What is your morning routine? Let me rephrase: What is your realistic morning routine?
Not the kind that you save to your favorites on tiktok to recreate, or the kind that youtubers advertise to show how to be healthy, and how-completely-not-attached-to-their-electronics they are.
No, the kind that you actually do every morning. Because here’s mine:
When I wake up, I snooze my alarm three or four times. Then, I shake myself awake, and go on my phone. I check to see if there are any urgent text messages or emails that require an immediate response, and then I click on the dreaded “social media” folder on my home screen that holds Tiktok and Instagram for me, just waiting for me to waste an average of five hours a day on (thanks to the Screen Time feature of the iPhone, I am constantly reminded of this).
If you also have this habit, I encourage you to try the seemingly simple but actually quite difficult task of pressing the delete button on your kryptonite app. Mine is Tiktok, and Instagram. Instagram is less of an obsession for me as of recent, so it hasn’t made nearly as much of an impact on my daily routine as the absence of Tiktok has.
Tiktok not only actively diminishes my self esteem, but it just takes up so much of my time, to the point where it makes me about 5 to 10 minutes late to class nearly every day of the week. (Yes, I can also blame this untimeliness on my ADHD, but this is besides the point).
So, if you want to take on this challenge with me, I want to share the positive outcomes you may experience from deleting Tiktok:
1. You will become hyper-aware of how much time you spend on your phone.
If you end up deleting Tiktok, you may notice that your brain physically has the habit of picking up your phone to check Tiktok. Since deleting the app, I’ve become hyper aware of this, which has just shed light on the fact that my brain subconsciously thinks about Tik Tok several times a day. Not having Tiktok has forced me to have inner conversations with this part of my brain, telling it to not have the impulse to pick up my phone and check social media every time I’m feeling bored, want to procrastinate, feel awkward walking past someone on the street, etc.
2. You’ll find more healthy activities to replace the time you used to spend on Tiktok.
With all this time on your hands now without Tiktok, what will you do? Instead of just checking other social media, use your precious time you would’ve normally spent scrolling through your Tiktok to do other productive activities that actually are good for your mental and/or physical well being. Go on a quick jog, do a yoga routine, meditate, get some homework done, listen to music, call and catch up with an old friend. This is just a miniscule list of examples of all of the things you could do instead of going on your social media.
3. Your mental health will improve.
As most of us know, a plethora of depressing psychological studies show that our generation’s self esteem is completely diminished by social media, Tiktok being one of the biggest contenders. With all of the beautiful influencers, perfect work-out routines, talented singers, dancers, painters, artists, and cooks (the list goes on), how can we not be wired to compare that to ourselves? This encourages a heaping amount of self-criticism, low confidence, and poor mental health overall. You may think that saving all of those recipes, tarot card readings, and lists of good brands of beauty products to invest in is productive, but it’s actually just feeding this dreadful and inescapable loop of consumerism. And, do you really go back and check those videos you save to draw inspiration from later? Because I know I don’t.
4. You will have overall a clearer headspace.
Consuming short videos over and over again on a two dimensional screen can give you brain fog, headaches, and overall, not a very good environment for your eyes and head. I find that when I’m not staring at my phone so much, I literally see things clearer, and think more clearly.
Try deleting Tiktok, and stick to it. You will not regret it.