My Year Off Social Media - Lessons & Going Forward
This is gonna be a lengthy one, friend, so relax into it. Grab a cup of something warm, get a little cozy, and dive in! I tried to keep my thoughts organized but they still get a little stream-of-consciousness in there.
This last year will forever be sacred to me. I know not being on social media for a year, in terms of my whole life, is not a big deal. But it meant a lot to me. It will forever be the year I made a counter-cultural choice that gave me and my family so much life. It is the year I welcomed my second miracle child into the world. The year I stopped living quite so numb and distracted, and felt the life and blood (and accompanying discomfort) come rushing back in.
And I don’t think I want to go back to where I was before.
If you’ve been following along the journey, you know I’ve provided real-time updates this whole last year about my year off social media — how it’s gone, how I’ve felt, the benefits and challenges experienced along the way. I highly recommend reading through those for some real, raw thoughts as it was all happening!
Quick links to those posts here:
I’m Taking a Year Off Social Media
On Being Off Socials, How It’s Going So Far
3 Month Social-Media-Free Update
I’ve Never Felt More Beautiful
So… why’d I do it??
In November of 2020, I felt an invitation to sign off my social media for an extended time. Y’all remember 2020? LOL! Social media was already becoming, um, interesting before then, but that year it went off the rails.
I had been regularly taking time off social media (a week per month-ish since 2017), but I a wild hair to do a whole year without Instagram and Facebook. It felt like God was holding a hand out to me, saying it’d be fine if I didn’t take it, but there might be something special in it for me if I did!
And I felt just curious and brave and nervous enough to say yes.
Just some quick background:
I’m not on Twitter or TikTok, and I still used Pinterest and YouTube to stay connected and inspired, because I don’t use them for their social aspect as much as for inspiration and education. I did not delete my accounts, but deleted the apps. I logged onto FB to access Marketplace and tried to avoid a wandering eye : )
I am your average millennial, slightly more senior, but I’ve spent most of my young adult/adult life connected to social media. I am Facebook Class of 2005, fresh out of high school and ready for college with my Sony Cybershot in hand, itching to upload cleverly titled albums of my adventures.
That’s 17 years of my life connected to tech in an everyday social and cultural way. Y’all, that’s a long time. I don’t even want to know the cumulative hours spent scrolling over the course of those years.
Of COURSE it has shaped how I see the world! Of COURSE it has shaped how I engage in relationships and how I view (and judge) people. Of course it has affected my day-to-day, and year-to-year (or, er, decades of) life. For better in some ways, for worse in others.
SO, late December of 2020, I set out to spend a year disconnected.
What I got in return was 100(000)% WORTH IT.
So, how’d it go?
I’m not gonna lie. It was hard at first.
Just like any new habit! I didn’t want to feel in the dark, disconnected, or worse — forgotten, irrelevant, or obsolete. What if people — gasp — stopped thinking about me?! I felt like a little fishy going totally upstream and against the flow of all the other fish!
I knew from previous experiences signing off social media, even temporarily, that the first few days are the hardest. I think it’s like any fast, like from sugar, caffeine, or food. When your mind, emotions, and body are set in a rhythm like muscle memory, it takes effort to readjust, and you realize some of the unhealthy ways you were attached.
In this case, it took the whole first month. I actually remember getting to mid-January and thinking has it been a month yet?!
When you stop yourself from checking in on social media, you begin to ask yourself a question that Instant Gratification doesn’t: Why am I doing this?
For me, I think I use social media most often to soothe boredom, to fill in a mental or timeline gap, to avoid something, or to zone out. I’m at a stoplight, or my kids are entertained with something else, or I finally plop down on the couch at night. Social media is a habit that by its nature doesn’t require much intention or thought to partake in.
There is a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that comes with “popping on” quickly and knowing what others are up to, how their families are doing, or what projects they’re working on. You might learn about a new life hack or a new product you want to buy. You might get a good laugh out of a cat video. There are a lot of directions you could take down the spiral of scroll, and it takes zero effort to just keep on slidin’ down.
And that’s just the consuming.
The producing (posting) is a whole separate thing. For me, that has long created a near-constant feeling of I should. Like, in my daily life, constantly feeling like it all wasn’t enough… for someone out there. That’s pretty invasive, and we weren’t meant to live that way!
My inner voice posting on socials sounds a lot like this: I should probably take a picture of this coffee shop. My kid is looking super cute, I should post it to my stories! It’s our anniversary… I should compose the most heartfelt paragraph about the love of my life! I wonder if so-and-so will see it and be impressed!
And we all know it easily leads to a feeling of not-enough-ness, and of course, comparing our lives (and our value) to others. I don’t have to wax poetic about that — it’s undeniably unhelpful!
So trading in all of that stuff for a year seemed worth the sacrifice of feeling disconnected and potentially becoming a shadow of a Sam that once was, LOL!
Listen, there is an element of “living under a rock” and missing out…
but honestly, it’s mostly with very unimportant stuff.
It didn’t take me long to really embrace and appreciate what I didn’t know from social media. I don’t need to know what people are doing, thinking, or accomplishing all the time. I believe there is such a thing of knowing too much, holding too much that isn’t yours. We are limited humans, with limited capacities. It is our responsibility to protect what goes into our eyes, ears, hearts, and homes.
And I realized that 99.999% of it is noise, fluffer, and life filler that isn’t actually adding much to my life mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. The other scant margin of positivity from social media involved 1) family, 2) close friends, and 3) brands/ministries/platforms that were highly encouraging and inspiring. All of those, I realized, I could stay connected with in other ways, such as in-person, direct text, or a website, newsletter, or YouTube channel.
By March, it felt mostly like Life As Usual
but different, in a really good way.
When you’re not constantly reaching for your phone for the vague activity of social media browsing/posting, it really does free up a lot of time and brain space. Those two things are a lot more valuable to me now that I’m a mother of two precious ones who need so very much from me.
I was (and am) still the same person with the same issues, but not having the constant distraction of social media helped some unpleasant/difficult feelings rise to the surface and allowed me more of an opportunity to look at it directly in the eyes. To hold it, to ask questions, and to put real help into place.
I didn’t grab for my phone near as much, and when I did, I knew exactly why I was picking it up — to answer a text, make a call, look at the weather, or take a picture.
It wasn’t so much life without social media, it was just life. And what a gift that was as I was preparing my body and heart and home for the arrival of my second born, Smith Bennett.
Your real, in-person, inside-your-own-home life is more important than social media. You’ve got bigger fish to fry!!
By springtime I was just fryin’ away and didn’t feel as much like I was missing out, although I still had to learn to embrace the feeling of being unseen and “irrelevant”.
The Big Takeaways
the not knowing was a social superpower for me!
Yes, that’s right! Ya know that feeling of seeing a friend/acquaintance in person, and you all about what they’ve been up to from social media, and you don’t know whether or not to mention what you know to them in person? Or worse, maybe you’ve judged them or pegged them as some “type” of person, so you actually feel a little weird towards them in person? Am I the only one who has felt this??
I LOVED NOT KNOWING! When I saw someone I know in person, I loved the freedom of going up to them and genuinely asking how they and their family have been, what they’ve been up to, what they’re looking forward to. I loved just listening and hearing in person, from their own heart.
And if they acted weird, I loved knowing that it wasn’t because of anything they saw about me on social media. It probably just had to do with a bad day, a hard conversation, or a strained relationship. Or something they knew about me from like… 5 or 10 years ago.
Humans became more human to me — soft, frayed, a little messed up, contextual, magnificent — and I really loved that.
Less social media connection led to more connection!
More connection to myself, my actual surroundings, and people in my life who I am committed to in real relationship. I honestly did not feel lack as much as I felt deep, satisfying, clear connection. WOW. What a life game-changer! This is the element that meant the most to me, because I had spent years thinking I was connected, but in reality, I just knew a lot about what a lot of other people were doing. This year has felt like the life-giving, hard work of actually connecting heart-to-heart, encountering a bit of friction and a lot of vulnerability. Lord, may I have more of that in 2022!
I really loved the freedom of not having to document my everyday life.
This one felt like a bit of a catch-22, because while I felt like a kid on summer vacation with not feeling the have-to of taking pictures and videos all the time, I wish I had picked up my nice camera more to document these precious fleeting days of new and growing babies.
Not feeling the should of documenting my everyday life, overall, did feel like a huge relief mentally and emotionally. I was able to just sink into the rhythms of my quiet, unseen days, to look into my kids eyes more often, to rest more efficiently and enjoyably throughout my days, and to learn a bit more about my needs.
Not listening to others as much allowed me to listen to myself more, and since I was pregnant and postpartum pretty much all of 2021, it felt significant to offer myself more attention to how I felt and what I might need. I was also able to confidently voice those things to my people so they could help support me, and ya know, when you open up to others in this way, it lets them know you’re the kind of person they could open up to, too. Isn’t that what relationship is all about? Really walking things out with each other!
Way. Less. Anxiety.
Included here is better sleep. Less mental chatter. Slower thoughts and slower days. Less pressure to define, prove, or be impressive with how I spend my time. Honestly, what a relief.
I’ve had some really rough seasons dealing with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and I just can’t overstate how helpful it is to sign off social media regularly. This last year proved no different and helped me to see how confident I really am!
And like I’ve said before, being off social media isn’t a cure-all into the perfect peaceful life of slow living. It’s still life. I’ve still got issues and the people around me do, too! There are still tough conversations and constant messes to clean and meals to prepare.
BUT being off for an extended time did allow me to significantly relax mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It allowed creativity to flow again, the kind that is for joy and that addictive flow state, not for getting it on a content calendar to post.
It allowed me to see the people in my life who were, in a sense, still standing, the ones still checking in and the ones I knew I wanted to reach out to, invest in, and be intentional with — my people. These are the ones I could share my highlights and my real, gritty, difficult stuff with.
It allowed me to take a good long look at my issues that were, shock, still there, and the ones that were stirring under a near-constant stream of distraction of social media. Not having a numbing-out activity so readily available helped me to make plans of action for real healing, one untangle at a time. Still workin’ on that!
In short, I felt like I was showing up to life as me. A little sleep deprived, a little sore in the heart from the beautiful and tough year expanding our family which has its unbelievable joys and strains, too. A little fuller and softer in the face and body from growing and sustaining babies. A little less serious, a lot more intentional, hopefully filled with a little more grace and laughter.
SO am I gonna come back to social media?
The short answer is no.
I have loved the last year so much. It has felt like a gift of freedom to me. It slowed down time to be more real-time (and not so next-next-next). It brought me back to my senses, like an erratic plane landing on the sure, solid ground again. It honestly helped me to like myself more, listen to myself more, and reach out to people I love.
If I am ever asked, “Does your day-to-day life match your values?” I want to give a hearty yes. For me, little to no social media really helps with that.
The real answer is yes, I will pop in from time to time! I have some creative projects in the works that I want to share and will absolutely use social media to do that! At the moment I do not plan to promote blog posts there, but instead hope to connect the most aligned readers to my content via Pinterest and of course, keeping my Newsletter up and going!
All right, y’all made it! We did it! One year, done and done.
And can I just say… if you are at all interested in taking extended time off socials… just do it. Just dive in! You really have very little to lose and SO MUCH TO GAIN!
Life is good outside of the screen and scroll.
Thank you for being a support over the last year, and being my people! And thank you to anyone who has commented or sent me a message — it honestly means so much to me!
I’m sending you all my love. Onward and upward, into a life that’s even more in alignment with our values, our dreams, and our passions!
With breakfast stains on my shirt and a heart that feels lighter,
Sam
P.S. Here are some other helpful posts about living a tech-intentional life, it you’re feelin the need to unplug for however short or long!
