How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?
I know it’s time to unplug when my thoughts stop echoing in my own voice. When the rhythm of my mind gets replaced by headlines, hashtags, outrage, and urgency. When I read one more story about someone like me, someone trans, or someone of a different race. It could be someone disabled or simply living, being silenced, erased, or attacked. Then I can’t even feel the full grief of it because the next notification is already coming in.
The build-up
It builds up, quietly and violently. The scrolling doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. It’s like I’m monitoring a storm I never signed up for, making sure no one I love gets struck. I absorb it all: the policies, the slurs, the opinions that mistake my existence for debate. And still, I don’t unplug. Not because I don’t want to, but because part of me feels like I can’t.
The Need to Unplug
If I unplug, who holds the line? Who keeps watch? Who amplifies the ones being shouted over, or reminds the world we’re still here? Staying connected feels like an act of resistance, even as it drains me. It feels like a duty, even as it blurs my sense of self. I don’t know how to look away, not when looking feels like a kind of protection, a kind of presence.
The signs are all there, though. I stop creating. I get snappish. I wake up already tired. I consume more than I respond to. My body tenses, my chest hurts, my hands hover over screens instead of reaching toward anything real. Still, I refresh the feed. I think if I just know more, I’ll be ready. I’ll be safe. But there’s no endpoint to awareness. There’s only exhaustion.
So when I do try to unplug, it’s rarely graceful. I have to force it: turn off the phone, leave the house, touch something not made of pixels or panic. Write a poem with no goal. Light a match and breathe. Let silence ring louder than the news for once. Let my thoughts come back in my own voice.
The Hard Part
That’s the hardest part, reminding myself that being informed and being overwhelmed are not the same thing. That I can care deeply without letting it hollow me out. That unplugging isn’t abandoning the fight. Sometimes, it’s how I return to it stronger.
Watching out for ALL Minorities
And it’s not just people like me I’m watching out for. My feed is full of grief and fury for so many others. Black communities are still brutalized and blamed. Indigenous voices remain silenced. Disabled people are pushed to the margins of every movement. Immigrants are treated like threats. Women and femmes are denied autonomy. Jewish and Muslim communities are caught in cycles of violence and erasure. The list doesn’t end, and neither does the ache of seeing it all unfold in real time.
Even when the news isn’t about me, it’s about us. All of us who live at intersections deemed inconvenient by the powerful. All of us who get flattened into statistics, headlines, or hashtags. I carry that with me. I don’t just stay online to protect my people. I stay to bear witness, to amplify, to hold space for others who are just as tired, just as sacred.
Respect
So when I say unplugging feels like absence, it’s not only personal. It’s collective. It feels like turning away from people I care about, even if we’ve never met. But I’m learning that I can’t hold all of it all the time. I can step back without stepping away. I can rest without forgetting. We all deserve that kind of permission, to pause, to breathe, and to come back when we’re ready.
