Not the Strongest Start...

“Day 1, Hour 1… and I’m off to a very, very rough start.”

When Professor Carlson had first announced the three day fast, I thought it was going to be an absolute piece of cake. I’m naturally a very busy person and feel like I barely have time to just sit and steadily scroll through my various forms of social media. Well, at least that’s what I tend to think. The majority of my days are filled with things like school, work, homework, working out, spending time with family, and, being the creative person that I am, there are moments where I dive deep into drawing or designing things. Some days I even just drive all around town and shop for the various things I don’t really need. Yet, I still utilize social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter(X), TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, and even Snapchat just to remain up-to-date on the current events or people around me. Now, I don’t mean to bring back any nostalgia, but I remember getting my first phone in like 3rd grade. It was one of those blackberries that you had to slide in order to type anything! I also had gotten an iPod touch to play music on, but the big upgrade came when I received my first iPhone that following year on my tenth birthday. It was simply used to communicate back and forth with my family due to sports, clubs, etc. In fact, I didn’t have any form of social media until I was in late seventh grade, and that was simply a result of pure peer pressure. At the time it was peaceful without them, but nonetheless, I stayed true to myself throughout middle school as the next form of social media that I got was Instagram that summer before my freshman year of high school. For sports recruiting purposes I got Twitter(X), and from that point on it was a snowball effect: TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, and now even Twitch. Although I rarely use some of these platforms, my utilization of social media has definitely heightened with the introduction to high school.  

As I’m preparing to take a step back, I realize that I reach for my phone a lot. Specifically, whenever there are moments of just complete downtime in my hectic day-to-day schedule. Social media has sort of become like the ambient noise that I use to bridge the gaps in between activities, bring in a bit of entertainment, or even just break up some of the prolonged silence when I’m relaxing. With that being said, i don’t feel reliant on social media whatsoever, or in better terms, I don’t “need” it to function regularly. Maybe I’ll come out of this thing looking at myself completely differently, I don’t know.

I find it kind of funny that barely an hour into this whole social media blackout, I've already experienced my first hiccup. I’m going to recap what happened: I naturally opened Instagram, by far my most used social media app, and without even thinking I began to scroll through my feed for a solid three to five minutes. Now, the challenge started today at 12:00pm, but I had burnt this idea into my mind that this was going to be such an easy task that I just lost sight of my habits. The sickening part is, I didn’t feel an urge or itch to check my social media; it just naturally happened on my walk home from class. Professor Carlson said this was going to happen as it has occurred to many of her past students, but I didn’t expect to be in that same boat. I’m disgusted to say the least.

It’s honestly wild to realize just how much of my free time is victim to my habits on social media. When this whole thing happened it was like muscle memory, which led me to really sit down and think once I caught myself in the act. If it is that easy to subconsciously begin scrolling on any social media platform, what does that indicate about how I'm spending my time as a collective? Once again, I’m a very busy person; between classes, homework, family time, work, and just creative things in general. However, I’ve subconsciously found a way to sneak in a bit of time on my phone here and there in order to “relax.” So, social media slips into even my busiest moments. I’m very interested to see how the rest of the challenge goes and if I’ll somehow flip a switch with the remaining days left to this challenge. So, here’s to the first real day of the social media blackout (now it's time to lock in)!