I decided make fun out of my internship and put my fellow peers up to a challenge. We made an agreement to not use social media for two days or more. I was ready for it and I thought I could do it but after that challenge, I certainly believe that I am in love with social media. By completely cleansing myself from social media I felt so weird. During those two days without social media, I failed the test of temptation. It’s no way I could go without social media. It’s a part of my life now and it’s hard to opt out of that mindset to avoid social media.
In the beginning, which was just a couple of hours, I thought I could handle it – I was watching TV on my ipad, enjoying nature, hanging with out with the other interns, talking on the phone, etc. As the time went by and I begin to get bored, I had this urge to open all my social media applications, which were Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Luckily, I turned off the cellular data so that I wouldn’t open the media applications until the day it was time for me to open it up again. By keeping myself busy and concentrating on things in the moment helped me get by the first couple of hours. When I felt unoccupied, that’s when things went left. I knew watching TV for a couple of hours was not going to last – it was like watching your life pass you by, and to be honest, it’s not that many shows in the world to keep me glued to the TV, I was so annoyed. Also enjoying nature, how long was that suppose to last? I couldn’t enjoy nature all day, I knew for sure was not going to stay until midnight just to avoid social media. I loved hanging with the interns and talking on the phone with my family, however, they have lives and have families to talk to as well– they only had a couple of hours to hang out. I felt very tempted to look on social media – I felt like I was missing out on life and confused about my life. I immediately thought: Am I really addicted to social media? Has technology updated so much that I’ve forgot the feeling of living without social media? Why do I feel sick about not looking on social media? As I reflected on my thoughts, I know I needed to reevaluate my life and life decisions- this can seriously hold me back on important things to I need to get done.
The second day, those thoughts went completely went out the window. I just couldn’t take it; I had to go on social media. I used it for many purposes – there was no way I could have completed my day without it. I started using YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. I’m proud to say I lived without Twitter; I deleted that app just see how and what I would do without it. It worked because Twitter doesn’t really mean anything to me. However, the only reason why I started using the other social media applications was because I had important things to take care of that day and I had to use it. I used YouTube was because I got tired of watching TV, I like subscribing to others channels and learning things that can build my side business for make-up, and hair. I used Instagram because I needed to show my hair stylist a picture of my hair on another person page. For snapchat I was curious about others lives because it only has 24 hours till it expires, so I just had to use it for that purpose.
Although it seemed like it can be easy to do a social media cleanse for two days, I found it very challenging to let go of completely. To discipline yourself from something you use on a daily is ruff – I have business to take care of and most of these media applications stores important information for me to get out to others, and that’s one way I could communicate to others out there. Overall it was fun but I couldn’t do it two full days.
Jasmine Richardson 