We are such funny creatures.
We love to lie to ourselves so we can only become worse humans.
We tell ourselves it’s okay if we have an extra scoop of so-called ‘healthy’ Oat ice cream or an extra hour of Tiger King because we want temporary satisfaction NOW instead of more fulfilling rewards later when we commit to pushing ourselves a tiny bit harder.
But no.
We love to be comfortable with no change until we deal with a low point and it’s your choice to wait that long.
Self-love is necessary but we also don’t push ourselves nearly enough.
We must be okay with being stern with ourselves, not just rely on our parents or teachers to instruct us to eventually end up arguing and finding all the ways why we shouldn’t do it.
So at the end, we can consider ourselves lazy bums.
But hold on, we certainly aren’t all the time, only when things get comfortable, such as during a year-long social media escape.
As a teenager, this is first off, an out of the ordinary thing to do.
I chose to do this not for money, not for bragging rights but for myself.
A 2020 experiment you can call it.
Not self-love but self-pity and proof how much I’m mad at myself.
Although quarantine did make it tempting, I had been planning to make this big adjustment. For all those 50 plus-year-olds reading this, it is a bigger deal than it sounds.
I needed to get prepared.
Make a list of what I would do with my extra 30 hours a week, what I enjoyed, my strengths and weaknesses, and what could occupy my mind.
I was never a big fan of social media from the start.
I joined becuase it was, of course, the trend.
As a result, it wasn’t difficult to quit or go in hibernation mode for a few weeks.
That was in 6th grade.
The younger I was, the easier it was to pay more attention to the things I enjoyed rather than checking in to the things that made me a worse antsy person online.
You don’t have to agree or follow these reasons, but if you are trying to convince yourself to take a more nutritious and delicious detox besides ginger tea or celery juice you can adopt these reasons why I don’t like social media and many of my peers are clung on as well:
1) It isn’t social anymore!
2) The addition of stories and all these improvements only ads to more competition and sales for advertisers along with the term influencers which doesn’t even make sense because everyone who tries to make quick cash from selling a product and poses on the beach wants to consider themselves influencers.
They don’t influence anything besides poor spending habits and CBD.
3) I have never felt better about myself or excited to do something after going on social media
4) They lure you into showing you what they want you to see not what you should really see
5) The more eyeballs, the more money they get as a company
6) A free product = you are service, they earn your time and eyes
7) It isn’t a tool but rather manipulation, seduction and sparks suicide, mental illness, and loneliness
That sounded really dreary but those were the reasons I wrote in my journal a day after my freshman year of college started last year prompting me to quit.
Did I feel FOMO?
Yes.
But especially during quarantine, this was the easiest experiment to do!
I always get my news on either CNBC, the Today Show, or CNN anyway so it wasn’t a problem and I was up to date on the world with more accurate information than from social anyways.
No one can last through this challenge because it is tempting.
Just like with donuts, we are lured into feeling temporarily good until we realize the drain and how much time we wasted.
Trust me, you aren’t missing much except for the photoshopped food parlors and piercings your friend got.
Thoughts:
Wouldn’t recommend it for everyone and especially if you find yourself relying off of social for your career as a marketer or one of those influencers, I would suggest utilizing multiple platforms in case this one gets snagged by China.
Who knows!
Better safe to have a backup.
Even though Facebook owns Instagram and Facebook is said to never get hacked with its bulletproof algorithm, Gmail went down last Thursday so anything is possible!
Ask yourself, what do you actually intend out of checking in on social?
If you want to do something educational for yourself and learn something, I would recommend heading to YouTube or thousands of online learning sites instead.
Do you not mind compare yourself and end up wasting hours per week?
Results:
Now I have no intention of going back on social media, expect for LinkedIn for a max of 30 minutes a week.
This is a hard change but with anything, more risk = more reward and I’ve certainly felt that.
As someone who’s never thought I was doing enough and always felt like an imposter, the ban of social media has lead me to appreciate everything I do and not feel I need to live up to others’ expectations.
I have no reason to show myself online because all people care about is themselves, not others.
My life doesn’t need to be broadcasted online and even if I was Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, I would feel obligated to post less and live more in the moment away from technology.