I am a super human. No really, I am. I did the unthinkable—the impossible—and here I am to tell the tale. I leapt off the grid into the great abyss of the pop culture irrelevant world; a world with no screenshots, no bad captions and no poking.
That’s right. I made the bold decision to delete all social media applications off of my phone for a week. Well, it was actually five days … give me a break, I’m not Gandhi. That means I missed a week of Miley Cyrus’s disturbingly photoshopped Instagrams, a week of Twitter fights over a the color of a very unflattering dress and a week of Snapchat stories, which don’t really need an example because we all know how annoying Snapchat stories are.
I was originally inspired to try out a social media detox because I had to study for midterms and found it dangerous to have the extra distractions. Let’s face it, social media is a huge time-suck. I have a friend (he knows who he is) who will go on his phone or computer while we are hanging out and completely tune out the world around him. I mean truly, a gun could fire and he wouldn’t notice.
But what’s the point in keeping up on everyone else’s lives if you are missing out on your own? I’m certainly not the first to say this, but time in Madison actually moves faster than anywhere else in the world. I’m sure of it. There is nothing on social media that could possibly be better than what you are missing right in front of you. I was tired of spending so much time on my phone, and I knew my addiction was strong. I knew I had to completely eliminate the applications from my phone—pathetic, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
I decided to delete all social media from my phone not only because of the ridiculous amount of time I would save, but also because scrolling through each social media app was often an unpleasant experience. Viewing a Snapchat story of all of my friends at a party while I was stuck at home studying gave me FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Reading overly opinionated tweets confused and frustrated me. Seeing an Instagram photo posted by one of the Victoria’s Secret models that I follow (which I need to stop doing, really) made me feel bad about my ever-present craving of chicken wings. One day, after putting my phone down after my “morning check” of each app, I finally acknowledged that I felt substantially less happy and peaceful than I did when I had picked up my phone. I was gaining next to nothing from all of social media, but was allowing it to control me.
It’s fun to keep up on what your friends, family or favorite celebrities are up to, but it’s much more important to live your own life. If social media has a negative impact on you and your life, get rid of it. It is a fairly worthless thing to waste your energy on. You will not cease to exist just because you haven’t posted a photo in a week. If you have midterms coming up, or if you find yourself deep in the archives of someone’s Instagram, give it up for a week. When I did, I felt like a new person. All of a sudden I had more control over my time and my feelings, and it was a control that was very easy to obtain. Maybe next time you’re online, you will realize that you actually did not miss Kim Kardashian’s irrelevant photo captions.
Marisa is a freshman and is currently undecided on her major. What do you think of her perspective? Have you had experiences similar to hers? Are there truly detriments that come with the overuse of things like social media? Would you also advocate for a detox period? Is one week not enough time, or should there be more? We would like to know what you think. Please send all thoughts and comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
