My December Digital Detox

After being completely intertwined with social media through the summer, I was ready to make a complete break from it. Social media was incredibly useful to me; to be honest I was living on the road, and I couldn't have lived without it. Social media allowed me to release blogs and posts, coordinate events, and connect with friends to have amazing adventures.

But it also sucked me in to its infinite scrolling black hole of FOMO inducing detritus. I spent most of my road trip outdoors unplugged and tuned in to nature and the people around me. But when I was indoors, my butt was glued to the couch, and my face was glued to my FB and IG feeds.

This winter was my opportunity to break free. As soon as I settled in to a place of my own for December, I pulled the plug on FB and uninstalled IG from my phone. Initially I considered asking a friend to act as the gatekeeper to my accounts, changing and holding on to the password.

However, the detachment went smoother than I thought. I had zero compulsion to log on to FB. And so the first half of December went very smoothly. The difference was slight but detectable - I felt more present and less compulsive, more in control of my thoughts. It helped that I restarted a self care practice, doing either 30-45 minutes of yoga or 10-15 minutes of meditation everyday.

Come the midway point of December, I found that I needed to send some important messages, so I decided to log on. Fortunately, I felt zero compulsion to check out the news feed. I needed to keep track of the conversations I started, so I continued logging on at least every other day. Again, I was content with the fact that I spent no more than a few minutes during any login scrolling through my feed.

Although in some ways I cheated on my digital detox, I was happy with the fact that I logged on to social media for productive reasons only, with only a tiny amount of wasting time. The digital detox achieved its objectives. It reminded me how good life is without wasting time on social media.

However, already a week into the new year and fresh off the digital detox, I noticed some of my old habits coming back, and how it affected my mental state. Some mornings the first thing I did was log on to FB. I'd even log in when feelings of boredom spontaneously arise. That sets a negative tone, and as a result throughout the day I don't feel quite as present and my brain feels just a bit foggier, like a window with a light coat of grime.

Scientific studies are beginning to corroborate our intuition about this phenomenon - social media is reducing empathy in young people, creating screen addiction, reducing attention span and sleep, and conditioning our brains for instant gratification over working hard to achieve intrinsic rewards... to name just a few things! At family gatherings, I see my younger cousins glued to their screens, no longer interacting with eachother.

I hope to keep the lessons from my digital detox to recalibrate some of my own chronic social media behaviours moving forward. I hope to continue to use social media for the good - for spreading ideas and inspiring actions, for organizing events and staying in touch with friends. And minimize the bad - wasting time on news feeds, getting sucked into other people's lives, and feeling FOMO.

There's no reality like... virtual reality?

If you have a social media addiction, I highly encourage you to structure time off into your life, whether it's one month, or even just one day here and there. However, a longer time period, such as the month that I did, allowed me to go deeper and really notice how much better I felt about everything, especially myself, without it.

Trust me, your life won't crumble without social media. You really won't miss out on much at all - so give it a try!