30 days since I deleted my social media accounts - how has life changed?

It's been over a month since I left all social media channels but one, and the lifestyle and mental changes I am experiencing are encouraging.

It had been a long time coming, but one day in a fit of annoyance at how much time I was spending on social media and how little of the content served up was actually to do with my friends or the people I followed, I requested that my accounts be deleted. I didn’t just delete the apps, I went nuclear and decided that my presence on social media, apart from where it’s needed for work purposes, had to go! The deadline for re-activating my accounts lapsed on Monday (I’d actually forgotten it was happening until a day or so later).

As a professional who works in content and digital marketing, I was just becoming so angry about how much crappy/lazy content was out there and at how the powers that be at the tech companies were serving that up over what I wanted to see (updates from people I’m connected with on the platform). It got to the stage that every time I mindlessly opened and scrolled through my feed, I would just leave in a rage; grumbling about what the hell happened to focusing on user experience? Not a healthy place to be!

Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash

To prove my point I did an experiment on Facebook one day and counted 40 suggested (yes, 4 - 0) posts before I saw an update from someone I knew. On Instagram, I remember watching a video about something I wanted to try with my hair, on the rare occasions I’m not just washing it and leaving it to dry while I sit at my desk. Within minutes I was served up multiple different versions of the same content posted by different women. They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but this just pissed me off and came across as lazy promotion and content creation.

Luckily, and possibly because I am an elder millennial who only dances at weddings when wine has been consumed, I have never been near TikTok. Similarly, Pinterest never interested me either so it was really just Facebook and Instagram from a personal perspective.

Professionally, I have kept my LinkedIn account, but I only look at it on my work laptop. Even that is becoming an annoyance, though, and I’ve found myself unfollowing anyone who is consistently posting rubbish (a subjective thing I know). For example, posts where they have filmed themselves doing something good rather than just doing the good thing, false/pointless/clutching at straws lesson posts like “what I learned from having to bathe my dog after they rolled in the mud”, copying other people’s content etc…

Now that I have finished my rant about how social media has gone down the toilet, I shall return to the point of this article - what’s changed for me so far since I left…

I have been given the gift of time

This sounds dramatic, but it’s true, I was spending 3 - 4 four hours a day on my phone and most of that time was spent scrolling social media. That’s 3 -4 hours a day that I have been given to do something more wholesome, and I’ve been doing just that!

I am using the time I would have spent on social media more wisely

The time I have been given is now being used in wonderful ways. I’ve read 4-5 books over the past month, and I’ve started going for morning walks and stretching/doing yoga before I eat my lunch. I also have more quiet time where I just sit and think. I even made a lasagne from scratch, and I loved it!

My world and my brain have gotten very quiet, and it’s a lovely feeling

I made the decision to delete my Facebook and Instagram accounts on a Saturday morning when the husband was at work so I was on my own apart from the house bunny and he’s not one for conversation. Once I’d done it I felt peaceful, present and also a little isolated. Without the TV on or any other noise/stimulation, the world became very quiet instantly. That morphed into having a clearer head, my thoughts being less scattered, and actually allowing myself time to think and process without interrupting it by scrolling social media when the thinking got tough or I felt bored.

I’m starting to get the urge to set some big life goals…

I’m a big goal setter, always have been, and it’s definitely a learned behaviour from my parents, who set goals in the “red book” every year and revisit them every few months - it’s no surprise that they have achieved a lot! I am a bit more relaxed about it, but with more time to think and less unconscious input from social media, I realised that I’ve been coasting in some areas of my life. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I think I needed to coast for a while. But I’ve had to acknowledge that some of it is down to mindlessly scrolling social media and using it to fill up every spare minute so that I had no time to think and set goals, much less take action on them.

I’ve noticed in the last week or so that I am starting to want to set some goals for a few areas of my life (this newsletter/my writing, my day job and finances for example). I am just letting this all sit for now and I promised myself that between now and the end of the year, I’ll just let everything percolate before taking any action.

I still pick up my phone too much

Picking up my phone during times of boredom/idleness is a habit that has been harder to break than I thought it would be, but it’s getting better. It’s taken a month to reduce the number of pickups from 90-100 times a day (that figure stunned me!!) to 40 -50 times a day (still too high a number!!), and I’m looking to reduce that even further.

I still spend too much time trying to get quick dopamine hits from the apps that I have on my phone - ask me anything about the weather, the predicted time of my Amazon deliveries or the current moon phase, and I’ll be able to tell you!

The time I am spending on my phone has reduced, but the sessions are longer and more deliberate because I’m using my time for more fulfilling things - research, reading articles on here or Medium, looking up recipes to try or reading books on the Kindle app.

So overall, this is a work in progress, it has surprised me just what a hold social media had and how addicted i’d become. But, apart from the odd thought about posting about something that’s just happened (something I never really did when I had access to social media), I don’t miss it. The benefits are really starting to show and I’m interested to see how this all continues to develop over the next few months.