It’s hard to admit, but we all know that we could say that we’re partially addicted to technology, especially when it comes to social media. A study done in 2015 stated that young adults aged 16-24 spend an average of 27 hours each week on the Internet, and that’s just the average. I know I personally spend way too much time on social media, and decided that I was going to take a break and log off from all forms of social media for a whole entire week, and you know what? I’m glad I did. I think that more people need to take time to enjoy what’s going on around them rather than what’s going on online. Here are five things I learned from logging off.
1. I don’t constantly need to be entertained.
I think that as a society with a seemingly bad attention span, we feel the need to always be entertained and have something to look at or do. So, when we’re sitting doing nothing we are infinitely more likely to open up social media and scroll through our feeds. Once I no longer had this option, it was actually kind of nice to just sit and do nothing. I’m not going to lie, I had a few moments where I went to open up my different apps because I had nothing better to do, but after a day or so it became much easier to just relax and enjoy the moments where I didn’t have to do anything.
2. Constantly being on social media affects the ability to be in the moment.
This kind of goes along with the first one, but I found it much easier to appreciate what and who was around me since I wasn’t glued to my phone. I noticed more things and was a bit more aware of my surroundings.
3. I don’t need to constantly know what’s going on in other people’s lives.
It’s definitely entertaining to see what’s going on in people’s lives 24/7, but as I spent less time scrolling through my news feed, I realized that I didn’t have too much interest in constantly seeing what people are up to. In fact, since I logged back on a few days ago, I’ve realized that I’ve actually spent less time keeping up with other people, and no longer have that desire to be online all the time.
4. You’re able to have better conversations when you’re not constantly scrolling through your feed.I was definitely that person who would check my different social media accounts while at dinner, hanging out with friends, etc. I found out (which this may be pretty obvious) that I was able to have more conversations since I wasn’t starting at my screen all the time. It made it a lot easier to spend time with family and friends since I wasn’t constantly distracted. In fact, I found it a little annoying when I was with people and they were on social media for a good chunk of time.
5. Your phone battery lasts a lot longer.
My phone battery lasted so much longer since I wasn’t always running down the battery with my apps. This seems very first-world problem, but it was nice not having to worry about charging it all the time.
