I Thought Giving Up Social Media for a Week Would Be Easy… I Was Wrong!

-by Mia Newkirk, Dartmouth College ’20 and LookUp.live intern

I have always told myself that I don’t “need” my phone; rather it is something that improves my life and allows me to stay connected to the outside world.

Going into the LookUp Challenge of giving up social media for a week, I thought it would be relatively easy. Boy, was I wrong.

I was at a campsite with no reception, so I thought it was a great time to unplug. Even if I wanted to check my social media accounts, I couldn’t. Consciously, I knew that refreshing my feed wouldn’t yield any results, but years of scrolling had preconditioned me to check every 30 minutes to refresh my feed. I grew increasingly frustrated with myself as I would refresh, knowing that nothing would or could change.

After a few days, I simply put my phone down and surrendered to the fact that I was stuck where I was and nothing could change that.

I talked to people without distractions, had fulfilling conversations, got better sleep, and in general felt more mindful.

Once I got past the initial feeling of “missing out”, it was really a very pleasant experience.

There was also a significant element of denial with this challenge. I would constantly deny that I didn’t need to give up my phone, I just didn’t want to. This challenge really put things into perspective as I ventured into the world of no social media.