I've had the opposite experience with DDG. While DDG itself resolves about 85% of my searches just fine, getting the hang of the !bang syntax has really elevated my search game without compromising a whole lot. I've been 6-months free of Google as my primary search engine, and see no reason to go back.
Insofar as other steps, I shut down my Twitter account (with a dictionary word username) last year as an experiment to see if I'd care enough to resurrect it before the account was deleted--a 30-day span. I didn't come back to check again for ~40-45 days, and I don't especially miss it. That was enough for me to realize how little value it provided me.
(Never really bothered with Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and the like.)
This year I'm looking into non-Google alternatives for my family's email and common functions (calendaring, etc). It's a slow slog in between a ton of other priorities, but the importance of decentralizing again is growing non-trivially.
Also, I plan to resurrect my blog/personal site for the first time in, spitballing here, about 8 years now. Putting my content back on my terms and reversing the tide in my own way.
Insofar as other steps, I shut down my Twitter account (with a dictionary word username) last year as an experiment to see if I'd care enough to resurrect it before the account was deleted--a 30-day span. I didn't come back to check again for ~40-45 days, and I don't especially miss it. That was enough for me to realize how little value it provided me.
(Never really bothered with Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and the like.)
This year I'm looking into non-Google alternatives for my family's email and common functions (calendaring, etc). It's a slow slog in between a ton of other priorities, but the importance of decentralizing again is growing non-trivially.
Also, I plan to resurrect my blog/personal site for the first time in, spitballing here, about 8 years now. Putting my content back on my terms and reversing the tide in my own way.