It’s safe to say the majority of all of us love social media and have either Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and/or all of them. I am guilty of having all of them and I use them all day, every day. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you are just as caught up with social media.

Social media can be very consuming for a few different reasons: it gives us easy access to so much information, we can easily connect with all of our friends, family or strangers, and they provide fun activities for us to participate in. We can do about everything we want to do on our phones by using any of those platforms. What keeps us involved is being able to connect with anyone and stay up to date with people’s lives and vice-versa.

I was caught up in social media and most of my time went into checking my phone for updates, posting pictures, talking to people or just making sure to stay relevant. For some reason, I got so caught up that I felt that if I didn’t post or update others, it would be like I went missing or something.

Another thing is that anyone can try to connect with you unless you block them. Well, I had a bunch of people wanting to talk to me that I personally didn’t want to talk to. I don’t like negativity, so I try to avoid the whole person all together. I had people try to friend me and communicate with me. People don’t like everything I post and it was feeling like a job to me. I became so invested in social media. This is my last semester and I became very distracted, so I finally made the decision to just break-up with social media all together.

I heard about people cutting social media off completely or doing a detox from social media. I was very skeptical, which is why it took me so long to do it. I did a detox and deactivated Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Anyone that was important to me had my number, so I wasn’t worried.

My first day after deactivating everything was kind of hard. I had my phone and barely had anything to do since I was so used to having all of my social media. That was a bit of a struggle. I even asked myself if I should even go through with the detox and questioned if it even works because I wanted to reactivate my accounts. I stayed strong, focusing more on my school work and other stuff in life.

After a few days, the struggle became less hard and I found myself finding more time to do things and focus more in class (just a bit). A few weeks later, I finally got into the habit of not having to check my phone or have the temptation to want to reactivate any of my accounts. I didn’t even want to reactivate them at all at this point. I felt free from social media, I was back to doing more things, I wasn’t worried about anybody else, and I didn’t have to deal with people and other issues. When I tell you I felt free, I felt free and was free from social media.

I have been off social media for a couple of months and until last week I reactivated all of my social media for work purposes. It’s not so bad anymore because there were some long-term effects in my life. I was afraid I would get consumed right back in, but I didn’t, and because I detoxed for a couple months, it helped me for the future. I haven’t been so consumed with it. I barely check my social media pages. I don’t care about making sure I keep everyone up to date. Social media is not as important to me anymore. I did get people messaging me asking where I went and why I got off of the platform, but at the same time, it was not that serious as to where people cared that deeply about me  being gone.

If you feel caught up in your social media and it’s becoming very distracting to other things in your life, I suggest taking a break. I know it’s hard and you’re wondering whether it may or may not work. I thought the same, but I had to stick with it for the first couple of days and it became easier as time went on. I think because we are surrounded by so much technology, it is so easy to get caught up with it, and I recommend for everyone to try it for a couple of weeks. It will make a difference, make your life a bit easier and help you become more focused on what’s going on in the moment.