The World Continues Without You
I’m coming back to the land of the living. Or so it feels as I return home having spent 14 days away from social media. I decided to combine my holiday to Florida with a rest from social and other apps at the last minute. For no reason other than I felt like trying it.
I didn’t allow myself any of: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, IGTV, YouTube, Twitch, Messenger, Mail or any apps that I usually use a lot like TED, Amazon and Premier League (which meant no transfer news! #COYS).
What follows is hopefully a nice and digestible bullet point summary of my thoughts on spending 14 days away from social media and pretty much everything else.
I found that my screen time halved, and quickly. Turns out I barely use my phone for anything else!
I began to just go on my phone for a purpose. It took me 4 days to get rid of the urge to check it in those small moments like when waiting in a queue or on the loo. The number of times I picked my phone up to put it straight back down again was ridiculous and shows how automatic that behaviour is.
I slowly found my relationship with time changing. Moving away from thinking “everything is urgent” to a kind of “it is what it is" mindset. This is what I found myself thinking when I came close to breaking the streak.
...and I was right. Turns out, nothing is really urgent, no one cared or noticed that I’d gone and the world continues without me checking on it 53 times per day. Forget FOMO (fear of missing out), more like YDMA (you don’t miss anything)!
"It was liberating to watch the world in front of me again instead of constantly get updated on the world elsewhere."
So...I’m super glad that I took the time out. A really worthwhile experiment which has renewed the way I value my time and the made me evaluate where I put my attention.
That said, I'm hardly about to retire to a moisture farm on Tatooine. After all, social has changed the way we live, work and communicate forever - there’s no going back. But nonetheless I found it insightful to take a step back and reflect. If you take one thing away from this article it is to live alongside social, not through it. Use it as the tool it is.