Written by Ironic that you’re most likely seeing this from a social media post and I’m telling you to get off social media. If this post is making you distracted, then I recommend you to be productive. If not, I hope after reading this post will also make you productive. I recommend all of us to take a 3-day break from social media, and here’s why:
Distractions:
Our culture trains us to be distracted. All our social medias are DESIGNED to make you stay longer. The Instagram algorithm pushes posts by accounts you interact with more to the top and the ones you interact with less to the bottom. The endless scrolling feeds are also a trap. You’ll be caught in a cycle until reality hits you.
I know I spend at least an hour of simply being on social media. It goes about 15-20 minutes in bed when I wake up, 20 minutes sprawled throughout the day, and the last 20 minutes before I go to bed. Probably even more time is wasted realistically. We live in a world where there’s tons of information everywhere, but not every information is going to be knowledge.
The distinction lies whether this piece will impact you later. This information is simply meant to inform you at the present moment, like memes, baby pictures, and even certain pieces of news will not matter later. It’s information clutter. Knowledge is like a bookshelf, where you can find the information and use it at a later time.
Social media feeds you mental junk food and we need to go on a detox to cleanse ourselves so our brains can operate at maximum efficiency again.
Masks:
Scrolling through newsfeeds instill our minds of the masks people have. We all have them. These masks are how we want the world to perceive us. Many of which don’t reflect the real people. There are two types of masks I want to talk about. The mask you put on and the mask in which we perceive them.
1.) The first mask is our presentation. We sometimes put too much time and effort into presenting ourselves we often lose ourselves and end up isolating ourselves. We’ve become so far into our small world of social media and we often end up living in that world. We post pictures of our highlights, the beach trips we took, the accomplishments we reached and all the cool friends we have. But is that really our lives? This detox will help you reflect on what you currently have and become grateful for them.
2.) The mask in which perceive others is what will corrupt our minds too. Because we only see how people present themselves online, we only see one side of them. That, in turn, can create biases and stereotypes of that person. By cleansing yourself of social media, you can meet new people without these preformed biases and actually get to know the person.
Being Present:
I went on a social media detox when I backpacked Europe. I didn’t want ANY distractions during my trip. It gave me an opportunity to meet new people, read different signs, and observing EVERYTHING that’s going on. I don’t have a phone to hide behind anymore and I get to be fully immersed in this new area.
Being present helped me build meaningful connections with people. I remember on my flight from London, UK to Venice, Italy, I commented to the person sitting next to me about the gorgeous view and we managed to have an awesome conversation, even though his knowledge of English was limited and my knowledge of Italian was almost nonexistent. At the end of it, he even offered me a cigarette, but I politely declined. Staying off of social media helped me build better relationships with people.
Time: Our Scarcest Asset
The one resource we cannot get back is our time. Social Media is a tool. It can be used to waste our time or used to save us time. We can’t let the newsfeeds consume us. We need to contribute back into the world and help it flourish.
I challenge you this, to take a 3-day break from social media. You can see the drastic results of actually being present.
Life of Wesley 