It’s been over a month since quitting social media, I did it sort of on a whim but deep down I’d been feeling it coming for a while. The stress and constant pressure to ‘perform’ for my business online, the evenings spent half-watching TV while doom scrolling and let’s not forget the sinking feeling of watching everyone else’s highlight reels while looking at my own life in ruins. So after a month of no social media, has anything really changed? Am I planning to go back? Keep reading for an honest look at the experience.
Coming Down From The High
The first few days were full of a feeling of lightness and space. I felt liberated, elated even! The relief of the pressure to post (and guilt of not posting and therefore, not trying in my business), was instantaneous. I’d made public posts letting family, friends and my small group of followers know where to find me and it had been met with admiration and encouragement. I felt good… until I realised just how ingrained social media was in my psyche.
Muscle memory meant that I kept tapping on the apps on my phone even though I’d set time limits. I initially felt jittery and anxious at not hearing everyone’s news and seeing posts, wondering if I was missing out on something huge. Evenings not spent doom scrolling while watching TV meant I didn’t know what to do with my hands so my long-standing dermatillomania (skin picking) got out of control to the point where my fingers were raw and bleeding. I also felt… a bit lost and didn’t quite know what to do with myself.
I spent the first few days looking for a new way to occupy myself. Reading required more concentration and commitment than I was ready for. Having spent years digesting information in post format, I didn’t know what I wanted to read anymore. Instead, I settled on exploring podcasts because there was enough variety from episode to episode and being audio meant I could listen to them as I walked my dogs or did other things. For someone who has lived like a hermit for the past couple of years, it was also a soft way to help me get used to ‘peopling’ again, listening to lots of different voices both podcast hosts and their guests with the ability to pause or simply duck out altogether if I wasn’t feeling it.
I deliberately picked out some gentle, nature-focused podcasts too such as The Plodcast and As The Season Turns as an antidote to the fast-paced technological blur of social media. It took a bit of trial and error to find what I liked but once I did I started to find opening up my podcast app coming more naturally to me and not something I had to consciously think about doing.
Quitting Social Media: Old Habits Die Hard
However, that muscle memory I mentioned earlier continued to kick my arse! I was so used to where my apps were positioned I started to open them almost without thinking. Initially, I would close them again after reaching my allotted 2 minutes for each but slowly over the next week I noticed myself dismissing the notification for ’15 more minutes in the app’.
I decided to take drastic action and deleted all of my social media apps. This was a challenge to start with because I was still getting notifications when I logged in from my desktop. I took it one step further and locked all my profiles down as private, deactivated pages, unfollowed and deleted a bunch of followers and on LinkedIn, I changed my settings to only allow connections to message me and only people with my email address could send connection requests. Ahhh, suddenly things were a lot quieter which was unnerving at first. I began to wonder if I was missing out on anything important but by week three I realised that… nope, the world is still turning and nothing has burned down in my absence.
As my head got quieter and I stopped wondering if I was missing out on the world’s biggest in-joke, I started to notice who or what I was thinking about. Who did I actually miss hearing about? That sparked my next call to action and I began to log onto websites and sign up for email newsletters to ensure that the people I really wanted to hear from, I’d get updates delivered to my inbox. For the most part, this was easy however there was a surprising number of companies and pages I followed on social media that simply didn’t have a newsletter to subscribe to, and some didn’t even have a website outside of social media. I figured if they didn’t have the foresight to build a platform of their own elsewhere that wasn’t rented then we probably didn’t align that well anyway and I let them go from my headspace.
I was still struggling with my muscle memory trying to open apps that didn’t exist anymore so my next step was to rearrange my phone screen. I moved all my folders with my apps to the second page, keeping my front page dedicated to things like my music shortcut, camera, calendar, emails and browser. Now if I want anything else, I am forced to go onto the next page and actively look for what I want which creates another moment to check in with myself—do I really need to open this? It had become far too easy for me to operate my phone on autopilot and check out so forcing myself to check in with my thoughts, feelings and intentions was really helpful in breaking old habits.
Making Space For Something New
On average the time I spend using my phone daily is about a half less than it was. But more than that, a month on, the spell is breaking. The first time I really acknowledged the spell breaking was when I realised that my phone wasn’t the right thing I reached for when I woke up in the morning anymore (it was my dogs for cuddles!) I haven’t had an alarm clock in my room for years since I got a smartphone but I’m seriously considering getting one again so that I don’t even need to pick up my phone to see the time when I wake in the night.
I’m only checking social media on my desktop if I need to look someone up to find their contact details to connect elsewhere and those interactions are feeling so much more genuine than they ever did across a comments section. I’ve had emails and messages from people I haven’t heard from in such a long time as well as offers to meet up for lunch and it’s filling my heart with a lot of love!
My head feels less busy and I’ve had more creative ideas in the last couple of weeks than I have done in months. My overall stress and anxiety levels have decreased and my concentration is improving. That feeling of FOMO, that I’m missing out on something huge has almost entirely dissipated. I’m much less concerned with what everyone else is doing and more concerned with what I want to be doing with myself. On the whole, I feel so much happier than I did even just a few weeks ago. Even my skin picking habit has subsided and my fingers are healing up very nicely for the first time in a long time!
However, this is still an ongoing challenge and it’s not been a perfect process. There are things I’d hoped would have improved but haven’t yet. I haven’t found myself writing from dawn til dusk and although I’ve had more creative ideas, I haven’t actioned any of them yet. I had also hoped my sleep would improve but I haven’t noticed any significant differences but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
Some people choose to quit social media for a short-term experiment but the longer I go on, the more strongly I feel in my conviction not to return to social media. It’s been beneficial in so many ways for me already and now my blinkers are off, I have no intention of putting them back on. In fact, I can’t wait to see what else I can achieve as my brain rewires itself to a life without chasing likes and followers, especially after listening to this episode of Windowsill Chats where they discussed growing a creative business without social media. I feel like my potential is returning to me and the sky is the limit now I’m not comparing myself to everyone else and wasting hours doom scrolling.
Quitting social media was never something I regretted although there were times when I wondered how I would make it stick. But in plugging the gaps of my time with new things and interrupting my muscle memory so I can’t go on autopilot, it has become easier and more joyful to step away from social media. If it’s something you’ve been thinking about doing, I urge you to give it a go—you’ll be surprised at what a difference it makes to how you feel! But if you do, make sure you sign up for my newsletters so you’ll continue to hear from me straight to your inbox ;)!
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