An Unsocial Experiment

This post has been sitting in my archive for a LONG time and I thought I would finally share it. It's not perfectly formatted or organized, but it's very much a live take on my thoughts on social media. It's very unfiltered, very unedited, and very real to me. So I wanted to share it regardless of the time sequence being slightly off. I hope you enjoy!

July 7th, 11:37pm

It's the middle of summer, I'm stuck at home taking classes, I'm truly only connected with the world because of social media.

What if that connection just didn't exist? In other words, what would I do if I didn't have social media?

I think about this a lot. Even just ten short years ago, things were exponentially different when it came to how we communicated. Do you remember technology in 2008? The newest breakthroughs were GPS and the App Store. The exponential pace at which technology has improved and taken over just about everything has been a pretty defining part of the past decade of my life. In a lot of ways, I've grown up with that technology along this perfect curve that it has progressed the same way that I have socially.

I don't remember not having social media anymore. Do you? Do you even remember the prehistoric life we were living when Facebook was just about the only "social media" site we truly used? I don't even think we were calling that social media! That was just how I knew the internet.

So tomorrow, I'm doing something a little crazy. I figured this is the literal only time I could do this without feeling totally helpless or out of the loop. I'm officially going off the grid with social media.

To give you some parameters, here is what will be deleted off of my phone: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These are the only real social media sites I use that I consider to be the gateway to the rest of the world on a wide basis. Facebook Messenger and Snapchat can stay, but both are only to be used for one-to-one communication, similar to how I would be texting or calling someone. In that way, it's almost like channeling IM (one of my favorite pass-times in middle school).

I'm very excited to test myself and see what the outcome is with this little experiment. I wonder if it'll make me tick not being able to waste my time looking at my screen. I wonder if I'll need to channel that energy elsewhere or if it will change my mood. I'll check back in and let you know.

July 9, 2:20pm

Today is Day Two, and so far, this hasn't been too bad. I keep opening my phone ready to click on my social media folder, but the only things in there are my emails. I find myself staring at it for a second, remembering why I don't see the apps, and locking my phone again. The most CHALLENGING thing has definitely been remembering not to go to Snapchat Stories. I have only been opening the app to respond to one-to-one snaps, but then somehow I find myself looking at someone's story. I try to catch myself and stop as soon as I figure out what I'm doing.

The scary thing is, I don't even remember how I get there when I do it. Does anyone else see that? If I were to watch three stories, then realize what I was doing and close the app, I probably couldn't tell you who the three people were or what their stories were of. But what does that say about how we check those things? Are we mindlessly clicking through stories staring at pictures and videos without really saying to ourselves "Oh, _____ is eating ______ at _______ restaurant, and they are with _______," or are we just tapping for the sake of clearing them from recent stories? I'm not sure when this happened, but somehow social media became so much less about connecting with people, and simply just putting yourself out there in competition or in sync with everyone else posting. It's crazy how I need to correct myself to remember not to be looking at them.

July 15, 7:05pm

So today is Day Eight, and I'm about a third of the way through this experiment. I must say, I've been really at peace for the past week or so. Something about not worrying about what other people are up to is pretty nice. I'm at the tail end of my classes I'm taking this summer, and I've definitely noticed that I'm much more focused on the task at hand when I don't have any excuse to pick up my phone and start mindlessly scrolling through any sites. I've started a new book, worked on some things for the upcoming school year, and have obviously been writing. Today was the first day I found myself not accidentally clicking on Snapchat stories, because that function is technically still available to me. It's surprising to me that it has only taken a week to sort of forget about what I was missing. The only functions I'm really using on my phone are email and text (kinda like 2010??).

Overall, I would say my mood has been better too. I'm a little bit less down in the dumps about not being on vacation or with my friends 24/7. I've been appreciating seeing people more, and less so in a "I need to be seen on your social media so people know we hung out", but more just enjoying peoples' company. It's so hard to believe that could be the only motivation for seeing someone, don't you think??

July 30, 3:32pm

So today is Day Twenty-Three, and I'll be quite honest. While I have felt very at peace without social media so far, today I really want to peek. The anticipation of going back to school, being back with my friends, I'm feeling like all of these things coming up require me to check up on everything going on. Does it feel good to not care about what everyone has been up to? In a way, yeah. In my head I know for a fact that social media was one of the reasons I dread being apart from everyone. I can pretty much blame that "fear of missing out" on the outlets that connect us, because they lead to more of that feeling of disconnect. Today I'm figuring out that what makes me want to scroll through those feeds is that reminder that those people and those things are out there ready whenever I come back.

August 7, 10:32am

Although I have been MIA for the past few weeks, it's mostly due to the fact that without social media, I've been keeping busy doing other things. But I'm here to share on Day Twenty Nine what I'm taking away from this experience.

Social media is entirely created, changed, controlled, and influenced by human thought and action. This system, none of these sites or apps, or even our participation in such would exist without the fact that we started it all. When you think about the very idea that social media was designed to build better connections, it puts an ironic spin on the fact that the debate on social media over the past decade has been over where we draw the line. When we blur the area between real social interaction and isolation -- better connections or worse relationships. I think that this has shown me that not only are we not truly programmed to our phones, but we can all take a detox. There's a certain "hump" to get over when doing so, but breaking that mold and detaching ourselves from that world is not only doable, it's probably needed every once and a while. I think this was the perfect way to learn a little more about my own dependency on social media as well as why I truly feel the need to use it. I would encourage anyone to do the same, I think you would be gladly surprised at how good it makes you feel to just be out there living.

xo Kate