive difference in your mental health, your relationships, and your ability to focus on what actually matters.
Healing Your Nervous System
Here is what most people don’t realize: your nervous system needs rest. Real rest. Not scrolling to relax, which isn’t actually relaxing at all. Not watching videos to unwind, which keeps your brain overstimulated even when you think you are resting. Your body can’t tell the difference between real stress and the stress of consuming endless content. It all registers the same way.
When you unplug, you give your body and mind the space to process emotions, regulate stress, think clearly, be creative, connect with others, and just exist without constant input. This is what Sabbath rest was meant to be. You take a break from productivity, consumption, and stimulation.
You are a human being. Not a human doing.
In 2026, make rest a priority. Make boredom okay again. Let yourself sit in silence without immediately reaching for your phone. Let your mind wander. Let yourself be understimulated for once. Your nervous system will thank you. You will sleep better. You will think more clearly. You will be more present with the people you love. You will remember what it feels like to be fully human instead of a node in a never-ending information network.
Moving Forward
We are not going to stop technology from advancing. AI, social media, and the internet are here to stay forever. And honestly, they are not all bad. They have connected us, educated us, and created opportunities that didn’t exist before. I’m not anti-technology; in fact, I love it so much I want it to help humanity more than it does right now. After all, I’m writing this on a computer that will be published on the internet.
But somewhere along the way, we lost control. The tools that were supposed to serve us started to dominate us. We have become the product instead of the user. Our attention became the commodity everyone was fighting over, and we give it all away for free, endlessly, without thinking about the cost.
2026 can be different. Not by rejecting technology entirely, but by using it intentionally. By letting AI help us unplug instead of keeping us connected all the time. By auditing our habits and cutting what doesn’t serve us. By choosing presence over performance, rest over consumption, real connection over digital noise.
We are all cooked!
But we don’t have to stay that way. We can choose wisely. We can reclaim our attention and time, heal our nervous system, and bring ourselves back to our bodies. We can remember what it means to be fully present in our own lives.
So, choose yourself!
What is the first thing you are going to unplug this year?
Fariza 