Intro
Do you find yourself scrolling endlessly on TikTok? Instagram? Youtube Shorts? In today’s day and age, social media dependency and attachment have become normalized. To combat this, it may be worth it to consider taking on a new type of spring cleaning this year and detoxing your mind. If this sounds appealing, keep reading to hear about how you can take a break from social media, my personal experience with a digital detox, and how deleting social media can improve your mental health.
How I Detoxed
For my social media cleanse, I deleted TikTok and Instagram since those are the ones I most often find myself using to distract myself from my responsibilities. The apps you decide to take a break from are completely up to you—if there is another app I did not mention you find yourself doom scrolling on, cut it off! By completely removing the apps from my phone, I made it impossible to feel the temptation to indulge and let myself use them. While my detox only lasted a week, it could be beneficial to do it for two weeks, a month, or even more.
My Experience
One major difference I noticed when I did not have short-form content available on my phone was that I was much better at staying on task when it came to homework, studying, getting chores done, or just taking care of things in my life in general. While I did find myself reaching for my phone to open the apps for the first few days, that habit faded when I got used to not having them. This process was also enlightening to me since I learned that I tend to use social media platforms to distract and entertain myself as a way of procrastinating my work.
While I did not cut off entertainment as a whole, I used this experience to re-introduce myself to various types of long-form content such as shows and longer YouTube videos. The beauty of this type of entertainment is that you can put it on in the background while being productive, whether that be cleaning your room, cooking, or doing homework. On the flip side, I personally have a hard time doing these kinds of things while on short-form content platforms such as TikTok since I often end up using it as a distraction rather than background noise. It’s much harder to multitask when you have to scroll every ten seconds.
As a whole, I felt that I got less FOMO (fear of missing out) in this detox than I had when I did similar detoxes in past years. Whether this is because of an increase in maturity or some other reason, I didn’t have too hard of a time accepting that doom scrolling was not an option and simply getting to my homework. Overall, it was a refreshing experience and while I would not like to permanently rid myself of the apps because of the creative inspiration I get from them, it felt good to take a break.
Reflection
The main takeaway from my experience is that a social media detox is a unique way to “spring clean” yourself when you are feeling overwhelmed or frustrated with a lack of productivity. By deleting social media, you can work on fixing your attention span, find healthier ways to fill your time and force yourself to do those assignments you’ve been putting off. Social media is not necessarily inherently evil, but it can be heavily toxic at times, and taking a step away from that environment can be highly beneficial for your mental health.
As a society, it is important that we work towards ensuring the future generations of our world maintain their attention spans and continue to be present in the moment when they are out and about. While a detox from social media does not fix these problems immediately, it can be enlightening and reveal to an individual their reliance on short-form content. If you are feeling like social media has become an unhealthy environment for you, join me in spring cleaning your brain and taking a break!
0
0
Average Rating