My Social Media Detox

Around a year ago, I decided to take a social media detox. I deleted all social apps. This was around the time I was a junior in college (now graduated :)). Anyways, I was feeling very tiresome of social media. It wasn’t bumping my productivity, and it just didn’t bring me any joy. I felt drained looking at it every single day, watching other people’s stories constantly.

I had reached a point where I was tired of keeping up appearances or whatever that I felt I had to do. So randomly one day, I deleted Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. I even stopped using Youtube as much and I absolutely love Youtube.

And let me tell you, it was the greatest decision I ever made for myself. I don’t wanna say that the only reason I had such a winning streak that year was solely because I deleted socials. I mean not having them definitely helped because it made it more difficult for me to distract myself. But I found I had more energy and drive to do things without the influence of seeing other people do exactly the same.

By the way, I had not deleted my accounts or anything, I wouldn’t go that far and go through the trouble of remaking accounts all over again.

I will say that this was the most productive school year I had. We were still on Zoom for classes and I didn’t go out at all unless it was for groceries or a quick refresher.

Time was all I had and I used every last second to keep myself busy. I had set up a complete routine from morning to night of what I was going to do that day and when. Now, you must know I’m an insanely organized person so I took this mapping my life out very seriously. I don’t do this now, at least to the extent that I used to.

However, it was effective. I kept myself on task. Truthfully, I was very content with life during this time. I only cried and broke down during a couple assignments that completely blew my head off. Some because of the difficulty level, and others because I bite off more than I can chew. I went a little over my head. My head became a lightbulb that blew out from exhaustion and stress.

To my surprise, I always made it back to my happy-go productive state. I had the mentality of work, work, work. When something popped up and acted as an obstacle to my work, I would feel it out then BOOM back to my work. I was doing everything in my power to keep me going. I like that I was a productivity machine, but at the same time I don’t like that I was a productivity machine.

I definitely could’ve lived a little more. Though had I not been a work machine, I wouldn’t have finished the semesters. Well, that’s not true. I would’ve finished, but not with the outstanding 4.o gpa.

Going from that Juliette to this present one that just graduated and has no job or anything needed from them at an exact due date, I honestly have no idea what to do with myself.

That productive Juliette still feels like she lives in me, but her system needs to be rebooted. This is also the first time that I get to linger in the freedom that I have. Now, instead of no social media and just work, I’m all social media and no work at all.

This is however the result of complete burn out. It’s taking me quite the time to return to my driven self. I mean I had the energy to type this up so baby steps!

I wanted to go into full detail about what I did with my time while having no social media, but I’ll admit, it would probably sound exhausting.

So I’ll lay out a little bit of how my typical days were. I woke up around 6am every day. (I’m a morning person.) I meditated and did yoga. Had my breakfast. Journaled. Then I went on to do whatever tasks and or assignments I had. And I’d close up with my night routine. Most tasks changed here and there, but these were the basic foundational blocks of activities that took up space in my schedule.

I would recommend most people to take time off from social media unless it is what you do for a stream of revenue. Not having it on your phone or at the back of your head (if that’s the case) leaves so much room for yourself. Social media can take up so much of our time.

It’s become increasingly easy to turn from your laptop over to your phone to see what your friends are up to. I’m not saying social media is a virus either. It serves as a handy tool for exposing yourself professionally, but I do think time usage should definitely be considered.

I hope this little experience of mine helps. I haven’t had the bestest time writing and I’m pretty sure this blog proves that, but thank you for reading anyway. :)