The Great Social Media Detox & What I Learnt from it
I used to think that I was constantly worn out because I had a lot on my plate. Too many assignments, plans, and responsibilities compete for the same 24 hours that we are all given. But when I finally put my phone down, I realized a very uncomfortable truth – I wasn’t running out of time; I was actually giving it away.
Most of us unfortunately fall victim to reaching out for our phones the first thing in the morning and are the last thing we look at before shutting down for the night. We convince ourselves that a simple five-minute doomscroll session would do us no harm, only to find ourselves, at least an hour later, still going from one video to the next. Most of us find ourselves in a loop of consuming the never-ending content of other people’s lives. The best moments of them, the opinions they have, and the trauma they dump. I found myself constantly consuming but was never really living in the present moment.
So, I decided to take a break from all of it. The consumption of content, the comparisons I made, and resisted the urge to reach out for it every time I found myself in those silent moments.
That is the first step for those wanting to put everything into perspective.
The very first thing that I noticed was that the quieter the outside was, the louder my mind became. When you’re accustomed to constant stimulation, the first moments of silence can often feel strange. Whenever I had an unanswered question or an uncomfortable thought, my phone was my coping mechanism to immediately stop overthinking. My ‘For You' page at the ready to distract me from myself.
Without it, I had nowhere to run.
Even though it did feel uncomfortable at first, I started to learn and understand my own thoughts instead of distracting myself with someone else’s.
When you force yourself into isolation and sit with an emotion long enough to understand it, you start to realize what, why, and how this emotion came to be. You start to think about what you really want in life, rather than monitor what everyone else seems to be doing with theirs. Trust me when I say that there finally comes a point when you start to become less interested in what people from your old school are doing on a Friday night. About what your ex is up to. About that one girl you absolutely hated back in primary school and what she’s doing now. It all starts to gradually become insignificant.
The more you block out the external, the more you start to marvel at the internal. You go into the innermost places of your mind and start to learn things about yourself you didn’t know before. Your thoughts become quieter, slower, clearer. Sometimes, you really just need to sit with yourself. Do this consistently for long enough, and before you know it, the uncomfortableness will start to feel liberating.
The second thing I realized was that my relationships with those around me had deepened.
It’s pretty ironic how social media was made to connect people to one another, but it prevented me from connecting to the people right in front of my face.
I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty present person when talking to someone. But then I realized that the conversations I had with the people around me were a little bit different after the detox. The talks that I had with my friends, family, and loved ones became more engaging and insightful, because I wasn’t glancing across the room waiting for a notification to pop up. Neither was I watching a 10-minute TikTok rant while I had someone sitting right next to me. I learnt to become fully immersed in the present moment.
The beautiful thing is that when you’re not checking your phone every time a conversation stops, and you sit in those silent moments, you might start to realise how happy you are to be talking with someone you care about. You start to cherish their presence and become a little more grateful that you have someone to have these nice conversations with. It’s truly an unparalleled feeling.
The third thing I realized was that the more we consume, the less time we have to create.
It is my personal belief that we, as humans, were put on this planet to do more than a 9-to-5. Many people say that the world has lost its art, but with all this distraction, they often forget that they themselves are the artists. Think about the activities that you used to do when you were a child, before you even had a phone. Were you a painter? A singer? Did you like to cook?
I found myself thinking about how much I missed doing the many different activities I did when I was a child and was determined to revisit them. I started to paint with watercolors again, immersed myself in sudoku, and learnt at least ten new recipes. I even brought back my long-lost love of geography and started to learn about the world again. Now I know all the countries, capitals, and flags of the world. An avid doomscroller wouldn’t be able to say that.
I understand that we do need to use social media sometimes to keep up with what is going on regarding work, friends, and events happening all around the globe. But when you do have the free time, my advice is to just put it away, because you start to realise that you actually DO have other ideas, plans, and long-term goals, and you DO have the time to pursue them. You start to gain clarity on how YOU see the world around you.
You start to realise the beauty in stillness, in good conversation and in creativity. Which, in my humble opinion, is much better than the AI fruit videos that I know you know of. So put the phone away. Far away. Seriously.
