My Digital Detox

I took a digital detox from social media whilst I was on my week’s holiday.

I needed time away, particularly from Instagram. I know it is just an app, but to me it became so much more than that.

It was originally a place where I connected with like-minded individuals or followed accounts that posted beautiful, inspiring images. This then turned into a place where I was documenting my life – mainly for myself as a kind of virtual photo album. I didn’t stress about perfection, hashtags or long winded captions. It was raw and it was me.

Then during my second pregnancy some opportunities came my way. I saw how my friend had made a career out of blogging and although she had been in the game a long time, she said there was still space for others. This is when the blogging and Instagram became more of a hobby – it became a place where I was promoting myself.

At first it was great. The follower count rose and rose. People were engaging with me. I joined a fantastic networking community based in the North-West: WeBlogNorth and met some lovely, inspiring people.

I continued to document my life but then I got ill. Mentally.

I found I could not concentrate or be particularly creative. I started seeing cliques form on those squares that I was not part of and I felt jealous. I felt unworthy. I became obsessed with follower count. When people unfollowed me, I would question why. What had I done wrong? Why didn’t they like me? Was it because they discovered I was boring?

Social media is such a fantastic outlet for all sorts of things but sometimes it can be so detrimental. I needed to step away from it. Stop the scrolling, my paranoia and the bad vibes. I enjoyed my holiday with the kids and Kristian. I really connected with Cecily in particular and for the first time in ages I felt happy and my laugh was natural.

I’m not saying that this was the result of my digital detox, but by not scrolling and getting bogged down in my feelings of inadequacy, it made me feel lighter and a much happier person, which resulted in a much nicer mother and wife to be around.

The digital detox wasn’t good for the old follower count but I have to keep reminding myself that those accounts that unfollowed me clearly were not my type of person and obviously didn’t ‘get’ me.

So I am now making a vow to myself

1. I am not going to scroll in bed. Bed should be the place for sleep and fun. Not phones.
2. I am going to spend less time scrolling on my ‘Mummy days’ because it is not fair on the kids to see me on my phone during the boring bits of the day [because let’s be honest, it can get boring!]
3. This one will be the hardest but I am going to try and go offline one day a week. It will probably be a Sunday so I can spend time with the family.

Have any of you tried a digital detox? Or do you want to but you are too scared to go cold turkey?

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