So, I did this experiment on myself. I messaged a few important people in my life to catch me in the Viber incase of urgency and kept my social media presence in other platforms very very low. I was a obedient consumer of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram data. But parallelly, I wanted to verify my experiment with few other platforms where I used to rarely check in like LinkedIn.
There wasn’t a day when my Facebook notification wasn’t flooded with minimum 20 notifications and 10 messages. Trust I’ve mentioned the lowest number, usually the numbers are bigger than this. So, if your have noticed, it’s been nearly 5 months now since I started experimenting this. I didn’t completely shut down my social media channels but just gradually started to use them as less as possible.
Now what I am observing after 5 months is, I rarely get messages and almost no notifications in my Facebook. A thing to wonder, the post engagement and reach have reduced dramatically. You can literally go and notice my posts are getting so less likes and comments since 5 months whereas they almost never were less than 100. Similar was my experience with Instagram and Twitter.
The another part was LinkedIn. Everyday in Linked I get minimum of 10 follow requests from arities of people and few messages on daily basis.
So, I discovered that once you start ignoring social media, they will start ignoring you as well. They are constantly looking for people who can bring long engagement rates and promote their platform. Once they notice you are not a regular user or they cannot expect things from you they will automatically start serving you less. So, ignoring social media will become easier with your willingness and perseverance. To be honest I was always the person telling others about how social media can never impact me. But I never realized that I was being manipulated unless one day when I realized that I had lost my decision making capacity and used to keep seeking for social approval. I had lost a critic part of thinking and all my decision making capacities were led by the mass influence and people’s viewpoint. I seriously wanted it to get out of my head.
All these and issues on not just my mental but also physical health started showing impact once the lockdown started. I started realizing gradually about how I was losing myself among the social platform and how addicted I was getting day by day. Let me share you a small event of my life to highlight what led me to this experiment and I how I came the addiction of social approval.
Few months in the beginning of the Lockdown were blessing since my life was getting really rugged and hectic and I was literally praying for a long vacation. Gradually months started passing by. After I realized that the lockdown is not going to get over soon, I set up a small working space in a room at my house. I kept the area clean and minimalistic with a table, chair and a couch for my guests. My office tasks were not affected even a bit by the lockdown and we were continuing it virtually.
Back in no lockdown days, my regular routine involved cooking and cleaning in the morning followed by a small walk up to my working office. Our office started at 10 am till 5 in the evening. After our greetings and small standup, we used to start office tasks and in the mid time cook or eat outside. At 5 we used to wave bye bye and return home. I used to cook, eat, clean and do my regular studies. That was my life in nutshell before lockdown.
After the lockdown, my routine changed to something like this: I get up at 5:30 and go straight to my working desk, open laptop and start doing work. The work included my personal tasks, my freelancing tasks and few of my pending office tasks. I literally used to get up from the chair at 9 am to have my lunch and go back to work immediately afterwards and work until 2 pm. I used to have my mid-day snacks at my working desk itself. Then I used to work until I had my dinner at 7 pm and work until 12pm in the evening. I seriously don’t know from where I used to collect so many works and tasks for myself but I was always busy…always.
I had stopped frequently communicating with my family member. I used to have rare conversation with my dearest friend Neeru. I used to talk to Spandan once a month or two. I used to take rest in laptop itself. My only source of entertainment was laptop. My only bestfriend was my laptop. Its funny that sometimes I used to watch the food shows whenever I got hungry instead of walking up to kitchen and grabbing real food. How insane was that.
I used to chat with people whole night and do video calls. I was busy talking to a bunch of people who never ever existed in my life before the lockdown. I had made many new “Virtual friends”. Gradually I had lost flexibility in both my body and mind. I started getting dizzy and my eyes used to burn as if they were on fire. I could feel my eyes getting dry and losing their power.
Amidst these, the most interesting fact was my addiction to “social approval”. I had started seeking for approval on even the smallest things. My life used to go fine whenever people were nice to me and talking regularly. But if they got busy or caught-up in work and couldn’t spare time for me, I use to start overthinking. Me being all time overthinker was no new thing for me until one day when I realized something big. An unexpected incidence happened in my life and I literally knew the issue was so god damn nominal but I had no control over my brain. I was irritated and angry at everyone and my mind was rolling the same nominal thing again and again. I had no control over my own brain. My head used to ache for days and I used to remain sad for no particular reason.
I can’t exactly express now but I used to feel like everything is going smooth and BAM! I am suddenly get sad and I have no particular reason about why am I sad. For few times I tried blaming my PMS but when it started repeating even on normal days, I slowly started observing myself. How funny that I was observing my own activities and my emotions. I slowly started getting irritated about everything. I used to remain angry for weeks, not days or hours but weeks. I never remembered myself staying angry for more than few hours, no matter how sever the cases were.
So, after talking to my brother Sandesh and doing a short analysis of how I am getting workaholics and addicted to my laptop, I decided to reduce my screen time and see if it could make any difference in my life. The hardest part was letting go off all my “virtual friends” who were so good to me. I swear it was a tough task for me. Anyways, I was determined to do it at any cost.
Luckily my friend Neeru came to Chitwan from Kathmandu and we started doing morning walk right at 5:30 in the morning. I tried reading hardcopies and real books in the morning instead of straightly reaching out to my laptop. I started my virtual journey only at 9 am in the morning and kept a water bottle always by my side. I promised to help my mom with morning dishes but the dish washing time was kept after office meeting so that I could take a screen break after an hour of meeting. After doing dishes, I used to continue my office tasks. Since I was determined to finish my office tasks within office hours so that I didn’t need to stare at laptop even after the office time, I started logging my time and started to work on efficiency.
At office, we started dividing tentative time for each tasks so that we would neither underdo nor over do the tasks. My boss Astha dd herself was very helpful nd concerned in this part. During my lunch break I made sure I wouldn’t eat infront of laptop and stayed with my family talking and laughing. At 5 pm, I shut down my laptop and my brother Sandesh and I used to immediately go out for evening walk, talking about life, career and stuffs for hours.
After I returned from walk, I used to check my messages. I checked Facebook not for more than 5-15 min per day and similar was with Instagram. I uninstalled all the apps from my mobile so that I wouldn’t get temptation of checking the mobile screen frequently. These days I barely find my mobile around me. The evening time of my life revolves still around laptop but I engage myself in personal and professional growth activities and learning. I very rarely check YouTube and watch movies. I stopped late night screens and these days, I can’t remain awake after 10pm. My eyes automatically get heavier and shutdown.
Life is getting peaceful. I of course lost a dozen of “friends” since I couldn’t remain in touch with most of them but trust me I have my precious people by my side as always. I got an opportunity to differentiate quality and quantity of people around me. I completely understand every person cannot be your “bestfriend” just because you are at the center of your universe.
The new normal has taught me many things. It has taught me how to love oneself and care oneself. It has taught me how to take care of mental health. So, my sincere suggestion to whoever is reading this, try detoxifying yourself from social media, honestly, and another thing is try not gathering unnecessary people in your universe. Keep your world love friendly, there’s no use of forcing and pleading people to love you or stay in your life. Keep those who value you and your time and who really matter to you always by your side. Stay humble and optimistic. The world is big, very big and it had its own things to take care of, so you better take care of your stuffs yourself. You are the center of your universe and one can change it except you.