The past few days I’ve spent pretty much all day in training for my summer job. I’m working as an RA for a program on campus and I can’t wait to get started. We have a pretty tight schedule during the whole entire day meaning that I barely have time to scroll aimlessly through Twitter or text with my friends all day every day. I feel like as I get older, I have a stronger love-hate relationship with technology overall but the strongest connection like this with social media. I basically spent my adolescent life molding my online personality.
I’ve always been a huge fan of the internet. I started a Youtube channel in high school and had every social media account available since 8th grade. I think it’s always been the easiest way for me to express my creative side since I’m not super handy with arts and crafts or drawing. Recently, though, I’ve spent a lot of time with my phone away and off. And I’ve noticed a couple things about my interactions with the people around me and about my own health.
I’m more engaged and engaging.
I’ve pretty much restricted myself to reading my TheSkimm and Daily News emails from the NY Times. When my head isn’t buried in my screen, I find it so much easier to engage with other people to learn more about their stories, abilities, goals, and experiences. This has added such a richness to my life that is truly invaluable.
I have more time to work on other tasks that I love.
People are always amazed when I mention hobbies outside of blogging and photography because it seems like those activities could easily consume my life. I spend a ton of time editing and the blog is a little part-time job. When I can cut out social media use, it gives me time to read books and newspapers. I’ve also even started listening to podcasts regularly.
I want to prioritize the content that I’m seeing by getting rid of the clutter.
When I am minimizing my technological interaction, I still want to see all the wonderful content that I’m subscribed to. But, I don’t want to have to scroll through 10,000 photos to identify them. I’ve taken the social media and phone refresh seriously. I’ve unfollowed and cleaned out a lot of my Instagram followers and made sure that I have post notifications for any accounts I just can’t miss. Other than that, ALL of my social media have the notifications turned off. This just helps maintain the discipline to stay off my phone and achieve other things.
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How has your perspective changed after a digital detox or once you made the effort to put the demon down? I totally recommend if you haven’t started to challenge yourself to interact more with the people around you. I know it’s strange coming from someone that loves the internet, but you CAN have too much of a good thing!
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