Musician Leith Ross is taking a year without screens

Between “friction-maxxing” and talk of “social media addiction,” it’s safe to say we’re ambivalent about our online lives. We’d love to “touch the grass,” but the bright colors of Instagram Reels tempt us to stay on our phones.

Some people, however, are making concerted efforts to reduce their screen time. But musician Leith Ross goes even further: they don’t look at screens for a whole year.

Not literally: They’ll go see a movie at the theater or borrow their partner’s laptop for a Zoom interview, which is how Mashable spoke to Ross. But they no longer use a smartphone or laptop themselves. They use an alarm clock, write by hand and only play physical games.

The Canadian singer-songwriter continues to film videos for YouTube, but they record them with a camcorder and someone else uploads them to his channel which has over 46,000 subscribers.

Mashable interviewed Ross about their “screen-free year,” why they’re doing it, and how it’s changing their lives.

Why go screenless?

“It took a while,” Ross said. They explained that they believed they were addicted to screens and that their compulsive behavior around screens of all kinds was having a negative impact on them.

The question of whether one can actually be addicted to screens or social media is controversial today, as is sex addiction. But the World Health Organization has noted an increase in problematic social media use, such as lack of control and negative consequences. “But it felt like everyone was dealing with the same thing,” Ross said. They didn’t have the motivation to try to do anything.

But one day their phone died. Their television wasn’t working either, or something like that was preventing them from accessing the screens.

Then they wrote a song that they really liked, and they had an epiphany: There are probably hundreds of songs they could have written that never saw the light of day because they were never bored.

There are probably hundreds of songs they could have written but never saw the light of day because they were never bored.

“I felt a lot of sadness in that moment, because writing music is what I love to do, and…and it feels like something I was meant to do with my life,” they said. “And I just hadn’t done it as much as I could have.”

This thinking also translated into thinking about how many books they wanted to read, which led them to want to do this project. Cutting things off little by little wasn’t going to work, as it hadn’t worked for them before. So they came up with a plan. Implementation took several months, but since January 6, 2026, Ross has been living (largely) screen-free.

“My year without a screen”

In a seven page documentRoss lays out the rules for their screen-free year along with a mission statement. No smartphones, no TVs, no laptops or desktops, or gaming systems, with a few exceptions. For example, they can use a library computer for essential tasks, like booking flights. Their family also requests FaceTimes, which are done on a friend’s or partner’s phone and supervised.

Ross has posted two YouTube updates since his screen-free year began, one in end of January. (which has over 100,000 views) and another in February. They (or rather their team) have since also released a demo of songs and vlogs from the European leg of their I Can See The Future tour, a series of shows to support the release of their second album of the same name.

Compulsive screen use and information overload

What a problematic screen In Ross’s life, consumption looked like a constant need to be online or look at a screen, extreme anxiety or an uneasy feeling in their body when they didn’t have access, and a muscular memory of always reaching for a device.

Nowadays, many people think they are addicted to social media and spend double-digit daily screen time. But Ross admitted this may have been a more extreme case, saying they physically couldn’t stop themselves from being online, scrolling or even watching TV.

“If I was having an anxious night, I would stay on TikTok until four in the morning or later, because as soon as I put it down, I would feel it like horrible, overwhelming anxiety,” they said. “It was like my constant, constant, constant coping mechanism for everything.”

But they are reluctant to support social media bans for childrenlike the mandate adopted in Australia last December.

“Our goal should be less about making policy that affects the population and more about making policy that affects the tech companies that are screwing us over,” they said, “for lack of a better term.” They discussed social media algorithms that amplify hate speech and disturbing content, and stressed that there should be a moral standard for what is shared and pushed by algorithms.

Social media gives us the illusion of being connected, they say, but we are bombarded with useless information that takes our breath away. We don’t see uplifting content like liberation work — at least, that’s not what Ross has seen in his last few months online.

When using social media, they were also hyperfixated on how others perceived them – a common complaint. For example, on their last tour, they immediately went online after a concert to see what they and their bandmates looked like, what they sounded like, and what people were thinking. But on their last tour, which ended a few weeks ago, they “couldn’t draw on anyone else’s experience.”

“I just had to take what happened to me at face value,” they said, “and it seems so funny, because isn’t that just a human experience?”

Not seeing the concert through other people’s eyes was strange, but it made Ross happier. They didn’t overanalyze themselves, their appearance on stage, or their behavior. “There was nothing I could hold on to and be hard on myself in that way,” they said.

“I was really forced to live in the moment, which is a great feeling,” Ross said.

How Relationships Change After Social Media

Besides their relationship with themselves, their relationships with others have changed since they started their screen-free year — for better and for worse.

For the friends they see often, their relationship has improved. Since they can’t follow their friends on social media, when they see them or talk to them, they’re excited to hear what’s going on.

“It’s not like I wasn’t excited to hear about it from my friends before, but I felt like I already knew,” they said.

On the other hand, they said: “I no longer really have the right to have the illusion of being close to a person to whom I am not really close. » There are people who Ross considered close friends before the project started, and even though they still are, they don’t really connect as much. Before, they felt intimacy with people who simply responded to their Instagram stories.

“And I’m not saying it’s unimportant,” they said. “But I realize that… I don’t see them much, if at all, and… that we didn’t have the opportunity to connect often and well outside of being online.”

“I feel a little alone sometimes,” they said, “but it also inspires me to strengthen those relationships in real, tangible ways that I can control.”

They also set up a post office box and receive letters from fans and viewers. “Receiving a handwritten letter is like a joy I haven’t experienced since I was very young, and it’s so much fun,” they said. Previously they were confirmed by kind DMs, now – like catching up with friends – receiving these positive messages now “seems much more rare, special and unique”, especially given the effort required to write and send a physical letter.

Should I go a year without a screen?

Ross recommends that everyone do this to the extent they feel able – not for the reasons you might think.

Beyond reclaiming your attention span, wanting to read more books, and being more creative, Ross believes there’s a larger existential threat that drives people to want to encourage others to reduce their screen time.

They believe that an emotional distance has been created between people and their community due to capitalism, individualism and social media. We are not tangible to each other and are less willing to sacrifice for others and do the hard things that make the world a better place, they said. Living a less digital life and being part of a physical community can help with this.

“I feel like we need to find a very concrete way to get back to each other, so that when push comes to shove, we will have real physical communities in our lives that can take care of us and that we can take care of,” they said.

They won’t stop at one year, but once the year is up, they will likely be less strict, they said. One of the main things they don’t expect, however, is to one day get a smartphone again. The main thing that brought them back to their bodies and themselves was not having a computer on them all the time, they said.

So far, they seem to be frictionmaxxing to the extreme – not that they saw the meme online before Mashable told them about it.

“It’s nice to hear from the other side of the veil [that] I’m talking about an online trend,” they joked.