Thursday 26 January 2017

Life Without The Gram

Here ye, here ye, come forth to here the tale of how I managed to live a life without social media (for at least 2 weeks.) 


It was a shitty Saturday night, the kind that only happens in January, when everyone's skint and behind on work and can't fit in their favourite jeans after Christmas and generally want to return to a time of tinsel and gin on a school night and sequinned dresses for no good reason. Not helped by the impending doom for the world, I was sat with my housemates discussing how generally SHIT we felt. Despite two rounds of that game where you stick a name on your head and have to guess who it is, the mood was still surprisingly low and it was just that time of night when you start to become way more philosophical than is sensible (somewhere between midnight and 1am btw.) 



In our depressor's revelation I came to the realisation that I found approximately zero happiness from my social media usage- which had become, to say the least, obsessive. All the free time fermenting in a permanently fully, semi-drunken state over Christmas had led my once controlled use of social media to a more worryingly, addictive level. I would open the apps without realising, my fingers doing the magic (steady on) hours before my brain even realised what had happened. And once there, I would spend what sometimes felt like days scrolling and clicking and stalking until my thumb would ache and my eyes would sting, but most of all, until I felt like complete shit. The worst culprit for self esteem shattering  is the discover page which is inexplicably filled with 'fitspiration' pages and Victoria's Secret models (this can't just be mine?!). Despite how undeniably crappy this made me feel, I have literally spent hours of my life at a time doing it. Why?????? I began to ask myself. January does enough to crush a person's spirit without me adding to this with a stupid app. 

So I deleted it. No cold sweats, no panic, I deleted the app. That night, before bed my hands felt lost without the ritualistic scrolling down my newsfeeds before spooning my cold mobile phone until I drifted off into a sleep polluted with the images of underfed models and women with six packs. And although I do have the app back now, those two weeks and a few days made me feel sooo much happier, I filled my boredom instead with reading and music, and things that generally made me feel better about myself. I still love Instagram, and Facebook is essential for stalking people I went to primary school with, but I use them so much less now and I would recommend a social media detox to everrrrryone. If nothing else you'll find yourself with so much free time- hey take up a new hobby, crochet yourself a top for summer!



Photo- The Telegraph


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