Last weekend I decided to go offline for more than 48 hours. Because I wasn’t feeling great and I needed a break from the corona news and other things. The news was stressing me out and I was putting too much pressure on myself. So I decided to do a social media detox for 48+ hours.
When I was younger…
When I was younger (before 2010) I had no smartphone and I was barely spending time online. I was mostly doing things offline. I grew up with the internet, but back in the day, the internet was super slow. And I wasn’t very interested to be online constantly. But now everything is different. Almost everyone has a smartphone and some people are even more than 3 hours online every single day. Which is a lot!
This happened during my social media detox
Because I decided last minute to do this challenge, I hadn’t made plans yet. And of course, making plans in times of corona is a bit difficult too. I stayed home during this whole social media detox. I think it would be easier if you have plans, with your friends for example. You can distract yourself by doing fun things. But I didn’t and I stayed home. The first few hours were easy because I had to work and I barely use my phone when I am somewhere else. On Saturday it was also pretty for me. In the morning I was super productive. I did so many things and I didn’t think about my phone at all.
But in the afternoon it was harder to ignore my phone. Normally I would check the new corona update around this time. It was already of me to check the news between 2 and 3 pm. Sunday was even harder because I was super bored.
Conclusion
Before I started this ‘challenge’ I did some research and I found out that people who did a social media detox in the past were claiming that they were feeling happier and more relaxed. I can confirm that I was definitely feeling more relaxed. But was I feeling happier? No, I don’t think so. long. But the fact that I was already feeling more relaxed was already a big win because I was feeling stressed all of the time. And maybe if I change my online habits, I will feel happier eventually.
Will I do this again in the future? Maybe, maybe not. I know I have to change a couple of things about myself. I don’t want to go back to the old me who was checking the news constantly. I also don’t want to spend hours on social media either. Well, I don’t want to waste time on the internet/social media. I still want to create online content. That is what is making me happy. I like doing that.
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