Today, on 7/2/17, I did my social media experiment. I chose the 24 hour option which started last night at 10 pm. It seemed like it was going fine as I went to the Bay City Fireworks last night. Today I woke up and immediately tried to check my phone. Then I realized, I couldn’t. While I did not break my goal of a phone-free 24 hours, it was extremely difficult. After about 2 hours of trying to check my phone, I decided to track the number of times I went to unlock my phone for its use. The number was astonishing. From 10 AM until 10 PM, I touched my unlock button 102 times. That’s crazy! I didn’t think that I was on my phone or checking my phone that often. Instead of being on my phone, I found mindless things to do. I went to the park, set up my hammock, and I actually READ A BOOK! I just started reading Jacee Dugard’s memoir called “A Stolen Life”. For those of you who don’t know who that is, she was kidnapped when she was 11 and disappeared until she was 26. The book explains what happened to her, in disturbing detail, and how she feels her life is altered now. I would highly recommend it even though I am not finished with it yet.
At times during this experiment, I actually felt out of place because my family and friends were checking their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and I was sitting there trying to have a conversation. I feel this experiment would have been better if I would have done it when I was with my good friends because we would have found something to do to keep each other occupied. Once the clock hit 10 PM I immediately unlocked my phone, and checked all my texts, snapchats, Facebook notifications, and Instagram posts. 24 hours doesn’t seem like a very long time until after you do it. My timeline felt like I had been gone for a week because of all the people that were posting pictures and stories about their holiday weekend. I didn’t make any posts after the 24 hours, but now I am thinking about what I could post.
