For the first day I gave up Instagram, I attempted to look at Instagram a total of 25 times before I got it in my brain that I’m not looking at it. On the second day, I found it easier to remember that I’m not going on Instagram. However, I still found myself checking my phone often throughout the day. Instead of Insta, I found myself gravitating towards Tumblr and BlueSky, a new social media platform I found recently. Since I was not intending to go cold turkey, I allowed myself to be on these apps, but I did try to be aware of how much I was on them.

To track my social media usage, I used the Digital Wellbeing section in my phone’s settings. From this, I know that during this last week I spent about 3 and half hours a day on social media. Which is about an hour less than I spent on social media in prior weeks. This is not a big improvement, but now I am aware of how much time I spend on social media. During the week, I would often find myself beginning to scroll BlueSky or Tumblr then realize, I am just doing the same thing I am trying to avoid by giving up Instagram. So, whenever I found myself doing this, I would put down my phone and try to get back to my task at hand. Even when I decided “Okay, I won’t check my phone until I am finished with this task” I would find myself looking at my phone and unlocking it to check it. According to my phone, I unlock it an average of 140 times a day. When I found myself doing this, I would force myself back to the task at hand. I realized I spend a good deal of time choosing to just zone out on my phone and scroll social media and am effectively distracting myself and making my brain reset to get back to what I was originally doing.

 Something else I tried is to put down my phone more while eating, focusing on that activity instead of my phone since I have noticed my phone is often in my hand while I eat. When I forced myself to stop looking at my phone, I found myself using my television to zone out as well. This is also making my brain reset from my task at hand, I was just using the big bright box instead of the small bright box! I gave up Instagram but replaced it with other distractions.

What I am taking away from this experiment is to be mindful of my social media use and when to put it down. I found that when I would just put away my phone and focus on my tasks, I was able to focus better and get more done. I may have only cut an hour of social media time this week, but you got to start somewhere.