24 Hours Without My Phone

I'm always the first person to say that social media doesn't affect me negatively. I always claim that I only engage in positive media and know how to manage myself online. However on Monday, I got super absorbed in a whole spiel of drama that had nothing to do with me, it shouldn't have affected me in any way yet I just found myself getting further and further pulled into this big pool of negativity and hatred and it started to have a really bad effect on my mental health so I decided that the best thing to do was to switch off and fully unplug. I switched my phone off at lunchtime and didn't turn it back on until the following lunch. I did the same thing with my laptop and put it away under my bed. I knew I needed a full break from any kind of digital media because I know from experience that even if I'm just listening to music on Spotify or watching a movie on Netflix or Disney Plus, it ultimately ends up with me back on twitter and scrolling through my timeline which was exactly where I didn't want to be. I'm an internet person,  I have too many social accounts to count and my entire livelihood is made online I always said that taking time off social media would never be a thing that I would do yet doing it this once was actually so so refreshing I didn't even worry about my duolingo streak and the world didn't implode! I actually managed to get so much done and it was so lovely so here's a little bit about what I managed to get up to on my whole day digital free.

Read an Entire Book

I literally managed to read a whole 400-page book in one sitting (it was The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary btw). I'm so quick to get distracted that I forget why I love to read. I always read on the plane for this very reason, I have no other distractions that I'm able to get fully absorbed in the story and the characters. Not needing to check twitter and Instagram every 5 minutes helped me to really power through and really showed me just how reliant on social media I really am. Which is honestly pretty terrifying.

Ate Outside

My sister's boyfriend came over for dinner so we had to eat outside which as the weather has been so nice lately wasn't a hardship. Not having my phone at dinner meant that we got to have good conversation and I even instigated a fun game that I found about putting things in order. Proving that you can, in fact, have fun without needing an internet connection.

A Good Shower

I spent my evening mostly in my bathroom after finishing my book so I could have a good long shower. I also self tanned for the first time this summer so now I'm officially feeling like a real human and not a ghost for once! Not only was this time good for my mental health but also clearly for my physical appearance.

Some Scripture

I was able to both start and end my day with scripture rather than starting and ending my day with social media. Which was so refreshing. I'm currently working my way through my yearly devotional on women in the bible and this week is all about King David's daughter Tamar, who was raped by her stepbrother. This event scarred Tamar for life both personally and culturally. It's important that we are aware of how our actions are affecting others what we do and say can affect not only the person we're directly addressing but anybody who may be listening.

No Alarms

Turning off my phone for 24 hours obviously also meant that I had no alarm for the morning so when I got up I had no idea what time it was until I checked my watch which was also very refreshing. but obviously, if you need an alarm to be up for something in the morning don't do this!!

Cleaned my Make Up Brushes

I honestly can't remember the last time I cleaned my make up brushes which is very embarrassing so luckily no screen time meant that I had time to actually do it and I'm so so glad that I did!

Stitching Again

I'm currently working on a top-secret embroidery project which I can't talk too much about but I worked on it a bit as well. Usually, I like to stitch with Netflix on in the background though so it was a little weird doing it in silence.

When I finally turned my phone back on it turned out we had drama with my uni rental house so I'm probably not going to switch my phone off for 24 hours again for a while in case I miss anything majorly important but It was such a refreshing period and I totally recommend doing it even if it's only for a short period of time. Essentially what I learned in these 24 hours is that while you might not feel the effects of social media directly effecting you, the amount of things I managed to accomplish while having my phone switched off is really staggering and really does highlight just how much time I waste scrolling when I could have been so much more productive, doing something else.