30 Days Social Media Detox and I Became More “Alive”.

What have I felt and learned about living without social media for a month?

Hello, anyone who reads my story. I hope you’re doing well, especially under conditions like this which in 2021 we are still haunted by Coronavirus disease. This is the first time I’ve written my story on the platform that everyone can access and read anytime and anywhere. The first topic I’m going to write about is that I challenged myself to do social media detox for 30 days. What did I do then? What benefits did I get? Is it useful for everyone’s life? Is it hard? I’ll answer them all below.

Less scrolling, more living. — @crewandco

The above quote is simple, but it proves it. Before I go to the main theme of this story, I would like to first tell you what social media detox is, because there are still many people who do not know what the meaning of detox is, which is associated with the social media sentences, but also many people know and already create their own experiences, which actually this challenge was discussed about 2–3 years ago.

Well, social media detox is someone who does not want social networking service applications for a certain period of time depending on the person who aims to more focus on activities in real life. In this case, I use almost everything and am active users in it are Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

I have challenged myself to do so because I have realized that I am being treated all the time, constantly staring, scrolling down, scrolling up, swiping right and swiping left on social media applications. I feel like there’s something left behind and know nothing about everything if I do not open it in a day or even a few hours. Recently, many people speak of a word known as FOMO syndrome (Fear of Missing Out). It seems to be addictive. I have a curiosity about what all my friends, celebrities, even strangers where are they? What did they do? What’s new today?.

This happens to many people who take for granted what they really do on social media. They just think they open it for five minutes, but do they think how often these five minutes are a day?.

However, this challenge is not suitable for people working with social media who can provide money for their lives and also need useful information. But since I have a lot to do without the use of social media, I am thrilled to do it.

On March 14, 2021, I began to challenge myself to uninstall these applications. No matter how hard I still do. It was hard at first. I felt uncomfortable. I was thinking about what was going on back then. I got confused about what to do when I was alone or with friends, what I would talk about if I didn’t know anything. But in the end, everything is fleeting and I already seem to get used to it without social media.

Prior to this challenge, I had a goal that I had to do if I didn’t use social media to complete my thesis. I was the one who poked about something because my eyes were shifting to scroll through Social Media so like it or not, there were things that I had to sacrifice. I didn’t use social media and I kept my phone around me when I was working on it.

It turned out that without realizing it, there were many benefits that I got in only a month:

1. Good Quality of Sleep
   I was very busy opening and scrolling on social media before going to bed and woke up. These must be made every night and every morning. That’s what makes my sleep worse. As we know, it’s like there’s magic in it that does not want me to stop opening it. I went to bed between 2: 00 to 3: At 00 a.m., I had nothing more important to do than open social networks and then fell asleep next to my phone, which was on. The WHO (World Health Organization) states relative to the use of wireless phones that there is an electromagnetic field of radiofrequency as possibly carcinogenic to humans that can increase the risk of brain cancer. Similarly, the first thing I did was open my phone, which I should have been able to start by praying, stretching, drinking water, or cleaning up my bed. Instead, I started living in the morning and looking at what was trending today and the lives of other people on social media.
2. Focus More on Doing Something It happened when I was at work or did my college duties, I didn’t focus on these things because I was often distracted to open social media and forget to continue what I was supposed to do in the real life. In addition, the notifications that suddenly appeared on my phone that made me curious to open it, and then happened that I would be done on something procrastinated that I had done within an hour instead of hours. When I deleted these applications, I was more focused on something I was working on because there was nothing distracting me for anything else.
3. More Care on The People Around The moment I didn’t bow my head to look at my phone for minutes or even hours, I could see people around me. Being able to “see” means, I was able to pay attention to what the people around were doing and I was be able to understand what the people were talking about, so that the interlocutor also felt respected because my eyes were focused on what was said. The time spent has become of quality when with other people.
4. Do Something Useful When I no longer used social media for a while, at first I got confused about: “What should I do? What can I do?” In fact, there are so many things I can do every day. About 10 years ago, when the Internet was, people used to know a little bit the internet. Now the Internet is in almost everyone’s grasp through the media of mobile phones. I could have done something useful. I could read books, write a diary, learn how to cook, write my thesis, enjoy my favorite music, watch self-improvement videos on YouTube, watch movies or series on Netflix, clean my home and so on.
5. Recognize Yourself Knowing each other is very difficult. Including me, who don’t quite know me yet, but I’m still learning. Because I didn’t use social media at the time, I got to know myself better as what I need and what I wanted. Once you open social media, one of them is like Instagram. All I see from there is the lives of perfect people. The physical body that others want to have. People who get something easy. The happiness they have in each of their posts. Sounds like jealous and insecure about other people’s lives. I also have to follow what others do on social media. Why am I worried about likes, comments and views, keep my mind negative, think of something that’s not necessarily true, as if I had few or none at all, I thought: “Is this photo bad? Why only this much? What’s wrong with me?” etc. Besides, I’m a thinker, who always thinks about everything. Even if after thinking logically when I do not use Instagram, these things are not a big problem and have no impact on my life. Now I’m used to not caring about things like that. The most important thing is that I don’t hurt others because my goal is that I can share the precious moments of my life and to look back on them after many years.

The many benefits above, the goal I wanted at first turned out to be more than I got beyond my expectations, there are:

1. Finished My Thesis
   Yeah, I actually finished my undergraduate thesis for my bachelor’s degree in a little over a month. My mind focused only on my main goal, so I don’t have time to date my friends and even meet my boyfriend, as we also have our own business yet, he still fully supports me by helping the difficulties I faced during I did. My mother, too, who diligently prepared some food at my study table.
2. I Have A New Project
   A project I never thought about, suddenly one of my high school friends asked me to do a podcast on Spotify. It has made me feel productive when I no longer use social media, so there are positive activities I can do.
3. I Have A Quality Time With The People I Love
   I really felt closer to my friends when applications are temporarily missing. I liked to see and be able to feel the expressions on other people’s faces when they spoke or expressed their emotions, the words coming out of their mouths were as pure as, that I was having a quality conversation with anyone.
4. Complete Reading of A Book
   I’m not the type of person who reads books quickly, I better understand what’s in it and it can take months because still, I read more often on social media, so when it was not active, I went back to what physical book I could spend in a month.
5. Finished Writing This Story
   I can’t say much about this, because my mind and fingers came until I finally finished it.

After 30 days, I finally spent everything with satisfactory results without any burden and regret. It’s very useful to do at least once a year. We don’t know anything that’s not important to our lives and also this is very good for mental health, which has been researched by many experts.

Do I want to continue to use social media applications? The answer is yes. But I won’t be as frequent as I was before. I just want to post valuable moments in my life or maybe something useful for someone else. Also, I will turn off Social Media notifications so that I am not distracted when I work on something in real life, so I can still do my activities right.

I really hope that this story will be very useful to you and that you have the courage to prove it. It does not need to be in a month, but there is time for you to try even if it is only in one day.

Thanks for reading! ❤

Bonus, a picture of me finally completing my undergraduate thesis 😉