For 2+ weeks now I’ve been logged out most platforms and have deleted all apps off my phone, except for Youtube and Apple Podcasts (if that even counts), which I use as a kind of background noise while doing mostly mindless tasks, or for entertainment purposes when I’m done for the day. But even then I try to be mindful of when they take up too much of my time or distract me.
Admittedly, I did log back into Instagram a at least once per week, just to let people know what was going on and that I wasn’t ignoring them. I also logged back into Twitter a few times to a) doomscroll out of boredom, and b) catch up on some news. Ultimately I found these behaviour patterns too time-consuming, and have been staying off the platform more consistently.
Maybe unnecessary side note, but in order to get the embedded social media links for this article, I also had to log back into Instagram – but it no longer felt like it was for my personal use.
2+ weeks really isn’t that long of a time, but it feels like ages – as if somehow social media has the ability to foreshorten time in digital space, and outside of it, you start to feel the actual duration. The internet moves fast, as they say. I’m noticing lots of periods of nothingness just by existing in the offline world, and I’m wondering – was this all the time I used to willingly give up?