Day 157 of 365: AKA Day One Of My Social Media Detox

For the past couple months I have been dedicated to removing as much negativity from my life as possible. I've been trying to pinpoint exactly where any negative vibes or feelings were coming from and its come to my (sad) realization that so much negativity is coming from the amount of time that we spend scrolling through our social media feeds. Don't get me wrong, there are many positives when it comes to social media, but at the end of the day, social media has the power to negatively impact our moods, thoughts, behaviors, etc., if you let it have the power to.

I had been thinking about doing a social media detox for quite some time, mainly because I think it distracts me from everything around me, but now also because I am starting to see the negative power that is potentially has. I finally decided to go through with a 30 day social media detox after reading this article. It really opened my eyes to just how much of the world we are missing when we are constantly glued to our phones. Even if a social media detox is no where in your radar, I definitely encourage you to read that article simply to become more aware of how much time you are potentially wasting while on your phone.

As I am moving to New York City for the summer in two days, I could not think of a better time to start this social media detox. 30 days free of social media for me to soak in all the experiences I am about to have while living in the city with an old bff (shoutout to Ash), working my first full-time job at a dream internship and being surrounded by so many friends in the place I love most.

I've made a few "social media detox ground rules" for myself. This is because as I am working in a public relations industry, I can't totally remove myself from the digital world. My ground rules are as follows:

• No use of Instagram.

• No use of Snapchat, the only exception to this one is I am planning on making a separate Snapchat account for these next 30 days only to add my closest friends from school because Snapchat is one of our main forms of communication.

• Deleting the Facebook app from my phone, but able to use it on the computer because I find myself checking it way too often on my phone but use it as a source of information whenever I have some free time to go on my computer.

• I will be keeping my Twitter app on my phone and logged in only because I solely use my Twitter for professional purposes only and as a current events source.

To summarize, I am completely letting go of Instagram, only using Snapchat to keep in touch with less than ten of my closest friends, only using Facebook as a source of information during my down time and full use of Twitter so that I can keep up with my professional network and current events.

Similar to the article that I shared above, I will be taking daily notes on how I think having a mostly social media free life for the next 30 days is impacting me to share in a future blog post. During this time I hope to notice a decrease of negativity in my life, to have more of an open eye for the world around me and to have more time to do things I love, like reading, exercising and writing.

If you've read this far, thanks for being a true fan ;), and if you need to reach me during the next 30 days, now you know not to do it via social media! There's a good chance that I will be sharing many more experiences on this blog now that I won't have social media to share my experiences on. NYC, here I come!!

xx, Lex