I Quit Social Media For a Week


During the lockdown in the UK, I have found myself become slightly addicted to my phone and social media, scrolling through my social media channels endlessly. It has not been great for my mental health. Normally, when I'm busy, I get a lot of value from social media a lot of the time, it is especially helpful for inspiration, keeping up to date with friends and educating myself about my activism.

However, I found that, especially during the social media trending with Black Lives Matter and the pandemic with extra time, I became very overwhelmed on social media. I was learning from social media but I was also getting overwhelmed by the problems in the world and how it was all too big for me to do anything about it. So, I decided to quit social media, just for a week.

The Rules:
  • Starting on Friday 19th June.
  • Delete social media apps on my phone.
  • No social media use on any other devices.
  • Allowed to use exclusively messaging services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. 

I went into the challenge kind of expecting some big revelation. This is not what happened.

I started off still reaching for my phone when I had a spare moment and scrolling through the app home screen and then realising that there was nothing for me to do on it. This showed me how the connection between being bored or having a spare moment, always seemed to draw me to want to go on social media. I was pretty disappointed that my phone and social media seemed to be my go-to when I didn't know what else to do but I also realised that it was inevitable. 

Eventually during the week, pretty quickly, I stopped reaching for my phone whenever I had a spare moment and just started getting on with one of the jobs that I had kept procrastinating. I got a lot of practical jobs done like fixing clothes, tidying the garden, sorting out rooms, hoovering and cleaning the house. However, I had expected that I would have more time and this time would be in little 10 minutes slot or so between my day, but it turns out those slots only create themselves because I make time for going on my phone and don't make time for big tasks that would be much more worth it. 

I had hoped I would start reading more during my social media-free week, but I didn't. I am pretty disappointed about this because I hoped that reading is what I would have spent my extra spare time doing. This kind of showed me that you only actually achieve things that you really put your mind to and I didn't actively pick up a book every time I went for my phone, I just found other things to do. This isn't inherently bad, but as a person who values reading, it didn't feel great. 

At the end of the week, I wasn't really craving to get social media back so I didn't for a couple days, making my week last a little more than that. I had realised over the week that if I had still learnt things and kept up to date with the world and my friends without social media, then maybe it wasn't as useful as I had previously thought to my life and helping me learn. I also learned that the majority of the time I spend on my phone is on social media so this is what ups my phone screen time each week. 

One of the biggest wins for the week was the lack of stress I experienced. I think I attach too much to social media and keeping up to date so I get some kind of stress and anxiety from not having kept up with it, the comparison with other people and their seemingly picture-perfect lives and seeing all the activism work that goes on which makes me realise what I am not doing to help the cause. I know that I can get some value from social media but I think until I refine who I follow, the value may actually be jumbled in with a lot of nonsense or just pretty pictures (which I guess are valuable in their own way). I just hadn't really how much stress and anxiety social media just into my everyday life but this week it really showed that I wasn't feeling stressed.

Sadly, I did when I did reinstall social media on my phone, I spend about an hour just scrolling with the illusion that this would get me up to date with what I had missed over the last week which is clearly ridiculous. Maybe what this teaches me is that I need to follow a more refined set of people on social media so my feed gets less full and I realise that there isn't that much to get up to date with. Either that or I just need to develop some self-discipline about how I use social media. 

I had also hoped that the lack of social media may have helped with this blog and the content that I post on it, but it really didn't. I didn't think once about writing this post until the end of the week and the end of the challenge. I think this was actually good though, counter-intuitively. I just spent a lot less time looking at screens than I normally would which meant that I also experienced fewer headaches and just wasn't always glued to the internet or a screen which can normally drag me in so easily so I just lose hours of my day. 

After this challenge, I am determined to spend less time on social media and make sure that it isn't the thing that I reach for unless I really am trying to have a break or catch up with people so that I can focus my time better. I still don't know how this should look because I am awful when it comes to setting up timers on apps on my phone because I will just extend the timer so that I can continue using the app. Maybe, I would benefit more from social media-free evenings or weekends so that it is easier for me to regulate and I would feel so guilty about my social media use for the rest of the week. We shall see. 

I would recommend trying to quit social media for any amount of time and see how you react it the change in your life. You could find that it helps you get more done, makes you live a little bit of a calmer life or makes no difference at all to you. I would be interested to hear what you find out from this experiment. 

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