A Brutally Honest Review of My 40 Hrs of Isolation From Phone & Social Media
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Boy oh boy, aren’t we all heavily addicted to social media!
On Friday 23rd, I got home around 9 PM after the last workday for the week and suddenly this idea hit me hard- “what if my colleague was right! What if this generation is hugely addicted to social media which is causing depression among them.” Then I thought why not I quit using social media for the next 40 hours to find out the truth myself!
Therefore instantly, I uninstalled all the social media apps from my phone & switched off my official number to experience the isolation.
Trust me it was really hard to resist myself for the first 20 hours. Though the night did pass pretty well, I was craving too much to browse my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter account. It was a feeling that I might miss out on big things if I didn’t browse my newsfeeds. The next day, I literally spent only 15 minutes in the washroom in the morning, LOL. Then the breakfast took about 20 minutes and I was already sad thinking what to do next!
It did felt like that I’m a drug addict.
Finding no other way to calm myself down, I went onto our rooftop after almost 3 months and tried to shift my concentration from what I can’t do to what I can do for now. And suddenly it seemed like, I have huge time on my hand and apparently not that much work to do. Hahaha…
So I sat down to make a list of items that I can do for the day and the list went like-
-Read
-Try beauty routine (which pops hardly on my list apparently)
-Lunch
-Give Ma time
-Go for Karate Class
-Hangout with Karate folks
Looking into the list I realized that I actually have plenty of todos for the next 10 –12 hours. Then I followed my list and finished all these items by 10 PM on Saturday. Still, I had 16 more hours to pass. And again my craving for social media came back. Though I uninstalled the major social media apps I use on regular basis (Facebook, Insta, Twitter…), there were still a few apps on my phone like Gmail, Skype, Medium, Quora, LinkedIn, Twak etc. And I had to respond to these few even when I thought I would try complete Isolation. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t afford total isolation, I must confess.
It’s Sunday and I woke up at 8 in the morning as it’s my weekend. So, after the regular weekend routine of mine, I sat down to write my experience of the last 40 hours. I must confess I actually am an addicted person who is heavily addicted to social media. And it’s true social media can trigger the negative emotions within us but it has also become the major source of entertainment for our generation.
So here’s my brutally honest opinion about social media which I came to realize just within 40 hrs of staying away from it-
Social media, in my opinion, has made us emotionally numb, we nowadays don’t want to connect with someone emotionally. We have become hurtful and we often forget to see the real people behind the screen. We now carry the inauthentic expression of our feelings. We have become less understanding and thoughtful about our fellow human beings. We create skewed images of ourselves for the social media. Do showoffs immensely. We post pictures of us looking perfect and share only the happy moment and good news about us. We find comfort on spending time with social media rather than with family, relatives and friends. And we are seriously distracted from what we truly want from our lives apart from showingoff.
These characteristics that we have adopted quite unconsciously over time, have made our lives different from our parents. Nowadays we often see people being unhappy about their conditions and positions in life. Though their social media profiles portray the happy and contented images, when you know that person closely you will hear a different story. It’s always that — they lack happiness & peace of mind. Due to social media people now do lots of comparisons and has become way more judgemental. We now have forgotten that every one of us is unique in our own way. Every one of our’s path is different and thus our stories have to be different from each other. But social media has somehow made us think in one particular manner. It has created a camouflage where we have started to believe that-
All that glitters is gold…. And if we can’t showoff enough we are not successful or happy.
Since we are only seeing the celebration of the successes of others and not the struggles behind it. Therefore we often think success has to be painless and effortless. Hence, while we confront with struggles at the early age of our career we got absolutely demoralized. And caught into depression easily.
But then the question comes what is the solution? Would quitting the social media solve all these problems?
I would say — no that won’t. It’s not like these media don’t have any positive items to offer. So, what we can do is that — we can try to practice to become more reasonable to what we see and absorb from these media. We have to act smart sorting those components which would add value to our personal growth and has to run away from those items which will feed the negative emotions of ours. We have to stay focused on our goals and have to act for those rather wasting much time on social media.
Let me know your thoughts on this blog of mine and do share where you disagree with me! Cheers!
