When Facebook came out in 2004, I joined, and immediately filled out my profile and started adding friends. That same year I started blogging. In 2007 I created my Twitter account. Fast forward to 2017 and I’ve been actively engaging with individuals and organizations via social media for 13 years without any substantive breaks…until now. Next week, I’m putting social media on pause.
Starting on Sunday, October 29th and going until Saturday, November 4th, I am not going to engage with any social media. It’s a personal experiment to see just how easy it is to unplug for a week from the social web.
This isn’t going to be easy. I’m going to miss stuff. The chances of me accidentally checking an app or a site without evening thinking about it are quite high. My daily routine is filled with social media sites and apps. I’m always checking out Twitter, watching stories on Snapchat, reading comments on Facebook, perusing images on Instagram, watching vlogs on YouTube, updating LinkedIn, and getting lost in myriad posts on Medium.
So, for next week, if you need to reach me, email is the way to go. On Saturday of this week I’ll take all of the social media apps on my phone and place them in a folder for safekeeping. I’m not going to use any extensions in my browser to block social media site access. The discipline that’s required to not check on social media shouldn’t be that difficult.
Now, the weather in England is rainy and grey at the moment which means the great outdoors won’t be as appealing as usual. But, I do plan on dusting off my Kindle Paperwhite and reading as many books as I can in a week’s time. After all, I’m going to have some extra time.
I think it’s important to note that I’ve never ever felt that I spend too much time on social media. Think of this less as a ‘so-called’ digital detox and more of time trial to see what it’s like. I’ve always been quite good at managing my time on and offline. However, as a personal experiment, this does feel like a bit of a challenge as I’m almost always a quick Touch ID away from being able to check my social media accounts.
When’s the last time you put social media on pause? *
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