Photo By energepic.com
A few weeks ago, I dropped my phone in my driveway in front of my mom. She gasped and gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look, but I assured her it was no big deal – I had my trusty Darth Vader case and a glass screen protector that had been through plenty of accidents before. I picked up the phone, gave it a quick look over, and saw no signs of physical damage. There were no cracks, no glitches in the display, there weren’t even scuffs on the case. I confidently showed my mom, assured her it was okay, put it in my bag, and went on my merry way.
No more than 15 minutes later, I get a text from bae. As I open it to read and reply, I notice my screen looks a little off. And the longer I stared at it, the worse it got. Before I knew it, my entire screen transformed into a vibrant, solid pink display. I freak out, uttered a few words my mom wouldn’t want me to write, and turned the screen off hoping it was just some kind of freak glitch. A few seconds later, I checked the screen, and everything was fine again! I swiped it open and went to message bae again… but before I could even open my messaging app, my phone was beginning to glow pink again. I could still see what I was writing if I held my phone about 3 inches away from my eyeballs, so I tried to write a message. That’s when I realized the touch screen was totally off. If I pressed “x,” my phone would type “i.” (Go ahead and check your keyboard, how is that even possible?) I got so frustrated I decided to let my baby – I mean, my phone – rest for a while before I tried again.
Thankfully, I have an iPhone and a Macbook, so I was able to text bae back when I got home. I started googling answers as to what I could possibly do to fix my phone. In my heart, I already knew exactly what happened. I knew I screwed up my digitizer, but I wanted so badly to be wrong. I mostly just didn’t want to tell my mom that I actually did break my phone. After searching the internet for a total of 5 minutes, I came to the decision to accept my mistake, and start looking for repair shops.
As hours passed with my broken phone, I found myself still holding it, still checking for notifications, and still trying to use social media. I eventually figured out that the longer I left my phone’s screen off, the longer I had a useable screen before it became pink and lost its touch sensitivity again. I had to strategize times to get on my phone, and it got really overwhelming.
Since I could still see my phone sometimes, I didn’t turn it off, I kept it charged and I kept with me the whole time. I still got notified for all my messages, calls, and I still saw all my social media notifications. Every time I got a notification, I still looked at my phone to try to see what it was from. I became obsessed with trying to view my notifications. Of course, I can always check some social media on the computer, but I am frequently away from home, so I don’t have a lot of time with my laptop.
As hours and days passed, I got used to not texting or talking on the phone. What I missed were my apps. I had 11 unopened Snapchats, and I was dying to see them. I missed playing Candy Crush on the bus to and from school. I missed all the cute videos my friends share on Facebook.
But what I missed the most was Instagram. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Insta-famous or anything like that – my follower count is definitely under 1000. I don’t even post very often. I have no real reason to love Instagram… but I’m obsessed. I didn’t realize how bad my obsession was until I could no longer access Insta from the palm of my hand.
I would spend hours a day scrolling through Instagram. Stalking, I mean, looking, at profiles of people I know, people I don’t know at all, people I kinda know but wouldn’t consider a friend, famous people, any and every one. If I wasn’t going through profiles, I was exchanging memes with my friends. If I wasn’t exchanging memes, I was sifting through hashtags. If I wasn’t sifting through hashtags, I was refreshing my “following” feed in the hopes of finding new accounts to go through.
You get the idea. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be interested in the content sometimes. I would literally force feed myself images of things I didn’t even care to see. What I didn’t realize is that these images had a huge impact on my self-image.
The more time I spent away from social media, I realized I’d stopped being so mean to myself. Even though I ended up only going a week and a half without a working phone, I learned a lot about the way I view social media. There were days where I’d be bored and think about girls I’d seen on Instagram, and how awesome their lives must be. Even girls I know in real life – their Instagram profiles are so captivating I think about them when I’m not on the app! Once that started happening, I knew I had a problem and needed to reevaluate my life.
I was consistently (though subconsciously) comparing myself and my real life to the images that random people would post on Instagram. I idolized these people, and I made myself feel less than them. I would catch myself thinking, “if I looked like that, I bet I’d have a ton of followers, too,” or “if I had the money to travel all the time, I’d post cool pictures, too.” I was putting myself down every day, multiple times a day.
Taking an unintentional break from Instagram helped me realize that things on the Internet aren’t always what they seem. What someone posts on the Instagram reflects nothing more than the very moment that photo was captured – nothing else. You can’t compare yourself or your life to what someone posts online.
Now that I have a new phone, I still catch myself going to Instagram multiple times a day. But I don’t sit there for hours on end, and I remind myself to take everything I see with a grain of salt, because nobody’s life is the way it appears online.