This week I decided to use my smartphone smarter.
I gave up social media for one week (on my phone and computer), namely the trifecta of distraction — Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
In lieu of wasting time on these apps, I vowed to use my new freed up mobile time using apps that teach me useful things — such as iBooks, Duolingo, the Washington Post and maybe even a little iTunes U.
I sent an obligatory text to my parents, my sister and a couple of other close friends to let them know what I was up to so they wouldn’t think I had fallen off the face of the earth.
My sister actually liked the idea so much that she decided to boycott her social media sources for a week, too.
Our week-long journey had both ups and downs.
At first, I noticed that I got out of bed a little faster than usual since I didn’t check four different news feeds before my feet hit the ground. I was feeling confident — and I started to pity those around me who were glued to their phones. I happily lived my life without feeling like I had to share every moment of it.
On day two, I was invited to a dinner and met a few of my friends’ coworkers. A round of sharing Instagram usernames followed, and I felt compelled to explain why I wouldn’t be able to reciprocate a “follow” until next week. I also missed the photos that — I assumed — they posted from dinner that night. I hoped they were good photos too, since immediate untagging was not an option.
By mid-week, I noticed that my fingers kept idly wandering to the place on my phone where the apps used to be.
Also, due to work obligations, I had to miss a movie premiere that I had been looking forward to for several months. I immediately felt the need to publish my feelings, but I remembered that wasn’t an option. If you’re sad about something and no one is around to read about it, are you still sad?
By day four, it had felt like 465 days since my last status update. Was it Throwback Thursday already? I wanted to throwback to last Thursday — to the days before I tortured myself into social isolation. #imissinstagram.
On day five, my sister took a trip to Cincinnati to see her brother-in-law star in a big theatrical production. He excelled and made headlines. We were so proud — but sharing the raving reviews and photos with more than 300 of our closest friends and family would have to wait.
Toward the end of the week, Facebook started to notice my absence. The company sent me multiple emails informing me that I have countless missed notifications. OK, they weren’t countless — there were 22 of them.
As the experiment came to an end, I realized that my original intent had changed. I wasn’t using any of my “productive” apps more often. I was just using my phone less.
When it was time to log back in, a little drumroll played in my head. An itch was about to be scratched.
And honestly, it was a little underwhelming.
I realized that it would have taken me several hours to read every little thing I had missed in the last week. There were things that I was happy to see, yes. But out of the hundreds of updates that I missed, there were only a small handful that I cared about. In fact, those who are closest to me knew I was off the grid for a week and personally texted me photos and articles that they wanted me to see, so I really didn’t miss out on much at all.
My sister, who had even more missed notifications than I did, found the large percentage of meaningless posts to be downright depressing. The overall minimal quality of what she had missed in the last seven days left her asking what she had actually been missing out in the real world while wasting her time on personality quizzes and memes for the past seven years.
She estimated that if we just spend 30 minutes per day on average checking our news feeds, that equates to over a week per year spent on the apps. If that trend continued for 50 years, we would be spending one year of our lives on social media.
Despite her slightly more depressing conclusion, I don’t count all that time as wasted — as long as it’s used wisely.
Social media is a tool. It has kept me updated with friends and family all over the world. It is a great way to stay connected.
But there is a difference between checking it when we want to be updated on our friends and checking it out of habit or boredom. Our lives are so full of stimuli now that it becomes a go-to when we have just 60 seconds to kill, when without the apps, I might enjoy some small talk with someone new or take in more from my surroundings instead.
Social media is useful, but it’s abused far too often. People post updates when they are bored and we, in turn, read them when we are bored. It becomes a vicious cycle of wasted time.
Going forward, I’m not ready to pull the plug just yet. But for now, I feel as though I have learned there is a time and place for social media. As it was for my sister and me, the balance may be different for different people. But whether you decide to connect once a week or once a day, just be sure that you’re not disconnecting yourself from real life in the process.
This is a weekly series about following through with a New Year’s resolution to have a new experience each week. To suggest topics or experiences, email alaina.akens@elizabethton.com.
Alaina O'Neal 