Picture this; it’s about three o’clock in the morning and you’ve just spent endless hours on your phone before going to bed and as you begin to think about sleep, you stumble across something you had no intention of knowing, and now through your tears you get up and impulsively give yourself front bangs, as if there was nothing else that could have been done when getting upset. Nobody does that. Except I did. Being eighteen years old and exposed to more technology than I could ever need, it often gets to me, as I am too attached. How can I not be? So many resources are offered to me that it is so easy to take advantage of. But in this day and age, why is it so hard for people to find a balance, to use technology in moderation rather than excessively? Becoming too attached or even dependent on your technology devices is a horrible habit and an even worse feeling. As Baratunde Thurston writes in his article, “#Unplug: Baratunde Thurston Left The Internet For 25 Days, And You Should, Too” he explains his struggles with relying on his smart phone more than necessary, and the idea he had to go on a detox with limited to no technology. Despite my lacking the numerous job titles Thurston holds, we depend on similar resources and I too find myself at this age, too invested in technology to the point where it causes extra stress and high running emotions.
Between being a CEO, co-founder, consultant, author and director of digital for The Onion, Baratunde Thurston realized that as a part of his career, he had become overly connected and attached to the internet. Dependent on his phone for emails, calls, messages and of course his GPS as he constantly traveled, he found himself too invested with his life digitally and was forgetting how to interact with people face to face. As communication became harder, with help from his assistant, Thurston was able to step back and disconnect from social media and the internet for 25 days. Essentially “freeing himself’ from digital obligations, Thurston was able to enjoy life in the moment and regain the ability to interact with others in person. He biked around, tried new restaurants, caught up with old friends and took life one at a time, slower paced than he had become accustomed to. After a few days of his detox, he came to the point where he was not even thinking about the digital world he was missing out on, but instead was completely focused on what was happening right in front of him. Coming back from his 25 day disconnect, he found it was easier to use his phone and social media apps in moderation and not be so quick to constantly update his doings, allowing himself to continue enjoying his surroundings without overdoing it, as well as keeping good connections with friends and coworkers face to face. As Thurston voluntarily made the decision to cut back on his use of the internet and his cell phone, he allowed less room for stress coming from his digital obligations and was able to take a step back and better enjoy life.
This is something I think about regularly in my own life. Not many people my age know how to use technology in moderation. Having an iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch and several other devices, how can you? Already being set up to be addicted to these resources, social media definitely does not help. It seems unjust to have twitter without snapchat, or Instagram without Vsco, or the worst one yet… “finsta”.
Finsta, or fake Instagram, is another name for an Instagram spam account, where anyone can post any funny, sad, angry content that updates their followers on their everyday life. Finsta users typically use a spin off of their actual name as their account name so that way it can be differentiated from their personal account and has a fun, light-hearted feel to it. With a funny name, anyone can find their account where they post whatever they please. Generally on your personal instagram account, you may post once every few days or weeks, where as a finsta, people might post several times a day depending on how invested they are into it. Considering significantly less people follow your finsta than your personal Instagram, the content varies and is much more private. Some posts may be what had someone had for breakfast, their plans for the day, a post about a date they went on or even a rant about a friend they have. Literally anything. Friendships were formed by bonding over embarrassing moments or how to talk to a boy they like. In the beginning of the finsta era, the posts were funny. However, over time it became very negative and my feed was overflowing with people who were experiencing real life issues that they use the internet to cope with and just overall a toxic energy. You are exposed to knowing so much about people that you don’t really know what to do with the information, and sometimes you learn way more than you ever wanted to.
This is exactly what was causing so much stress in my life. Some of the things I had been seeing was just not anything I wanted to know about, so why not just delete it? Well, Baratunde Thurston, author of “#Unplug: Baratunde Thurston Left The Internet For 25 Days, And You Should, Too” introduces the idea of “fomo” in his article. This is, “The Fear of Missing Out” which is exactly why it is so hard to walk away from everything even when you most want to. With all this being said, I have made my own attempts to go on a phone free vacation.
Last summer between working three jobs, I rewarded myself with sitting on my phone for countless hours after a ten hour shift. Again being on my phone for so long lead to a lot of negative feelings and helped my mental health completely plummet. For example, I had found out through “finsta” that after a long ten months of thinking someone really cared about me, they did not in the slightest. Not ideal. Definitely, not ideal. Though it isn’t always dramatic, and social media does have its benefits, there is in fact room for error. After this event taking place, leading to my impulsive hair cutting, I deleted everything off my phone.
After starting my senior year in high school, around December, I began talking to someone who seemed really good for me. At first everything was great and fun as we had a good time doing our own thing, and not even two months down the road, friends of mine started telling me they thought something was going on and seemed skeptical. Shrugging it off and not thinking anything of it, I soon forgot about it and it didn’t occur to me that they may be right. Again a few months later, some of the girls on the cheerleading team had been posting finstas with him, causing my friends to again try and get me to figure out what was going on. After being reassured that I was overreacting and overthinking, I was again forced to drop the topic and get over it. Finally nine months later being constantly paranoid seeing millions of pictures of him with different girls and hearing who he had been out with when he wasn’t with me, I decided I was too dependent on social media and wanted a break. Being busy and working most days anyways, I did not have a ton of time to spend on my phone anyways, so for a few weeks I used it significantly less and tried to not let anything get to me. This was completely 100% useless as one night, a picture had been posted on finsta that confirmed everything I thought was happening, was actually happening. Minutes later the photo was deleted. Gone. The only real proof I had, ceased.
Between being a CEO, co-founder, consultant, author and director of digital for The Onion, Baratunde Thurston realized that as a part of his career, he had become overly connected and attached to the internet. Dependent on his phone for emails, calls, messages and of course his GPS as he constantly traveled, he found himself too invested with his life digitally and was forgetting how to interact with people face to face. As communication became harder, with help from his assistant, Thurston was able to step back and disconnect from social media and the internet for 25 days. Essentially “freeing himself’ from digital obligations, Thurston was able to enjoy life in the moment and regain the ability to interact with others in person. He biked around, tried new restaurants, caught up with old friends and took life one at a time, slower paced than he had become accustomed to. After a few days of his detox, he came to the point where he was not even thinking about the digital world he was missing out on, but instead was completely focused on what was happening right in front of him. Coming back from his 25 day disconnect, he found it was easier to use his phone and social media apps in moderation and not be so quick to constantly update his doings, allowing himself to continue enjoying his surroundings without overdoing it, as well as keeping good connections with friends and coworkers face to face. As Thurston voluntarily made the decision to cut back on his use of the internet and his cell phone, he allowed less room for stress coming from his digital obligations and was able to take a step back and better enjoy life.
This is something I think about regularly in my own life. Not many people my age know how to use technology in moderation. Having an iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch and several other devices, how can you? Already being set up to be addicted to these resources, social media definitely does not help. It seems unjust to have twitter without snapchat, or Instagram without Vsco, or the worst one yet… “finsta”.
Finsta, or fake Instagram, is another name for an Instagram spam account, where anyone can post any funny, sad, angry content that updates their followers on their everyday life. Finsta users typically use a spin off of their actual name as their account name so that way it can be differentiated from their personal account and has a fun, light-hearted feel to it. With a funny name, anyone can find their account where they post whatever they please. Generally on your personal instagram account, you may post once every few days or weeks, where as a finsta, people might post several times a day depending on how invested they are into it. Considering significantly less people follow your finsta than your personal Instagram, the content varies and is much more private. Some posts may be what had someone had for breakfast, their plans for the day, a post about a date they went on or even a rant about a friend they have. Literally anything. Friendships were formed by bonding over embarrassing moments or how to talk to a boy they like. In the beginning of the finsta era, the posts were funny. However, over time it became very negative and my feed was overflowing with people who were experiencing real life issues that they use the internet to cope with and just overall a toxic energy. You are exposed to knowing so much about people that you don’t really know what to do with the information, and sometimes you learn way more than you ever wanted to.
This is exactly what was causing so much stress in my life. Some of the things I had been seeing was just not anything I wanted to know about, so why not just delete it? Well, Baratunde Thurston, author of “#Unplug: Baratunde Thurston Left The Internet For 25 Days, And You Should, Too” introduces the idea of “fomo” in his article. This is, “The Fear of Missing Out” which is exactly why it is so hard to walk away from everything even when you most want to. With all this being said, I have made my own attempts to go on a phone free vacation.
Last summer between working three jobs, I rewarded myself with sitting on my phone for countless hours after a ten hour shift. Again being on my phone for so long lead to a lot of negative feelings and helped my mental health completely plummet. For example, I had found out through “finsta” that after a long ten months of thinking someone really cared about me, they did not in the slightest. Not ideal. Definitely, not ideal. Though it isn’t always dramatic, and social media does have its benefits, there is in fact room for error. After this event taking place, leading to my impulsive hair cutting, I deleted everything off my phone.
After starting my senior year in high school, around December, I began talking to someone who seemed really good for me. At first everything was great and fun as we had a good time doing our own thing, and not even two months down the road, friends of mine started telling me they thought something was going on and seemed skeptical. Shrugging it off and not thinking anything of it, I soon forgot about it and it didn’t occur to me that they may be right. Again a few months later, some of the girls on the cheerleading team had been posting finstas with him, causing my friends to again try and get me to figure out what was going on. After being reassured that I was overreacting and overthinking, I was again forced to drop the topic and get over it. Finally nine months later being constantly paranoid seeing millions of pictures of him with different girls and hearing who he had been out with when he wasn’t with me, I decided I was too dependent on social media and wanted a break. Being busy and working most days anyways, I did not have a ton of time to spend on my phone anyways, so for a few weeks I used it significantly less and tried to not let anything get to me. This was completely 100% useless as one night, a picture had been posted on finsta that confirmed everything I thought was happening, was actually happening. Minutes later the photo was deleted. Gone. The only real proof I had, ceased.
"My first thought after what I had seen was just to get rid of everything"
My first thought after what I had seen was just to get rid of everything, for real this time. I had no intention of being on my phone or communicating with anyone until further notice. I had run into similar problems as Thurston struggled with when he stated, “ This is where things got complicated. Disengaging from all this was a lesson in just how locked in we really are” (Baratunde Thurston Leaves the Internet For 25 Days and You Should to). I started by going through my apps and tried to deactivate, but as it was harder than I expected to do so, I ended up successfully deactivating my snapchat, and overall just deleting the rest of my social media apps. My phone remained on for the few weeks that this lasted, even though I was essentially going off the grid, I still needed to keep in contact with family and close friends.
Not feeling the constant need to check my notifications of snapchats, likes, comments, etc, it soon lead to me not wanting to be on my phone at all. I carried it on me to work to keep in touch with my parents when they checked in every so often, but I found myself not wanting to respond to texts or calls from even my closest friends. Again, my reasoning for cutting down on phone use was different than Thurston’s but it allowed a lot of the same benefits. Now that my nights of staying up until 3 am on my phone had ceased, for the time being, I found myself going to sleep a lot sooner. I loved to drive around Plymouth by all the beaches and docs, so after tiring myself out driving in circles I’d head home watch a movie or hangout with my nephew that I never wanted to spend time with before. Either way, one of the two would tire me out and with working at both the nursing home and the ice cream shop, catching up on sleep wasn’t the worst thing. The next morning I was able to wake up on my own, after getting a real full nights sleep, and begin my day. Without reaching for my phone for anything except to change the song playing, I was so much more efficient and productive. My room was always clean as a result of me being bored, always had clean clothes, which before I dreaded laundry and I was always happy to help out watching my nephew or cousins when needed. The time I spent not being on my phone created a sense of independence that I hadn’t really felt before. You really don’t realize how much people share on social media until you take a break and see that you don’t have to post every single thing you say and do every day. Though I wasn’t out exploring the streets of New York with friends as Baratunde was able to, I was perfectly fine using this time to grow and enjoy time and dissociating- in a good way.
After almost three weeks, when I felt more comfortable with where I was in life, I began the process of downloading some of the things I had deleted prior, and explained to friends I just was at a place where I needed time to myself. Taking these two to three weeks of being almost completely isolated was extremely eye opening and fully worth every minute and I really do think it could be beneficial to anyone and everyone. Especially today, it is so easy to get caught up in everything happening online with friends, people you follow, and even celebrities lives. Taking the time to distance yourself from this is cleansing and takes you back to another time period when people would actually go out and enjoy their teenage years and not feel the need to post everything they do. Even when you come back to the reality of your phone being your best friend, like Thurston, found it is so easy to passively use social media and not be so active. You can use your phone and watch a video… without having to share it to all your personal pages, blogs, timelines, etc. You can scroll through here and there, following people who do not negatively impact your life and limit the amount of time on your phone. In more ways than not, cutting out your phone/social media, is beneficial to your mental health and can be just as easily done for anyone else.