My Social Media Break

For the month of June I decided to take a 30 day social media break. My goal was to see how much of a addictive habit social media was in my life and to find mg creativity again.

I’ve mentioned time and time again about my struggles to write after facing burn out. I have three books that are in various stages of being finished. One thing I know for sure is that when I take time off social media I usually have some really good ideas. The urge to write and read come back to me so that’s what I expected from this social media break.

So far I’ve gotten so much more than that. I got my time back, I’ve been able to get so much more done when I don’t spend hours scrolling through tiktok. I’m able to clearly think about myself, my own life and what I want to do with it. Without the influence of social media I feel like I can be authentic in creating a life that I want not what is popular or trending.

Giving up social media really took away the Glamour for me. The word Glamour is used in the book Letting Go to describe how normal things are made to look shiny and amazing on social media. For example, those day in the life video makes someone’s day look AMAZING but in reality they are setting up a camera and filming everything they do, sometimes in public. They probably deep clean their house before filming and spend hours editing just so we can see what a “perfect” day is. It’s all fake, all of it and I’ve known that but taking a break from social media really made me see it in real life.

I lost some motivation. I have to be honest, giving up social media made me lose some motivation but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I’m not longer performing, if I go somewhere really cool then I’m going for myself. I can’t post it online and receive praise so it really made me think about weather or not I’m pursuing goals because I want to or am I doing it as a performance. I was sad to find out that something’s were just a performance.

I’ve realized giving up social media is not the answer to my anxiety. I think it has helped, I don’t feel triggered by certain things I’ve seen online and send myself into a spiral but anxiety is still present and something I have to continuously work on.

I don’t feel like I’m missing out. I’m very surprised by this, I thought I’d feel like I was missing everything but honestly I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. I can’t think of one positive thing that social media is personally doing for me. It’s fun, a way to past time and connect with friends but what it really was for me was a way to distract myself and compare myself to other people. I’m thankful for this social media detox and I’m excited to see how life changes without social media in it.