Why It's Important to Switch Off - How to Declutter Digitally Day 22 - 40 Bags in 40 Days Declut
The purpose of the 40 Bags in 40 Days Decluttering Challenge is to donate whatever we we get rid of to charity, in order to make a difference in someone else's life. At a little more than halfway through the challenge, we've cleaned out our closets, our bathrooms, bedrooms, and pantries. We've spent this week talking about decluttering our online lives.
Did you know that the average American spends 3.2 hours per day on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.? That’s 3.2 hours per day—1,168 hours per year—that each of us could be spending on activities, hobbies, passions, and dreams that give our lives more fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and value. That’s 3.2 hours a day that we could be spending making a difference in our own lives and in the lives of others.
Social media has become a necessary aspect of our lives with the alleged purpose of bringing us together; however, more often than not, they can drive us further apart. They can hurt our relationships, suck up our time, damage our confidence, hurt happiness, and kill our self-esteem. The biggest challenge I found in my exile of social media and the Internet was how much time it was sucking up from my life. I often found myself heading down the proverbial rabbit hole of YouTube, Wikipedia, and other information sites and find that two or three hours had passed.
Disconnecting yourself from the Internet—even if it is just for a little while (during Lent, for the rest of this challenge, or any time it has become "too much")is a positive step that that can add to your life, your productivity, and "happiness". After getting through the initial withdrawal phase of unplugging, it will free you from the addiction of constantly checking for updates, answering every email and text right at that moment. For your self esteem, it can help because you aren't always trying to keep up with your "friends" or see who has "liked" your Instagram/FaceBook posts.
I also think it's a positive step that all of us can take in order to feel and behave more human again. Have you noticed, especially in today's political climate, how we can forget that on the other end of our keyboard are actual people, friends, and family who are like us? Just because we may disagree politically, ideologically, etc. does not make them the enemy. We forget to treat each other with respect and empathy. Social media and technology makes it harder to form and keep those personal relationships.
Here are Three Reasons Why It's Important to Switch off and Unplug:
1. Technology Can Be a Highly Addictive Waste of Time
How many times have you checked your smartphone this past hour?
Just these past sixty minutes, how many times did you bust out your phone to check the latest updates from your social media newsfeeds? How many texts have you answered within the first few minutes or seconds from receiving them? Do you answer each email immediately as it comes in? How often are checking your email on your phone?
Was it 2 times? 3 times? 4? 5? 6? 7? Or have you lost count by now?
How many updates do you post to your social media profiles per day? How many videos do you watch on YouTube? How many Facebook posts do you browse through? How many hours do you spend on your social profiles on a daily basis?
Try keeping track one day of how many hours per day you spend on the Internet or on your phone. It may come as a shock regarding the amount of time you are spending.
As I stated earlier, the average American spends 3.2 hours per day on social sites (I read this in an article on Huffington Post). This amount didn't include the time spent on social media using your phone. It's still a lot of time.
3.2 hours per day comes out to 1,168 hours per year. On average we are spending 48 days on social media each year. This doesn't include the time we spend with email, texting, or just flat out surfing the web. Theoretically, we will spend at least 2,736 days of our lives browsing through timelines, liking photos, and posting updates on social media.
Those are days of that could be spent reading books, seeing the world, working towards life goals, helping others, and especially spending time with friends and family—2,736 days that you could of used to actually jump out into the world and make real-life connections with people.
Time is the greatest luxury we have. It’s the only expense that we spend every single day without any possibility of ever making it back. What makes times so precious is the fact that it’s limited. We only get so many days to walk this earth before we pass.
2. It Can Take a Toll on Your Confidence, Self Esteem, and Well-Being
How often to do you see a FaceBook post, a Tweet, a SnapChat clip, a YouTube video, or an Instagram post of someone at their absolute worst? How often do you notice one of your friends, family, or peers post an update about how sad they feel, how terrible their day was, or how miserable their life is? Doesn't happen all that often.
People on social media are almost always at their best—as happy as can be, in love with life, on top of the world, getting engaged, getting married, getting promoted, having babies, or accomplishing big success. Or so it would seem.
One of my friends is a recipe/food ghost writer for various blogs. She received a call that a well-known "mommy" blogger needed help with a mom/kid friendly recipe. She went over to the house only to find that she was expected to prep the entire recipe and get the steps "photo ready". At each interval, the mom, in her perfect apron, hair, make up as well as her adorable daughter (who was brought in by a nanny) would pose for the pictures while another ghost writer wrote the actual blog and another person posted the pics to the woman's Instagram and FaceBook accounts. Turns out, this perfect mommy blog wasn't so perfect after all.
People on social media almost always seem to be at the top of their game because the snapshots we see of each other online are not our true selves. How many selfies, poses, and filters were used before posting that perfect pic. The truth is—despite what the story their social media timelines might show you—no one’s life perfect.
The truth is we are all flawed and imperfect. However, those things never seem to get posted. We tend to post photos that reflect the kind of life we want but may not always have. We show ourselves at our best, most successful, and happiest. Instead of using social media to uplift and encourage, it's become a tool of competition of constantly trying to out best and impress each other. One of my friends (and it really is one of my friends and not a "friend" lol) admitted that when she posts she always has it in the back of her mind that her frenemy from 7th grade needs to be impressed. That really hit me because others in our group admitted to those feelings as well.
So, we post our best lives on social media and then we wait for the feedback, shares, retweets, likes, comments to determine our sense of well being and self-worth. Or we compare how many of the aforementioned our frenemy from 7th grade is getting from her posts and we are either happy or sad when we measure up or when we don't.
Here's the truth. No matter how much you post or how great you portray yourself on social media, there will always be someone who is more popular, gets more likes, etc. than you. Social media adoration is temporary and shouldn't hold any weight as it relates to our quality of life.
3. Technology Can Hurt Your Real Life Relationships
Have you ever gone out and noticed that almost all of the people there were crouched over aimlessly browsing through their phones? Have you ever been somewhere and suddenly noticed that instead of connecting with each other - everyone was too busy with text messages, emails or social media updates on their phones? The biggest one for me is when I'm at a concert and the entire time someone films the entire concert watching it through their telephone screen instead of experiencing the moment.
I see this happen all the time. It seems to get worse and worse. People are rejecting human interaction in favor of technology. Something that was supposed to bring people together has had the opposite effect. We are spending every effort to connect with people behind the screen we are forgetting to connect to those people right in front of us. Our interpersonal relationships are suffering.
The Solution: Digital Detox - Decluttering Technology
Technology is everywhere. It’s accessible from anywhere and everywhere.. And it’s being used by almost everyone you know. It’s almost impossible to avoid.
The great news is is that we don't have to become enslaved by this addictive behavior. There is a simple and powerful way to take your time, confidence, happiness, self-esteem, and relationships back - UNPLUG!!
Some people I know have just deleted their social media accounts altogether. For most of us, that's not realistic. Social media does serve a useful purpose of connecting us with the rest of the world. So deleting your social accounts may not be realistic.
Google Chrome apps, and Firefox apps like FocusOn, StayFocusd, and LeechBlock can temporarily block you from accessing your favorite social media. They are all highly recommended.
After you drastically cut back on the time you spend with technology, you can have the best of both worlds. You will gain a greater appreciation for your time, for those around you, and that social media and technology when it's used as just a tool and not a priority.
