Social Media Break

I have finished a 10 day “fast” from social media. I stayed off (almost) all of my social media sites, plus blogs and podcasts too.  

It was super easy to stay off Facebook. I’ve not been on it much anyway. Twitter was easy. Pinterest was fairly easy. I do have a lot of recipes saved there so I grabbed a few during the 10 days, but it was easy not to browse. Instagram was a little harder, though I did it. I have that set up so I can see pictures of things that make me happy and I kind of missed it. GoodReads was hard. In fact I just plain didn’t make it. I did not realize this, but I don’t think I’ve decided on a book to read without looking at reviews for years, at least not for stand alones and first books in a series. I replaced podcasts with some audio books from the library and I had a hard time deciding which ones based only on the synopsis on the library website. Plus, I wanted to post the books I read because that’s how I keep track of them. I do stay off GoodReads for days at a time when I travel or go on vacation, but I just didn’t like not using it while I’m home and in my regular reading pattern. Kind of crazy to think about it. So I while I did limit my usage, I didn’t stay off completely.

Also, I probably get on social media more at work than at home. Oopsy! That is a crazy realization. I replaced some of that time with reading the news or reading up about other topics online when I needed a break. I missed some of my book blogs but others blogs I found I could do just fine without. 

The whole point of this was to take a break and figure out which, if any, of my social media habits were making me unhappy or having a negative influence on my life.  The results? I waste a lot of time on GoodReads. I should watch that a little bit better. The sites that don’t make me happy or feeling a bit negative are Facebook and Twitter. I already knew that about FB, so months ago I stopped logging in very much, and then maybe in September, I turned off all notifications on my phone so now I have to log in to see them at all. I love it. Twitter is like my negative news feed and I’ve realized it more now. I know I have the ability to change what I see so I think some changes might be in order before I get back on it. If I get back on it. I need that balance between knowing what is going on in the world and my own sanity, but I can get news from other sources.

So I missed some social media, but some I can do without. I did not fill that time with other, good things, but hopefully, I got more work done. When I logged on to a bunch of sites again this morning, I just thought Huh. I’ve been wondering what I’ve been missing, but the answer is: not much.