Happy & Health
PHONE CHALLENGE
a weekend without social media
So, it feels a bit like I've woken up from a hibernation. I survived, people: from Friday morning to Monday morning without my beloved Instagram and Facebook. Because offline is the new online, everyone knows that, right? How did it go for me? With uh, ups and downs, shall we say.
Friday
10:15 AM: I'm just doing one last round of swiping, giving hearts, and scrolling, and then the challenge is really going to start. I announce with a photo on Facebook and Instagram that I'm completely off social for the whole weekend. It actually feels like a thing.
10:36 AM: I would have checked Instagram FOUR times by now to see how the hearts are doing on my photo. I'm not doing it. I. Am. Not. Doing. It.
10:38 AM: Okay, I'm really going to struggle this weekend…
1:50 PM: positive point, I'm a thousand times faster with my articles. I've put my phone out of sight to avoid temptation. I'm really ten times more focused.
4:02 PM: okay, I'm getting WAY too tempted by Facebook pop-ups on my phone. ‘So and so has reacted to your photo’. Yes, that's the photo where I say that OFFLINE is the new online. And I must NOT click on that.
4:08 PM: I've temporarily removed Instagram and Facebook from my phone. Bye temptation! #superbadass.
8:21 PM: if I hadn't removed all the apps from my phone, I would have definitely cheated by now. About seventeen times.
Saturday
10:17 AM: I wake up and grab my phone. Automatically, I go to the folder where Insta and FB were stored. With emphasis on ‘were’, yes… Then I’ll just check if anything interesting happened on WhatsApp. Not much.
12:03 PM: okay, omg, help. Apparently, with the new Insta update, you can now f*cking ZOOM IN. Moms, do a little dance. Zooming in on Insta, the rescue is near! And I’m not allowed to try it out. Grr.
4:40 PM: my not so Amayzine colleagues are not making it easy for me. I quote: ‘Check out the intense boobieshot of * (no names mentioned) on Insta.” After which the whole group immediately takes a look and reports extensively on the boobs. To which Jet says: “HAHA KIKI YOU CAN'T LOOK NOW”. Crap. I suddenly realize: if you're not on social, you miss out on a whole social event.
7:32 PM: if one addiction can't be, then the other will have to do: binge-watched the entire new season of Orange Is The New Black in two days. Is this normal behavior?
Sunday
11:25 AM: this seems to be the first day that I actually haven't thought about it. It seriously feels a lot quieter in my head now that I haven't looked at Instagram for over 48 hours. The excuse ‘I don't have time to run’ suddenly feels like bullshit now that I have a social media ban. Hooray, actually ran 5 km outside (!).
2:02 PM: and I cleaned my entire house. #distractiondistraction #yeahI’mstillthinkinginhashtags
5:23 PM: I'm almost there. Almost. The food photo I'm taking of my meal now, I could technically save for tomorrow when I can go back on Insta. Or is it also not allowed to be thinking about what I'm going to post later?
Monday
7:02 AM: IT’S D-DAY! Let out a little scream, shake your butt, do a little dance. The alarm goes off, and the first thing I do is: download Instagram and Facebook again. To see that I have 40 new followers. And quite a lot of hearts. Which is actually a lot more fun than seeing a few followers and likes trickle in every day. I open Facebook: 42 new notifications. I click it away because I really don't feel like that this morning. First, wake up.
Conclusion: on one hand, this was quite a bit tough (and also scary to experience some sort of ‘withdrawal symptoms’), on the other hand, this was the chillest weekend ever. In a world that is ‘on’ 24/7, it was nice to also be ‘off’ for a while. And the battery of my phone lasted about three hundred years longer. Try it once, and you'll know exactly what I mean. I slept better, had more time for just about EVERYTHING I wanted to do, and did I ultimately miss a lot? As I thought: except for a few butts of Kim K. after, totally nothing.
