My life-changing habit of a social-media free weekend

How do you want to spend your time on Earth? According to DataReportal, the average user spends about 2.5 hours per day on social media. That’s 864 hours (or 36 days) a year spent scrolling. Should you live to be 72 years old, that’s 5.5 cumulative years on social media.

You’ve heard the adage ‘you are the average of the five people who you surround yourself with’. Well you’re also the average of the quantity of time and of the quality of the content you consume and produce on social media. How and what you consume informs who you are and the energy you bring to every human interaction.

Is social media all bad?
Why take a break from social media
How to go a whole weekend without social media
A sample social-media free day
TL;DR What I learned from my social media detox

No. Social media isn’t all bad. At its best social media keeps us connected, inspired, joyful, and loved. At its worst, however, over-use of social, can lead to an increase in anxiety and depression. After approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour per day on social media, the ‘connection benefits’ of social media start to middle out. So why do we keep scrolling?

Social media is ‘free’ because we pay with our time and attention. Tech companies, with the help of psychology and human behavior experts, designed social media to keep us on the platform as long as possible so that we consume as many ads as possible. With a user base of 1.28 billion users at the end of 2022, Instagram generated $33.25 billion in 2022 ad revenue in the United States alone. Social media companies ensure that opening their app after the briefest moment of boredom becomes automatic.

Let’s be real, you’re not going to permanently delete social media for ever and ever. And I’m not asking you to! However, I am asking you to take 1-2 days off per week from social media to radically improve your mental health.

Last month I decided to embark on a social media experiment. I noticed that I was spending more time than I would have liked on social media, which, for me, includes Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn. My average social media usage time had increased to over 2 hours per day (45 minutes-1 hour of which was on Instagram alone). I simply couldn’t go more than a couple hours without checking Instagram, and I realized I didn’t like feeling so dependent on the app.

An episode of the 10% Happier Podcast that featured author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin, inspired me to try a social media reset. I started by taking Sunday (12 am Sunday-7 am Monday) off from social media. The result of taking a full day off social media was immediate and palpable. Without the mindless scrolling and hourly check-ins, my Sunday took on this aura of calm and joy. I didn’t accomplish more per se, that wasn’t the point. (You can read more of my thoughts on productivity and rest here.) After a day without social media I felt better. My experience of Sunday was happier, better, and more relaxed.

Naturally, after such positive results from one day off social media, I wondered if two days off social media would be better. Should I make my whole weekend be social-media free? So, one fall weekend in September, I decided I would go both Saturday and Sunday without using social media. No scrolling, no posting, no rabbit holes of interior design videos (my personal kryptonite). Zip, zero, zilch.

I’ll walk you through the “how” later on in this post, but the gist is: OMG my two-day social media reset was amazing and freeing and life-changing and this might be what I do every single weekend now. I read, journaled, slept, cooked tasty food, read some more, and called my moms. I felt creative and inspired in new and interesting ways.

Probably THE MOST interesting thing I learned about myself from this social-media free weekend:

I learned that, whenever I’m bored, my first instinct is to open Instagram.

This impulse is automatic and uncomfortable. Over the course of the weekend I sat again and again with that impulse and learned a hell of a lot about myself.

So here’s how I did it. How I went two whole days without using social media.

Use an actual alarm clock.

To go social-media free all weekend I knew I couldn’t have my phone wake me up in the morning and be the first thing I saw each morning. So I plugged my phone in downstairs and turned it off at night.

Everyone always asks me if I’m worried my alarm clock won’t go off. Nope! At this time I’ve used it long enough I know it works. On days I really really need to get up early, I set a second alarm on my phone. But I only do that on days where I need to catch an early flight or teach an early morning yoga class.

Enable a ‘Pomodoro timer’ app. Or something similar.

The “Pomodoro Timer” plugin on my computer blocks all my social media sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

So named for the flow-state practice of the “Pomodoro Method” where you work for 25 minutes on one task, take a 5 minute break, and repeat that throughout your day, this app blocks me from my social media impulses.

Ironic, isn’t it? I use an app to block from using other apps. Pomodoro saves me from my own impulses. (I literally just tried to open instagram while writing this sentence, no joke.)

I have always wondered why I am so thoughtful and productive on planes. That’s because flights are 1-9 hour breaks from connectivity, phone usage, and social media. I write and journal prolifically on flights. The Pomodoro timer recreates this hermitage in 25-minute increments.

I turn off notifications and also turn my phone on silent so the buzzing of new messages doesn’t draw me in. That way I have fewer reasons to pick up my phone and open Instagram.

In a perfect world I also would turn my phone FULLY off every night after 8 pm. However, I aspire to do this more than I actually do this right now.

Ask others to hold you accountable.

You may have seen these kinds of posts from me on Instagram. I post on Friday night and tell my social media followers that I’m off the platform until Monday. They’ll see if I sneak back online, so, my followers hold me accountable.

This also works when I tell a friend, partner, or parent. Someone who will ask when I send them a kitten video at 12 am and ask: “Weren’t you doing a social-media free weekend?”

I use every mindfulness technique in the book to notice my frequent impulse to open Instagram. I sit with the discomfort, the urge to scroll and get my dopamine hit of likes and external validation. Thanks to meditation, I can acknowledge the urge without opening social media, and then I let the impulse go without opening the app. I know all my messages and interactions will be there for me come Monday morning.

11:30 pm I planned to start my social media free weekend at sundown on Friday. But … here I am, on instagram, and it’s nearly midnight. My partner and I are next to each other in bed sending each other instagram reels back and forth. Not an ideal start, but indicative of my urges/impulses/obsession around social.

12 am Okay let’s consider the start to be midnight Friday night going into Saturday morning. Now let’s begin.

7:30 am-8:45 am Wake with the sunrise. Read in bed

8:45 am-10 am Tea and breakfast, visit with family

10 am-12 pm More reading

12-12:15 pm Meditate

Every time I pick up my phone, I go to open Instagram first. The habitual instinct, the primacy of this unsettles me.

Last week I spent 4.5 hours total on Instagram. What else could I have done with that time? Slept? Wrote? Baked a cake? Played piano?

How passive am I being with these precious waking hours of my life?

12:30-3:30 pm Boat ride with family

3:30-4:30 pm Lunch

4:30-4:45 pm pm Duo Lingo language lesson, French and Arabic

What apps do I even use when I’m not on Instagram? Email is an easy open. Texting. Headspace meditation app. The weather? Now I’m grasping at straws. It’s easier to put my phone down without an endless scroll of videos to draw me in.

4:45-5:30 pm Read (I’m currently reading Rest Is Resistance and The Two Towers.)

5:30-7:30 pm Sleep. I got my Covid booster and flu shot yesterday. My immune response has left me feeling achy, tired, and slightly feverish. I literally never take naps, but I need one today.

7:30-10 pm Dinner. I leave my phone upstairs.

10-10:30 pm Get ready for bed.

The danger zone. Normally I’ll scroll 30 minutes around now and delay my bedtime.

What are my contextual triggers to pick up my phone? I’ll scroll in the car right after I get home. Like, I’ll literally sit there in the car for 20 minutes before going inside. Or right I will scroll after we’ve eaten dinner. Or right before bed. That’s when my endless scrolling addiction is strongest. I’ll pick up my phone, immediately open Instagram, and the time speeds by. I have alerts on my phone and time limits, but I just end up pressing ‘ignore’.

What are your ‘danger zones’? What place prompts you to open social media? It could be a time of day or a literal, physical place, like your bedroom or car.

10:30 pm I got drawn into watching the final 30 minutes of the OSU game, a nail-biter against Notre Dame.

11 pm Reading in bed, then sleep

I was on my phone for 55 minutes that social-media free Saturday (20 minutes of which I spent writing this blog post).

Folks, that’s less than half my average screen time.

I felt lighter and more present without the constant flood of 5-30 second video clips (and I say this as someone who creates this kind of content for public-facing yoga and wellness Instagram for my followers to consume).

Don’t get me wrong, I like the creativity behind creating posts my social media following will like, resonate with, and derive meaning from. I like connecting with people all over the world who love yoga. It’s my uncontrolled scrolling that I don’t love. I don’t like that I constantly refresh my feed to see new likes, messages, and comments.

So how do I balance what I don’t like about social with what I do? I don’t want to give up Instagram altogether because I like it. But at the same time I don’t want an app to rule my life. You know? When I’m not constantly bombarded with information my creativity has the space to express itself, which feels so necessary.

I would recommend a social media-free weekend to literally everyone. This brain break was a blissful break from the mental overload that is living in our information age.

Wondering Soul Yoga