The Social Media Detox

Being a millennial means living your life online is a normality these days, it's almost as if the two come hand in hand in many ways. With this comes the expectation that you will share your world and the life that you live with complete strangers. If you aren’t posting the highlights of the day then it’s presumed you’ve had a boring day, if you're sharing abundances of photos of you looking overly happy and laughing, of your traveling and everything else you get up to then your life suddenly becomes 'goals'. 

But what happens when you need to switch off? When you need to take time for yourself?

It's strange to think that when I was between the ages of thirteen and sixteen I was completely glued to social media, I would spend all day posting pointless tweets and sharing useless things on Facebook; I would be up until 3am binge watching YouTube videos and tweeting celebrities. My phone data would constantly be nonexistent due to the amount of social media usage and notifications I would get through.

Nowadays the only time I find myself up until 3am is when I've gotten too far into the weird conspiracy theory side of YouTube and I am texting my friends mt theories on the theories in discussion (please tell me that my friends and I aren't the only ones to do this). I can also go through days without thinking about tweeting or sharing anything online, I think this is part of growing up and learning to live your life in the moment instead of having your head in this constant digital cloud.

Over the past few months my social media presence has both decreased in its amount but increased in its popularity. This is probably because with my decrease it means that my followers are no longer having to sift through my shitty one am ramblings and find the content that I really want to share with the world. I have separated my work (which running this blog and having an online presence is slowly becoming) and my social life but there is a line between them which blurs sometimes.

Being a blogger means constantly sharing things in real-time, it means presenting yourself on social media as relatable and funny but also serious and businesslike while somehow finding a way to be yourself at the same time. It means having a filter on what you do and don’t share, yes I want to be open and honest with my audience - this is something I pride myself on - but do they really need to know that I just waited in line for twenty minutes just to buy some tampons? Probably not.

There have been (and still are) times when online life got a bit too overwhelming for me, I became scared of messing up or saying the wrong thing and this anxiety has inevitably come through within my normal life too. 

I will avoid Facebook messages for weeks as though they are plague ridden when in reality my friend just wants to know how I am; I will ignore texts for days on end until someone finally calls me to tell me to check my messages; and my phone is on do not disturb from 4pm to give myself wind down time. These are regular things for me, and yet they sometimes begin to ruin my relationships in the real world.

This is why I decided to step back from social media, I still post what I want on Twitter and Instagram but a lot less than I may have in the past and a lot more organically. Since doing this and becoming someone who is much less glued to social media my whole demeanour and mindset has changed, though I still avoid certain messages like the plague (you can see more about this in my Fear of Rejection post).  

As I write this, I’m trying my hardest to keep off of Facebook (which is a strange social media to get stressed over) and its constant flow of seeing what the people I went to school with are doing in their gap years that was making me wallow, not to mention the abundance of messages I receive daily from group chats. I love my friends, don’t get me wrong but sometimes replying to them just fills me with dread. This is often when I tend to long off and curl up with a book or a bit of The Vampire Diaries and allow myself to ignore the world for a while.

Over the next few months I am going to work on allowing myself to switch off at certain times, and especially not feeling bad for having my phone on do not disturb as I get on with my work. Yes, my friends may want to talk to me but at the end of the day they can wait. My has mum always said that if something is important enough to reach out to someone for then they will call, texts can be replied to as and when. I come first in this equation and if the idea of constant messages popping up on my phone that fills me with oh so much dread is avoidable then there is no reason that I should feel any shame in doing so.

I don’t want to be that girl that is constantly thinking of the next image she can post in instagram and how likely it is that I am going to gain followers and have a good engagement from it (welcome to blogging) but I will be sometimes. Perhaps finding some form of happy medium between the two will happen, but until then I will continue switching off for days on end, after all social media detoxes are wholeheartedly allowed. Especially when they are to help improve your mental health.

(Backpack: Vans        Hoodie: Vans         Jeans: Topshop            Shoes: Converse            Belt: Primark

Photos by my lovely friend Emily)