This post is a continuation of my social media break series and in part I, I shared, HOW I REDUCED MY SOCIAL MEDIA USE as a blogger and what led me to take that decision. Now on this post, I want to share the things I have learned from doing it.
So at one point, I realized that I’m actually “addicted” to social media after being in denial for so long and whenever I got any free time: break between work, time between dinner and bedtime for my kid, basically whenever I got that window of “free” time, I was on my phone just mindlessly scrolling. Though it took a lot of self talk at the beginning as I’m sure many of us bloggers “justify” our time on social media by telling ourselves that this is part of our “job” but I needed to really make that thought believable to me and I couldn’t convince myself that spending an average 9+ hours a day on instagram or other social media was justified to the work I actually do on here. So I made a promise to myself and came up with a plan on reducing my time spent on these apps and be very strategic about it. I decided to spend solid couple of hours each day for making stories, posting, engaging, etc. and anything beyond that had to stop. You can find how I did that on this post. Apart from social media use, there is a lot of behind the scene work that I do as a blogger, i.e. planning contents, shooting and editing photos, writing captions, etc. for instagram posts and same goes for blog posts, lots of planning, shooting, editing, writing, etc. is involved in blog post writing; so apart from doing all of that work, I just couldn’t justify spending even more time on social media without a solid purpose. There had to be a balance; so I have enough quality time to spend on myself and with my family.
So, it’s been a couple of months, I have cut down my social media use into literally half and this is what I have learned so far.
1. The Real Followers Will Always Be There:
Not even gonna lie, this was my number one worry initially that if I’m away for a long time and lose the momentum, I will lose followers. This is true to some extent, after cutting down my usage especially on instagram stories, my engagement tanked and it kind of got me worried because I wasn’t ready to be constantly “on the app” to build the engagement again as that would defeat the whole purpose. But slowly as I started using the app little strategically, I saw the engagement going up, nothing like before but it was a rate that I could live with. Also the followers that I lost were probably never meant to be there at the first place. This was the first realization and I cannot even tell you how liberating it was to finally know that I can still build my blog and grow my ig page without being like a hamster on a wheel. Trust me on this one, do a little research, find a system that works for you, decide on some blocks of time that you want to put into your blog every day and stick to it. Main goal should be to not go over your daily limit as well as not doing things that doesn’t help your blog in any way aka mindless scrolling. ofcourse, don’t stop building that connection with your follower base, reply to those dms and comments but you don’t need to do all of that everyday. Instantly reply to some people and you can always go back next day to reply some more and this way you can stay within your daily quota and not lose the connection.
2. FOMO Is Not Real
Okay before you revolt, hear me out! I totally get the FOMO and let’s be real we all get it. I did’t want to miss out on the latest post from my favorite blogger or a collaboration with another peer or a brand, or not share what I did in a day or ate that day. But then I started thinking, which of these is absolutely necessary to grow my blog? Sharing my day with my followers is a really nice way to connect with them as I get tons of dms daily about how they can relate to something I mentioned on my stories but this is not something I need to do constantly. Also an important brand collaboration would probably come through an email which I can always check during my allotted time. Same goes for any dm from a fellow blogger for a collaboration, it can be checked and replied back within my alocated time, so I really am not missing out a whole lot, may be I’m missing the instant exposure to certain things but I realized, I’m totally fine with that.
And initially I was NOT fine with that as I’m human and I got tempted but think of it like a drug, the more you use it, the more you crave for it. So when I started using it less and less, my cravings went down as well.
3. I Have A lot More Free Time
As I mentioned earlier, I used to go on instagram throughout the day whenever I had some free time so when I stopped doing that I realized, I have pockets of free time all day which I can use to do something productive which eventually will make my life easier. For example, in between my day job whenever I get some free time, I do a quick vacuum or do some dishes, make a quick phone call to my mom back home or simply make some coffee and sit down and enjoy 5 minutes of free time without any distractions. Trust me on this, there’s so much we can do with those minutes that we otherwise use to scroll through our phones. Plus I keep reminding myself that I can check my social media during my daily allotted time and this discipline is very important to stick to the daily limit.
4. I Found Clarity
If you’ve been on social media long enough, you would know that the comparing game is inevitable especially for bloggers. It’s hard not to compare ourselves especially as creative professionals in terms of our growth, exposure, network etc. There’s also another aspect of comparison where we compare how other people are so far ahead in their lives in general or how some are being so much more productive or how some people are travelling so much or how some people just simply have it easy- frankly speaking, these are all the things that came across my mind at some point of my social media life. Or there had been instances when I second guessed my ability as a content creator after seeing someone else’s work. These are all natural emotions and nothing to be ashamed of. Taking some time off social media gave me greater clarity on such feelings. When we’re constantly scrolling through other people’s highlighted reels, it’s very easy to get bogged down in the comparison game however, once I took multiple breaks and went completely off grid, I had some time to really process those feelings and I realized how disproportionate these comparisons are. We all have our own unique struggles and more importantly everything is highly curated on social media as we mostly share only the highlights of our day and there’s absolutely no comparison between real life and “reel life”. I think this was the biggest takeaway for me.
5. Social Media Is Not Evil
During my break, I realized how social media has also brought so much positivity in my life in terms of creative inspiration, being able to create a platform where I have the power to voice my opinions on things that I care about, being able to make genuine friendships and connections, being able to create a brand for myself and having the ability to create a source of income through that, getting motivation on fitness and wellness and many other things, I can go on and on. I realized that social media is just a tool and it depends on me whether I use it to bring positive outcome in my life or negative. As a blogger, I cannot quit social media so the key for me is in maintaining a boundary on it’s usage and taking complete detox time to time to get some clarity in my thoughts which can get foggy from continuous social media usage. Social media can definitely be beneficial to us if we use it properly.
Now your turn! Have you ever taken a social media break or decided on cutting down it’s use? If yes, please share your experience in the comments section.
Until next time!
Love,
Nawrin