Recently I have found myself entirely overwhelmed with my social media. There has been a shift as I have grown older when it comes to how I use social media. Where I used to spend all of my time, I can now only spend a couple of minutes. To me, I think the biggest distinction to why it is hard for me to be on social media now vs in the past, is because now I am on social media as a force of habit, an addiction if you will. When in the past social media used to be a form of entertainment, it did not consume all my time. Now any free time I have is spent scrolling through posts I could care less about. Once it got to the point where I was putting off my responsibilities and avoiding my problems with social media, I decided I wanted; to make a change and remove social media from my life for at least a month.
I started off by deleting Tiktok, this was the app that I spent the most time on! I deleted TikTok in mid-January and have not been on since. It is now March so I would say I have been somewhat successful. I say somewhat because I would be lying if I did not say I downloaded it a few times here and there. However for the most part TikTok probably takes about one hour of my time every two weeks! That is a huge improvement compared to the hours every day I would spend.
Now, if you are wondering how it was so easy for me to delete TikTok, the answer to that is simple, Instagram. As I move forward with my social media detox I am beginning to realize that I just moved from doom scrolling on one app to another! Moving forward I plan to delete Instagram for the entire month of April. I will continue to document this journey and give tips and tricks along the way! So far I have occupied my time by reading and engaging in hobbies I previously neglected. My biggest question moving forward is if deleting my two primary sources of social media will affect my mental health in any way and whether it will be for the better or worse.
Ultimately, taking a social media detox for me is something that I know I need to do. I hope whoever reads this feels inspired to follow along with my journey and even join me on it!