I documented my life more than I lived it.

If you had asked me a few years ago what I wanted most, I probably would have said: more reach. Until I got it, and my whole view of the world turned upside down.

Who I am

I am Diyana, 26, and three years ago I moved to Bulgaria to study medicine. Honestly, I thought back then that this would be the biggest change of my life. New country, new language, new degree. But looking back today, something else shaped me far more: my relationship with social media.

I know both sides

The strange thing is that I have lived both sides. I know what it is like to scroll for hours through other people's lives. And I also know how it feels when suddenly thousands of people follow your own life.

Shortly after I moved to Bulgaria, I started making content myself. Really without big expectations. I genuinely thought no one would care anyway. Then everything happened incredibly fast. After about a year I had over 40,000 followers.

With every number came pressure

At first that feels great, of course. Every new comment, every message, every new follower feels like validation. But at some point I noticed that with every number a little bit of pressure came too. Suddenly I felt I had to constantly check everything. Always post something. Always be watched, and deliver for everyone.

And the strange part is how heavily this self-staging weighed on me. Some compare themselves to you, idealize you. You in turn compare yourself to others and feel terrible about it. The impostor feeling gets louder and louder. But you keep going anyway, until somewhere in the middle of it all you realize that your own life is not meant to take place publicly all the time.

Busy, but not living

Honestly, my experience as a consumer rather than a creator was just as bad. There were weeks when I had twelve hours of screen time a day and jumped from one algorithm to the next, unable to get out of that loop on my own.

The worst part was not the time itself. The worst part was the feeling of being constantly busy and still not living the life I actually wanted to live.

I have big goals, big dreams. Things I really wanted to reach. But at the same time I kept pushing my daily intentions to tomorrow, wondering why I just was not moving forward.

Not a fair fight

Of course I thought, at first and for a long time, that the problem was me. So I deleted apps, deactivated accounts, locked my phone away. I kept resolving to become more disciplined. It usually worked for a few days, and then I was right back where I had been.

Only much later did I understand that this was not a fair fight. On one side was me with my good intentions. On the other, companies investing billions to hold our attention as long as possible. Some of the smartest product designers, psychologists and developers in the world work every day to make us come back again and again.

That is why I find it unfair to blame people alone. We should talk just as much about the systems that encourage exactly this behavior.

Why back to ctrl

For me, something only changed when I stopped relying on willpower alone and instead built systems that help me make conscious decisions. It was out of exactly this thought that back to ctrl later grew.

Not because I am against phones. Not because I think social media is bad in general. I have lived both sides and know how much good can come from it. But it can quickly tip from good intentions into something negative if you are not very mindful.

I simply wish that we could decide more consciously again when we want to be online and when we would rather enjoy our real life. I wish for a community of people who have big dreams and take their attention back, piece by piece. People who do not want to be perfect, but simply want to feel again that they decide over their own time.

In the end, it is usually not the moments we posted that we remember. It is the ones where we just left the phone in our pocket.