Drew's third blog post

I decided to go 24 hours without any interaction with media via computers, phones, and other forms of technology (my iPad). I choose a Saturday so that I wasn’t in class without my computer or anything, and I kept my phone on me just in case my parents called or for emergencies. I did turn off my notifications so that I wouldn’t be tempted by twitter notifications.

8AM- 5PM:

My 24 hours without social media began at 8am on Saturday morning. I had already planned on fishing most of the day on Saturday, so I knew that would help me pass the time during the day. Normally when I’m out on the water I keep my phone put away, so for the first 8 hours I wasn’t missing my phone that much. It was a little weird pulling my phone out to check the time and not seeing any type of notification on my phone, but I still felt pretty good about not looking at social media. I got home from fishing at 5pm and that is when the real test started.

5PM:

Normally after a day on the water I get home, relax, and catch up on social media for the day. It felt weird not being able to do that. I wasn’t sure what I should be doing. I just sat on my couch and caught up on some homework. Definitely not what I would do on a normal Saturday night.  

6PM:

I made some dinner and found myself again feeling weird while I ate. Normally I eat with my phone next to my plate, and I scroll though twitter or Instagram while I eat. Now, I just eat, and it feels pretty boring.

7PM:

 After dinner, and it’s back on the couch. Still not on the phone and I’m beginning to develop FOMO (fear of missing out). I feel like I am missing out on Twitter drama, Instagram pics, and snapchat stories. Time has felt a lot slower for me because I’m not mindlessly scrolling through twitter catching up on celebrity beef.

8PM:

I have become really bored, so I’ve started a movie. After flipping through Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon I decided to watch 12 Angry Men. I normally keep my phone with me while I watch the movie, sometimes checking on twitter during the slower scenes, but without my phone I was really able to engage with the movie more.

9PM- 10PM:

After the movie ended, the real boredom hit. I normally spend the last hour or two before going to sleep to do a final scroll through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and especially Tik Tok. Tik Tok is the perfect bedtime app because you need sound to watch the stories so it’s not conducive to public viewing. Without being able to go on any or my social media apps, I found myself doing homework again. I did homework for about an hour, and finally got bored and went to bed around 11PM.

8AM Sunday morning:

FINALLY! I can get back on social media. I actually woke up this morning excited to get back on social media. The FOMO was too much. I got on Instagram first because it is always what I wake up to. I was surprised because I thought that I would have missed so much, but it really didn’t take me long to catch up on what I missed. Same went for twitter and snapchat.

RECAP:

Overall, I think it was good for me to experience a full day without social media. It really helped me understand how much time I waste throughout the day. I spent most of my time doing things I normally do on a Saturday (fishing and a movie) but I still felt like something was missing. The newly discovered time did allow me to catch up on homework. Normally I would procrastinate on it until hours before the deadline on Sunday night, but I now realize that if I just put down the phone a little more, I wouldn’t have to worry about rushing to get my work done. I think the craziest thing I found out during this experiment was that I really didn’t miss out on anything like I thought I would have. It only took me about an hour to really catch up on 24 hours of media, which is rather shocking considering I would have spent hours on social media to get the same about of information on a normal night. It really makes me question how I can spend so much time on social media on a regular day. Do I just look at the same information over and over again? I will definitely be watching for this and taking more breaks from social media.

I think the hardest thing was trying to break the habit I have formed with checking social media. This experiment showed me that I can put down the phone more and still not miss anything. Hopefully I will be able to change my habits moving forward.