I’m response to yesterday’s post about how getting away from social media has helped my mental health, I got a few questions about what I did to break the seemingly endless cycle of notification checking and doom scrolling.
Here’s what’s worked for me:
1. Delete the apps from your phone and turn on two-factor authentication (2FA). This forces you to log on from a browser and go through an additional step to get connected (i.e., 2FA). As a bonus, turning on 2FA makes your account more secure and less prone to being hacked.
2. Set time limits using your phone’s native settings. Limit your usage over time until it reaches a level you find acceptable.
3. Delete any accounts you’re not using or aren’t connecting you to people care about and/or content that benefits you (after downloading your content to keep your pictures, etc.). It’s drastic, but effective.
4. If you need to use platforms to share content more broadly (e.g., blog links on Twitter) use auto-posting features to limit your time and interaction on those sites.
5. Turn off notifications so you aren’t tempted to open the apps (if you don’t delete them) every time a red badge pops up.
I’m not entirely off of social media, because I don’t feel that I have to be and I don’t want to be. However, limiting my consumption has dramatically improved how I feel about myself and the world. Find what works for you.
From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.
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Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 