Field Notes From Real Life: Week 4
stack of books, antique fan, flowers
The last week of the challenge was the easiest of all. I really settled into abstaining from social media to the point that I barely picked up my phone for anything. The weather, news, to check messages. I’m really sorry if you were trying to reach me. I would lay my phone down for hours and not even care to look for it when I realized I couldn’t remember where it was.
I felt free. Free in a 1995 sort of way.
Free from notifications and all the annoying noises that say “stop what you’re doing and pick me up!” I was much less Pavlov’s dog, I noticed, and like more of a human being. Even if we don’t check our phones, those dings and chimes going off constantly divert a part of our brain that opens a tab. We can label the tab, “I wonder what that was. Was that important? What am I missing?” And so in this way even though we exercise the willpower to go on with our activity there’s…something.
I did not miss that.
The amount of reading I got done every day was impressive to me. All the times during the day I would have picked up my phone, I picked up a book. At some point during the last week I was feeling that my concentration had returned to the point that I found myself ordering a course on classical Latin. Note: my bored brain looked for things to do. If you recall from the beginning of this challenge I was wondering if that was something that could even still happen.
I also had a revelation about how much other screen time I spend. My favorite way to spend an evening is watching a variety of YouTube videos. I’ll spend 20 minutes searching for a movie on other streaming services to just head back to YouTube and watch some impressive couple restore an old English cottage or another beekeeper check his hives. This month the algorithm served up some great content related to ditching social media, underconsumption, and escaping some of the traps of the modern world. (Yes, I see the irony.)
I was encouraged and challenged by a lot of what I saw Millennial and Gen Z focusing on. Millennial parents remember the time without their phones and are nostalgic for it and desperate to give their kids a similar childhood. Gen Z is sad that they never even saw a world without the internet and smart phones and groups are forming to meet up in real life without bringing a phone.
Are the majority of younger people out there living and dying by influencers on Tik Tok and completely addicted? Yes, but the awareness is growing into a movement and that’s a good sign.
I ended my 30 day SM fast by going to see my daughter and her family. Social media was made for airports. Lots going on, too distracting to focus on a book, magazine maybe. I literally just watched people like a complete weirdo. I used my phone as a prop so no one called security. Fortunately the 30 days was up on the day I had to fly home and my immediate thought was that I was free to open those apps. But the allure had faded.
When I did get onto Instagram for the first time in a month the very first story that came up was something tragic that I wish I hadn’t known about. How many of those stories had I been spared in 30 days? Probably a lot. But I did go back to making fun reels which is a creative outlet I do enjoy and that I did miss while I was on my self imposed fast.
So how to move forward? My blog traffic took a 70% dive in July showing me that most people are finding me, or remembering to check the blog, because of Instagram and Facebook. That’s a problem.
I’m working on treating posting like work. And creating content isn’t the problem. It’s the scrolling. Always the scrolling. But I catch myself after a minute or two now as opposed to 20 minutes, or more.
We’ll see if that sticks.
I’m planning a zero screen weekend coming up soon. No phone, computer, or TV. I’m starting with a weekend because I honestly don’t think I can do it for a month or even a week.
What’s your biggest challenge around media use?