As an advertising-public relations major (and a 21-year-old college girl in general), I am always surrounded by social media. Whether it is professionally, or just sending memes back and forth to my friends throughout the day, it’s safe to say a good amount of my time is spent messaging, scrolling, and posting. That said, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and go an entire week without social media.
Day 1:
Clearly, I am not good at planning, because my first day without social media happened to land on the same day I was going to Epcot’s Food and Wine festival for the first time ever. My undying urge to Snapchat my wine samples and fancy cheeses did not cease. Eventually, I decided to open my camera app (I know, who am I—a caveman?) and snap some old school pics of my adventure. Heartbroken knowing I wouldn’t be editing these to upload on Insta, I texted them to a couple of friends and had an actual conversation instead of a couple blank Snapchats sent back and forth. I guess this no social media thing might have a couple perks after all.
Day 2:
This was my chill day. After sleeping in late, I decided to get some homework done. I quickly realized that it was easier to focus without constantly getting distracted by my phone. I felt very productive and even got ahead in some of my classes.
Day 3:
Day three landed on a Saturday, and I happened to be visiting my best friend and her newborn son in St. Pete. Most of my time attention was devoted to gawking over the little munchkin, so I wasn’t really thinking about social media too much. That is, until the grandparents showed up to babysit so we could go to our basic Saturday brunch (don’t judge me.) While it kinda sucked not being able to upload pics of our mini-reunion, it was nice to be fully in the moment and not looking down at a phone screen.
Day 4:
People started noticing. The lack of memes and hilarious (if I do say so myself) snaps of my daily predicaments in my friends’ inboxes became apparent after four days. I started getting texts asking where I have been and why I haven’t been responding to my DMs. When I told them about the challenge m,ost of them replied with “OMG, that’s insane.”
Day 5:
I’ve officially had enough of this and I’m ready to scroll through Instagram again. I was really missing my nightly routine of catching up on everything that happened today via social media. Since laying in bed and staring at the ceiling is no fun, I decided to download a coloring app and see if it would keep me occupied. It was relaxing, but it was no Twitter.
Day 6:
I kept busy at work all day, and by the time I got home, I was SO ready for bed. I guess you could count day six as pretty uneventful, but hey—that means I’m kinda getting the hang of this.
Day 7:
The last day was undoubtedly the hardest. With the end in sight, I was eager to see what I had been missing out on all week. I felt like everyone around me was documenting their day with snaps and posts while I was stuck back in the early 2000’s with my most advanced form of communication being text messaging. I went rollerskating with the Her Campus UCF crew that night and the amount of boomerang-able photo-ops was unbelievable; however, my archaic camera app does not have this capability.
Final thoughts:
I DID IT! Even though I was more than ready to return to my social media filled life by day eight, I think that this challenge will have some long term effects on my social media usage. While I love an eventful Snapchat story just as much as the next girl, it was definitely nice to feel completely in the moment. I also noticed that since I wasn’t getting quick bits of news constantly, I found myself reading full blown articles a lot more than normal which I plan on making a habit. While a full seven days may seem a little excessive, I think a social media break is a good experience for anyone who involves it in their everyday life.