A Week Without Social Media

This is my second post for this week as promised in this post. I did not post anything on my blog last week as I was off social media for a week (which I had planned the week before). I have an account on most social media platforms but I am most active on Facebook, followed by Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp and Telegram. 

I have a pattern of activity on social media platforms. There are periods of great activity, followed by a silent period. We are so used to social media these days that we, well at least I, have forgotten what life was without it. Online social media was non-existent growing up but, it at this day and age, it feels like it has been around for ever. 

So, What did I exclude during my week-off social media?

- Facebook

- Instagram

- Twitter (I barely look at it usually, still....)

- WhatsApp (do not look at it often anyway)

- Facebook Messenger

- Telegram (hardly on it these days)

- YouTube

- Pinterest

- GTalk

- Personal Skype

- Podcasts

- Blogger

What I included in my week-off social media?

- Work email and instant messaging during office hours (I really cannot get rid of these at work, can I? )

- Personal email (because....need to pay bills etc. :-))

What was my experience like?

Before I took the decision: I was looking forward to it. I was not sure if I had it in me. I was inspired by something I read, not sure who wrote it, but it made complete sense to me. Before the advent of social media platforms, people spent time reading or watching TV but these media came with an end to it and were structured, but with social media, things have become unstructured and bottomless and nothing ever seems to end. The mind is constantly active, always looking for more information or data and is not satiated no matter how much we feed into it. This actually made me look at giving up social media for a week as a detox and inspired me to do it.

During the week off social media: I really did not miss it much, though, I must admit, I sub consciously did reach out to the YouTube app on phone just to listen to music on day one during my commute, but checked myself just in time. It gave me a lot of time to read, write and also sleep and wake up early. I also found some time for myself. I kept myself busy with some activity all the time and did not realise how time flew. To my amusement, I found that apps like Facebook missed me more. I remember receiving an email asking if I have any problems logging in and was just emailing me about all the great things I might be missing out on. I also noticed that nobody really noticed me out of action. Just goes to show that we do become self-absorbed while we mindlessly browse through social media. I did not read and clean up my mailbox on my personal email. I just read the most critical ones based on the sender and the topic. 

Name has been redacted

Name has been redacted

After the week off: When I logged into these apps, I was left with a lot of notifications and to be honest, I just ignored them all. I had 200 odd new conversations on WhatsApp and there was a couple of conversations where I have over 700 unread messages, which again, I did not read. I am not very crazy about WhatsApp anyway. I have over 7500 emails (yes it definitely has a lot of promotional stuff), which I still have to clean up.

As an outcome of this experience, I have scheduled social media time for myself. I know I might miss out on some important updates but I think I should be able to deal with it.