Just shy of two weeks ago, a friend challenged another friend and I, on a Friday morning, to just perhaps, just maybe stay away from Facebook for the day. No scrolling. Just no time spent at all if we could help it.

And I while I couldn’t help it 100%, I took her challenge that day and ran it with it for over a week.

I still continued to post articles, memes, and pictures of my life, from both Instagram and Facebook. I thought I would just check and respond to notifications, but then, since bad habits are hard to break, I allowed myself 2-3 minutes tops of scrolling a few times throughout each day, thinking that would help.

Of course it didn’t.

Naturally I would see something that would either hurt my tired heart or make my blood pressure sky rocket and then I would chastise myself for falling into the trap of still being on there. And even though my phone informed me that my screen time from last week dropped by an embarrassingly high percentage number (think: a passing grade on an assignment), I entered this week still feeling like the games of comparison and judgement that come with social media use were taking far more than they were giving me in return. 

So, I stopped.

I turned off all notifications for FB, IG, and Marco Polo. I kept Messenger because I still wanted an easy way to connect with people who might not be able to text me. I didn’t delete the apps entirely because my “click impulse” was already relaxed after last week to not be touching those little icons as much (although I fully reserve the right to go back and delete them or move them to a back screen on my phone for good measure).

I then messaged a handful of people who I knew might be wondering about my sudden radio silence, letting them know that the next week will be a no-social-media zone for me.

And then I semi-failed because, Lordy,  I still posted several things throughout the next day! (insert palm to forehead emoji here) Apparently my fingers and brain are twitchier about this than I realized but I did manage zero scrolling, responding just to whatever was said on those posts and that’s it. So, baby steps?

Maybe it will last longer than that. Maybe I will continue to cheat (I’ll have to in order to share this post or others that I write in the future). But if you’ve read this far as to why I’m not online as much, perhaps you’ll understand my spotty response and my attempt to get to full SM shutdown, at least for a little bit, before this summer is over. There’s just too much noise in my head and heart these days and I need to sit with that without the distraction or the addition of all that is social media land. Will it work? We shall s