One of my highlights in 2019 is to successfully quit social media. Here I would show you why did I reach that decision and how did I successfully quit social media.
I didn’t even realize how serious my addiction to social media until I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. In it, he stated how social media is not just wasting our time but also the practice of constantly flitting around Facebook, online news,… is reconstructing our brains in a bad ways. This resonated with me so well simply because I, myself realized I had a problem with the Internet saturation. Since the time I got into college, I was spending time using the Internet quite often. Now looking back, I noticed some negative affects of that increasing usage. I focused terribly and easily got distracted when studying or even when I was not using social media. I was spending a lot of time caring about things I didn’t need to care about.
As recommended in the book, I decided to conduct a digital detox for 30 days. To start off, I listed out all types of social medias that I am using: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Netflix. I deactivated Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I cut my Netflix subscription. Fortunately, I don’t have the habits of watching TV or reading news. I deleted all of those apps on my phone. I turned my iPad off and buried it in the back of my closet. I spent only 10 minutes a day to check emails. I only use smartphone for the following activities: call, message, map and ride hailing app.
The first few day was painfully hard. I was really like losing a limb. I quickly realized how serious my addictive habits. There were more than a few times I grabbed my phone up and unconsciously browze facebook.com and relized that I had deactivated them all. I noticed the detox symtoms wore off quickly after 3-4 days. This reminds me of an analogy from a podcast that I listened that qutting social media is just like qutting smoking, you think that you can easily quit it if you want to so you never even tried.
Note that this detox experience is important because it helps you reflect on your internet usage. If you are tempted quit forever it might seem particularly hard, you will be likely to give up. Limit to 30 days, you will have the goal to reach, giving you a chance to comeback and decide whether you will completely stop using a piece of technology or not.
It became weirdly peaceful. I was so proud of myself and was confident to succeed in my 30 days detox. The feeling of not getting updated by friends’ Instagram stories or reading funny Facebook comments’ sections is actually not so bad but is even really nice because the urge of constantly checking Facebook every 10 minutes is almost gone. I was intentionally about time and live more deliberately. I valued more time alone, was thinking what I want to do in the future, had more time preparing for the new school semester and even watched an entire online course.
After 30 digitally free days, I was both reluctant and excited activating back social media. After reactivating Facebook, there were obviously a huge amount of friends’ post but consider seriously I didn’t miss anything beautiful, I couldn’t understand why did I spend hours into this thing. There was exactly 1 friend ask me about my disappearment. Followed by instructions in the book, I carefully think of any benefits of any these social medias, I quickly deleted forever Instagram and Twitter accounts. Now, there were Facebook and Email left, entirely giving up Facebook now is obviously impractical for me. For one reason: teachers conduct classes using Facebook groups. I set up my rules using Facebook and emails: every day at night at around 10 pm, I normally spend 5-7 minutes to check Facebook is there any annoucements from Facebook, less than 10 minutes a checking email. I check messenger messages 3-4 times a day. If it is not school time, I only check Facebook once every 3-4 days. I hope I will be able to quit Facebook entirely after college.
I highly recommend you read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. I personally love it so much that I have read all his books and subscribed to his newsleter at his blog. If you are curious and want to see the result quickly, read the Digital declutter part of the first book or even check some tutorials somewhere on the Internet and try to commit with it for 25-30 days. I think you will have the motivation to read the book after that.
That said, minimalism does not totally mean nothing, smoking a cigarette a week isn’t that bad. The idea of quitting entirely social media is at the other extreme. A person who follows the digital minimalism philosophy never say “I use Twitter because it helps my social life”. He would instead say something more specific, such as: “I use Facebook for about 15 minutes every Sunday on my computer to see what my close friends and family are up to. I don’t have the app on my phone”. Finally, I want to include a set of three rules to consider when adopting any new technology into your life.
Good luck !
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport