Zwanziger Blog #3

Blog #3

Over spring break, I went without social media and the internet for a day. And it was hard. To start, I never thought that I relied on my phone nearly as much as I apparently do. While I do not actively post on social media and am admittedly more of a “lurker”, I still use it a lot more than I realized. The start of my day without social media was not that bad, but I definitely noticed it’s absence more and more throughout the day. In the morning after my alarm goes off, I normally sit for a little bit and scroll through my social medias such as Instagram and TikTok before I actually decide to get out of bed. Since I did this over spring break and was at the beach, this was not that bad as I just woke up and talked to my friends that were there with me. Eating time was when I started to notice it’s absence though. In the past two months I have started tracking my calories via an app called Lifesum and since I was trying to go without my phone for the day I tried not to use it.

This created a little bit of anxiety for me throughout the day because I am so used to closely monitoring what I eat through this app. Not only that, but I also noticed the absence of my phone when I was working out. I do a lot of cardio which can often get pretty boring, so I normally watch YouTube videos while I run to keep me entertained. Not being able to watch YouTube made my workout seem a lot harder than it actually was. Since I watch videos when I run I normally pick a video that is the same amount of time that my run is, that way I can stay entertained but also gage how much longer of my run I have. Without YouTube my workout seemed extremely out of whack and I think I performed a lot worse than I normally would have if I was using my phone.

While I was around a lot of people on my spring break trip, I still noticed how often people use their phones even when they’re around one another. It was incredibly common for us to all be hanging out and someone would go on their phone, which would start a chain reaction of everyone else in the room going on their phones as well. This would not have been that weird if I also had my phone, but since I was trying to go without it for a day I ended up just sitting there in silence. Not only that, but I realized that a lot of our conversations revolve around the media that we’re seeing through our technology. There were sometimes when my friends would bring something up that was happening on social media, which. I had no idea about.

Another instance that was continuously weird throughout my day was with how little communication I felt I was having with my friends who weren’t there physically with me. It is very common that throughout our days we are constantly talking or messaging people on social media, and not being able to have that line of communication felt extremely weird. I use snapchat a lot to talk to my friends who are other colleges, and not being able to send them things throughout the day was a little unnerving. I was constantly wondering what my friends were doing throughout their day and felt weird that I was not sharing my day with them as well. At one point in the day something funny happened and I went to grab my phone to share the experience with my friends but quickly had to stop myself. This made me realize how much we are constantly sharing with one another, whether or not we even realize it in the moment.

The night was probably the hardest part of my day without using my phone, mainly because I have a nighttime routine of checking social media and watching TikTok. While they often tell you not to look at your phone before bedtime, it actually helps me fall asleep and not being able to go on my phone made it a lot harder to go to bed. I ended up tossing and turning because my mind felt that it wouldn’t turn off.

Throughout the day of not using my phone I realized how much we rely on our technology as a society. Before trying this for a day I thought that I did not rely on my phone and thought that I could easily go without it for a day, but boy was I wrong. I think that our phones act as a security blanket for a lot of us and help us get through the day. While I think at one point we could have been without them, I think that our technology and social media is extremely engrained in our society and I think it’ll only keep getting that way as time goes on. After this experiment I am going to try and be more proactive and mindful about my social media consumption and technology usage throughout my days.