It was Sunday 10th August at 23:29, we’d finally turned out the lights ready to sleep but I just had to have one last check on Facebook (incase one of my friends had messaged me of course). I was then ready to finally put my device down for the night but not before sending one last Tweet and then having a quick final swoop through Instagram. Okay I was done… Oh wait, it dawned on me that I hadn’t checked my Tumblr in ages (yes I even have a Tumblr account). So after one last brows through my Tumblr feed, I was ready, ready to switch off and start my week long social media free detox.
I’ll admit it, I am a social media addict. This will come as no surprise to most people, especially my boyfriend who bares the biggest brunt to this self confessed addiction. Other than the times when I go on holiday, there’s rarely a day that goes by that I don’t interact, browse or post something out on social media of some form. So I decided to do a little self experiment and give myself a seven day ban from all forms of social media and remove all the apps from my iPad and phone.
I didn’t really give myself the ban for any particular reason other than to show myself that I could and that my life wasn’t so consumed by social networking that I wouldn’t be able to cope. In the end it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact strangely enough, it actually felt like a relief. In the spaces I’d usually spend killing time on social media, I read, I wrote, I talked, all without the distraction of the electronic devices that usually rule my life. It was strange, after a week away I actually felt nervous when I was re-downloading my apps from the cloud. ‘Should I do it?’ I thought to myself and to be honest I probably would have stayed away longer if it wasn’t for my blogging and networking that I do for work.
Now it’s all back, I’m reconnected, everything is the same and nothing changed in my online world during my week offline. I’m not saying that a week is an extraordinarily long time, however, a lot can happen in such a short period. If we can put down our devices and spend more minutes, hours, days, looking around and experience life a little less distracted we might be able to live it to a greater potential.
Remember you control your social media, don’t let it control you.
Enjoy your week,
Samio x
