Over time, we get so caught up in the social media world that we superficially transform into that realm. It can be easy to relax for a little from our lives and use social media to kill time and go into a place where things seem to be perfect all the time. Although, after some time, it can get exhausting to keep up with all the socials and with everyone else’s lives while trying to keep ours updated too.
I never thought I would ever feel that I could feel exhausted from social media since I never used it that much. During quarantine, that changed a lot. I ended up spending a lot of my time on social media – specifically Instagram, since that was the only social media platform I had. I spent hours just scrolling through my feed and the explore page without any meaning, and I didn’t realize how much of my time it took. It led me to download Twitter again, which took up even more of my time. I decided to take a social media break, so I deleted all socials off my phone to see how long I could go without it; it wasn’t even a day later that I started using the socials again. It took a big hit on my mental health, and I acknowledged it, but I couldn’t implement proper ways to fix it. Slowly, I stopped going on socials and made use of my time to do things I never got around to doing.
We always tell ourselves that we will go on a social media cleanse, but something always comes up, and we make excuses to keep the specific platforms on our phones. It’s usually to make sure that we stay in contact for academic and professional purposes with those who don’t have Facebook, so we feel obligated to keep it, “just in case.” It’s hard to realize that there are other ways to maintain contact and that if we think genuine about going on a cleanse, we can find ways to communicate with others.
The mental drain and constant distractions of social media are eventually not worth it. Even though they have their fair shares of pros, we still need to take some time off for our own sakes and to give our brains a reset from technology and social media lives. It doesn’t take much to start overthinking something that we see on Instagram, and that requires us to keep having constant thoughts about something that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t seen it on our feed.
So, if you mean to take that break from social media, let this be a sign that you need to take it now rather than later. Give your mind a break and take up cooking for a change!