Social Media is impressive. We use it every day like it’s secondhand nature. I am no stranger to using social media daily. But as time passed, it got me thinking, what would I do without it? So I put it to the test. I took 3 of my most used social media – Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube – and gave them up. I gave myself a challenge, 5 days without using any of them, from the morning of Tuesday, September 10th to the end of Saturday, September 14th. The goal was to record myself along the way and turn it into a digital detox visual. I learned a lot from this journey, especially about how I handle my time with social media and how much it affected my life. 

The Setup

Before I could do anything, I needed a good setup and a smooth way of recording myself. So, I came up with a plan. I took all my social media apps on Monday and put them into one section on my phone. Anytime I would need one of the apps, I’d have to go there to that one spot. So I recorded the number of times I tried to find the app, whether it was when I was eating or needed a video to sleep to, to watch something for fun, or to look at someone’s activities or events. I would also record my feelings on how I felt about the apps for the day and write them down each night. 

I also took inspiration for the actual setup from Dear Data, a year-long project by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. The two would draw out detox data charts in interesting and cool setups. They would be in funky patterns and shapes and not what a normal graphic would look like. When they were done, they sent them to each other through the mail. All of their designs are hand-drawn and it’s honestly pretty impressive how much creativity they had. The one I took inspiration from was this piece! I loved the way they organized the card! After figuring out what I wanted to do, my journey began.

Day 1: I Had Some Problems

I started super confident, thinking I could easily handle the challenge. And as far as Instagram was concerned, I handled it pretty ok, some taps now and again but its disappearance didn’t bother me. But I started noticing major problems as time went on, especially with TikTok and YouTube. 

Big issue number 1: What I listen to when I’m working/bored. I didn’t realize how much time I spent watching stuff in my free time so I honestly felt like I had nothing to do. TikTok and YouTube are what I listen to when eating, resting, and when I have free time. TikTok and YouTube were also helpful when I worked, mostly by providing background noise. It became hard not having control of what I could listen to, because it felt like the song, movie, or show I picked was too long or too short. 

Big issue number 2: sleeping. I normally listen to a video I’ve already seen when I sleep. I have seen so many YouTube videos so many times that I mostly go there to listen to videos out of habit. The problem is that even if I’ve heard it before I get easily invested in content; like watching movies/shows or singing to music. As a result, I can’t sleep to a song/movie/show unless I’m on the verge of either complete tiredness or sleep exhaustion. For this reason, I kept finding myself at the apps but never using them. By the time I finished the day, I wrote down all my thoughts and how many times I’d caught myself trying to find the apps. 

Day 2: Research and Analysis

This day was spent researching healthy ways of handling Day 1’s issues. The first thing I tackled was what to do while I was working. I first tried music, but I kept singing along to the music or got bored and did something else and kept wanting to use TikTok and YouTube. I tried working in silence, but I kept getting distracted by the sounds around me. Eventually, I came across an app called Forest. It is an app where you spend 5 minutes up to 2 hours listening to nature music as you grow a tree. You start with a seed and as time goes on, it grows into a full tree. It was nice listening to the music and when the time was up, it was cool seeing that I made progress.

After that, I began tackling the sleep problem. I found an article called Struggling to Give Up Your Smartphone at Night? 8 Ways to Ditch Screens, which gave me different tips on how to avoid using my phone while I sleep. As I went into the next 4 days I tried various tips to find the most effective way to not use my phone. I struggled at first but eventually, I would get used to sleeping in silence. 

Day 3: An Increase In Other Apps

This day was probably the lowest day I spent wanting to go on any apps. This was mostly due to Wednesdays being my busiest days. I had back-to-back 3-hour classes, so I was focused on my work. I tried to use the Forrest app, but the repetition of nature music began bothering me after 2 hours. So I started looking elsewhere for other apps. I recorded how much time I spent on different apps while I worked. Netflix and Spotify became the apps I used the most outside of Forrest. I used both apps for around 1 and a half hours, listening to music and watching movies while I did my work.

I also recorded other apps I was using to distract myself after work. X (formally Twitter) and Brawl Stars (a gaming app) became the two other major apps I used the most throughout the week, with Brawl Stars being 2 hours on average and Twitter being 1 hour and 10 minutes on average. This day was one of the easier ones, so I recorded my thoughts and took a huge nap.

Day 4: A Noticeable Change

On this day, I began noting how much better I felt after not using the apps for 4 days. It felt good not having to worry about social media, and figuring out what I would do or watch. I wanted to see if there was any reason for this sudden change. That’s when I found Impact of Limiting Time Spent on Social Media. This is an article explaining the benefits of limiting screen time. It explained that when we have healthy limits to our screen time, it boosts our mental health. With these limits, we become less concerned or worried about how the media will affect us. I also noticed how much I had gone down when finding the apps. It felt satisfying knowing I didn’t need them as much as I thought.

However, there was one issue on the fourth day. I was going to a school trivia event that day, and I wanted to see what activities they had there. The issue was that the only social media they had was Instagram, and I was frustrated because I hadn’t been bothered by Instagram’s disappearance till today. Stolen Focus chapter 6 explained best why my desire for Instagram rose that day. The author, Johann Hari, explained that because social media can keep our attention and show us what we want, companies can give us what we want to see. Because I wanted to see content related to the event, and since Instagram was the only place that provided it, I wanted to use the app more. So while YouTube and TikTok were down, Instagram sadly rose. 

Day 5: The Final Day

The last day was pretty down as well. Instagram and TikTok went down again, with YouTube slightly rising because I was excited to use it again the next day. Similar to Day 3, I mostly worked this day, working on graphics and papers. I was honestly really proud of the progress I had made over the past few days. I also began collecting all of my notes and data, starting to compare and contrast how I did on the first vs the last days of my journey.

Conclusion of the Challenge.  

Overall, I’d say this challenge was pretty interesting. I expected to not be bothered by not using them, but I never realized how much I used them daily. I took all of my data and began writing it down, and my results were super interesting. On Monday, Sep. 9th (before the detox), I spent almost 6 hours on social media. But on Saturday, I learned I only spent 1 hour and 10 minutes on social media. That’s an 81% decrease in social media, that’s crazy to me. I also felt a lot better after doing it, it felt nice having limited social media and having it not be a priority all the time. The journey made me realize that living without my main 3 social media was possible and that I was missing out on many other ways of doing what I normally do. This was quite the experience. Below is the detox chart I made to show how I did. I would love to do it again with other apps. I hope others try this too as you may be surprised at what you can do.