in the month of march, i did a major detox and decided to quit social media for 30 days. it was a Very Big decision for me and i’d thought about doing it for at least a month prior. now it’s april; i’m back on instagram & co. and ready to share my ~thoughts~.
here are the main takeaways from quitting social media:
01. everyone should do it (lol)
okok, i promise i don’t hate socials!! but… it can get Much at times. (like, maybe now.) and i felt a huuuuge weight off my shoulders when i left. once you get over the initial roadblock (echm fear & anxiety), you’ll feel a stronger sense of clarity. you can allow your thoughts to think for themselves. i’d always go to others for creative ideas, but this month helped me realize that i have a lot of ideas on my own.
i thought i’d be really bored, but i was filled with hyperactivity with all the things i wanted to do/create. i spent a lot of time with myself (+ quarantine!) and became comfortable in my own skin. without the excess chatter, i was forced to confront my fears & myself. and after i got over, i felt GREAT.
02. quitting social media will not fix my obsessive behavior
i think i’m a little obsessive by nature. you know, ALL OR NOTHIN. either don’t care for it or FAVORITE THING EVER. so deleting these apps just left a void for me to obsess over something else. instead of twitter, i impulsively opened NYT and watched the coronavirus news worsen by the hour; instead of instagram, i opened youtube studio and refreshed my analytics to see if anything changed. spoiler: not much did! but this is why we impulsively open social media apps: to see if we got another like, comment, follower, etc. and 99% of the time it’s the same as two minutes ago.
03. i no longer depend or care for social media???????
it’s been a few days since i reinstalled instagram & co. i don’t open it as much; when i do, i usually close it after a few minutes. same goes for twitter. i remember myself scrolling for hours at a time, doing excessive things “for the aesthetic,” and caring too much about numbers. (i mean… two out of three are still true but BABY STEPS.) but also! it’s okay to do things “for the aesthetic” or care about analytics!! the important thing is that i no longer allow that to control me.
i had an excessive and messy relationship with socials. i’d let it consume me and control my day to day actions. if you use social media as another way to connect with friends, go you! you probably don’t need to do something this extreme.
however if you were like me, PLEASE GIVE YOURSELF SPACE. maybe it’s not social media – maybe it’s the news. if you feel yourself doing something mindlessly, without control, do yourself a favor and delete the thing.
Social media was the main reason I stopped blogging when I started college. It took up so much time, and I found myself bogged down with the feeling that I need to post as much, be as interesting, look as [insert adjective here] as other bloggers. I’ve been thinking a lot about starting up The Unprinted Protagonist again to engage myself more while social distancing, but I find myself worrying that I’m just not cut out for it anymore.
Wooo! Congratulations on quitting social media and finding a healthier relationship with social media. I’ve been on many social media cleanses and I have to agree that everytime I come back after a break, I feel like my consumption with the platforms has decreased dramatically to the point that it no longer controls me or absorbs ridiculous amount of time. After one of the breaks, I made the decision to delete my Facebook and it felt like a relief to be honest. I still have Twitter and Instagram but I have so much control in what I want to see on my feed that I don’t mind them.
I took a semi break from things. Honestly its just because having a new baby is a lot of work and I just don’t have the time lol BUT I noticed how nice it was to not really think about it. Although, I’m similar to you…I just obsessively watched other things like youtube or the news hahah