When social media takes a toll on your well-being.
Watching the day-to-day lives of your friends, family and even strangers can begin to take a toll on your mental state. It can cause you to compare your real life to someone else's highlight reel. In addition to that, you waste so many valuable hours of your day scrolling through various social platforms. Hours that you could be putting to productive projects or to spending time with loved ones.
Once a year, I go on a social media fast. It's never the same time each year or for the same length of time. I do it when I feel myself slipping. This can be when I begin to spend too much time scrolling while my to-do list is growing. Or maybe it's when I find myself comparing my life to others and beginning to feel unhappy about where I am in life. I know during these moments that I need to log off.
This past August, I spent a week logging off Instagram. I deleted the app so that I would not be tempted to take a peek. Usually, my fast includes all social media, but I recently found Instagram to be the biggest problem. I can spend hours on the explore page looking at the posts of people I don't know. It became a huge problem when it made me question my own life.
During my Instagram fast, I felt free. My downtime was used to read books, workout, and connect with my loved ones. I got more rest as I did not spend hours in bed at night scrolling to see what was happening in the world around me.
Following my fast, I made a promise to spend less time scrolling and more time focusing on reading and writing. I felt so much better and more relaxed by not being so attached to the lives of others.
When social media gets to be too much for you or you find yourself too involved in the lives of others, LOG OFF!