A Social Media Holiday (6 min read)
I ran an experiment and removed social media accounts for 7 weeks. No Instagram, no LinkedIn. Find out what happened.
Social Media Life Today
Social media is omnipresent. It’s a part of daily life.
Whether you are on social media or not, the existence of it affects you.
What happens on social media gets picked up by news reports and you see or hear those via internet uploads, streaming, tv and radio.
Social media causes advertisements to pop up while you’re using your computer, and those ads creepily follow you around as you hop from device to device.
Your children are exposed to social media trends and topics while at school, and then they bring comments, conversations and behaviors home with them.
You might find yourself endlessly scrolling at night, or find your patience tested while you wait for someone to look up from their phone and engage you in conversation; instead they are physically in the same room, but their presence is deep inside their phone and they are disconnected from the actual world around them.
Social media is pervasive and generates addictive behaviors that impacts every area of life.
How long social media continues to be around is a current debate, highlighted by Facebook’s recent flounder. However, today, as it stands social media is generally viewed as a platform for people, businesses and organizations to come together, connect, engage, and share content, views, opinions, and insights. If only it were just that simple.
The upside of social media
Social media is a business industry, it is for profit by design. The upsides, while some could be contested, could be seen as;
It has generated an entire industry and created hundreds of derivative industries with billions of dollars running through them.
It has paved the way for thousands of jobs.
It has created entire education systems.
It gives individuals a direct and indirect way to keep in touch with each other, whether they know each other or not.
It has become a marvel for celebrities to reach their adoring fans.
It gives consumers a way to keep track of their favorite brands and discover new brands and missions.
It creates a platform for social and economic plights, for businesses and organizations to proliferate their messages and engage in public conversation with their tribe as they build their community empires.
Social media has created movements.
Businesses are started and run from social media alone.
Social media “celebrities” have been born.
We have access into the lives of millions and get to explore far flung places in a way that was previously unheard of.
The downside of social media
The downside and often extremely dark side is that social media has given way to;
Atrocious monsters; it has instigated, proliferated, and normalized the bullying, humiliation, targeting, and victimization of children, adults, businesses and organizations.
Social media messaging has seeped into the subconscious of children and adults alike to subtly manipulate thinking and behaviors where an individual becomes detached from their own thought analysis, decision-making and action steps. They merely blame or accredit social media for their behavior.
It has been attributed to being the cause of death, illness and addiction.
It has torn families and friendships apart.
It has created unrealistic expectations by forming an artificial view that everything on social media represents real life and is true.
It has paved the way for the deletion of privacy from ordinary life and created the “cancel culture” which has destroyed lives and crushed individuals, families, communities, businesses and organizations.
It has created the expectation that everything about you from the inside of your body, to what you do and have, who you interact with, where you work, and who your family and friends are, are for public consumption, ridicule, and judgement.
It has ripped through lives in ways to traumatize those involved and leaves them defeated, down trodden and in a grief state, lifeless for life.
The pluses and minuses could be discussed passionately for hours, yet what matters the most is whether you are mindfully, thoughtfully, and intentionally engaging with social media. How much of your well-being is generated or diminished from your interaction with social media? If you are out of balance a social media cleanse might be a worthwhile activity.
A social media cleanse
I am interested in having a healthy, balanced relationship with social media, I know it doesn’t have to be all consuming, and I can choose to engage with it in a positive way. I choose for it to add to my well-being.
With that intention, can I find a way to reset my perspectives and cleanse from social media for a while? Can I find a way to foster a more balanced and healthier relationship with social media?
I came off Instagram and LinkedIn for 7 weeks to consider this question. This is what I learned.
Week 1
Apply the same rules as when fasting. Many highlight the benefits of fasting as this gives the body time to reset and cleanse. Remove the things that are making your system work harder. Step number one in a social media reset? Remove access to your social media apps and desktop links for at least 4 weeks.
Pay attention in the first few days to your habits and feelings. Your feelings and emotions are likely to be more intense in the first few days. Be warned! You may feel an irritation at not being able to incessantly check your phone. In fact out of habit you might find yourself picking up your phone to scroll; only to remember you removed the apps. You might feel like you have zero willpower and desperately want to check your account, then you discover an internal dialogue begins. “Go on just have a quick look.”, “Seriously? You have no willpower. That’d be right and so typical of you…” Begin onslaught of unkind self talk that is neither constructive, helpful or true.
You cave, and reload those apps and have a quick check, “ahhh.. bliss, there are all the posts, likes, comments…” yep, still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. Here’s the interim solution; allow yourself to be on social media but choose not to interact, no liking or comments. Enjoy observing content and learn to receive. It’s important we learn how to give and receive and if you can do this exercise well it’s an indicator that you can allow others to give, therefore you also are able to receive. If you are a constant content sharer this exercise will be harder for you to achieve, you will feel compelled to interact. Persevere. Give yourself 2 days of this activity. Then come off and remove those apps again.
Create an incentive for yourself for each time you don’t cheat and scratch that social media checking itch. Once you have removed your apps. Get $50 worth of one dollar coins from the bank, every time you resist the urge to check your account take $1 and put it in a jar, watch your dollar coins accumulate… ironically even though it is your money, the psychology behind that will actually help you resist checking your phone. You’ll start thinking about what you’re going to spend your “free” $50 on when you reach a full jar. Thank Jon Acuff for that idea from his book “Soundtracks”.
Feel like you’re missing out? Your mind might start telling you that. I guarantee, you are not. Resist the urge to check. You are not missing out. You are detoxing and cleansing. Have you ever seen how someone glows after they’ve completed a cleanse? Keep that thought in mind.
Week 2
After about a week you might begin to notice the urges to check your accounts have reduced, you might even begin to notice that you are able to be more present in moments during the day. You might get to share more conversations, are less distracted by your phone, and oddly discover you have a lot more time and a renewed sense of peacefulness.
You’ll begin to wonder what life is doing on social media but don’t feel a pull to check, and instead you experience an odd sense of freedom. You begin to recognize that you’re not really missing out or that life is less than without social media. In fact, you might start having thoughts about how you’re going to shift the accounts you follow if you do decide to go back on again. You start to ponder the sorts of things you’re going to post, what to like, and what sorts of things you’ll comment on.
Week 3
Your mind isn’t pre-occupied with social media at all, you have a sense of freedom and space that you’d forgotten existed.
You might think about the friends you have and miss seeing what they’re up to, but then you remember that your close friends you see or talk to regularly anyway, and the other “friends“ are connections that you might or might not reconnect with in the future. If it’s important you’ll catch up somehow.
Week 4… Week 5…
Social media? “Oh yeah, I used to be the crazy person checking it way too much, and what for?” That was the old me. Now it’s different, you’re not missing social media. You haven’t missed out, and you haven’t missed it. You don’t even see its value anymore. It’s not adding to your life and you haven’t noticed any decline in your thinking or understanding of what you thought the world was. In fact, you’re beginning to explore topics on your own instead of being “fed” a constant stream of stuff. You’re noticing you feel more enlivened, you’re appreciating aspects of your life you hadn’t done for a while. You haven’t had to stop your mind from comparing the artificial online life with the reality of your own life. You are feeling good. Your entire body is enjoying the social media holiday. You feel relaxed and contented. The thought floats across your mind “Perhaps I’ll just delete my social media account entirely.”
Week 6…. Week 7…
You begin to consider what elements of social media were positive, the new brands you discovered that align with your values. “What are your values?” Ah, you begin exploring that. You consider the posts from close friends, and the positive posts you enjoyed the most. You consider what it would feel like to zero out all of the accounts you follow and all of your followers and begin anew.
You begin to consider a new pattern of engagement, if you decide to go back onto social media what will that look like? Will you now live peacefully and contentedly without social media indefinitely? Will you go back on it every day? Will it be once a week? Which day of the week? Will it be weekends only, or weekdays only? Will it be for 1 month every quarter? Will it be 6 months of the year?
You gain complete insight into what works for you, you empower yourself by recognizing what you are willing to put your effort and energy into, you come up with a whole new plan of engaging with social media that fits for you.
Finding balance - Your new pattern
The outcome of the experiment led to four key decisions:
I will engage with social media again.
I will be active during week days only, and I’ll take weekends off.
I will engage with it every other month, with a rest month on alternating months.
I will reassess as I go. If at any point it begins to lure me in to more with needless unhealthy distractions, I will run the cleanse again to create a reset.
Have you tried a social media cleanse? What did you learn? Let us know in the comments below.
Be well, live intentionally
Birch Cove is not a medical or therapy based business, we do not offer guarantees of any kind. We are not responsible for the well-being of businesses or individuals that read, watch, or hear our content, or take part in sessions, or use our services or the services we highlight. Birch Cove and our Collective members are not responsible for the physical and mental health and well-being of individuals we interact with directly or indirectly. We work to share best practices that inspire healthy living and revitalize a quality of life.