Social media has become something so crucially integral to our lives that we couldn’t imagine our existence without it. It has intertwined itself in our daily schedules and rewired our brains to feel like something is missing when we go without it. So, what would happen if you gave it up for a week? Would the world fall apart around your feet? Could you even survive it?! I decided to find out.
Like any addiction, my social media detox involved a withdrawal period. I missed it, I thought about going back to it, I even slipped up a couple times because, yes, I am a human; but, importantly, I stuck with it. For the first couple days, I wasn’t really sure what to do with my extra free time. What do you do when you’re 20 minutes early for your next class or sitting in the lobby of a dentist’s office whose idea of ‘on-schedule’ is 45 minutes after your appointment time? My answer: read. One of the most important things this experiment provided me with was a rekindling for my love of books and blogs and news. It’s actually amazing how much more I could read when I wasn’t jumping from one 140 character blurb to the next. I downloaded The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NPR News and was never bored while waiting in line to get into the cafeteria. I brought a book with me at all times and was fully prepared for my News Writing lecture to be let out early, leaving me with little time to do anything else productive before my Women’s Studies class.
Social media takes up SO much of our lives. Teens, specifically, spend up to 9 hours per day consuming media. That’s mind boggling. But, when you think about it, it’s a couple Netflix episodes here, a scroll through Instagram there, or looking through a funny account on Twitter. The sad part is that we could be doing much more productive things. Imagine what thoughts you’re missing out on while you’re busy consuming OTHER people’s thoughts and images. You could be losing opportunities to better yourself and instead be opting to ‘favorite’ and ‘like’ the media that other people have come up with. I bet 9 hours is more than you spend on your homework each day- imagine what you’d learn if you studied that long. Imagine how high your GPA would be if you put in as much effort to your grades as you did to maintaining your Twitter follower ratio. Imagine how fast you could make your dreams come true if instead of watching other people fulfill theirs, you went out and used that 9 hours to work towards your goals.
Media isn’t all bad, though. Its worthiness depends largely on how you use it. Instagram, for example, was something I had an especially hard time giving up. Being a journalism major, I enjoy following other journalist’s/blogger’s lives on Instagram and being inspired by their success- if you have an account that you check up on regularly, you know what I mean (for me, it was The Minimalists, Eva Gutowski, and Sjana Earp). These accounts add value to my life because they’re something I aspire to. They encourage me to grow and further my dreams. This is the important side of social media: using it to further yourself. Following people who are positive, thought-provoking, and inspirational is not a bad thing. Where the problem lies is following the wrong people and wasting too much time keeping up with their lives. Do yourself a favor: invest in yourself. Spend less time concerned with what other people are doing, and more time becoming the best version of yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to eliminate social media completely, but next time you find yourself preparing for a long scroll through twitter reconsider how much value it will add to your life. None? Then perhaps it’s not worth your time.
