Deactivate to Recharge: My Journey Into (Temporary) Social Media-Free Living

apple-cell-phone-cellphone-607812.jpg

I recently stumbled upon an article in the Huffington Post about how Facebook is keeping us from being happy, and another article from Real Simple saying that giving up Facebook could make you happier. The unhappiness from using Facebook is argued to stem from comparisons – as stated in Real Simple,  “If we’re comparing ourselves to our friends’ ‘highlight reels,’ this may lead us to think their lives are better than they actually are and conversely, make us feel worse about our own lives.” Social comparisons on Facebook et al. are making us unhappy.

Time for an experiment. Only one way to find out if this is true – deactivate Facebook and other social media outlets in which I participate.

We all know that we’re plugged in too much. This is not revolutionary thinking.

I previously wrote about Social Media and External Validation, where I argued that we don’t ‘need’ to share our milestones to feel validated, and to take time to be mindful about posting your own milestone simply for the responses, knowing that even if nobody knew you landed a new job or got engaged, that this milestone would still be just as significant. The argument in that blog post aligns with the notion that social media outlets can make us unhappy, since many people only share the ‘good’ in order to elicit positive feedback, and to create an identity online that may be exaggerated and comparatively ‘better’ than ours. It’s the “-er” effect – we see others has happier, thinner, wealthier…fill in the ‘-er’ that you feel inadequate about and Facebook will inevitably highlight your insecurities but showing you someone who seems to be living better than you.

Real talk:

I pride myself as someone who isn’t bogged down by societies’ notions of stage of life milestones I ‘should’ be achieving; I never have listed my relationship status on Facebook and intentionally keep those details fairly private – and yet, I live in this social media-driven world, and as an almost 29 year old unmarried woman in a committed 3+ year relationship, the social pressures still have a way of creeping up and lurking in my psyche, poking away in my already anxiety-filled head.

Being asked ‘when are you going to get married?’ is about as annoying and invasive as ‘when is your next pap smear?’ and yet I’ve been asked it countless times, even by people who haven’t met my partner. It should be nobody’s business but our own, BUT with social media, engagements and weddings and babies and birthdays and promotions and divorces and sickness and health somehow have become everyone’s business. Perhaps this is why people think it’s OK to ask these personal questions, because others around us are sharing them quite openly on social media. While we live in a time where millennials are waiting longer to get married and have kids, the job market is difficult to maneuver, and renting trumps buying, social media still highlights milestones, and if we participate in it, it can force us to look in the mirror and wonder, am I ‘where I’m supposed to be?’

I personally have a lot of mixed emotions about engagements, weddings, and traditional notions of marriage (don’t get my started on archaic tradition of engagement rings…) and don’t think I necessarily fit into the social constructed ‘boxes’ that are stage-of-life milestones. But, as confident in my anti-traditional mentality as I sometimes feel, seeing scattered all over my news-feed words and images of my generation keeping up with the traditions can’t go ignored, even by me.

Should I be wanting those things more than I do?

Will being off of social media decrease this lingering anxiety? Will it, in fact, make me happier?

The experiment:

I had already planned to give my blog a face lift,  so it would be under construction for a few weeks and I would have no need to share my posts on social media. It felt like an opportune time to experiment with this theory and temporarily deactivate my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, and delete those apps, plus Snapchat.

Full disclosure, (and maybe this is cheating), but I did keep Pinterest because it is helpful for me in building my blog, is a good platform for ‘test’ posts as I tinker away at the design, and has great tutorials on being more ‘Pinterest friendly,’ which is a primary goal for me shutting A Subtle Magnetism down for a bit.

On a Friday morning, I cut all ties and already felt a little liberated and excited at the notion of not worrying about checking those outlets.

What would occur during my weeks off of social media? Would I have FOMO? Without social media, is ignorance bliss?

During that first weekend there were definitely times where I would instinctively grab my phone, swipe through my apps, and remember that I really didn’t have anything to browse. ‘Oh well’ was the extent of my reaction.

On Saturday I went to yoga, went to the grocery store, donated 5 bags of clothes(!), and went to a brewery for lunch where I had my phone buried in my purse the whole time. Long enough to have 31 new text messages! (thanks high school group text friends ).

On Sunday I met up with friends where we conducted our own walking tour to an art museum on campus, followed by Mediterranean lunch and a walk around the arboretum, I wasn’t burdened by the need to post a ‘great pic’ to Instagram and show people how I spent my Sunday. If someone wants to know how I spent my Sunday, they can just ask me, right?

(Turns out, not that many people asked me. It would be interesting to investigate how we communicate caring or interest towards others, and how social media impacts those communication patterns.)

I stayed off of social media for 3 weeks, until my blog was revamped and ready to activate again.

What I learned:

First, I learned a purely logistical lesson, which is that Facebook has a really clever way of automatically reactivating your account. You know how certain apps or programs sync directly with your Facebook, or you have the option to log in using Facebook? I usually opt for this, since it’s easier than thinking up a username and password or testing whether or not I have one. What this means, however, is that when you deactivate your Facebook, and decide to sign into something like Spotify, you’re automatically reactivated! I didn’t even go to the Facebook page to do this, but I sure enough I got an email saying, “Welcome back to Facebook!” I had to change my Spotify app to log me in with my Spotifyusername and password, as opposed to my Facebook username and password. This must have happened 3 times with different apps in the first few days after deactivating! Very tricky Mark Z…very tricky.

OK, on to the more important discoveries.

For the most part, I didn’t miss social media. My days were unaffected by not keeping up with social media. And honestly, I don’t think social media missed me. There were very few moments when I thought to myself, “Oh jeez I wish I had social media available so I can share this moment with the world because they REALLY need to know!” My life isn’t full of milestones or drama or brag-able moments, and as I get older I find more comfort in this notion.

It helped me detach from my phone. I was more present in my ‘boredom’. I learned that it’s perfectly OK to be uncomfortable and bored and know that it will pass with or without a mini feed through which I can mindlessly scroll. My bf calls it ‘opening and closing the fridge’ – even though you already know what’s in there you still check it over and over – the same goes for social media. In our lightning speed world, we’ve attached a negative connotation to boredom, which is unfortunate. With boredom comes daydreaming, creativity, and dare I say the buzzword of 2015…mindfulness.

Takeaway:

Am I on my high horse telling everyone to get off social media in order to live a more rich and fulfilling life? I don’t think so, because I find in general it’s a fantastic tool, and for the purpose of my blog, essential for reaching my audience. The answer is not to disconnect completely, but to be more mindful about when and how you use technology, social media, your smart phone, and decided when to put it away in exchange for greater things, like having a conversation, living in the moment of boredom, and limit your exposure to bombardments of ‘important’ milestones and just be quiet. Everyone’s Spirit benefits from being exposed to nature and natural organisms because they raise our vibration, and I’m fairly certain the opposite is true for social media – hence the unhappiness and anxiety it induces.

I was off of social media for a total of 3 weeks. Not very long. Yet when I reemerged, I decided to ease my way back into it. I don’t have Facebook on my phone, but loaded Instagram back on it. Still don’t have Snapchat. Another way that I eased back into social media was tailoring my exposure. I went through my Instagram ‘following’ list and cut it in half. No more celebrities, and only friends that I truly care about seeing. Minimizing the list of who I follow is helpful in combating the ‘mindless scroll’ – there’s just not a lot of new stuff on there.

Whenever I do log onto Facebook on my computer, I unfollow several people each time I scroll through. They remain my friend, but I filter out many of the posts and people I no longer want to see. Then the subsequent times I log on there is less ‘noise’ on my news feed and posts that I find more meaningful. I have a feeling with the 2016 election I will be doubling down on this effort.

Small steps like this are helping me detach from social media more, while still giving me access to it for blogging purposes, and keeping up with friends near and far. I would encourage anyone to think about what a month, week, or even a day OFF of social media will do for you. For your spirit, for your creativity, for your ability to daydream.