Take a break from social media for a day and see what happens
By Ann Shelley// Opinion Editor
The newest iPhone update gives us data about how much we use screen time. I am averaging around five hours every day due to the time spent on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and many more. This number freaked me out. That’s a waste of five hours of my precious time when I could be working on so many other things.
“Teens now spend up to nine hours a day on social media platforms,” says an infographic located on the Social Media Today website. Time spent on social media beats the time spent socializing, grooming and eating.
The infographic shows that the average person spends five years and four months on social media during their lifetime. In this time you can climb Mt. Everest 32 times or even walk the Great Wall of China three times. Think about how many other activities you can do instead of being on social media.
I deleted my social media accounts for a day to see how I felt and to see if I noticed anything different. I did it. I didn’t have as much stress. I had everything written down on a checklist instead of my notes app on my iPhone. I didn’t feel guilty for not texting anyone back, and I felt less anxiety not checking my Instagram to see who posted.
Isn’t it funny how we all sit around on holidays and family gatherings looking at our social media? Take Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a day where everyone posts about who they are thankful for and a long caption explaining why. Christmas and Halloween are the same way. Everyone wants to see what others get for Christmas and what individuals dress up as for Halloween. The truth is, everyone is curious by nature, and this is why we spend so much time on social media.
However, social media only gives us the good parts of people’s lives. We never see the heartbreak, fights or struggles that each individual goes through.
When I come home, my family members always comment on what a good time it looks like I’m having in college. Our posts are an illusion of our lives. This is why we follow various celebrities on social media like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner. These two icons are known for the constant selfies on Instagram and posts about their extravagant lives. We want to live their lives, and so we live vicariously through them on social media. Individuals have become too involved in social media platforms because we’re constantly curious about their extravagant lives. If we see something that causes us jealousy, we tend to gain an unwelcoming feeling of stress and anxiety because we know we can’t attain it.
Nicole Sarcosian, High Point University senior, broke her phone and went without social media for a week. She told me she didn’t have any worries about who she was seeing that day and could spend a lot more time on herself. Nicole didn’t have anyone texting her asking her to hang out or asking questions or favors. They could only talk to her when they saw her, and it’s a lot more private of a life.
The issue with today’s age is we have way too many ways to see what people are doing. We shouldn’t know this much about people’s lives. On Snapchat, for example, it tells you the locations of your Snapchat friends. This is like the Find My Friends app; it’s extremely invasive. However, these social media platforms keep adding more to their apps to make it more engaging. For example, Instagram put stories on the application, similar to Snapchat and the two social media platforms were practically combined into one. I have been a big fan of using Instagram stories just because of how easy it is to use. I find myself using it a lot more often to add stories about the weekend. How do I stop myself from doing this? Take a step back and don’t use social media for a day.
When I did this, I didn’t realize how hard it would be. At first, the absence of the constant buzzing was nice. I didn’t feel the need to check someone’s story or see what people were snapping chatting me. I was entirely in my own space. I went to class and found myself paying more attention. I took notes in my environmental science class a lot easier. When I was bored, instead of looking at my phone, I looked through the slides and got more work done. I hung out with who I wanted to because they came to me or we had planned something in person. I didn’t feel bothered or stressed in any way because I was ultimately able to focus on what I needed to get done.
Overall, this experiment showed me that my phone holds me back from a lot of day-to-day activities, especially my issue with distraction in class. We spend way too much time on social media and not enough time communicating in person. Social media is a trap; it pulls you in and it’s really hard to get out. The only way to go about it is to take a detox with social media, delete it all for a day and see how you cope. How important is social media to you?
The Snapchat discover page is one new feature of the app that is easy to get lost in. Photo by Ann Shelley