I Got Rid of Face­book for a Week and Here's What Hap­pened…

I have an ad­dic­tion to my cell phone, I’ll ad­mit it. At least once a day, some­one will tell me a story and I com­pletely ig­nore them to watch Kylie Jen­ner play with her pup­pies or read-up on the lat­est beauty trend I’m too lazy to try. So with that in mind, I gave it all up for a week and here is what hap­pened…

Day 1

I am so over Face­book and Twit­ter. They dis­tract me and I chose to look at them when I’m dri­ving, in class or at lunch with other peo­ple. It is so rude of me to be so ad­dicted to so­cial me­dia.

I deleted the apps, de­ac­ti­vated my Face­book and gave my­self only In­sta­gram and Snapchat to use for the week. (Go­ing on a full-blown no so­cial me­dia cleanse would have been much too stress­ful, and I would lose my snap streaks.)

Day 2

I ac­ci­den­tally logged in and re-ac­ti­vated my ac­count, but caught my­self and de­ac­ti­vated it again. It’s so ha­bit­ual to click the link when I open my in­ter­net. Clearly it is a real ad­dic­tion.

Day 3

It’s so nice not to worry about what is go­ing on on­line. I have more time, I am be­ing more pro­duc­tive while us­ing my com­puter and I have fo­cused on putting my phone away when I’m dri­ving. I have small ten­den­cies to see what I’m miss­ing, but not log­ging in tests my self-con­trol.

I’m be­ing ques­tioned as to why my Face­book is gone. It re­minds me of how much is on­line for peo­ple to see, and how many peo­ple are search­ing for my page.

Day 4

I miss Face­book. In­sta­gram is okay, but I miss know­ing what every­one is do­ing and what news peo­ple have shared. My friends are start­ing to send me screen­shots of things hap­pen­ing on­line, what peo­ple are wear­ing and who they are with. Makes me re­al­ize how weirdly sat­is­fy­ing it is to know about other peo­ple. Also it’s weirdly creepy that I am cu­ri­ous about what is go­ing on in their lives.

Day 5

I never want Face­book back. It’s so dumb, I have got­ten all of my home­work done and got one of my grades from a C to an A. Face­book was clearly a huge dis­trac­tion for me, and not hav­ing it has only bet­tered my study habits and how I spend time with my friends. I looked at a mag­a­zine in Schnucks and re­al­ized how ridicu­lous it was for me to be so in­ter­ested in what fla­vor smoothie Jen­nifer Anis­ton is en­joy­ing.

Day 6

I thought I was spend­ing less time on my phone, but I have been in­formed; “You’re still on it a lot, you still have In­sta­gram and you still text all the time,” Kevin, my boyfriend, said. Ap­par­ently he has seen no change. “No­tice how last night I had ask you mul­ti­ple times to get off your phone and pay at­ten­tion to me.”

Day 7

I’m not get­ting it back. I am keep­ing it de­ac­ti­vated un­til af­ter fi­nals, when I will have more free time. One of my New Year’s res­o­lu­tions is to get rid of so­cial me­dia and en­joy more of every day. I have more time to think about me in­stead of ob­sess­ing over who some­one took to for­mal or watch cook­ing videos for an hour. I am look­ing for­ward to the change; some­thing I never thought I’d say.

 

Even though I gave up my so­cial me­dia, my phone habits seemed to stay ac­tive. I thought I was do­ing well in stay­ing off my phone, but my boyfriend and my mother thought dif­fer­ently. “You’re still on your phone too much, it’s bad for your eyes and I know you just started a new Net­flix se­ries” my mom said. Yikes, guess I should tackle those New Years Res­o­lu­tions early.