Life Without Social Media
It is been a long time since the day I decided to delete social media apps from my phone. I did not know what I was putting in my head and so I decided to quit social media in just a split second that day. All I remember was that I felt overwhelmed by everything, and social media did not help me reduce it, instead, it added to it.
I have been using social media religiously since the era of smartphones, approximately about ten years ago. So, based on that number, I have been on it non-stop for more than half a decade. No wonder, I feel burnt-out and in need of a holiday from it.
It is so easy to be addicted to social media, it is a great and easy escape from your boredom until you are attached to it before you even realise it, especially for someone like me. I do not know what kind of personality I am, but I am one of the millions who are addicted to social media.
I was not addicted to social media at first but over time, the convenience of having access to it from the gadget I own makes me want to be on it all the time… whenever I feel unoccupied, I will be on social media, scrolling mindlessly.
If there is a measurement tool to measure how long I could scroll on my screen whilst I am still on social media then it would possibly be hundreds of kilometres a day.
Now I realise I do not want to waste my time scrolling through my phone screen for hundreds of kilometres a day, but there is a measurement tool for the time we spend on our phones and it sends us a weekly report of how much time we spent on our phones that would help us to understand our digital habits.
After I quit social media for the first week, my screen time report reduced from an average of six to seven hours a day to at least half of it.
Like dropping any other habits and addictions, it was never easy. In the first few weeks, I was still in the default mode of randomly picking up my phone and straight tapping to the place where social media apps were that were not even there anymore and a glimpse of emptiness creeps into my soul.
Surprisingly, that empty feeling did not last long. After less than a month, I started getting used to living without social media and after one hundred days of my social media fasting target, I genuinely did not feel like going back anymore, yet I still did, and not long after, I decided to go back unplugged, to continue living my life without social media.
It has been many months without social media and I feel so much more alive than I have in years. I forget how it feels to be fully aware of my surroundings and the people around me or simply be present at the very moment.
I remember when I used to check my timeline right after I woke up in the morning and spend at least half an hour replying to unimportant messages and being caught in unimportant conversations throughout the day. I spent hours on social media daily for that, now I believe if it is important, people will call instead.
One of the reasons I continue my life without social media is the feeling of liberation that I never knew existed before and the peace it brings to not being 24/7 available online. Although, I sometimes miss sharing my experiences with people on social media who might find it inspiring yet it is not worth the feeling of having a lack of privacy.
It started from when I turned my account private, then filter to reduced the amount of both following and followers by more than 90% to only closest circles.
Back two or three years ago, who would have thought I would be dropping social media and be just fine without it? Honestly, not even myself. It is either I am growing into a different person or I am simply getting old and turning to make my privacy a priority.
I believe that removing myself and not wasting my precious time on social media and having the privacy I deserve is the greatest gift I could give myself.
Nowadays, I would rather be fully present to enjoy the beautiful moments or views I am lucky enough to experience with the ones I love without having the urge or split-second distraction from the actual event to take the camera out of my pocket to snap it with the thought of showing it off later to a bunch of people on social media.
As a matter of anything else, there are also pros and cons of removing social media from your life. One of the cons, maybe you should not consider quitting social media if you are capable of making an income out of it. One of the pros, when sometimes scrolling through your timeline could overwhelm you or make you tense is your brain telling you to take a break from it.
If you are interested in living without social media or fighting social media addiction, you could try social media fasting for 24 hours first to see if you are fine to live a day without it and if you can do it, you could continue the next day or set yourself a target to a certain period and see if living without social media would improve your overall life quality as it successfully did to me.
It is nice to be a little mysterious and not constantly know what everyone is up to and not let everyone know what we are up to.
