Today I embark on a year without social media and here’s why: Half an hour ago I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and I came across a video about the Millennial Generation and how we have been brought up to be impatient, Lazy and Anti Social. It was an exceedingly interesting video.
I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to be impatient, lazy or anti-social. While I’m sure there are many exceptions to this, I thought about it and I most definitely am impatient, lazy and anti social. My parents always used to say that I was lazy, but I have never been seen as anti-social or impatient, quite the opposite actually. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about all the ways you can be impatient. I am not impatient with certain things such as children and animals, but I am impatient with my own life. I’m impatient in my career, my love life and my own stubborn nature.
When it comes to laziness, I can be very productive, driven and focused and when I am amazing things can happen. The problem is I get impatient with the slow results and resort back to my laziness. Especially with things such as my career as an Actress and sustaining a healthy lifestyle.
Anti Social is far from what I would call myself, I have always been a very social person, and to a certain degree that’s still true. I believe there are a few factors that have prevented my social life from being as booming as it once was, the first one being social media and how my friends and I believe we can maintain friendships through Instagram or Facebook. We meet up less than once a month and spend 50% of our time together on our phones talking to others that are not with us, posting videos/photos to social media showing that we have friends or looking at what strangers are doing with their days. Even when I meet with friends the conversation isn’t as meaningful as it once was as we are being updated almost daily on each other’s lives through social media, preventing us from having a deep conversation and delving into the parts of our lives that are harder to talk about online, the imperfect things.
When I was a teenager we had MSN and Bebo, that was the beginning of social media for me and many others. The difference was, you could only go on it once/twice a day as there was only one family computer and you had to share it with siblings and other family members. So instead of our social lives thriving online, my friends and I would meet up and connect in real life at least once a week when not at school. Admittedly it was easier as a teenager as you had little other responsibilities, but I still don’t feel that should be an excuse. We spent an average of 2 hours a day on social media, that’s 14 hours a week. If we all could take 2-3 of those hours and put it into meeting with friends than we would all be much more connected and much less ant-social.
I feel as though I’m missing out on how much I can really get from my life. I can sometimes get myself down after looking at social media due to being jealous of other people’s online lives, especially when I’m not having the best day or week. Although I’m aware that an ‘online’ life is all that it is, it can still be hard to not allow myself to get held up on the ‘grass is greener’ effect. I can sometimes feel my self esteem sinking lower, feeling like I’m not doing as good of a job as everyone else in life. Even though I’ve done lots of amazing things.
Then you have the opposite effect on social media as being imperfect now seems to be a trend, but a lot of those people even seem weirdly perfect and then you wonder why you can’t be as bold and as perfectly imperfect as them… contradictions galore!
Things I’d like to gain from this:
* Being Present: I want to be fully present in my everyday life, I want to capture more memories simply by living my life. I don’t want to have to worry about taking pictures, boomerangs or videos so people can see what I’m doing. I just want to experience it and thoroughly enjoy it.
* Deep Relationships: I want to build whole, deep relationships with new and old friends. I want to deepen my relationships with my loved ones, enjoying my family, boyfriend and my dog without looking at my phone.
* Read More: I want to read more books for fun and to continue learning new things.
* Stop Comparing: I want to exercise without tracking how far I ran, how much stronger or faster others are than me or how much better I was a month ago. I want to eat intuitively, without counting calories and tracking my weight and without seeing how great a stranger is doing with their weight loss journey.
* Make better use of my time: I want to buy an alarm clock and not take my phone to bed with me, I want to use my time wisely. I want to cook myself dinner and enjoy every bite without watching a video about someone else living their life. I want to leave my phone at home and be in the moment as much as I can.
I want to do all of these things and I’m hoping this challenge will enhance my experiences and enable me to break my addiction to my phone and to social media.
Social Media Detox 