The Social Media Ban

So I know I’m not the only one. But I LIVE on social media. I know most people my age do but it was an instinct that every morning when I woke up, when I got home from school, and any spare second I had would be spent checking my snapchat to see if I had any from my friends, watching everyone’s stories and scrolling through twitter. It was a problem.

I decided to do something about it. I challenged myself to see if I could actually survive two days without going on social media. Apart from sending streaks obviously because I am noooot losing those. My longest is 185 if you were wondering cause I am not one of those people who has a year. Sadly. Yet.

You see what I mean? Things like streaks and constantly updating people about what you are doing has become such a regular everyday occurrence. And I won’t be an adult and go ‘in my day’ cause this is my day and I love it. I wanted to see if I COULD do it, I felt like it would be good to refresh myself and I also thought it would be really interesting since the stimulus for my drama exam is social media.

I had got to the point I was so worried I wasn’t sending enough snapchats to my friends, or enough tweets, that I was doing it for the sake of it. WHAT IS THE POINT. They don’t want to see my face saying I’m bored or there is no food in my house. From Tuesday morning until Thursday morning I went on Snapchat just to send streaks and didn’t go on Twitter, Instagram or Bloglovin. Here are the thoughts I had:

DAY 1:
I wanted to talk to my friends. I missed them and I felt like I should be in constant contact with them and it was weird and just wrong. I kept accidentally clicking on the apps just out of routine and I hated having to just slide that notification away. ‘I have a MESSAGE my friend wants to talk to me, what if something has happened? What if someone has put something hilarious on their story?’ It’s THAT. The fear of missing out (well FOMO is an actual thing now). The fear that everything is so quick and is always changing so you need to be checking at all times. Lesson: you don’t. Nothing that interesting happened while I was off social media and I saw my friends for most of the day at school anyway.

This is very bad but I hadn’t had a day without my phone or iPad for YEARS. I was so bored and I had so much time to think. To the point where I was overthinking everything. I was productive at times but I also spent a lot of time with my head nestled in my duvet or staring into space. It’s such a weird feeling when something you’re so used to relying on for your main entertainment and conversation is taken away from you. The thing that I found most intriguing was that I was actually LOOKING FORWARD to leaving the house and going to help with a work event cause normally I dread it but I wanted to leave the house. That sums up my boredom.

DAY 2:
The morning OMG. I was up quite late singing and jumping on my bed and listening to Stormzy (lol me and my bro have such fun) but I got to sleep so much quicker. It was amazing cause I was nowhere near as tired and normally I have so many thoughts going round my head and end up going on my phone until way too late but my head hit the pillow and that was it. I was asleep.

On this day the fact my phone had no purpose motivated me so much to work and I got to do things that normally come second to technology like singing. Spent a good hour and a half doing karaoke and learnt that I just can’t sing verses, only choruses. I started trying to check for messages again and got very excited for the next day. I don’t know if this makes sense but it wasn’t even the going on my phone I was excited for but the freedom to DECIDE if I wanted to go on it or not. One of my favourite things about having 48 hours without social media was the fact that there was nothing keeping me at home. I didn’t feel like oh I’ll stay home and spend the whole evening waiting for my mates to snap me or watching YouTube, there was no reason. So I made plans and went to my school’s creative arts evening where everyone was so talented (why I was then doing karaoke).

I’m not going to lie though. I did kind of fail. Because I had to meet my friend so I had to message her on Snapchat to find out what time and where. I’m sorry. It didn’t make too much difference and I still feel like I’ve actually learnt a lot. There were downsides to not going on social media but it was so refreshing and made me love it again. I could do a whole post about taking stuff for granted cause MY GOD I do it so much.

I really think everyone should try to do 48 hours without social media and I will definitely be doing it again, maybe even longer, if I’m feeling stressed or just like I need a break.

Ellie xo