120 Days Without Social Media…Surprisingly, Nothing Has Changed Without It.
By: Greg Rasmuson
Tags: Self-awareness, Mental Health, Social Media, Mind, Society

This is socializing in 2020

A little more than 4 months ago I began the process of deleting all my social media accounts. At the time, I felt that my compulsion to check social media was effecting my relationship with my wife, and infant daughter. I found myself messing with my phone during quiet times with the baby that will certainly not last forever. Yet, there I was, watching Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Instagram story instead of being present and enjoying these truly fleeting moments. That’s just one example of how I could not control my consumption of digital media, and trust me, it’s far from the only example I could think of. So with that in mind, I began the process of detoxing from social media.

This obviously isn’t an apples to apples comparison, but the process felt to me a lot like an addict who had to wean themselves off of opioids. I slowly lowered the dose of social media until finally I had almost no digital footprint left.

First, I deleted every social media app off of my phone. Like any addict, I found work arounds to get my fix. I was constantly visiting my Instagram account from Chrome’s web browser on my phone or laptop, and despite an extremely inferior experience to the app, it still gave me the brain numbing distraction I was seeking. Over the years, I had built a very small “following” of mainly strangers that I, at best, barely knew. Yet the account was still hard for me to delete. Instagram was my main social media fix. It’s where I would go for memes, updates on my friends’ lives, excitement from likes and stories I posted; but mainly, it served as a distraction from my real life to a life that I had so perfectly curated. However, after about a month of deleting and reactivating my IG account, I finally managed to delete my beloved Instagram account for good.

After IG was gone, I quickly replaced that fix with Facebook. I caught myself going down rabbit holes looking at high school people’s profiles who I haven’t spoken to in real life in about 15 years. It was like going to my high school reunion only better, because I could judge them without actually having to talk to them. Sounds like the behavior of a healthy person, right? But, eventually, I ran out of rabbit holes, and with that, I deactivated my Facebook account.

Next, was Twitter. This was the easiest to delete. Twitter is a dumpster fire. Enough said.

Me. Stressed and anxious, without any social media to distract my thoughts.

So there I was. No more active social accounts. I felt the anxiety build, and only told a few of my closest friends that I had deleted social media. I didn’t want to the person who announces their departure from social media… like any of their followers actually give a shit (insert eye roll emoji). However, Checking my social media feeds had become so ingrained in my routine that whenever I opened my phone I would click on the Chrome web browser and start typing in the URL for IG or Facebook out of pure muscle memory before I would recall that I deleted everything. I needed to start retraining my mind, and this would only come with time.

And now that time has added up to just over 120 days and I’ll be honest, not much has changed. I still feel my anxiety and sadness build and my mind start to wander and get distracted when I feel bored or have some rote task to accomplish. But now, I am forced to sit with that anxiety, sadness, or boredom. Face it head on. Processing why I am feeling anxious or sad in certain moments is really hard, and with the amount of caffeine I consume on a daily basis it’s often really hard for me to slow my mind down in general. But now, I don’t have the crutch that allows the cycle to perpetuate. Instead, when I start to feel overwhelmed, or feel my mind start to spiral, I remind myself to put my feet back on the ground. I look around and name some things in the room, take some deep breaths, or go do a Headspace guided meditation. (No big deal, but I am currently on a 160 day Headspace meditation streak, so I’m pretty much the Dali Lama…right?)

So no, nothing has really changed; and no, I haven’t had some sort of life altering realization. But, I now am starting to practice to sit and be present, and deal with the boredom and insecurity that lead me to jump to social media in the first place. This skill couldn’t be perfected in 4 short months, or even a year’s time. It’s going to take me my entire lifetime of work to make it happen, but I had to start somewhere.

Now, please excuse me while I go share this article on my social media feeds.

If you recently deleted your social media, or are thinking about it, drop me a line in the comment section or email!

Would love to hear other people’s thoughts and experiences!

Cheers!