I’m 6 days into one of the best decisions I’ve ever made: quitting social media. I wasn’t a huge user compared to many, but still found myself spending faaaar too much time looking at Instagram and Facebook, and, moreover, even when I wasn’t looking at those sites I felt like a piece of my mind was still ‘holding space’ for me over there, like a car stuck in traffic, polluting my thoughts and draining my mental fuel as it idled.
It was an ever-present but just under the radar of consciousness feeling much like the paranoia of wondering if you’ve forgotten to lock the door to your house as your plane glides along the runway. A micro panic attack. That’s the feeling I had waves of all day when I was using social media but not actively on it. The only thing to make it go away was logging in and ‘checking’. (What are we checking?! That the internet is still there?)
A few years ago I took a long (multi-month) break from Facebook, the only platform I was really using at the time, and I remember it feeling good. Very good. Time slowed down and I had room to think. Last week, I found some notes I’d made about the experience, and it was suddenly apparent that my current overwhelm, stress, and general feelings of “I’m sure I’ve forgotten-something” and “I’m-behind-schedule!” could probably be reduced, if not completely eliminated, by another social media break. This time, Facebook had been joined by Instagram as co-conspirator in the sucking of my time/soul/sanity.
So, some time in the middle of the night last Wednesday morning, woken by what was probably just another low-level anxiety attack due to that ever-present feeling of having forgotten to finish something important, I silently committed myself to a “break” from social media, and deleted the apps from my phone. How long a break? I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. The act of deleting felt empowering but was instantly followed by the reassurance that I could easily reinstall them in the morning. I went back to sleep.
When I woke up, I leaned over to grab my blankie iPhone, and soon remembered my 3am act of spontaneous rebellion. I left the phone charging and headed to the kitchen, trying to recall what exactly had triggered my impromptu commitment to taking a social media break.
As I made coffee and fed the dogs, I found myself being fully energetically present with my sweet animal friends for probably the first time in forever on a week day morning. They returned my extended affection happily, but with looks of confusion. “Mama, where’s your phone?!” I felt them saying. A wave of guilt washed over me, knowing that although I am most definitely in the top 10% of animal-parents in terms of the amount of love and quality of care I give my babies, I was still susceptible to the modern day scourge of delaying the gift of my full attention in favor of whatever urgent feeling bullshit was on my phone at the time. Ironically, sometimes because I was catching up on the day’s perfectly choreographed adventures of an Instagram dog I followed, a cute rescue pup I’d never met and never would, while my own rescue pups patiently awaited my gaze.
By Wednesday evening, only a few hours into The Experiment, I felt more present in the activities of life than I have in a long time. I barely picked up my phone and didn’t even take any photos (which was something I usually do a lot of).
By the following morning I was convinced I might stay off for good. I found myself moving in a slow and centered manner as if I had just taken a yoga class or given/received reiki. I poured a glass of kombucha, watching it fizz and slosh with a level of sensory satisfaction I had forgotten was available in such mundane moments. Huh. “I guess this is what the whole ‘mindfulness’ thing is about…” I allowed the thought to form and land and file itself away magically like the tidying up scene in Mary Poppins. Normally, a thought like this would have me reaching for my phone to google something like “how mindfulness works” or “kombucha ASMR”. (Did I mention I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge? 😂 )
The next day, inspired by my rave reviews of life unplugged from the Zuck machine, my husband joined me on this adventure, and a close friend/colleague of mine followed. Both have experienced similarly huge benefits.
Our house now has a sense of calm that resonates on a cellular level, almost like we got solar panels installed, or are in the blissful stillness of a power cut.
I have the mental bandwidth to think and reflect without rushing either process, and I’ve lost that ever-present anxious feeling of always somehow having more to do… The “infinite scroll” feature of most (all?) social platforms is probably the worst feature for multi-passionate ADHD folks like me. As an introvert who posted online maybe once a month in recent years, I can’t say I was hooked on ‘likes’ the way I know some people have experienced, but social media still got its claws into me via the infinite scroll, the all you can eat buffet of garbage that you knew contained the occasional life-affirming or hilarious gem. The thrill of panning for gold in a cesspool.
Anyway, I’m on day 6 now and by day 3 or 4 I was 99% sure I wasn’t going back again. I still get FB messages so I have the ‘messenger’ app. Even using that makes my stomach lurch now, as my poor traumatized nervous system braces itself for what it probably still expects will be another 30-60 min session of rollercoaster emotions that leave my brain with a million open browser tabs and unfinished thoughts.
The days feel longer, I haven’t missed anything important, and I’ve made mental and energetic space to restart writing and playing music, something I’d back-burnered under the feeling of being too busy/stressed. The moments between activities and the real, fully present conversations, are peaceful and spacious. My thoughts, ideas and plans (of which I always have many) now have room to roam around, stretch their legs, and think about what they want to be when they grow up.
All in all, life feels pretty good out here in the real world. I highly recommend at least a 3-day break to see how it makes you feel. If nothing else, it will make for a good post when (if) you decide to log back in.
