What 1 Month With No Social Media Taught Me

For starters, it has been a while since I have posted anything. It has been difficult trying to find what to write about that is interesting for my intended audience. With that being said, in the last few months, I have made decisions to take a more proactive approach to my life. That is why this year I took up a challenge: try to create 12 new habits every month of the year. The inspiration came from my favorite YouTuber Matt D'Avella who tried this himself. I decided to start with a challenge that is relevant to my age group: social media. Apart from that, January also contained daily cold showers, but I made a separate article for that. Anyway, after a month, this is what I have learned.

In the past, I have tried to stay off social media, but I never succeeded. It was not difficult to justify using social media. After all, everyone in my generation used it. I believe the longest I ever went without using social media was three days. This time around it was different; I understood what I was getting myself into. I had a purpose and a goal. I was determined to stick through to the very end. Social media, like many things, is not completely bad. There are pros and cons to social media. The problems arise when people let social media dictate their lives. Social media can be a great tool to connect ideas, people, and groups; it can also be a destructive tool that cripples people's self-esteem and instill anxiety or depression in others. I am sure that most of you already know this. The older folks are not purposely bothering us when they say that technology is causing a lot of problems. Throughout the thirty-one days, I abstained from using social media, I found out firsthand that those boomers had a point. After a while, I found that I wasn't missing out on anything important to my life. Additionally, I had more time available. My brain was also free from the constant overload of sensory information. The restricted access to dopamine made me happier. For those of you who do not know what dopamine is, it is a natural drug for humans. We get dopamine from the activities we do that please us, like sex or eating that cheesecake in the fridge. Social media gives us dopamine and after a while, we need more time spent on social media to get the same amount of dopamine. Essentially, the reward system of the brain requires a higher input to get the same output. This is how addiction occurs, so biochemically speaking, your uncle's addiction to cocaine is the same as your addiction to posting about yourself.

Apart from the benefits listed above, I also gained more self-control over myself and that translated to other parts of my life. You see when you control one aspect of your life it starts a snowball effect. I also noticed that when I was off social media I started to not care about anything and was stress-free. This led me to contemplate the concept of social media. Social media is a fucking mess, but it is alright if you know how to use it and do not let it control you. A quick way to test whether or not you have a social media addiction is this: delete the apps for a week. If you find that you are hesitating then maybe you have a dependency on it, especially if it's over bullshit reasons like a snap streak. If on the contrary, you find that you will live without social media completely fine then congrats, it is safe to assume you are not addicted to social media.

The Cons: The only cons I have to mention about this challenge is that I was not able to see funny memes or know what was funny at the time, occasionally my brother showed me a couple. Another was that I wasn't able to see any funny pictures of my girlfriend's dog or any pictures of her if she had posted anything. It was not much of a problem, I saw her and her dog in person. Other than that it wasn't that bad.

Overall, I learned that I could easily live with or without social media. It's gonna feel weird to download social media again. It feels great to come back and write again, hope you all enjoy it!