Here’s What Social Media Detox Taught me
Three things I learned
The summer of 2019 was a particularly stressful time in my life. The shit had hit the proverbial fan and everything came crashing down on me. They came in three’s, as the saying goes.
The first blow I was dealt was my grandma getting diagnosed with terminal cancer and passing away during finals season of my junior year of college. Finals are stressful enough, which made the situation more difficult. On top of that, I was going through the first serious breakup of my life romantically and I also was falling out with some of my friends from my childhood.
After trying to balance all the stresses in my life, it became too much and I was suffering. I was struggling to sleep on a regular basis, my appetite was diminished, and I felt like everything was falling apart. My anxiety levels were at all-time highs, and I needed to figure out a solution.
I was sitting around trying to think of things that could help my anxiety and I made the connection that perhaps my phone isn’t helping. It isn’t the sole contributor to my problems but at the same time… could it be making it worse? Or no difference at all?
I couldn’t tell and I had never tried up until this point. I was desperate for answers and so I gave it a whirl. I decided to delete Twitter, which I was spending 5 plus hours a day on. I logged out of my Instagram accounts and would limit the number of times I checked my feed. Once at the beginning of the day and once at night.
I saw that my daily screen time was in the double digits of usage, ranging from 10–11 hours a day. That was shocking to me, literally, half of my waking day was spent online in a fake reality. No wonder why I was feeling like shit…
So after having this shocking realization I went boot camp and implemented my strict measures. I would put my phone away in my backpack at work, and wouldn’t look at it until I left that afternoon/night. These are my results.
The Conclusion
I just want to start this section by saying, this whole article is related to my personal experiences with said experiment. I can’t speak for anyone else. Maybe you had similar experiences and can relate (and if you can please comment, I would love to hear). Maybe you can use social media responsibly and it’s no big deal to you. That’s all dandy, this article is strictly based on MY experiences. Although if this is received well, perhaps I will do a deeper dive into this topic in a separate article.
1.) It’s an addiction
This was perhaps the most striking thing I had experienced when I went cold turkey on social media. I felt withdrawal symptoms and this isn’t hyperbole. I don’t smoke cigarettes or have fallen addicted to alcohol or drugs, but damnit I love my coffee. If I don’t have a cup a day, I get a caffeine headache that day. It goes away once I drink coffee, it is a direct cause and effect from blocking that habit.
The cause and effect from social media came when I caught myself feeling phantom vibrations in my pocket. Every five to ten minutes I would flinch to grab my phone in my pocket even when it wasn’t there. I was positive that I felt a vibration in my pocket. In my two shoes, I felt it. Over and over I kept flinching for it. I couldn’t make it longer than ten minutes in my own solitude before I felt that unnerving desire to distract myself.
Distract me from anything, any sort of mind-numbing nonsense to distract me from my own personal struggles. The same type of distraction you find in addicts of any kind. Addiction or addict is a word that strikes people because they only think of alcoholics or heroin addicts. When in reality almost anything can become a distracting addiction.
Eating too much can become addictive, chasing financial gains can become addictive, watching pornography can become addictive, playing video games can become addictive, and so on and so forth. All of these things can distract you by increasing pleasure and keeping you preoccupied away from reality. With different sets of destructive outcomes for each particular avenue of gluttony. But the key thing that unites them all is their inevitable destructive fallouts if engaged in this vicious cycle for too long.
Eating too much can lead to obesity which can lead to an early death from cardiovascular disease or other illnesses. Watching porn all the time can alter your social skills, especially with the other sex, leading to loneliness and non-satisfactory relationships with the opposite sex. Only chasing financial gains will lead to a life of fake friends and shallow relationships at the expense of one's morals and values. Spending too much time online can lead to feelings of inadequacy, depression, anxiety and that can stem to self-harm.
For the first time, I was able to realize that social media isn’t merely a harmless thing. Sure it can be, but if you overconsume it, it can lead to chaos much like anything else that is pleasurable.
2.) It kills your time
This is the biggest eye-opener. I mentioned at the beginning that I was spending 10–11 hours a day on my phone. That is a double shift in the restaurant industry, that is overtime hours at an office job. That is the majority of the time you spend awake throughout the day. All of it is spent online consuming nonsense that doesn’t contribute to your life.
It is essentially 10 hours a day of junk food for the mind. Junk food for the soul. Think about if you spent those 10 hours a day slumped over your phone, doing ANYTHING else. Let’s say you love to play basketball. How much better could you be at basketball if you devoted 10 hours a day to it? Probably significantly better I would imagine. You can cut that time in half, hell even in thirds, and still make progress in a craft or hobby!
I’m not saying you need to be spending zero hours a day on your phone and all of your waking free time on some other hobby. I’m just saying, I frequently hear how we don’t have time for this or we don’t have time for that. Perhaps some of us don’t for legitimate reasons. However, if you have time to spend 10 hours a day on your phone… maybe you do have the time. We live in the age of distractions where advertisers are constantly competing for our attention with money. Every once and while we need to step back and see just how much of our time they are robbing from us.
3.) Social media is fake
That’s right, it is all a lie. I can’t tell you how many stupid nights I spent in my adolescence being sad or anxious over stupid social media drama. Comparing myself to this person and feeling inadequate because this girl is commenting heart eyes on his photo but not mine. Or this friend group takes fun trips all the time and my friends don’t, god I wish I had better friends.
I quickly learned that these people who post their highlight reels on Instagram are doing it for show. It is all a facade and most of it isn’t what it appears. Social media doesn’t show the blow-out fights moments after a cute photo is taken.
It is so easy for our minds to fill in the blanks, make comparisons and even beat ourselves up. Social media can drastically increase those things when we are constantly seeing what everyone else is willing to show us. Most people aren’t willing to show the bad, the drama, the backstabbing, and all the other ugly things behind the scenes.
Instead, all that is broadcasted is the photogenic, the pretty, the fun, and the appealing material. After becoming acquainted with people in person whom I followed online, I would quickly learn after getting to know the individual better in person that most of the preconceived notions I ginned up in my head were false. I had generated and cultivated a completely nonsensical persona of someone. That made me wonder how many people do that to me, and how many of us do that in general.
So those are my personal experiences, I will do some research to see if these claims can be backed up by other people or scientific research. My hunch is that these things aren’t uncommon. If you had similar, or different experiences, please comment below!
