Have you ever felt like you were so consumed with social media that it felt like it was basically going to ruin your life? Well, I hate to say it, but that happened to me. In the midst of family problems and my depression basically dragging me down and around, I laid in bed staring outside my window, grabbed my phone and deleted the Facebook app. I unplugged and fell off the face of the earth for a week and it was probably the best week of my life.
A lot of my friends asked me why I did this. The answer is simple: I was simply exhausted of seeing everyone else's problems that it was hard to even deal with mine. I was tired of seeing this person and that person getting engaged, married, having kids, basically a life that I want, and I won't lie, I was getting jealous. I needed to just unplug from everything to deal with my mental health and just deal with life. I really didn't even give myself a time limit, but I just told myself to see what happens after a week.
The first day or two was a little rough because when I'm bored, I tend to go onto Facebook just to pass the time but I kept forgetting that I turned my account off after searching almost my entire phone for it. Once I realized that I got rid of said app, I just went about my day. After the first initial first few days passed, I in a way felt better. I was more focused on my job, slept a little bit better than normal (just because I haven't used Facebook doesn't mean I wasn't using other apps on my phone), focused on school a bit more and I was more aware of everything around me. Just to do a simple task that would have taken me longer than normal to do it because I was playing around on Facebook, got done quicker than I normally would. I focused more on the real world and my attitude wasn't that bad. I was more aware of what it was that I was doing than I normally am and it was refreshing to just actually deal with life rather than just become socially and emotionally numb and hide behind my phone or computer. What I did notice that I kept saying quite a bit, was that "Life doesn't revolve around Facebook". I've said that many times before but never really truly realized it's meaning until I disconnected and unplugged and the truth is, is that everyone is fixated with updating every aspect of their life from the time that they wake up to what they did in the bathroom, and to be honest, not everyone really needs to know. I know what you're thinking (or about to say), "scroll over it"; well of course you can scroll past it but maybe you have mutual friends and see that they commented on something or if you very well just wanted to read it, etc, whatever the case maybe. As a person, you have every right to read whatever you want and whatever you don't want, but sometimes, life doesn't need to be constantly broadcasted. I wont lie, I've written about almost every aspect of my life on Facebook, I have friends that do it or have done it or still do it, even my own mother gets angry if I unfriend her on Facebook (to which I will get constant text messages borderline harassing me as to why I deleted her and that I "better add" her back) or if she sees something that just strikes a certain cord with her and time and time again, I've turned around and told her that life doesn't revolve around Facebook and time and time again she's told me that she doesn't care. If you're constantly getting angry over something that I was posted on Facebook, then you seriously need to reevaluate your life.
Unplugging from social media for a week, again, was one of the best decisions that I ever made and everyone once in a while should do it and just reevaluate yourself and how you use social media. I even went as far as unplugging from Instagram also (currently going on 2 weeks without using it for the exception of comments) and even though I still check it daily, I don't have an interest in posting anything (that'll change next Saturday when I document New York Comic Con) at this point because life is just--well it's boring and even though I'm connected back into Facebook, another unplugging will happen soon.
