For Lent this year, I gave up excessive social media and internet time. In all honesty, I think I had been looking for a bit of an online detox, and since Lent is generally encouraged to be a season of self-reflection and sacrifice, the added layer of piety made it even more appealing. Besides, when you tell people you’re going to quit social media, they look at you like you’re embarking on something really, really cool. (So much for piety.)
Since I work largely online, I knew that a complete avoidance of social media would downright impossible, if not costly. That said, hard and fast rules could definitely be put into place; emails could be checked throughout the day at four designated hours, with similar time restrictions set up for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where I could tag, promote, and share for clients— and then log the heck off. The real challenge would be in putting down my phone, working in analog mode as much as possible, and fighting the urge to scroll which, to be honest, I really shouldn’t have been doing while attempting maximum work flow in the first place. Easy, right?
A few weeks in, I’m a half-productive, half-twitching mess. It’s encouraging.
My “quit social media” results so far:
Bad habits are ridiculously hard to break. Within the first hour of the first day, I had grabbed my phantom phone roughly thirty times. Wondering how many times in that hour I had needed to make a phone call or answer a text? Exactly zero.
Cheating happens. A lot. The first day or two I was on a serious mission to avoid touching the phone at all costs, like maybe the hand of God was going to reach down and smack it away from me. A few days in, however, I’d look down in surprise to find my phone in hand, with my thumb idly swiping at nothing. I’m not proud of this.
I had a sleeping skeleton on me and didn’t post to Instagram so DOES IT EVEN COUNT.
Focus is a[n atrophied] muscle. I can’t be the only one who checks the time on her phone, gets sucked into a hilarious, timely, and relevant story shared online by a childhood friend, puts down the phone, and immediately realizes that she still doesn’t know what time it is. As soon as I managed to look at my phone and retain the time, I celebrated with some well-deserved praise (and not even a single GIF, even though I knew the absolute perfect one). How am I supposed to quit social media when dancing GIFs exist.
The truth hurts. Barring all of those times I needed to Google a recipe or directions or how to convert European shoe sizes for American children, the majority of the time I had reached for my phone in the past I had just been bored. This one was hard to take. After all, isn’t the battle cry of the overworked parent “I wish I had time to be bored?” Apparently I had the time all along, but was squandering it by challenging a stranger to a game consisting of nouns or dots. So I started practicing boredom or a good ol’ fashioned daydream for those three minutes in the checkout line instead. Update: I’m still terrible at it.
The past was pretty great. I pondered what my ideal social media life would look like and, apparently, it looks like the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Back then, I had to return to my dorm room’s desktop computer to check my AIM messages and read my door’s white board to see if anyone had written about a missed call on the 4-digit hall phone line. Sure, it was it a miracle if any of us ever showed up to the same place, but that sort of limited connection was a type of freedom I’m now nostalgic for.
My screens caused tension as soon as I picked them back up. The longer I could endure phone-free stretches, the easier I could tell what my brain looked like “on phone.” Now, I’m not saying that I became a zen yogini when I managed a good hour away from my device, but as soon as I checked into social media on my allotted time table, I would feel my body ramp up to fight or flight. Whether that was due to the stimuli of everyone’s everything or just my perceived need to catch up, that acknowledged change made it easier and easier to finish up my work and log off again. (Unless, of course, someone had posted a photo of their new baby. I’m not a machine.)
It’s hard to reflect on why you embrace bad habits while you’re still doing them. There’s the good in social media, of course, with the far-flung community and ease of which we can all send cat videos to one another, but it wasn’t until I started avoiding certain sites that I found my reactions to re-entry getting a little, well, biblical. At least for me, certain outlets inspired an obvious wrath (Twitter), pride (Facebook), and sloth (Reddit), or at least a sloth-like scroll coma. Some managed to combine envy and gluttony (Instagram, what with those sweet brunch pix), but I also realized that perhaps an eighth suggestion for deadly sins was inspired by social media, stronger than even lust or greed: FOMO.
I was now on time. Roughly 90% of the mornings where I had been irritated with my children for their sluggishness had most likely been exacerbated by my own counter-leaning, phone-scrolling ways. That one stung.
My kids and I made eye contact. Related: My kids stopped needing to ask if I could look at them. (Aren’t kids obnoxious when they’re onto something?) When I was with my children, I was fully with them which, in turn, helped them chill out during meals and before bed. You know those things you say out loud and realize how nuts it is that you even need to vocalize them? Oof.
Although I’m alternately encouraged and dismayed by my semi-detox results, I have decently high hopes that I can occasionally quit social media long after Lent ends— and long before my brain gives up on me entirely.
Keep you posted.
(In May.)
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