In day to day life, it’s quite easy for us to just plug in our headphones, put in the AirPods, watch Netflix, or anything else that’s commonplace in daily life that’s a distracting factor, it takes a huge hit on our personal relationships. From checking Instagram and Snapchat for about an hour a day a piece to my over-consumption of other media forms, I’ve done a favor for all of us and focused on what really matters. My results are as follows. 

Due to many convenient factors, I was able to successfully complete one week with more than 50% of my social media, and with so many practices and other factors because high school, I started to realize more and more how important it was for me to pay attention to others. I started being able to listen more, have a greater attention span, and overall focus more on my assignments and lessons in subjects. There were some easier to give up than others, and I’ll go over that in the coming paragraphs. 

I found the hardest media interactions for me to give up were, surprisingly, Spotify and reddit. In a modern digital age where Instagram and Snapchat are kings, a music app and a more obscure message board based social media were the most difficult for me to not instinctively reach for. As it turns out, though, it’s just because of my preferences. When I talked to friends about this, they thought I was acting quite weird for this week, not using any socials, and in spite of that, I persisted. 

I truly believe that we often find ourselves looking at influencers on Instagram or Snapchat and wishing that we had that lavish lifestyle that they had attained because they were born into more money than us or are substantially more attractive than we are. I was able to remove most of this toxicity from my social life, and thus I noticed I had felt happier because I wasn’t trying to get something worthy to post or otherwise reflect on, I spent more time with the people who matter and procrastinated less than normal. 

Overall, I would consider this experience quite telling of how important it is to disconnect within this modern time dominated by the internet. With a greater happiness by using less, I would say those who also seek some release from the shackles that social media puts on us, you could go less extreme than I did and still focus on what matters: friends, extracurricular activities, and homework.