To Scroll or Not to Scroll?

By Rebecca Kiser
Honorable Mention: Abagail Conyers

Social media is a huge part of our culture. For many of us, it’s the first thing we see in the morning and the last thing we see at night. It’s how we keep in touch with hundreds of  “friends,” share our opinions, and sometimes even receive national news.

Although it’s role in our lives varies between generations, it’s safe to say most of us are more reliant on social media than we ought to be.

The average adult spends around two hours a day on various social media outlets, while it’s a whopping nine hours a day for most teenagers.

These statistics ignited a question for me: What happens if we take away social media? Cold turkey. Just there one day and gone the next.

I figured this, like all crazy ideas, would be best executed alongside my best friend, so I enlisted Abby to join me in a 21 day social media fast.

Here’s what happened:

So… Why?

Before we dive in, you have to understand the underlying motives that drove each of us to commit to this experiment.

Abby was curious of how dependent she was on social media, a question born from observing how dependent other people are. She was also conscious of her tendency to turn to social media when she was bored, and would often catch herself mindlessly scrolling.

For me, it was more about how I witnessed social media influencing my life. I would look at what other people were posting or doing and feel like what I was doing wasn’t as worthy to be shared. I was anxious and extremely cautious of what I posted because I only wanted people to see me in a certain way.

Just as I related to her reasons, she agreed with mine. “If I shared a picture of something I did, the amount of likes I got on it would kind of determine how likely I was to do that activity again,” she explained.

Another factor in my decision to disappear from social media was how negative people seemed to be, particularly on Instagram. I noticed how my feed was full of long, vague rants meant to incite drama or fish for attention. People criticized themselves by saying they were ugly or boring. I was disappointed in how people were treating each other (and themselves) and I was beginning to feel more irritated each time I went on.

While we each had portions of social media that left us uplifted and encouraged, we felt that most of the time we were left feeling dissatisfied, anxious, and generally unhappy when we closed out of our social media apps. We were curious to see how a hiatus from social media altogether might change our lives.


Initial Reactions

On day one, I put a quick post on each of my social media accounts (Instagram and Facebook) explaining what I was doing, and then I turned off notifications for each app, and moved them to their own screen so they were out of my line of vision.

Abby took a slightly more extreme approach and deleted her apps completely. For her, it was less of a temptation to just have them completely gone. She said it was liberating, and she would wait until after the 21 days to determine if she wanted them back at all.

While Abby might have seen the experience as freeing, I was uneasy about it. I had wanted to do it for a while, and was actually anxious to start, but while I was taking action I began to feel like, “Wait, hold on a sec, we’re doing this for real? Right now!?”

The slight panic I felt just solidified how necessary the next 21 days would be for me. 

The first day, I reached for my phone a million times only to remember there was nothing to do on it. Each time I realized how much I rely on social media to entertain me, and how frequently I turn to it instead of interacting with the people around me.


A Couple Days In

After we let our lack of social media settle in as our new normal, we were both surprised to see how much less value our phones seemed to have.

Before, I constantly needed to have my phone within a foot of my body. I was panicked if I ever didn’t know where it was. After being without social media for a few days, I caught myself leaving my phone in my bag or around the house, and only checking it every once in a while. Abby actually left her phone in her hotel room while at her college orientation with her mom.

Abby concluded that it was because the more time you spend with something, the more valuable it becomes to you. So because the lack of social media led us to spend less time with our phones, we began to place less value on them in general.

I also noticed that without social media around to turn to, I suddenly had a lot more time for God. 

Instead of breaking out my phone at night, I would finally investigate a book of the Bible I had been too busy to study. It opened my eyes to how I was prioritizing my time. I realized that if I turned to Jesus in some of my spare time instead of to social media, I might not feel so drained.

What did we miss?

Like anything else, we found that social media has pros and cons. While there were plenty of things we were glad not to be exposed to anymore, we also felt the absence of some aspects of social media.

We each found there were people who we cared about but didn’t see or speak to on a daily basis who we missed seeing via social media. We each follow several christian bloggers, vloggers, preachers, or churches whose posts we missed as well.

What We’re Doing Differently

When our 21 days are up, Abby is planning on detoxing her followers and friends lists. She wants to get rid of people she isn’t close to so she is only seeing things about the people she really cares about.

I am going to limit the amount of time I spend on social media, and lay down some ground rules like not to be on it at night or when I’m around other people, and never to spend an unnecessary amount of time just mindlessly scrolling.

To recap, we definitely recommend that everyone try this experiment. You are exposed to how social media influences your entire life, and how deeply attached our society is. It definitely takes effort, it isn’t something that was natural to do, but I think we can both vouch for how worth it your effort will be.

We determined that social media definitely has a place, and it should not be cut out entirely. Instead, we should filter what kind of content we are dwelling on, limit our time spent scrolling, and use our posting superpowers for good.


Links to the statistics quoted:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11610959/Is-your-daily-social-media-usage-higher-than-average.html

https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-screen-use-report/index.html