Sometimes life just comes crashing down. It happens about twice a year, an earth-shattering event in my personal or professional life that disrupts the normal calm state I try to stay in. But this time when it happened to me I decided to delete Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat for a while. I needed time to myself, and honestly, I was in a bad place and couldn't bear to see people happy on my timeline.
To be honest, it wasn't as horrifically boring as I thought it would be. It kinda felt nice to not tweet all of my brilliant thoughts and instead keep them to myself. The Internet can survive without all of my snarky comments I post on Twitter, and I don't really need the instant validation for all of my jokes. However, I did still indulge myself on TV and Youtube videos because I needed things to calm me and get out of my head for a little bit. I didn't really miss social media at all, at least for the first few days.
The biggest downside, I have to say, is being so incredibly out of the loop. I don't know about other people, but I virtually get all my news from Twitter. I had no idea what was going on in the world. I even tried to browse through the Apple News app, but it just wasn't the same. I found myself looking up Twitter's worldwide trends just to get a sense of what was going on. And since I decided to take my break the weekend of Comic-Con, I missed out on breaking news that I was interested in.
My absence didn't go unnoticed, either. People actually reached out to me, telling me they missed me and hoped everything was okay. My own mother even commented that she had noticed I was gone from Instagram. It was a little bit shocking for me, I had no idea that people would notice, or even miss me. It's a testament to how important a social media presence is these days. Are you even doing anything important if you're not posting about it on Instagram? (the answer is yes, but I think it's important to reflect on.)
After things in my life got increasingly better, I decided to return to social media. I only lasted about 5 days, but to be honest I felt good. I now understand how freeing it can be not to owe anyone any explanations online. I liked that no one knew what I was doing, or thinking, or feeling.
If you're thinking about maybe taking a break from social media, I highly recommend it. Just try it, even if it's to see if you can last a few days away from your phone.
Sheetal Tadiparty
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