In today’s society people often confused their self worth by how many followers they have, how many likes they get, or how many people they snapchat. I wanted to try and give up social media to remember a time when our happiness wasn’t measured by how many favorites our posts got.
Don’t get me wrong, I love social media as much as the next teenage girl but I also have never considered myself to be reliant on it. It’s normal to want to have a reminder that I am important to someone else. I would check my Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and vsco once, twice, or twenty five times every day to see if there was any new progress in my social standings. My overpowering desire to take an acceptable picture that would get me maximum likes isn’t weird, it’s what is considered “the norm”.
Trying to get a picture that is sure to match my feed doesn’t take much time, but it is still a process. I always look forward to being able to test different effects and making sure that the colors look as natural as possible despite being fake: the fade isn’t too much and the borders are nice. Every time I take a picture for vsco, I spend about two to six minutes editing the picture to make sure it is visually pleasing and also matches my feed image that I’ve spent months building. Choosing and editing a picture for Instagram takes about twenty minutes because I know that more people are going to see it and judge it the same way that I do. When scrolling through my recently posted, I always look at each picture and mentally pick it apart in both good and bad ways.
A few months ago, snapchat released an update that included many new exciting features. One of these new features would soon become all the new rage. The feature that created a tremendous amount of buzz was the “snapchat streak”. A snapchat streak measures the numbers of days in row that two individuals snapchat back and forth. In order to for it to be a streak, these two individuals must snapchat back and forth at least three times in one day. In this day and age, a snapchat streak is something that almost everyone with access to snapchat wants. A streak is so desirable that when I told my friends that I will soon take an oath swearing away all access to online social interactions, they were enraged.
One of the reasons I enjoy social media so much is because I harmlessly use it as a distraction from all of my important everyday responsibilities. I would find myself looking at posts online that I already scrolled by at least two times just to avoid homework. Everytime I logged in I would get so sidetracked from anything else that I was doing and only zoom into my screen. I expect that cutting all social media out of my life for seven days would be quite challenging but I believed in my own willpower.
Day 1 – Monday
Today was the first day. I woke up with determination ready to take on the world without the distraction of my favorite apps. I had an idea of what I was getting myself into and I was prepared for the temptation that would follow… Or so I thought. At 12:34 last night I deleted snapchat off of my phone because I couldn’t take the constant flash of notifications that popped up every time I harmlessly checked the time. I knew giving up the rest of my social media would be rough, so I vowed to delete the app if I had even the slightest urge to open them and explore the days social standings. As my night draws closer to an end, I feel like I am slowly losing a part of myself. It is weird not being able to complete my nightly ritual of scrolling down my feed at least two or three times before resting my phone next to my bed for its own recharge.
Day 2 – Tuesday
I opened my eyes to the morning sun with the realization that everything I’ve worked for over the past couple of months was going to just vanish. My everyday effort to maintain my online relationships was crumbling and I was trying my hardest not to snap a selfie of myself and send it to 18 of my closest friends. I knew what to expect, but the emotional baggage that came along with willingly giving up all of my snapchat streaks was unpredictable. At 8:22, while sitting in my favorite class, cafe study hall, I was drawn to checking my Instagram post that I had uploaded the night before. The only thing stopping me from logging on was the guilt that would’ve followed me checking my like count on a picture that I posted with the intentions of letting my followers know that I was signing off for a week. Today was the hardest.
Day 3 – Wednesday
There was no going back now. I had already deleted most of my apps and lost most of my Snapchat streaks, with the exception of the streaks that I am constantly being reminded of by the face of my friends off the screen. Today I realized that I was unintentionally compensating my lack of social media with endless Netflix sessions. One of the reasons for momentarily deleting social media out of my life was to make more time for school and myself, but I accidentally got into the habit of coming home from school and binge watching The Carrie Diaries and Lost until all hours of the night. Going to school was a constant reminder of the sacrifice I took. I tried to avoid my friends because it was inevitable that they were going to bring up our lost streak, a beautifully executed instagram picture they saw, or a savage tweet that was bound to grab everyone’s attention by the end of the day. But by the end of the day, I was unaware of anything that was happening over the internet and I was strangely okay with being completely out of the loop.
Day 4 – Thursday
Today was a day of acceptance. I woke up feeling great because of the increase of sleep that I received from falling asleep two hours earlier than I usually do. I didn’t feel the need to check my delivered snapchat’s, new instagram notifications, or even my text messages. As I pulled into the school, my mom eyed me down with curiosity when I forgot to grab my phone out of the cup holder. She called my name as she held my phone through the window and that’s when I realized that my goal was complete. I am more reliant on myself than the modern technology and social online world. During lunch I was able to have a full conversation with my friends and all of the end of the lunch table inhabitants. I had caused a chain of effects that started when I walked into the lunchroom with my phone in my backpack and ended with all of my friends putting their phones face down next to their tray. At the end of the day I realized that if i could do it, then anyone can do it. It’s worth it.
Day 5 – Friday
School is easier because, at this point, everyone around me knows what I’m doing. People don’t make a point to bring up the drama online and I don’t make a point to ask about it. Now, i’m not going to lie, throughout the week I would ask anyone and everyone I sat down with if they had any news or updated statuses that I would want to know about. Today was different. I wasn’t interested in what they had to say and actually found myself changing the conversation when someone brought up the social media life. I was able to walk down the hallway and see the person for who they are, and not what they tweeted about their boyfriend on Tuesday night at 10:36. I was the most relaxed that I’ve been in a long time as I was laying in bed at the end of the day because I wasn’t thinking about how cool someone else’s plans were on this Friday night.
Day 6 – Saturday
Is one really up at 5am if they don’t post a snapchat story about how tired they are? I knew today was going to be a long day filled the potential to meet new people that all share the same interest as me. I also knew that today was going to be filled with temptations and awkward “no’s” when someone asks me to take a take a picture with me for a snapchat story. Spending the day with the people that you see at their worst at least three or four times every week is anything but a photo opportunity. But when you and your teammates finally get together all looking your best, you’re obviously going to want to let everyone know how good you guys look. The desire to take a snapchat to show everyone where I was and how much fun my team and I were having was more overwhelming than the anxiety I should have been having for performing in front of hundreds of people. I’ve never noticed how many selfies people took until I was sitting phoneless in a gym full of cheerleaders. After the competition, my teammates and I were sitting around a table watching everyone else’s plate arrive one by one. I would notice that when their food finally did arrive, some people took pictures of their food. I thought they looked silly until I realized that I too once was a victim to a good plating photo op. I went to bed feeling guilty for not being able to favorite someone’s photo even though they politely asked me to.
Day 7 – Sunday
Sunday’s are my lazy day. I lay in bed for hours at a time watching movies and getting my homework completed. I usually am sidetracked and distracted by my apps, but today I didn’t worry about that- except for when I spent about 45 minutes editing photos that I wouldn’t even be able to post until tomorrow. I spent a large majority of the day thinking about how proud I was of myself for being able to complete my personal journey of no social media. I was able to replace online social interaction with real personal interaction. And I was feeling good with that.
That was until I got my puppy. She was a sweet little baby just sitting in my seat. I was so overwhelmingly happy when I got to pick her up and cradle her in my arms. She was so soft and smelled like new puppy. I was so excited and all my feelings toward social media redownloaded into my brain.
After both my puppy and I settled down, she looked so cute and squishy and I just wanted to let everyone see her beauty. I wanted to share my happiness with others right then and there. She was so small and adorable, I knew my 697 instagram followers would be thrilled too. Although I needed to get my news out, I knew I had to wait so I put my phone down and spent time with my puppy. She was now mine and it actually felt nice to be able to hide her from the world for a little while.
I felt so empowered, but I still found myself thinking about how excited I was to finally be able to redownload my apps that I’ve missed so dearly. I didn’t realize until after, but I think I was subconsciously waiting for the clock to strike 12 so that I could finally check everything that I’ve missed from my absence. At 11:45 I made the executive decision to go to bed. I knew that if I waited up until 12 that I would spend the next 5 hours scrolling through all of my apps. I knew that I probably wouldn’t get more that 2 hours of sleep after being distracted by looking and liking my friends posts from over the week and snooping into all the publicly displayed drama.
My week without social media has been a real eye opener. I quickly realised that my self worth isn’t based on how many snapchat streaks I have, how many likes i get on a picture or how many retweets I get. The hardest thing for me to give up was probably snapchat because even though I didn’t have actual conversations, seeing someone else take time to snapchat a silly face of themselves was oddly comforting. Although I knew I wasn’t really losing anything, I still felt lonely. When I first told my friends that I was going to give up social media, most of them were just concerned with losing a snapchat streak. Throughout the week I patiently waited for “I miss you” and “what have you been up to” texts from those friends but they didn’t deliver. I felt more disconnected from my friends than I’ve ever felt, but I also felt more connected with myself. I got more sleep at night, kept my room clean, finished my homework before 10pm, and didn’t have to worry about keeping my online status in check. This experience is something that I won’t forget for a very long time. Now, every time I log in, I realize how boring, uneventful and pointless all my efforts to maintain my online media really was. I don’t think so much about what others will be seeing and post things that I will enjoy looking back on. To me, social media is really a way to document your life so that others can see it as it happens Why would other people care about my memories as much as I do? What I take away most from this experience is just to put down the phone and look at the memories through your own eyes and not a camera lense on your phone. No one should be more interested in your life than you are.
Rules of the Game
- Absolutely zero social media interaction.
- Avoid even clicking on the apps.
- If a powerful urge to enter app is felt, delete it.
- Allowed to take pictures throughout the week, as long as they’re on the iphone camera app.
- Editing pictures on a picture editing app is okay as long as they stay there and not go anywhere where people can view them.
- Try extremely hard to avoid asking about what is going on online.
Caitlyn is a Staff Reporter at Hawk Headlines, and has spent one full semester at Hawk Headlines. She once bought a betta fish without telling her mom, and describes herself as a "rebellious reporter".
