Do you ever go to your settings on your iPhone, click on screen time, and literally want to gasp at how many hours you've spent on your phone during the day?
Now that Apple has given us that feature to take advantage of, I've decided to just take a step back from social media this week, and delete the apps all together so that I'm not tempted to open them up and spend hours on end scrolling through pictures and news feed that makes me feel no different. If anything, those apps keep me up at night.
They make my vision worse. They make me even feel worse after stalking models Instagram accounts over and over and over. "If I could just look like her" or "why doesn't my body look like that?" or "am I ever going to look like that?".
The truth is, if I could just love myself and my body for what it is and where I'm at, I would probably be one of the happiest versions of myself.
Social media is not all bad. I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that if I spent those 5 hours and 18 minutes today going to the gym, reading my book, doing my homework, etc. instead of scrolling through these addictive apps, I could've been sitting here writing this article feeling accomplished and refreshed.
I want to learn to love myself for who I am. For who God made me to be. I want to love others around me and be a light in their life. I want to have fun and enjoy life, not just live it. I feel like I can't truly start to do those things until I unplug and get focused.
Anything worth having doesn't come easy. That is one of my favorite quotes my competitive cheerleading coach used to use. It's so true, isn't it? It's so much easier to sleep later in the morning, wake up and scroll through Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat rather than going to the gym. It's so much easier to check my Instagram stories rather than diving into a really educating, heartfelt book. No one can make those changes but me.
If I want to get into bed at the end of the day and feel replenished, refreshed and accomplished, then I'm going to have to change the fact that I spend nearly 6 hours of my day with my phone unlocked and in use.
Don't get me wrong, I love seeing what my friends are up to through social media. I love seeing all of their cute pictures and especially staying in touch with my friends that are away for the summer.
It makes me feel like I am there with them at times. On the other hand, though, more than half the people I follow on social media, I don't know very well and am not super close with. Some people I've never talked to at all. It doesn't mean that I don't enjoy following them, it just means that I could be devoting the time I'm spending looking through their pictures to bettering myself.
Moral of the story is that I just need to take a step back and unplug for a while. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe social media isn't bringing you as much joy as going to the gym and getting back into shape does.
Maybe it doesn't bring you as much joy as reading a really good book does. Maybe it doesn't bring you as much joy as spending quality time with your friends or family and having quality conversations with them. Sometimes you just need a breather. You need a breather to realize what's really important at the end of the day and what's really important in your life.
At the end of your life, you're not gonna sit back and remember all those nights you stayed up for hours scrolling through your Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.
You're gonna remember those summer nights with your best friends. That concert that you soaked up every second of and didn't put every song on your story.
That relationship or friendship that took strides forward just from sitting in the car and really talking to one another. I know that when I look back at this year, I want to be able to say that I made some lifestyle changes.
One of those being getting back to where I want to be physically. Another one of those being spending quality time with my friends and family. And finally, being able to say that I unplugged from social media and focused more on just having fun rather than making it look like I was having fun.
