I Fasted Social Media. Here’s What Happened.

Earlier this month, I decided to evaluate how I was spending my time — in part because I’m naturally curious and also because I wanted to see if how I was spending my time really aligned with my (so-called) values. I have a deep desire for 2020 to be the year I eliminate hurry — or at least severely decrease it — so I can spend more time with God and be fully present to the life in front of me today. So — I find myself in a bit of a predicament. With all the busyness of life, is it really possible to eliminate hurry? What would that look like day-to-day? And what does this have to do with social media?

Before I decided to fast social media, I started noticing what my free moments looked like. Do I reach for my phone? Turn on music? Complete a non-essential task (e.g. shuffling items, cleaning, re-organizing)? Basically: yes. I distract myself a lot, especially when I’m alone. And when you have a lot of legitimate tasks or places to be and then spend most of your margin distracting yourself, you feel even more spent. At least I do.

Social media is definitely one of, if not the, main vehicle of distraction for me and arguably much of our generation. I won’t use this time to go on a rant about the dangers of our phones and social media — though they are many — but I’ll just say that it’s not an accident that our first instinct is to jump to our phone, scroll a little, feel a little worse about ourselves, hop off and then hop back on a few minutes later.

For the last 9 days, I’ve not been on Instagram at all, logged onto Facebook once to check something and may have used Twitter once as well (I’m not really a big Twitter user anyway). Here’s what I’ve noticed/observed about myself in that time.

• Even with my “full” schedule, I do have at least 1-2 hours (sometimes 4-5 in the evenings!) of margin each day, which is often enough time to build in some rest and play. Before this fast, I think about 1 hour of that was spent on social media, not to mention the 30 minutes-1 hour I would unnecessarily check my email before or after work. That’s almost 2 hours right there!
• When I have an unexpected unoccupied moment, my first instinct is to reach for my phone. These last 9 days I’ve felt that desire subside but it’s still not completely gone.
• Boredom is kind of a lost art nowadays but I think it’s important to be bored — particularly to have to wait for something you want.
• I tried to use the moments I would spend scrolling to practice silence & solitude — a spiritual discipline that is still relatively new to me.
• When I feel discomfort, social media is a great way to distract myself. I feel myself longing to download Instagram again when I am nervous, anxious or fearful.
• For the most part, I have really enjoyed being off social media. I read an entire book in 5 days! I painted for hours! I can’t remember the last time I did that — or if I ever did.
• I used the momentum of slowing down, removing distractions to observe the Sabbath for 24 hours. It was life-changing, and I will try to write about that another time.

Takeaways & Next Steps

I am still fasting social media but might consider going back on it soon with a few parameters for how often I use it and for what. I do enjoy using social media – particularly Instagram to connect and be inspired. The point of this experiment and blog post is not to argue we should regress back to a time without social media. I absolutely recognize the benefits of using social media from time to time — as with anything, it’s important to be intentional with why we’re using a particular platform and check in from time to time to make sure this thing is still doing what it’s supposed to be doing.