I'm not going to lie, I'm like every other 20-year-old girl in the sense that my iPhone is an extension of my body. In an uncomfortable situation? I just open Twitter. Trying to type a paper? I open Instagram and stalk myself even though I basically have all my pictures engrained in my brain. Even when I'm usually writing these articles, I have Facebook open in another tab and constantly refresh my timeline in case I miss a picture of girls "sorority squatting" while hiking. My life literally revolves around social media. So with this being season of Lent and purging ourselves of bad habits for a span of time, I decided to challenge myself. Last Sunday, I deleted almost all social media platforms except GroupMe and LinkedIn (for communication reasons). Honestly, it was one of the most uplifting and freeing experiences I've had in a long time. Here are a few things I observed during my week without social media:
The feeling of connection
During the first two days, I felt extremely disconnected and a little depressed as I sat down for dinner and all the eyes of my friends seemed glued to their radiating screens. When they weren't aimlessly staring into the addicting bright light, we were having conversations about someone's cousin's engagement post on Instagram, or whose boyfriend favorited another girl's tweet. However, after the initial 48 hours of a world with no social media, I no longer caught myself attempting to check my accounts. In fact, I felt more connected to the people I spend most of my time with because we were having real conversations. And maybe the fact that it was unseasonably warm for February played into this, but I definitely cherished little moments of laughter and togetherness more than I ever have while in college.
Self-esteem
Not only do our daily lives revolve around social media, but it can crush our self-esteem like nothing else. Social media encourages us to constantly compare our lives to the lives of others. Because I wasn't constantly scrolling through the Instagram posts of unrealistic-looking celebrities, I felt way more confident in my appearance, and that caused me to be more outgoing this week. In addition, the decisions I made became more of my own because I wasn't constantly questioning how it would look to others on the internet. It felt freeing to not be constantly in the know of other people's social activities because I wasn't constantly comparing my life to theirs all week. A quote comes to my mind as I'm trying to put this feeling into words: "Stop comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone else's highlight reel." If nothing else, this week proved how easy it was to get caught up in how "perfect" others' lives might seem.
Productivity
I am not exaggerating when I say it was unreal how productive I was. Every time I opened my laptop, my fingers automatically started typing facebook.com. However, after I caught myself, I would go to my course websites and check for upcoming assignments or plan what work I needed to get done that day. Because I couldn't distract myself with checking any social media, I got so much done and didn't have mini-panic attacks every 15 minutes about all the ways I'm falling behind (#SoCollege). One of my greatest accomplishments from the week is that I crossed off everything I had written in my planner for one day. That literally has never happened to me. I definitely feel like I had my life together academically this past week, and it just made me happy.
All in all, it was the best week of my semester so far. I felt happier, more organized, and more outgoing because I wasn't hunched over my phone 24 hours a day. Would I do it again? Absolutely. If you're looking for a way to have a better week, or even month, try cutting social media out. It has a bigger effect that we all think.
