What Happens When You Quit Social Media for a Year
*Photo quality warning: All photos in this article were either taken by myself or a friend on a mobile device.
This is not a drill, folks… You read it right — I’m 22 and I went off of all social media for an entire year (and it was a leap year). Before I explain what this experience was like, it’s only fair that you understand why I did it.
The Back Story
I first got a smartphone when I was 18 years old, after graduating high school (even later than the majority, these days). I downloaded the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram apps to my phone, but, like most people, I didn’t dive in right away. I didn’t even know that Instagram was a sharing app for at least three months.
When I was 19, I joined a networking business, so my life began to revolve around, you guessed it: networking. Of course, social media was the perfect tool for this. Not only could you use it to “network” (aka stay connected with acquaintances) with minimal effort, but you could use it to market your awesome products and services. My friends and following lists grew into bigger monsters each day, adding more and more people to impress, more likes to collect, more people to “connect” with, and more opinions and thoughts to take in on a daily basis.
By age 21, I had spent some of the most critical years of my life with my nose in my iPhone and my anxiety at an all-time high. Was I posting enough? Too much? Were my follower-following ratios acceptable? Are people unfollowing me? Do people dislike me? Why did that post get less likes than the last one? Two and a half years — the years during which I was growing from an adolescent to a real-life “adult” — spent doing what? How much time had I spent on social media, or merely thinking about social media, in that time?
More importantly, how has this heavy daily involvement with social media shaped my still-growing brain?
After my company closed down in October 2015 and I fell into a depressive state, I turned to social media for comfort. My business had been so online-focused and networking-oriented, but I didn’t feel like myself. I kept opening apps to scroll, but I didn’t have anything to say, nor did I feel like looking at the same gifs and memes circling around the internet.
Making The Decision to Go Off Social Media
The decision to go off of social media was fairly easy. It was almost a given, after realizing that I very well could be an entirely different person today if I had zero exposure to social media. I had tried going on a social media break from two of my four apps for a few months here and there, but I wanted to go cold turkey to get the truest answers to my questions…
Countless hours scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. Was social media making me less productive?
Numerous examples of being with a friend but only half-listening because I’m Snapchatting. Was social media making me less present?
I know myself to be a happy and optimistic person, but I still constantly crave validation. Was social media making me less positive?
Taking Action: Getting off Social Media
A year seemed like a long enough time to go on a hiatus and get some real answers. So on January 1st, 2016, I deleted Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat off my phone. I didn’t feel much emotion at the time, but that’s probably because it was New Year’s Day and I was hungover.
One of my hypotheses for the experiment was that I would feel instantly liberated. I sometimes had felt like a slave to my phone so I was excited to go “offline” and off the radar. Interestingly enough, this hypothesis couldn’t have been more wrong.
The first few days, weeks, and months into 2016, I felt two unfamiliar emotions:
I felt lonely, and I felt like nobody liked me.
I remembered reading an article that claimed that social media can lead to depression and loneliness, because when you’re looking at Facebook for instance, you’re usually by yourself. However, when you’re posting on Facebook, you’re posting yourself doing stuff — fun, cool, exciting stuff, with your friends and family, all looking your best! So, when sitting in your sweats, unshowered with bed head, scrolling through Facebook, you’re seeing what your friends are doing at their best, and you’re feeling left out. I was looking forward to not feeling that way, but oddly, I still felt lonely and excluded.
Withdrawals: Are we All Addicted to Social Media?
I was also experiencing an unexpected physical sensation; I felt an uncontrollable urge to scroll with my right thumb. I found myself scrolling through my texts (which I’m usually pitiful at replying to promptly) incessantly, responding to old messages, creating new text threads, and even double-texting people for the hell of it. I also caught myself scrolling through apps like Venmo and the NBA app, looking at payment “reasons” between friends and basketball players’ stats on teams that I don’t even care about.
This need to scroll combined with the sudden darkness of being offline impulsed me to start texting and calling my friends more. My best friends live all over the country, so I’m already inhibited from seeing them frequently. I realized I missed my friends more, because I didn’t see their selfies every day on Snapchat and Instagram. I didn’t know what they were doing because I wasn’t following their tweets. I didn’t know how they were “feeling” because I didn’t see their Facebook statuses.
Analyzing the Effects of Social Media
Since I had so much time to not mess around on my phone, I began analyzing why I felt like nobody liked me. Aside from being sad about my company recently ending, there was a definite surge of sadness after the new year.
After some digging, I realized that I felt unvalidated.
Why would I not feel validated?I had never even consciously considered that I was receiving validation on a regular basis.
Since I wasn’t posting anything on social media, I wasn’t getting any likes. Nobody was commenting on my work or messaging me. No wonder I felt like nobody liked me. I went from getting hundreds of likes a day to zero within 24 hours. As the weeks of January went by and bled into February, the lack of validation weighed on my existence heavier and heavier.
The good news is, I realized this by early February. After I found the reason for my emotions, I let myself feel them through, while understanding they would only be temporary. The beauty of an experiment like this is, you at least know when it will be over. That helped me through the harder moments.
Finally, Truly Off Social Media
After spending a few months clearing all of the social media side effects out of my brain, I was able to start restructuring my brain without social media in my life. I had cleared space for new thoughts, ideas and feelings.There were a couple months during which I thought about social media every day, and dare I say, missed it. One day in March or April, I didn’t think about social media all day, and my next day followed suit. It wasn’t until I thought of social media that I realized I hadn’t been thinking about it.
That was when the true liberation happened. My mind was finally free from the weight and noise of social media.
Over spring and summer, when I thought of social media, I did so in a healthy respect. I reflected on my previous usage and everything that I used to be exposed to regularly, making it seem normal to me. After having to make the effort to reach out to my loved ones so often, an epiphany hit me:
I realized that social media doesn’t connect us, but rather, it creates the illusion of connection.
When we “like” a friend’s post, we feel as if we interacted with them. Don’t even get me started on how interactive it becomes when you comment on someone’s post and they like your comment! Now THAT is an interaction. Aside from the illusion of connection, we also get to excuse ourselves from not actually communicating. We learn about the important events of each other’s lives from “following” each other. You can know about anyone’s engagement or wedding, pregnancy or new baby, new car, new house, breakup, travels, new jobs, and anything else they may decide to put on the internet, simply from opening an app. You wouldn’t have to speak to someone for an entire lifetime and still know every important event in their life.
Is social media legal, semi-mutual stalking?
Another factor to get used to in 2016 was living in the moment. Doesn’t sound like it should be so hard, does it? After being so incredibly accustomed to pulling out my phone to share something cool I just saw/heard/thought of for so many years, it makes sense why my initial inclination was to post that awesome tree to my Snapchat story. Or what about this sunset? Everybody has to see this! (But they already see it, it’s the same sun…” “but they don’t see it from my view!”)
I took a lot more photos with the camera on my phone in 2016, rather than with my Snapchat camera. I recorded more videos. But I also spent more time without my phone in hand — feeling the earth below my shoes as I walked, listening to the twigs and leaves crunch, hearing the birds dancing in the very same wind that cleansed my face and filled my lungs. I climbed trees and jumped in the water. I ran when I felt like it, leapt in the air, approached strangers to strike up a conversation, and enjoyed every car ride.
I watched the world through my own eyes rather than through a lens or a filter.
When taking photos, I didn’t have to worry about which one I’d post or what caption to write with it. I made up my own captions in my inner monologue as I strolled around Mexico, Hong Kong, Vancouver B.C., and the west coast of the U.S., laughing to myself when I thought something that I thought was funny.
Having nobody to please but myself — that was a true vacation.
When in conversations, I was undistracted. I had nothing preventing me from focusing on the person or people in front of me. I felt people open up to me more, as I gave them my full attention. Learning how to become uninterruptedly engaged with another person was one of the most valuable lessons from this year.
I reserved my head space for more worthwhile thoughts.
In terms of productivity, I certainly still found ways to procrastinate. I didn’t read as many books as I thought I would, but I also wasn’t distracted by notifications when I was reading in 2016. The biggest player in the productivity aspect of this experiment was the fact that my mind had more room to think about what’s important. It was not cluttered with blips from the media and neverending opinions of acquaintances. For that reason, I was able to work more productively with less distractions. Between tasks, I didn’t go to Instagram to scroll, but I sat in silence for a few moments and breathed. Sometimes I just thought. I looked at the Solar System poster on my wall and my world atlas. I colored in a coloring book. I went to get the mail and stopped to smell every rose along the way. Every color rose smells different, you know.
Nothing’s Perfect
I’ll admit that there were some cons to being offline. While social media can become detrimental when overused, it is still an excellent tool when used wisely. If you need to reach somebody whose contact you don’t have, you can find them on social media, indubitably. Social media is also useful for keeping up on surface-level yet important trends and news, but you can still find that information elsewhere. It’s just more convenient to have it in one place.
2017: Getting Back on Social Media
Gearing up to go back online was also an interesting phase. When December 2016 rolled around, I realized that I would be back to the unknown world of social media in less than a month, and I was a little intimidated. I didn’t know what was on there, what had changed, what hadn’t changed, and, scariest of all, I didn’t know how my online presence would have changed. I don’t remember what my posts used to be like. I don’t know if I had people expecting anything from me, or if they had already forgotten about me 11 months ago after I stopped posting for a week.
Initial Reactions after Returning to the World of Social Media
Initially, I was overwhelmed. That was really something I was placing in my own mind, though. I downloaded Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram back, but I didn’t see a purpose in Twitter anymore. I had made a video of 2016 that I planned to post on Facebook and Instagram, so I did that, and got back off all apps immediately.
I slowly eased my way back into social media after that. I started doing some scrolling, and what I saw was interesting: it was that nothing had changed. In an entire year, I saw the same types of posts as I saw flooding my timeline in 2015. The biggest difference was the layout of Facebook, the new Snapchat filters, and the new Instagram logo.
To be fair, I follow the same people as I did a year ago. But that’s where it gets interesting. There are some people who changed, and some people who are exactly the same, from what I can tell. And some of those who changed, changed drastically! How amazing to see the new career paths, travel experiences, graduations, engagements, births, and personal goals accomplished over the past year! On the contrary, some changed for worse. And then there are those who haven’t changed at all. I think that’s my biggest fear, and that’s something that this year taught me. A year is a milestone and a solid portion of time to zone in on to track progress. More important than accomplishments, it’s been fascinating to see the changes (or lack thereof) in the mindsets and goals of my peers.
What I’ve Learned from Being Off Social Media
It would have been very easy to get carried away and forget everything I’d just learned. I had so many cool pictures, videos and experiences from 2016 that I wanted to share, but I learned that not every memory needs to be shared with everyone. We can keep certain pieces to ourselves or share them with a select few. So I consciously caught myself feeling the dopamine rush of likes, comments and validation, and I instantly switched up my thought process about it all.
I decided that I would not post for likes. I would not worry about following/follower ratios, nor would I unfollow someone for unfollowing me. Further, I wouldn’t even keep track of who does and doesn’t follow me. I will use social media to spread positivity and influence productivity, as is my personal mission in life. I will also use social media to connect with people when I have no other method of reaching them, follow life events of loved ones who I don’t talk to regularly, and reach out to them personally when I see something exciting they did to congratulate them. I only unfollow posts that are negative or incredibly too repetitive, and I won’t be offended if someone unfollows me for their personal reasons.
Our generation must learn that our likes do not define our character and our followers should not affect our happiness. Furthermore, we don’t need social media. Like a drug, it can cause psychological and physical addictions without us even noticing – I am living proof of this.
You don’t need to go on a year-long social media hiatus to take back control of your life. What you do need is a realistic understanding of who is in charge. Just like what Francis Bacon said about money – the same applies here:
“Social media is a great servant, but a bad master.”