Week two without social media and this experience is already a rollarcoaster.

 Yes, being without the burdens of social media is great, yet, technology isn’t all burden. I mentioned in my last article that chemicals are released every single time you receive a notification. These chemicals make you feel great, so when they’re suddenly taken away, it’s hard to feel great.

  The first two days after I quit social media, I was absolutely miserable. I sat around my house doing nothing. I knew this is what I signed up for, but I couldn’t get myself out of the rut I was in. After 48 hours of being in that funk, I assumed I needed a new distraction.

 That wasn’t as easy as I anticipated. Before the experiment, I figured I would just hang out with people more and work on school work, but the reality of that didn’t quite pan out. You can’t do schoolwork all the time, and schoolwork wasn’t distracting or happy for me. I also couldn’t hang out with people all the time. I used to talk to my friends at night and after dinner, but reality check, people can’t hang out in person during that time, and neither can I, so the loneliness set in.

  Without distractions, I had time to myself to think again. I didn’t have a distraction, so what do I do instead? Do I need to distract myself? Yes, and this came through not finding a new distraction, but truly starting to appreciate the non artificial world. I now talk to people I love and spend time in nature.

  Finally forcing myself to appreciate the people and things around me was a breath of fresh air. I could no longer ignore things that bugged me or made me sad, but I also could no longer miss the things that made me really happy. That may sound cliché, but there’s a huge difference between thinking that you are living your life and truly taking the time to do it.

  Phones don’t have to be this evil distraction that everyone needs to get rid of in order to be happy. Every person doesn’t need to spend 2 hours everyday sitting in a field. Yet, spending some time each day to focus on non artificial things is crucial, and my mental health thanked me.

  It’s only been two weeks and I already feel as if my relationships are stronger and my quality of life has improved. I definitely still have some ways to go in my journey, but I’m finally getting over the hump. It’s still pretty difficult hard to not re-download Instagram and check out the latest posts. I still go through my day and see funny things and wish I could Snapchat them. It’s not all self realization and happiness, but the amounts of those things I do have are incredible.