It was a normal Saturday morning. The first thing I do when I wake up every morning is reach for my iPhone, hoping that I got tons of notifications over night, so I can get some sort of satisfaction. I checked my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, making sure I was caught up with absolutely everything that I missed while I asleep. I opened Snapchat to see who opened my story and most importantly, to see if the person that I really wanted to see them opened them. I spent about 20 minutes just laying in bed, scrolling on my phone.
I got out of bed, drank some water and realized that I was completely out of control. I’m not sure what really brought me to this conclusion, just that I am always on my phone, and it’s always in my hands. I was completely addicted to social media. I am constantly snapchatting my friends, tweeting my thoughts and scrolling through Facebook in hopes that someone shared cooking videos or that somebody liked my status. It was getting unhealthy for me. I would base my happiness on how many likes my Instagram pictures would get. I would constantly be doing things “just to tweet about them,” and I would spend more than the acceptable amount of time editing selfies and instagram pictures, making sure that I chose the best filter to hide my “flaws” or to make my feed look the most aesthetic.
I thought about deleting my apps off of my phone for the entire day. It took me a while to actually do it. I was thinking about what I would do with all of the spare time that I usually spend aimlessly scrolling through my social media. Then, finally, that night, I deleted everything. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all of my text messages and all of my emails. It was weird at first, not seeing any notifications and unlocking my phone and basically having nothing to do. I went to work and didn’t touch my phone for five hours, and unlocking it after that long and seeing absolutely nothing on my screen was, frankly, awful. Of course, with time over the week, it got easier, and I learned a few things from not checking my social media 50+ times a day.
A Snapchat streak is just a number on a screen.
It doesn’t mean anything, and just because you break a streak doesn’t mean that your friendship has changed or that your life is ruined. I had a 76 day Snapchat streak with my best friend when I deleted everything, and the first thing she told me when I told her I wanted to delete everything was, “OUR STREAK!” It doesn’t matter. Our streak broke. We’re still friends. We still talk to each other. Nothing has changed.
You don’t have to tweet whatever you’re doing.
Some of the content on Twitter is hilarious, but constantly scrolling and reading through things that are less than 140 characters isn’t really benefiting you at all.
Putting your phone down and looking at what’s around you, and actually appreciating it, is amazing.
I never realized how many people walk around this beautiful campus looking down at their phones. It’s almost heartbreaking. I would be walking to class, looking at how beautiful the Pentacrest looked with all of the falling leaves and how beautiful of a day it was, and everyone else was too busy looking down at their phones to enjoy it!
You get more sleep at night.
Instead of going to bed, then staying on my phone for another hour looking at Instagram and Twitter, I just went to bed. That simple. I slept better, woke up with more energy and had more motivation to be productive during the day because I didn’t need a nap by 2 p.m.
When the week was over, it felt weird getting back on my Facebook again and seeing 20+ notifications that didn’t even really matter at all. I did enjoy looking at my Instagram feed again because I love looking at the unique pictures that people post, but I learned that likes really don’t matter and that posting what makes you happy is all that matters. I’ve learned that there is more to life than what people are doing online and that half of what you do see online doesn’t matter, and you can live without it. I’ve learned to appreciate the little things. I would recommend anyone and everyone to take a “social media detox” because it really opens your eyes and keeps you off of your phone.