Last November, I had stopped using social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. for 1 month. However, I didn’t actually remove all of those apps, because I needed some of them for sending message. I tried to use those apps only when it was essential.
Motivation
I was talking to one of my English teachers, Mike. He has quit using social media since 2016. At that time, Facebook turned into a battleground for politics because of the election for the US president.
My grandma and cousins are throwing bad words at each other, and I’ve never even seen some of them before! That’s enough, I have had enough of all of this crap. Good bye Facebook! Twitter!
- Mike (Anti-Social Media Evangelist)
People start to generate hatred on those platform, just because they supported different campaign. Facebook also has this ultimate-keep-people with-the-same-mind-together algorithm to worsen this kind of situation. 🤯
Facebook don’t sue me, your algorithm is awesome. It’s just that this technology is too awesome and it becomes a double-edged sword.
The same thing here in Taiwan earlier in 2020. During the presidential election in Taiwan, people from the opposite sides were abusing each other on social media platform rather than discussing about the political views of each candidates. I removed every Facebook pages that related to politics at that time, because they were clearly creating opposition. I would rather browse through some memes and cute animal pictures.
After the talk with Mike, I decided to try this out myself.
Plan
What’s the plan? That’s right, no more social media.
What’s the target? Not using social media.
For how long? eh… Maybe 3 weeks? 🤔
The first thing I did was moving these apps to a place that I couldn’t easily see them. People tend to browse their frequently use apps in the first home page on their phone. I replaced Facebook with Linkedin (Still a social platform, but a more professional one? Damn, you people are strict), Instagram with Gmail, Twitter with Medium etc. By doing this, I had a small time slot to stop myself from using social media, because they were not in their original spot.
Second, I said to myself that using social media is a crime. Yeah... I know... It’s ridiculous! But this is actually a great way to prevent me from using it, because of all the guilt. 😥
The last thing is to set up a count down. It reminded me that the challenge was there, helping me to keep track of this routine.
Process
I have to be honest. It was very difficult to not use it at first! Scrolling Facebook and Instagram pages was already a habit.
Reading Medium posts became a regular thing for me when I was heading to my office. I read 3 times more in a week than the last 2 months. It quickly became a habit. I opened Medium app to read technical, personal growth blog posts whenever I had free time.
However, I didn’t reduce my time spent watching Youtube.Youtube was my only entertainment at that time. As you can see below:
Facebook and Instagram were replaced by Youtube and Medium. Social category screen time dropped, Productivity & Finance screen time increased. Even so, the total screen time was higher than before. I was surprised by this result though. Maybe I kept on finding entertaining things during the challenge. I could easily be satisfied when I was using Facebook. 🤷🏻♂️ Who knows!
I was behave in the first two weeks. 😂 As the challenge went on, the craving to use social media became serious. I had to hit my hand for a few times from preventing it to click on the Facebook button. Damn you, Facebook! I love and hate you at the same time.
At the end, I failed this challenge on day 23. I wanted to watch those funny videos and memes on social media. I wanted to watch stupid cute cats doing some crazy stuff. I wanted it so bad…
Takeaways
Even though I failed to finish this challenge, I still learned something from it.
- I don’t need social media in my life, I just want it.
- True friends will always reach out to you, even though you are not active on social media.
- After this challenge, I actually spend less time on social media.
- You can actually build a new habit(reading from Medium) in 23 days.
- Cat memes are just cute.😹
