NO SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGE

Have you ever felt like going off the grid?  No calls, text or internet, nothing, well i have. At that time coming online was a struggle, It made me depressed. Why?, I still don’t know. I just wanted to turn everything off and I did.

There was an app on my phone that helped me turn off all the social media platforms, so I put all of them in the app.

Long before it was a thing, I had tried the no social media challenge. For almost 3 months, everything was turned off. Even the news!

If you ever wondered what it’s like to live off the grid. Here’s my experience.

•  Quiet.

That was the first thing I noticed, no pings, no buzzing, no twitting from my phone. It was like a vacuum and all sounds had been sucked in. The first day it was very unsettling, I even began to hallucinate thinking that my phone was buzzing. The urge to check my platforms was very overwhelming, I felt like an addict in withdrawal. Then I realized that I had spent a lot of time in the house and my phone. The second day the urge was still just as strong but since I had set a goal, I was going to achieve it, I went out. Took a walk and breathed in fresh air. As the days flew by, the urge to go online, faded but at a slower rate. I learnt not to be concerned about the quiet, even learnt to embrace it.

• Free time

This one shocked me the most. Online, I always complained that I had no time to do anything. Once I turned off everything, I realized that I’d been lying…there was enough time,  even after my mid day nap. I was writing more, reading more. I was free.

• Peace of mind.

I don’t know if this is a “me – thing” but I felt peace. Connectivity is the main aim of social media but, one of the side effects I’ve come to realize that comes with this main aim is anxiety. With all the depressing news flooding my feed, I began to get very anxious.

Deaths, explosions, abuses, cases of these were everywhere, being thrown at me so fast my head was spinning so I made the conscious decision to turn it all off.

At first I was unsettled, the quiet bothered me but after one week, and then two weeks,  I started to feel at peace.

   Settled

In summary, it was a great experience, one I continued to do subsequently. Do I recommend this for everyone? Absolutely. I would also love to hear about your experiences.

Let’s talk in the comment section

Peace and love