I have tried to write this post three different times.
The first time was right after the 30 days of no social media.
The second time was a few weeks later when I noticed an uptick in social media use.
The third time was after the Texas Winter storm in February that took out my power and heat for almost four days straight in the cold.
This essay is broken down into three sections based on my experience of trying to write this essay.
We develop patterns, good and bad, to make our lives run, and a lot of them are subconscious. There is always a raging battle about technology in our lives, and that is for another day to talk more about in depths.
On average, an adult in the US will be on their phone for 4 hours, and about 3 hours of that screen time is on social media.
The Social Dilemma, although it got 38 million views in just quarter 3 of 2020, can’t stop this addiction.
2020 changed how we go about our days since most of us work from home and don’t have a commute. The lines between home and work are blurred, so many of our habits have changed for the worse.
Before I go further, I love the power of social media.
I have been able to meet mentors, friends, and stay connected with family. I love that I get to share my work online, and heck, my company, Gattozzi Collective, creates content for consumer brands.
Social media is a big part of my life, but it shouldn’t control me.
For me, going into December of 2020, I was starting coaching with Chris McAlister, and I was in a place of feeling lonely and isolated. I wanted to clear my mind to make the most of the coaching, focus on me versus who I was to the outside world.
So I stopped social media for 30 days.
Here is what I found!
1. I spend less time worrying about my career and business and more time working on my career and business
I love social media because I have connected with so many amazing people in the marketing field and fellow entrepreneurs. I have grown from my network that I have met online over the years.
But right before I did my social media detox, I wasn’t being inspired by connections; I was worried about my place amongst my peers.
This wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. I chose to see social media that way and affect me to be negative versus positive.
I didn’t realize how this affected my work, but within 30 days, I am more creative and excited to share than if I stayed on social media.
2. I worked less but got more work done
I didn’t realize how the little bit of scrolling here and there would take away from my working day, and I would work longer hours in turn.
The central part of this is that social media distracted me from getting into a deep workflow.
I was able to work hard for a few hours straight and get most of my daily tasks done so quickly that I spent less time working in December while getting more done.
3. I became creative again
So much of what holds us back from creating is social pressure. But if you eliminate social media, there is no social pressure. You create for yourself.
I learned that so much of my creative spirit was killed in 2020 because I focused more on a strategy that I never posted anything. I was paralyzed in my creation process.
Me writing again and creating videos on YouTube is not for views but comes from this fantastic detox of social pressure and freedom to create.
This is where I stopped writing the first attempt at this post. I wanted to end with a high note and show people that I am free from the shackles of social media, and I am independent of this technology.
Well, that really isn’t true.
The thing with doing a 30-day challenge is, what happens after the 30 days? What will you do differently? Will you keep any of this practice for everyday life.
To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about the future use of social media, which hurt me at first. I ended up using social less, but I could see myself slipping into old habits. Something had to change.
I started using an app called Opal that blocks apps on your phone to help build a better relationship with the technology. I am thrilled that I have a tool to stop the addictive properties that technology offers.
All while I was writing this second part, my life changed because of the Texas Winter storm. My wife and I didn’t have power or heat for 3.5 days, and our apartment was at 38 degrees. The situation was terrible. At the time, we were focused on just surviving. We didn’t think about work. We just wanted to make it through the next day.
This experience made me question how we are highly leveraged to the need for electricity as a society. A lot of things don’t matter when you don’t have electricity.
Heck- a lot of things don’t matter if you don’t have your basic needs met.
I say all of this because I found a sense of relief after this crazy week of no electricity. After all, it centered me on what really matters in my life.
Because my basic needs are met, I can focus on more profound ideas or think about life instead of worry about food. This opportunity is precious, and I don’t want to waste it scrolling.
I am not anti-social media because I see this tool's power, but I also know that social media seizes to be a tool when it is an addiction.
What happens next, and how will I use social media in the future?
I think it is always good to reassess boundaries of how we use anything, especially technology. It is so easy to create a reliance pattern that it ends up being more harmful than good. In the future, I will use Opal to help build boundaries for my use on my phone.
I have become a lot better at having my phone away from my desk throughout the day, so this will be easier for me to limit. The other part of this is that I liked the things I filled my time up with instead of social media, like writing, reading, and thinking about new business ideas. I hope to focus on those each day more and less on using social media.
I see many benefits to publishing the work I am doing, but I know that I am only doing so to share my life, not to validate my life. This detox changed how I view social media, and now I see it as a tool that can help me publish my work, not to prove to others that I am unique or that I have an exciting life.