How Stepping Away from TikTok Strengthened My Submission

This isn’t an outcry against TikTok, Instagram Reels, or however you prefer to consume your short-form content. This is just an anecdote about my experience with this content type and my submission. So, as they say on TikTok: “Don’t @ me.”

Like most people of my generation, I spent a lot of my free time consuming short-form media. In fact, I would sometimes spend hours watching content, and aside from the occasional doom scroll, it was a very enjoyable experience.

There were actually a lot of positives that came from my experience with TikTok and similar platforms. I got a lot of laughs, a way to connect and share funny videos with friends, and even dabbled in posting content myself from time to time. As an artist, I found a lot of other great artists out there that I followed along with. I also know there are a handful of people in the kink community who make educational content and market themselves. These are all great uses of the platforms.

But here’s where things get a little gray… I started using it as a form of escapism. What began as a fun distraction quickly became a coping mechanism, and eventually, I was addicted.
Too stressed from school or work? TikTok. The news getting me down? TikTok. Struggling with boredom? You guessed it. TikTok.

Part of me always knew this was how I coped with life, especially as a young adult still figuring things out. I could go into the ways this impacted me as a person and my daily life, but let’s get straight to what this article is really about: how short-form content negatively affected my submission.

The Impact on My Submission

For context, I’m in a 24/7 dynamic with my Master, and during the height of my short-form media usage, we were long distance (I’m talking a plane ride apart long distance). For my Master and I, communication was crucial for our TPE to work from so far away. As I consumed more and more of this media, my Master began noticing shifts in my servitude:

Shorter Attention Span

This one is probably the most obvious. There are well-known links between short-form content and attention span issues, and it absolutely affected my service. I struggled to stay fully present in long conversations with my Master and often found myself reaching for my phone or scrolling during moments of silence. There were even times when He spoke to me, and I just didn’t seem interested.

Diverted Focus

Long-distance already made quality time harder to come by. When I got home from a day of work and we called, the first chunk of our call was us sitting in silence as I “decompressed” from work and watched short videos. What was worse is that I would feel myself get frustrated if my Master wanted to talk because I wanted to focus on watching my videos instead. I viewed it as a way to relax and turn my brain off for a while, and unknowingly, I had turned my “relaxation time” into a barrier between us.

Not Being Present

Building on that, even in one-on-one conversations, I often disappeared into my phone. I’d get so absorbed that it was as if the world around me disappeared. My Master could have an entire conversation with me, and if I was too invested in my phone, I wouldn’t hear a single word.

Short-Term Memory Issues

Admittedly, I’ve always struggled with memory to some degree, but it worsened significantly when I was deep in my short-form content phase.

Loss of Schedule

Because I was staying up late into the night consuming content, I would not get enough sleep, and that led to a grumpy submissive. (And no one wants to deal with a grumpy, tired submissive.) I also used TikTok to cope with my restlessness, which only repeated the cycle.

Poor Aftercare Practices

After intense scenes, my aftercare literally became… TikTok. All I wanted was to be on my phone and indulge in escapism, and that did not address my Master’s needs at all. Aftercare goes two ways, and I never realized how disconnected He felt from me when I went on my phone straight after a session.

Eventually, my phone usage became so automatic that when I would unlock my phone, my fingers would immediately gravitate towards the TikTok icon. Sometimes I would do it without even cognitively realizing that I had opened the app. It was pure muscle memory. TikTok had become my go-to escape from anxiety (and reality).

As I mentioned, my Master and I are in a TPE. One day, He approached me and told me to delete TikTok. We had both reached the point where it was obvious the negatives far outweighed the positives, and with His command, I recognized I did need to rid myself of it.

What followed was when I truly realized I had an addiction to short-form content. I deleted TikTok… and immediately pivoted to Instagram Reels.

I didn’t even like most of the content on Instagram Reels. In fact, sometimes I actively hated the content that was being shown to me, and Instagram tends to bring a lot more hatred within the comment section. Yet still, I scrolled. Despite not even enjoying the experience, I kept going.

My Master saw the signs of a relapse in my addiction and made me get rid of Instagram for a while too.

That’s when the real improvement started.

I could hold and focus on a conversation again. My anxiety slowly lessened. Of course, there were other factors that contributed to my overall improvement, but the link to reducing short-form content was undeniably clear. It felt like my Master and I were in the same room again. Even His other slave noticed the difference in my demeanor.

My communication, attention span, memory, and aftercare practices all dramatically improved. I have even started dabbling in reading again, a pastime that I lost during my college years as the surge of content took over my free time.

This isn’t a call to action. I’m not saying that every submissive will magically become “better” by deleting these apps, and I’m DEFINITELY not telling Dominants to start ordering your submissives to do what my Master did. (We know you don’t like to be told what to do.)

This article is here to provide insight into my experience with this type of content, and how removing it as a whole helped us to strengthen our connection and my servitude.

For many couples, short-form content is a way to bond—by sharing videos with one another, especially long distance, or perhaps creating content together. I will never deny the positive effects of social media, especially since my Master and I met through social media and I traveled across the world to live with Him.

Now, I’m actively working on being present and listening more fully. I still use social media quite extensively… I have been granted permission to download Instagram again as long as I avoid the Reels, and I am an avid Reddit user and YouTube watcher. Shifting to long-form content and reading has already made a huge difference, but I’m still repairing the habits I built with short-form media.

Maybe you have a good balance, and if you do, I applaud you for that. But if not, remember that even small changes can help:

• no short-form content in bed
• setting time limits
• simply putting the phone down when your Dominant asks

It took a lot of accountability from my Master and humility on my part to admit it had become a problem. I’m not suggesting you throw your phone out the window (especially if there are pedestrians walking below you), but if you’re a submissive, maybe ask yourself how you’d feel if your Dom did ask you to put TikTok away.