This spring while you’re all KonMari-ing and detoxifying your life, consider a social media cleanse as well!
I decided to go off of social media for 5 days in order to test if it could actually improve my mental state and overall quality of life, like so many have claimed. I vowed to not check Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter during this week and just see what happens. Here are 5 things (good and bad!) that I learned from going off social media!
Social Media is incredibly ingrained in my routine
We’re all addicted to our phones, we know this. But I wasn’t fully aware of just how much I rely on social media until I got off my phone. I wanted to check my social media every time I woke up, got bored, ate, or got out of class. I would even subconsciously try to open the apps from where they used to be to on my home screen! I guess old habit really do die hard.
Productivity went through the roof!
Wow! Let me tell you, nothing motivates you like boredom. Since I didn’t have social media to eat up my time, I voluntarily did homework even if it wasn’t due the next day. Or even if it wasn’t due in the next two days! I felt less stressed and really successful, all because I was on top of my work and managing my time better!
I found other ways to waste time
Productivity aside, per human nature, if I couldn’t procrastinate one way, I found another. Instead of turning to social media, I watched more Youtube videos than usual, and I found myself reading a lot of gossip articles about The Bachelor. Sometimes, I think our brains just want a break, and turning to carefree entertainment, can be good for you. But everything should be in moderation for a balanced life, and this cleanse showed me that.
There’s a different kind of FOMO
We all know of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in terms of the pain we fell of seeing an Instagram of a peer in the Bahamas while you’re stuck on your couch for Spring Break. But something I wasn’t expecting was the FOMO of the updates of people’s lives, especially for my friends back home. Like most college students, social media is one of the primary ways I stay connected to my friends from high school. When I went off social media, I worried about all things I wouldn’t be informed on about their college life. I was really hard, but I had to convince myself that missing one week of the constant life updates of literally everyone you know, won’t in fact, kill you.
I felt more carefree!
Going off social media really did help my mental state! For an entire week, I wasn’t unfairly comparing myself to my peers or strangers on the internet. I could focus on myself; bettering my own standard of living, and putting more of my time and energy into myself, rather than worrying about others. Now that I’ve felt first-hand the benefits of going off social media, I definitely want to continue to limit my use of it in the future, especially while studying or when I’m with friends. I would highly recommend trying out a social media cleanse this spring! You might just learn some new things about yourself! (That being said, as soon as my week was up, I spent multiple hours scrolling through my feeds seeing all the posts I missed. What can I say, I’m a product of my generation.)