A week ago, I was lounging around in the back room of my best friend's house watching YouTube videos and sharing a family size bag of salt and vinegar chips among my four friends. One way or another, the topic of social media and its controversial standings came up.
Social media is beneficial to society by providing motivation and inspiration, or it is detrimental to society by setting unrealistic standards and making everyone hyper-focused on what people we really do not care about are doing. Regardless if social media is good or bad, I can see both sides of the argument.
I felt an overwhelming urge to try a cleanse. After all, it was Winter Break and I had no responsibilities. What better way to waste time than trying a cleanse?
So, I deleted my social media.
Keeping my phone free of social media was a larger obstacle than I had thought originally. Almost every app that I had downloaded on my phone had the possibility of being a platform to social media. To keep my cleanse simple and to the point, I got rid of the main platforms: Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook. No, I could not delete YouTube; that would be far too big a sacrifice.
I wasted no time and deleted those four apps that same night. I had high hopes for what was to come. After living a week in solitude( okay, I know, a little dramatic), here is what the social media cleanse taught me.
1. Pinterest is a life saver.
Since I had no social media, I resorted to Pinterest quite often. I had always had the Pinterest app on my phone, but often times, it was overshadowed by the big guns, like Snapchat and Instagram. Having nothing else to do on my phone, besides binge-watching "Pretty Little Liars", I spent a lot of time on Pinterest and I don't regret it.
Pinterest was an eye-opening platform for me. Although it very well could be considered a social media platform, I have yet to find any detrimental effects of it. Being on Pinterest motivated me to do the things I never felt like doing, like eating healthy and working out. I spent more time planning gym workout routines than scrolling through meaningless photos on Instagram.
Overall, Pinterest made this seven-day cleanse far more bearable.
2. Not knowing what anyone is doing is SO freeing.
I cannot begin to count how many nights I have spent home watching my favorite show, reading a good book, or making some new recipe that probably was a failure... and having it ruined by looking on social media. By having social media, we are taught that we aren't having fun unless we look good doing it and sharing it with the world.
Many of those nights that I enjoyed staying in and having fun on my own were ruined because I compared my quiet night into someone else's night out in the city. Why do we do that? Honestly, I'm not sure. But what I do know is that not having access to seeing what everyone else is doing made me feel far less guilty for enjoying a few nights in by myself.
It also cured my FOMO disease.
3. There is so much more you could be doing with your time.
My screen time per day went down 33% from the week before I began the cleanse to the end of the cleanse. In my settings on my iPhone, I was able to track how much time I spent on my phone and what I was doing with that time. The proof is all in the pudding.
Week one, I spent a total of 20 hours and 16 minutes on social media. That's almost a full day of staring at my phone. Week two, I spent no hours on social media, and my total screen time per day went from eight hours to five hours. While five hours still is not something to brag about, I realize that so much of my time was wasted on social media.
Instead of being on social media, I spent more time catching up on my favorite show, starting a new book, running outside (I'm not sure if that will happen again), and simply taking more time to care for myself. I found a lot of my inspiration through Pinterest, and each morning, I'd wake up and feel motivated to accomplish something different, no matter how small it was.
4. I felt an overall stronger feeling of positivity in my life.
As much as we all hate to admit it, group messages with your closest friends tend to hold some top secret conversations. While a lot of those chats are harmless and fun, a good amount contain A LOT of gossiping. By not having social media, I had no idea what anyone was talking about. Sure, I felt a little bit like the odd man out at first, but by the end of the week, it felt so liberating not taking part in meaningless gossip.
I felt a lot more positivity within me and began to feel more open to new ideas and ways of living. Not having social media opened my eyes to a new perspective on life. While social media can be fun and trendy, it can transfer a lot of negative emotions around.
I had no opportunities to compare myself to others or to judge what anyone else was doing. This feeling was something that made this cleanse worth my time.
I know we all say it, that we will start that diet tomorrow or start working out tomorrow. Stop waiting until tomorrow and start right now. Even if your cleanse only lasts one day, try it out. I promise you won't regret it.
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