Social media; what is it? Everyone and their mother has some form of social media, whether that is Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, the list goes on. It hooks you because it is supposed to connect you with new people. You connect with new people, new communities, and communicate with them using messages, viewing their posts, and short videos. These apps are all about getting you to communicate with new people and expand your social circle, yet they seem to have some major side effects you can see in your own lives. I know that for me, my screen time was extremely high as a result of these apps, as I would spend multiple hours every day looking at them and mindlessly scrolling. It affected my schoolwork and my social life, and I finally decided to take action. I deleted the apps for one week and decided to record how my body and my life would change.
Day 1: Anxiety
The first day that I deleted all my social media, meaning Instagram, X, and YouTube, I felt anxious throughout the day. I remember, feeling that I was missing out on something, but I didn’t know what. I felt out of the loop, like my friends were having fun without me, as they still had social media installed on their phones. The reason for my anxiety was because social media is supposed to make you feel connected on paper, introducing you to new people and allowing you to communicate with your friends without being in person. Without that connection I felt like a part of me was missing.
Day 2: Boredom
On the second day of the detox, I woke up with a feeling of having slightly more energy. This was because for the first time in a long time I read before bed rather than scrolling through Instagram and X for hours at a time. I carried this energy through the day, however when I went on my phone at school I got a feeling of boredom; my phone didn’t seem as interesting as it once did now that I wasn’t getting the constant dopamine hits from social media. This boredom made me come to a harsh realization that I filled up so much time watching content on the internet, and now that I couldn’t watch anything I had so much time that was just wasted. I decided that I would live in the moment rather than watch everyone else live on my phone.
Day 3: Making the Change
Today was a Sunday, my day off from doing school work, I had a massive amount of free time that normally I would fill by scrolling through my phone, but I decided today to go on a walk at a park in my old neighborhood with a good friend of mine. Normally I would have the distractions of notifications, but I was able to focus and have a great conversation with her about colleges and plans for the future, I even talked to her about her social media use. She talked about how Instagram is the most mentally draining app she uses, it constantly shows pictures of people who look better than you and makes your self esteem plummet, and when you post something and get positive feedback, you become hooked on the “clout”.
Day 4-7: Almost giving in
From Monday to the end of the week I was extremely sick. I have been a miserable zombie all week with what I believe to be a sinus infection of some sort. When I sat down to work at my house after my day, I felt like I couldn’t focus on my work for more than a few minutes. This is because the short form content like Instagram Reels has videos that are less than a minute, and you scroll through an endless amount of them. This leads to a drop off in attention span. I wanted to do nothing more than get in my bed, turn on my phone, turn off my brain, and waste the night distracting myself from my illness.
It has now been almost a week since I began the detox from social media: I managed to persevere, I did not look at any social media for the time I selected, and I noticed a lot of changes in my life, even from just a couple of weeks going cold turkey. Following this detox from social media, I had more energy throughout the day (except when I was sick) and I had more mental clarity, which helped me significantly with my schoolwork and general moods throughout the week. I didn’t realize until now the massive effects social media had on my attention span or on my ability to think clearly until I removed them from my daily routines for a week, and now I have decided that I’m going to cut out Instagram permanently; it had the biggest effect on my mental health out of all the other apps I have used in the past. It inhibited me from completing work on time and it kept me up late at night the most out of all the other apps I’ve used. It has proven to be more of a distraction, and a burden than a helpful tool for meeting new people.
I would recommend everyone to try this, even if just for a week as I did, to see how much time you have in your day that you could fill up with productive hobbies and to see how your mind is affected, your energy levels. I promise you will notice a difference as I did.
