After I smashed that “save & publish” button on last week’s blog & went about the internet to the various socials to post links so you all would know that it’s up & exists for you to dig your stunning little eyes into, I took a week long social media hiatus.
First off, let me acknowledge just how special, important, heroic, self sacrificing, & outright paramount I am for making that decision & going against the cultural & societal norms that inform our need to consume phone related snippets of content constantly. I know I am a monolith of courage & strength in these trying times. Secondly, if you don’t understand sarcasm, that was it, but I feel like that’s how we all behave when we “announce” our departure from our socials. We act as though we’re giving up a limb & as if our decision was the most refreshing, innovative thought to ever grace the idea space. It’s really not & I don’t think we should treat these breaks as novel things, they should be ingrained in us, because they are healthy. Anyway, here’s what I learned, what I felt in just the week I took off.
The rules were simple. No social media for a week with the singular exception of the daily allotted minute in which I could go into my messages & DMs to see if there was anything pressing that I needed to address. Outside of that there was to be no scrolling, no posting, no sharing, no engagement with the apps outside of answering the few things that needed to be answered & taken care of. The fast began at the time that I finished promoting my blog & ended this morning. Simple enough.
The first thing that I noticed was just how clear my mind felt. My thoughts didn't feel foggy or convoluted, in Scuba terms, my visibility went from a minimal amount of feet to 50-100 feet. Optimal dive conditions. I was able to process information, to make decisions, to form thoughts like I haven’t been able to do for years, probably since 2020 when we all got trapped inside & the only real thing to do was doom scroll into eternity until we all became massively addicted to the light boxes in our pockets. I felt more grounded & at home in my mind in a way that was refreshing.
The first & a half thing that I noticed, which coattails a little off of the previous point, was that I felt a lot more creative. I felt a lot more inspired, I was coming up with new melodies & songs randomly throughout my day instead of having to sit & try & force creativity to work in my favor. While I didn’t get the chance to full on sit & work on something creative during this time off, I am certain that it would have been an easy & enjoyable practice just based on the frequency & freedom in which ideas were flowing to me.
The second thing that I noticed was that I didn’t have the “doom scroll crave” that I normally do. By completely eliminating socials as an option my brain didn’t feel that pull to open up instagram, Tik Tok, or twitter & just scroll. This opened up a lot more time & space for me to do other things & in term made me a lot more productive & economical with my time. That being said, I found that not having the ability to scroll made time pass a lot slower, often to the point where I was often ready to be done with my day far before it was actually time to call it.
The third thing that I noticed was that my attention span was much improved. As someone with ADHD who is struggling to stay focused on this blog as I’m writing it because I know my phone is just a few feet away with the option of scrolling now that I can, I was actually wildly impressed with how much better I was able to maintain my attention span. I actually ended up getting pretty far along in a book that I’ve been reading for a while now & made my way through a few shows entirely focused on the plot & the goings on, without that constant tug to scroll.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I have fallen back into the grips of social media having ended the fast this morning, especially Tik Tok. There's just something about it that feeds the dopamine meter in my brain in just the right way & I think I’ll need to put deeper limits on myself with it going forward. This morning I set my social media timer to one hour total for the day, of which I have already exceeded that because I often use social media in passing, splitting my attention while doing other things, in addition to using it as a messaging system.
All in all I think it’s incredibly healthy to step away from our socials from time to time. It allows us to reprioritize, to clear our minds, to put aside comparison, & rediscover our focus. I took my daily phone screen time from 6-7 hours down to 3-4 without it & I honestly thing I should have extended the break another half a week or more just to fully purge the need of it from my system. All things in moderation, right?
As always, much love to you all,
-C