It has always blown my mind how the way we construct our social lives, our phones/social media, wasn’t really around 10 years ago. This weekend, I decided to delete all of my social media apps, including Snapchat, Instagram, and VSCO to see how our “ancestors” had to survive. Friday-Sunday without these platforms taught me a few things:

1. I noticed how many times I involuntarily picked up and unlocked my phone out of habit.

Several times, I caught myself picking up my phone and scrolling through my apps, almost as if I was looking for something to open. When I realized I had deleted these apps, I was kind of ashamed how habitual I had let checking these platforms become.

2. It was interesting to see the people who would go out of their way and text me to keep in touch since they couldn’t reach me on snapchat.

I feel like the circle of people I stayed in contact with dramatically decreased because only a few people stayed in touch with me through texting and calling. That being said, there were several times I wanted to take a video or picture of something and send it to a group or post it, but I was obviously unable to do that these past few days. Despite its bad rap, I realized snapchat really is an evolved way of contacting people (in comparison to imessages) due to its multi-technical features of texting, picture/video-taking, group chats, private stories, etc.

3. I was less focused on my appearance because I wasn’t constantly sending selfies on snapchat.

Yeah, it sounds a little stupid, but I didn’t realize how much we actually look at our reflection on the camera of snapchat when we snap other people. I wouldn’t necessarily say it is a bad thing either, I honestly just noticed myself being less aware of what I looked like throughout these given days.

4. By the end of my social media-less weekend, I noticed myself being more productive and less anxious because I wasn’t missing my phone anymore.

I think I got used to being disconnected because it no longer felt like something I was missing. It’s interesting to me how quickly breaking a habit can make it feel like it was never something you did in the first place.

5. I got to spend more time focusing on the people in front of me rather than the people behind a screen.

Again, not a bad thing to communicate to people virtually, but in the end, real relationships are the people we get to see, talk to in person, and spend time with, and by going on this break I realized I was more present with those definite relationships.

My takeaway…

This little experiment taught me that social media has a lot of benefits, like easily staying in touch with many people at a time, seeing what’s going on in the world around you, and the ability to capture pictures and videos to more easily remember them. On the other hand, I realized how much of a habit it had become for me to constantly check these apps, when my time could have been better spent doing something else. I got to focus on what was happening right in front of me instead of what was happening on my phone. I hope to take what I’ve learned from this and continue to be more present amongst a group of people, along with not instinctively resorting to my phone out of procrastination when I could be working on something else. Overall, I would rate this as a 8/10 experience and would encourage anybody reading this to give it a go!