Sometime in early January I made the hermit-like decision to not use social media for a month. Several minutes after making this decision I realized nobody would know when I published a new blog post if I didn’t use social media a little, for blog-related reasons.
Through dumb luck and a google search, I figured out how to automatically post links to my articles on Facebook and Twitter through the blog itself. If you’ve been blogging for more than twenty minutes, you probably also know of this trick. I am a humble people. Moving on.
In what i’m pretty sure is a world record, I was able to successfully keep off of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from January 7th-February 7th and I have learned a great many things.
1) Cell phone batteries last a long time when you’re not constantly on Social Media
Who would have thought?
2) It’s easy to still waste time on my phone without checking social media
The point of the exercise was to become more present. Spend less time mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed and instead pay attention to what was going on around me.
I did pretty good at breaking my psychological addiction to checking social media, but would catch myself checking and rechecking my Google news feed. Face palm. Overall I did significantly cut down my screen time but not as much as I would have liked.
Going forward I want to continue not using my phone for social media nearly as often as I did before, but I also need to make a rule that I can only read so much news on my phone.
I am a small child, I need boundaries.
3) Social Media is useful in small doses
Contrary to what I assumed, it turns out social media has some great benefits. I’m able to get breaking news on Twitter and stay connected with my family on Facebook. The hard part is knowing when you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns.
I think for the next month or so I’ll allow myself back on social media for 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening. This will give me the chance to catch up on the days events without mindlessly scrolling.
4) I missed it, but not that much
I’ve heard reports from people saying they took a break from social media and didn’t miss it at all. This was not the case for me. I did miss it, just not very much.
Like I said above, it’s useful in small doses.
I was able to break the psychological addiction of needing to constantly check and recheck social media, and that was the important part.
On February 7th I woke up and thought, “Oh, I can just check Facebook if I want,” but I didn’t really care to. Eventually I went on there and scrolled for a few minutes where I came across a few pictures of babies, a few political memes, and a cat video or two. Yup, Facebook was still there, right where I left it.
5) I was able to get more done
Without the ability to waste hours on social media I filled my time by writing more. I wrote several blog posts that probably would not exist if I had allowed myself to mindlessly fill my time on social media.
Not being on social media gave me ample free time to focus on bettering myself.
Ha! Hahaha. I have a 7 week old so I got very little done. I opened the computer several times and even got to the point of typing things once or twice, but my efficiency was questionable.
Not being on social media, but still being stuck sitting in a chair holding a sleeping baby, gave me more time to think about what I would eventually write.
A few of the potential blog posts I came up with were really philosophical because I had so much extra time to sit there and think deeply about the universe and my place in it. Those types of posts are by far my least popular, so I’m really excited for those to come out.
6) Social Media causes a lot of stress
This is the big one. It might be obvious to a lot of you, but social media increases stress. There were several times over the last month where someone would say something like, “Did you see that article/meme/status so and so posted about (insert controversial topic)? They completely oversimplified it and wouldn’t listen to the opposite side.”
People generally don’t post controversial topics on social media so that they can have their mind expanded and their opinion altered. Usually, when people post about any number of potential land mine topics they aren’t looking for a nuanced opinion or civilized debate.
The stress that creeps up when you see a post over-simplifying some complex issue that you just want so badly to correct doesn’t happen when you don’t check social media.
I didn’t have that stress in my life this month. It was nice.
7) Being mindful is still hard
It’s still so hard to be present. I had to constantly fight the urge to be doing multiple things at once. In some ways I replaced my “I’m bored, I’ll check social media” with “I’m bored, I’ll check the blog,” or “I’ll check my google newsfeed.”
Overall it was a positive experiment and one that I’ll continue to tweak. Getting over my phone addiction will be a huge weight off my shoulders. I’m not there yet, but I’m further down the path than I was before.
If you enjoyed this article please share it with your friends and other people who you don’t like as much as your friends
Here’s a few more articles you can read while you’re here.
No Social Media For A Month!! AAAHHHHHHH
How to Quickly Tell if You Can Trust Someone
Did you know? Sharing this will make you happy!
