Content Note: this post discusses grief, loss and bereavement.

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There’s a certain kind of discomfort when your phone is in your hand, your thumb knows exactly where to scroll - and yet nothing feels reachable. 

This year, grief broke my relationship with the internet. 

Not in a dramatic, delete-all-my-apps way. More in a slow, confusing unravelling. I’d open Instagram out of habit, stare at the screen for a few seconds and close it again. TikTok stopped being funny. Reddit stopped being sharp. Even the group chats - the ones that usually feel like home - felt loud, distant, wrong. 

As a child of the internet, this was disorientating. I spent my early teens on Tumblr, endlessly digging for culture and inspiration - blogs that introduced me to art, photography and ideas I couldn't find anywhere else. I spent years diving down YouTube rabbit holes, hunting for music and slowly building my own soundtrack to life. I’ve processed feelings through memes, distraction through content, and connection through constant digital proximity. For as long as I can remember, the internet has been where I go when things feel heavy - a place to numb, to escape, to feel less alone without having to explain myself. 

Grief took that away. 

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Nothing To Scroll Past

This was my first real experience of loss, and I wasn't prepared for how physical it would feel - or how incompatible it would be with being online. Grief doesn’t move at the speed of content. It doesn’t fit into a carousel or a punchy caption. It lingers, loops, interrupts. 

And suddenly, distraction stopped working. 

I couldn’t consume content as a buffer anymore. I couldn’t scroll my way out of sadness or busy my brain with other people’s lives. Everything felt too fast, too performative, too detached from the reality I was sitting in. 

There’s a strange loneliness in that - being constantly connected, yet unable to connect. The internet thrives on momentum. Grief demands stillness, and the two don’t coexist easily. 

I didn’t want hot takes. I didn’t want aspirational noise. I didn’t want to be sold joy while quietly carrying something I couldn't put down. 

So I went offline - not intentionally, not neatly - but emotionally. I was present physically, but absent digitally. And for someone whose work, identity and curiosity are deeply tied to culture and the internet, the absence felt like losing a language I was fluent in. 

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When Content Stops Distracting

What surprised me most wasn’t that I couldn’t engage - it was that I didn’t want to. Content designed to distract suddenly felt hollow. Trends came and went without me noticing. Campaigns launched, discourse erupted, algorithms kept moving - and I was standing still.

Grief stripped things back. It made me hyper-aware of what felt real and what didn’t. I became less tolerant of noise, more sensitive to intention. Anything that felt forced, opportunistic or empty landed badly.

And maybe that’s the uncomfortable truth we don’t talk about enough: when you’re grieving, you don’t need more content. You need meaning. You need care. You need things that feel human.

It made me realise how much of the internet is built around avoidance - avoiding boredom, discomfort, silence. Grief offers none of those escape routes. It asks you to sit with it. To feel it fully. To exist without distraction.

And when you can’t look away anymore, you start noticing what actually matters.

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Coming Back Differently

I’m slowly finding my way back online now. But it’s different. I engage less, notice more. I’m drawn to quieter corners, smaller conversations, moments that feel considered rather than optimised.

I have less interest in virality, scale or being everywhere. I care more about resonance. About sincerity. About things that acknowledge real life instead of glossing over it.

Grief didn’t just change how I feel - it changed how I consume culture. It recalibrated my attention. It made me protective of my energy and allergic to anything that feels like it’s shouting for the sake of being seen.

If there’s one thing this year has taught me, it’s that constant connectivity isn’t the same as connection. And distraction, no matter how cleverly packaged, can only take you so far.

Sometimes, the hardest thing - and the most necessary - is sitting in the silence, without a screen to soften it.

And sometimes, stepping away from the internet isn’t about disconnecting from the world at all.

It’s about finally being present in it.