Social media is my life. I absolutely love social media. I love how it helps keep everyone so connected, regardless of where they are. Parents can keep up-to-date with their kids who go away to college, and grandparents can see what their children and grandchildren are up to. Social media is so amazing that I decided to pursue a career in it post-graduation. I want to connect the company I work for, hopefully a theme park, to it’s audience in new and exciting ways.
However, social media is also my worst enemy. It sucks me in and I spend countless hours scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram over and over again. I’ll see the same post five times, but it doesn’t matter to me because I feel this overwhelming desire to be connected. I wake up and instantly check what is happening, and I’ll check again before I go to bed, plus every chance I can get. It got to the point that I would use social media as my social crutch. If I was in an awkward position, I’d just go straight to social media. I would rather check social media than really be invested in everything that was going on around me. I would even tweet to make it look like I was texting someone. I realized what I was doing was wrong and I should be focused on what was going on in real life, and not online, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I eventually realized that I needed to take a break for a little while. I deleted the Facebook app off of my phone, but had a tab open on Safari so I could still check every once in a while. We use Facebook at work to trade and give away shifts, so I would check to see if I wanted to pick up any extra shifts or if anyone needed to trade and I could possibly help them out. Other than that, I disconnected myself from Facebook for about a week. I kept Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, and Tumblr, but found myself not really checking them all that often. I hid the Snapchat app so I wouldn’t live snap my life. Just by removing those two apps from every day use made me feel all the better. I still used Pinterest daily, but I felt like it was different than Facebook and Snapchat since I wasn’t watching the lives of my friends through my phone. I was getting ideas for how to further detox social media from my life, how to really start preparing for finals, and looking at some style inspo.
After about a week, I moved Snapchat out of hiding, but still wouldn’t check it all the time. I would go on and just check the snaps of people who I don’t get to see on a daily basis (which is quite hard to do with the new update where all the snaps play back-to-back). I would maybe snap something interesting, but that was it. I did download Facebook again because it was far easier to use to app than to use the website on my phone, but I keep it off my main screen so I’m not tempted to mindlessly scroll through Facebook for hours upon hours. I found by this short social media detox, I was so much more productive than before. Before, I wouldn’t really get board because I would fall into the social media rabbit hole, but now, I do a quick check of Facebook and Twitter and then move on with my day.