Hi, my name is Pia and I am an Instagram addict.

There, I said it. It is out in the open. I feel like the shackles have been lifted off of my hands, and I can finally take a deep breath in and let it out without guilt festering in the pit of my stomach.

All throughout the day, I'm subconsciously tapping my finger onto that beautiful little animated camera app only to scroll through photo after photo of people I know, people I wish I knew, and people that make me question why their follow button is even green. But my addiction to social media and my phone in general does not stop there.

I am apart of the generation that is constantly "plugged in."

I find that if I have to walk outside, take the bus, study, walk to and from class (even when it is in the same building), I slide my earphones over my head and plug in to this device that essentially controls my day.

I think my moment of clarity--well not quite clarity at this point in the story, but rather the epiphany for this change in my life--happened on my standard bus ride home from campus. I was sitting down surrounded by strangers, and not one of us was unplugged. Everyone was in a trance looking at their phones, eyes shut with music or sound of any kind flowing their earbuds, and that was the day I almost missed my stop because I was too busy "pinning" my dream home on Pinterest. I decided to unplug for a week and document it. The struggles, the clarity (if there is any), and the honesty of our society's addiction to technology. The only exception to this week I'm giving myself is listening to music in the gym. Enjoy.

Monday:

As you will come to notice, I start my days the same way: pressing snooze too many times in the morning, finally crawling out of bed around 6 a.m., and then heading to the gym for my first workout of the day. Today, I enjoyed my 45 minutes of cardio as much as I could mostly due to the realization that this would be one of the two times today I could listen to music. And as a human being that is surrounded by music for the majority of her day usually, I knew this was going to be hard. As I stepped off the treadmill, I turned off my earphones and exhaled. Today was the start of a change and man, it was hard in retrospect. I looked at my phone within the next 15 minutes ready for my morning scroll through Instagram only to realize my phone now lacks more than 10 of my favorite apps. This then continued for the first half of my day. In case you have not been convinced, I am addicted to my phone. I also had to unfortunately log onto Facebook on my computer today in order to retrieve an address of someone. I was sure to log on, find the information, and log off promptly without checking any of the six awaiting notifications. My first failure of this week occurred three hours into this “challenge." However, shortly after my mistake, the first silver-lining to my day happened and I was once again hopeful with regards to this process. I went to class today (shocker), a class that we are encouraged to be on our computers, social media, and all forms of technology because it is an online content course. But today I sat without a computer in front of me, without being on my e-mail, without a phone on my desk. I sat in class present and engaged with everything in my being. I felt thankful in class; my teacher is brilliant and I was in awe and inspired by each word that came out of his mouth. I feel if I were on my computer, as I usually am, I would have missed something he said and it would not have been such an impactful lecture. That was the first win of the day without technology and I felt grateful. Today I noticed people and situations that I would have missed out on if I was walking with my head down staring at my phone or if I was not mentally aware of what was going on due to being plugged in. I witnessed someone beatbox and rap a free-verse poem in front of the bus stop, and I would have missed that if I was not fully engaged with everything around me. I also saw something that made me believe in the power of irony all over again; I was driving in my car and I was so astonished to see someone so enthralled and pulled into their phone with their earphones in that they did not realize they were inches away from being hit by my car. If I was not paying attention or did not slam on my breaks as they haphazardly crossed into the middle of the street without glancing up from the oh so important screen they held in their hands, they would be in the hospital right now. Then, I thought, that was me just yesterday. A mindless walking robot that only cared about the phone she held. Today was eye-opening and full of only one loss and three wins.

Tuesday:

I was exhausted today: mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually drained. It was the combination of both my body and mind catching up with the recent changes to my lifestyle, and all that I wanted to do was crawl into bed and scroll through Instagram and Pinterest. I am not sure why I immediately yearn for these apps but when life gets overwhelming and I get in a weird place, I want to be on social media--more so Pinterest rather than Instagram. I have come to the conclusion that I immediately go for Pinterest because it gives me hope and sparks creativity, believe it or not. Throughout my feed, I see pictures of quotes, books, people, children, houses, some of the places I have been, and my dream destinations and that makes me excited. I strongly am against making Pinterest boards for a wedding or other major life changes, however I see nothing wrong with planning out my house from the master bedroom to the kitchen fixtures. And today, all I wanted to do was find a perfect dark wood table to go with my dining room. Today was much harder to stay off of social media than the first day. I did not have any “wins” today which upsets me because I can control that. I made the choice to not be positive and to let certain factors affect me and how my day went thus resulting in not having any moments of clarity. I had one potential loss and one definite loss today: I accidentally logged onto Facebook in my class only to slam my computer shut before the page loaded which is when I begged my acquaintance in the class to get onto my computer and shut it down for me so I wouldn’t have to count this as a definite loss. My loss for today was allowing myself to not be positive and for being okay with it. But this is why there is tomorrow; it's a chance to be better, to do better, and to have a win.

Wednesday:

This day was much better and that already makes today a win in my eyes. Leaving my 8 a.m. math class, I sat at the bus stop waiting to run home for a quick bite to eat when I looked up from the ground to see if my bus was arriving and I saw a guy that I follow on Instagram but have no idea who he is in real life (c’mon we all follow strangers even though they go to our school because their feeds are just so ~cool~). And, as I suspected, he is even better to look at in person rather than Instagram. Maybe it was his faux-leather blue jacket that he casually paired with distressed jeans and boots that were almost better than my own while holding his longboard. He was probably going to nonchalantly skate over to his private plane that he flies on the reg. And to think I would have missed out on this spotting if I had been drawn into my phone, I do not know if I could go on in my life. That was dramatic but you get the point I am making, right? The point that I have been trying to make this whole week? We are missing out on events everyday, events that have impact on futures sometime, events that can take a good day to a bad day and a bad day to a day that changes you for the better. We are missing out on so much because we are so involved in a virtual world; a world that does not impact you the way your surroundings and environment do. Today was a win; a moment of clarity of how little importance there is in a world that revolves around technology.

Thursday:

Today I was asked if I missed social media and if it was hard being off my phone. I laughed as the words came out of my mouth but what I said was the truth. “It is a lot easier than I thought it would be,” I admitted. This week was not difficult without social media. Sure, there were times that I went onto my computer and almost logged onto Facebook out of pure habit but after four days of doing this, I feel absolutely content without it. I have been productive this week in ways that I have not in a while; not productive solely surrounding academics either. I have been productive with my leisure time. I have read more of my book this week than I have in the past three weeks combined. I have had the time to be up-to-date on all the articles I want to read in the New York Times, and I shared quality time with human beings without an interruption from social media. I believe this is what I found to enjoy the most out of this short vacation from social media: I made the time to do the things I love to do because there was no distractions for myself to get involved with. I was able to read in-depth articles rather than the quick briefings, I never sat down next to someone only to half-ass a conversation with them because my mind is focused on Instagram, I was engaged in my classes instead of engaged with the latest trending hashtag on Twitter, I watched people have conversations with one another while both looking down at a screen and that was horrific, and I realized how easy it was to cut something such as social media out of my life because in all actuality there is no importance to it.

I went unplugged for a week and I survived, I even ended up enjoying life without social media. Maybe you will too.