This summer I am going to go off the social media grid.

That’s right. No Facebook. No Snapchat. No Twitter. No Instagram.

Recently, I have noticed that I spend way too much time on my phone. Whether it be checking Snapchat stories, Facebook statuses, or photos on Instagram... I really just need to put my phone down.

I have honestly grown to really dislike these sites. I have found that the pieces of information shared on these sites really do not matter. I've come to realize that if I were to spend the same amount of time that I spend on my phone on social media sites as reading news articles, I would be a lot smarter than I currently am.

Really, in the scheme of things, social media sites truly are just widespread manifestos of how people wish to be portrayed publicly and do not reflect upon the personal experiences one has and wishes to share with specific people privately.

What I have found to matter the most is how you personally express day to day experiences with other people privately. These personal interactions can be face to face, over text message, through Facetime, or even over the phone (calling).

No longer am I going to spend my time scrolling through Facebook looking at irrelevant pieces of information. I want to hear about my friends’ personal experiences, directly from them. I want to learn about different environmental problems, read books on my Kindle, and take amazing photos of some of the experiences I am having while they are happening in real life.

I just spend way too much time on my phone.

My goal over the summer is to stay off social media and to figure out which experiences I wish to share with my friends privately, and which ones I want to keep with myself. Truly, I need to experience some things privately, without sharing them with everyone. Who really cares about my day at the beach? Nobody.

Without documenting my every move over the summer through Snapchat or Instagram, I will have a lot of stories to share with my friends and a lot of pictures to share when I return in the fall. I am going to be answering my other means of communication (text, call, email, messenger owl) because I do not live under a rock, and doing so might actually be detrimental to my planning for my sophomore year of college.

Despite having this social media embargo, I am going to be posting to the Odyssey every week, and will be having my articles thrown on my dormant Facebook pages, with wishful hopes for shares and likes. I hope that over time, this lack of social media will become easier.

Until then, I will just have to wait it out.