When I Escape From Social Media for 24 Hours
“What if I were totally isolated with social network, even only for 24 hours?” This idea popped up in my mind just after I started to think about my stunt journalism idea.
It originated from my self-awareness that I’ve been addicted to social media a little bit too much. Not even to be self-dramatizing, flows of information “raid” my iPhone everyday which might sometimes be annoying. But frankly speaking I am indulged in the world of connection, “I feel so connected.” And the official lame excuse is that as a journalist, I have the obligation to follow up with the latest news and check my emails more frequently (begging for response from interviewees as I wake up in the early morning). But we all know, this is not the truth, at least not everything of the truth.
I have 8 Apps in my social networking folder on my iPhone. Before I came to the States, the most commonly used social networking apps are the Chinese ones: Wechat, Weibo, and QQ. And Instagram as the fourth one — I’ve been following a bunch of celebrities and brands on Instagram to catch up with the fashion trends. But now, I need 2 sets of social networks to “cater to” my friends in China and the U.S. I added Twitter, Facebook, Messenger, and SnapChat. Though I never count the time I spend (or waste) on social media every single day, or I guess there’s no way to count, my habitual taking out the iPhone and unconsciously clicking on the social media app folder intermittently make me suffocated and agitated.
I was expecting to somehow save myself from setting me free from social media. I set up the rules as: I would only check my NYU email and my text message.
I picked the day to isolate myself on a Friday. It was the third day after the election night when Donald Trump was surprisingly elected president of the United States. God knows how I wanted to check the news and discussion online about this topic after a burst of breaking news on Wednesday: market crashed, New York and other democratic states burst into irritation and extreme sorrow, protests of anti-trump going on from morning to night… Btw, one of my favorite designers was releasing his new collections on Thursday, and I literally don’t feel comfortable missing the new release!
The day started when I was waken up by the alarm clock and hopelessly realized that I couldn’t play my phone before I automatically logged in any social network. Before breakfast, I went downstairs to get a print copy of the New York Times since I knew I couldn’t check the news on my phone as usual during breakfast. I went directly to reading after breakfast, while normally I would waste some more time replying to messages from my Chinese friends due to time difference. Noontime, when I was having lunch with my friend in a lovely place at Midtown Manhattan, I hesitated before I was about to take a nice picture of the food along with the table decorations. What’s the point of taking photos if I’m not going to post them on Instagram? I left my phone in bag for the entire meal, and demanded my friend to do the same thing. Then we had an unprecedented undisrupted meal, as neither of us was adding filters to the photos, thinking of captions for the posts, or posting them to multi social media platform. Nor did we gossip about others after seeing anyone’s news on whichever network. We tasted the food more attentively, and we had a substantial conversation just about ourselves. Good for both of us.
I didn’t have a strong desire to use my phone until 4 p.m. I was googling an academic term and a stupid but alluring advertisement just popped up on the page. I knew that a click on one page would lead to five, and ten, and 100. For too many times, when I initially thought of just having my mind absent for only 5 minutes, I ended up lost for 50 minutes and regretted for another 20 minutes. The escape from social media has saved me at least 2 hours of time. During the day, even when I was trying to record my feelings of this never-gonna-happen-again experience, I used my notepad instead of laptop, which may drive me to a click on chrome…
From the late afternoon I started to rethink the question that’s been on my mind for a couple of months: why I’m increasingly obsessed with social media? I’ve thought about this question for hundreds of times and I came up with some reasons:
1. I might feel lonelier after I came to a different country for study, and social networking pretendedly sooth my anxiety. But it really isn’t just me — I found out that most of my friends from China turn to show up even more frequently on the Chinese social networks after they went abroad, when they are supposed to have more schoolwork to do and spend more time on Facebook or Twitter.
2. I tend to use social media more frequently when I’m too compelled to have my work done. I’m not sure if it’s bad habit only of me, but as I feel overwhelmed with the approaching deadlines, I take out the phone that I hide under bed in order to drive up my productivity and wander on the social media.
3. I have rebellious love for Instagram as it meets my needs, caters to my interests, and fills the gap of my personal weaknesses. Daily experiences have turned out that people are fond of showing off their fancy possessions on Instagram, splendid journey on Facebook, or interesting posts that shows their superiority and uniqueness in their blogs. I never wish to show-off that much in social media, but still I have a strong desire to build up an ideal digital appearance and attract followers, which turned out to be an unconscious act for me, out of human nature.
I turned on all the notifications of social networking and news apps just after 12:00 a.m, and logged in all my social networks. I felt back to life when I was reconnected with everything. But as I woke up on Saturday morning and started to play my phone as usual, I doubted if I were back to reality and inefficiency at the same time…
