Social Media Detox

I decided to get off social media for a while. I felt sidetracked by my phone. a nice way to say “I was addicted to my smartphone ”.

For years now, I have been contemplating getting an old Nokia you can only text and call with. I tried many things to get myself off my iPhone. It started with turning off all sounds for my notifications and then all notifications altogether. The next step was going off for a couple of hours a day, especially when I had to focus or wanted to be with my friends. I would either put my phone on airplane mode or not take my phone with me. I quickly got the reputation of never being available. I heard things like “ You are harder to reach than Obama”..… I continued doing it anyway and would warn people that I might not answer calls or messages as I’m “bad” with my phone. Just to manage the phone expectations. Crazy really, isn’t it? We got used to having people available for us 24/7.

I then for some time changed the color settings of my phone to black and white, inspired by a good friend of mine. It’s unbelievable what colors do with our minds and how addictive these phones and apps have been created by simply the use of the "right" colors. Try it in your phone settings. It’s incredible how boring your phone becomes. But as I couldn’t use my camera either with those settings, I changed my phone back to a colored screen. And hooked I was again.

None of my attempts were actually having the effect I was striving for. I still felt the stress of my phone addiction in my daily life. For most of my spare moments in my day I would grab my phone. I felt like a robot being used by my own phone instead of the other way around. Watching the Social Dilemma documentary last week was the final nudge I needed to really disengage for a while. I call it my own “Social Experiment”.

It’s now a week that I’m off social media. From day 1 I felt a sense of peace, yet also a little disoriented. A dozen times a day I’d pick up my phone and literally tap on the screen exactly where the apps used to be. Feeling the withdrawal symptoms, I found myself with so much more time during the day I hardly knew what to do with it in the first days. I felt a certain kind of emptiness. Quoting Hemingway here..

“ By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. but if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. if it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”

As the days passed, social media, surprisingly, was not on top of my mind anymore in those spare moments. I watched the sea whilst eating, instead of scrolling my feed. I spoke with friends when I had some free time instead of liking their pictures. I started learning about photography instead of sharing my photos online and then engaging in the comments of others. I started writing instead of scrolling.

It felt like I started to surrender to real life. Being more connected to others, nature, the cosmos, and myself.

Bingo.

Generally, I am feeling calmer and more connected to my surroundings. Yet the most interesting effects are my enhanced inspiration and, the biggest of all, more focus!

The effects are remarkable, really. Beyond my own expectations.

Two of the main reasons I was hesitant to get off social media were one, I was scared I would lose connection with my friends. and two, I was afraid I wouldn’t get new clients as I wasn’t able to promote my services online.

I decided I will try for a month and see how it goes. Results after one week: I got more new clients than I usually have in a month and I feel more connected with my friends than before. The fears in my mind now prove to just have been mental projections to keep me in the old and familiar and in the illusion that with social media I am fulfilling two of my basic human needs.

Safety and connection.

When you watch the documentary, you will get more insights into the psychological manipulation of these apps and platforms from the people that actually created them! I’d recommend you to watch it.

As I watch the stars at night and stare into the cosmos instead of my screen, I wonder about the influence of technology in our lives, in both good and bad ways.

As I work online I cannot deny the immense freedom and benefits from our technological evolution in my personal life. It’s not all bad, of course. But it needs measure. For sure.

I think we have to ask ourselves. Which parts of technology are actually benefiting me and which parts are not?

I wonder what will happen when we all don’t have a phone to stare at for hours a day and share and compare our daily life with? And what will happen if we connect more with each other, Earth, ourselves?

As I spend more time contemplating, witnessing, and engaging in my own daily life, I can’t help but philosophize about what is truly important in my life. And how social media fits in all that.

My 75-year old neighbor invites me daily for a coffee and most of the time I join her for a quick chat and some human connection, which I now have plenty of time for. I asked her what she thinks of social media and technology. As I stare at her old Nokia phone on the table she shares her view. She has a tablet she only uses for Skype calls with her grandchildren that live on the Greek mainland and tells me all about the fights this Summer when her grandchildren visited her on the island. The fights to get them off the screens. She thinks we lost the plot altogether and slowly will start to be unable to have fulfilling human relationships as we simply don’t know how to truly connect and have a conversation with another human being. She compares her own children with her grandchildren and tells me about the differences in focus, collaboration, and needs… Fascinating, really. This is just one generation apart. I cannot deny that I do think there is some truth in this.

If we can’t put healthy boundaries on social media and the use of technology in our own lives, how can we ever teach our children? I don’t have children myself (yet) but I do wonder how to pull it off in the society we have created.

That brings me to the next and final question. Is the way forward perhaps going back?

Thank you for reading. On a screen, that is. Ha, the irony...

Sending you love and peace wherever you are.