Social media diet: commitment

Recently I have been spending a lot more time on social media. When I was working, I used to have really strict rules about Instagram and Facebook and how often I would check those. But once I went on maternity leave, it all went out of the window.

Babies are cute and nice creatures but they are also not adults with whom you can have a two way conversation. I love my daughter but I feel like I am missing adult conversations or simple things just like going to a restaurant with someone you can talk to. I did see friends and colleagues from time to time but most of them are working during the week and I don’t have really have anyone who had a baby around the same time so I am often left to my own devices during the week. This seems to have led me to spend more time consuming social media and scrolling through feeds. All in all, it would not have been that bad until I noticed that my sleep was being affected by my screen time – a few times I had trouble falling asleep because I was checking Instagram right before nighttime and was thinking about something that I saw there at some point. I think this is when it hit me that I needed a break.

I tried removing social media from my phone – Facebook was easy because I don’t have it on my phone at all and only rarely check it from my laptop. My feed there looks horrible and is full of ads and not actual updates from people I know so that has discouraged me from using it a lot. But Instagram is another story – a lot of people I know and hang out with are there so it has been hard to give up. I keep on constantly reinstalling it back – sometimes it gets as ridiculous as a few times per day. So this is when I decided that I need more effective means to deal with this and this being a public commitment. So here I am, commiting to a 30 day break from social media:

Herewith, I promise to take a 30 days off social media and you all are to hold me accountable for my words. I will start tomorrow on September 17 and will be back on social on October 17.

To be honest, it already feels better to write this all down. I am also just tired of constantly seeing everyone traveling everyone and having all the good time. Life is more complicated than that and has ups and downs. In any case, I won’t be seeing those now. Not for the next 30 days 😜