The Digital Dextox has been a huge trend in recent years. After the inevitable consequences of people becoming addicted to social media, the cold turkey style "digital detox" method was born. The idea is that you delete all your social media off your phone for a certain period of time (in this case, 24 hours) to break your addiction and re-center yourself.
I've done this multiple times before. I'll admit it- I spend way too much time on Instagram. Especially in exam season, having a distraction one click away from my essays is just way too tempting. So I delete it. And then re-install it a few days later after I'm finished what I need to do.
I deleted Instagram (again) a few days ago. It was the same as usual, except my Spanish class was going to talk to students from Panama that day to practice speaking. Of course, after we'd all been talking for an hour, we all wanted to exchange social media's and stay in touch. It was hard to explain why I had temporarily deleted Instagram in a language I've only been speaking for 8 weeks.
I want to say that it's nice to delete social media; and it is. It just doesn't stay that way. Because the truth is we are all addicted. We like to say we're not, but we are. We follow the same habits as someone who swears off drinking. We succeed for a while- and then we stop succeeding. Eventually we relapse. We convince ourselves it's better this way- that we want it; and we do. Our brains are wired for the dopamine boost scrolling the 'gram gives us, so we give in, eventually.
Just a quick check.
I'll only stay on a few minutes.
I'm never going on Instagram again.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
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