Try This For a Week And Get Your Life Back

2020 was quite a year, am I right?! I’ve been journaling about it and am often not even sure where to begin! So, I don’t think I’m alone in hoping and praying that 2021 will be significantly better. To kickstart my year, I completed a bible study by IF: Equip called “Enjoying Jesus.” This bible study was all about the 12 disciplines that bring a Christian closer to God. One of these disciplines was fasting.

Photo by Le Buzz on Unsplash

People fast for all different reasons and from all different things. I wanted to fast to start the year with the discipline I know I’ll need to accomplish everything I have planned for 2021. I wanted to fast from something that I really and truly exercise no discipline in, and something that if I did exercise discipline in I’d feel noticeably different. But I wasn’t sure what.

Then, one night, I found myself aimlessly scrolling Instagram (as we all tend to do). I was looking at the profile of a woman I used to know. She had almost 10k followers! Her photos were all bright and happy. Her captions were all preachy and knowledgeable. I didn’t buy it. And I was absolutely dumbfounded that almost 10k people did! As a result, I found myself second-guessing my content and my audience. Before you knew it, an hour or so had passed and I felt worse with each hour.

Then, it hit me. I needed to take a break from social media. The average American spends a little over 2 hours each day on social networks! (Ha, that definitely included me.) What’s worse is we spend so much time engaged in an activity that has many negative side effects. It can:

• Be addictive;

• Trigger sadness;

• Cause us to compare our lives to others, which is fundamentally unhealthy;

• Lead to jealousy;

• Mistakenly lead us to believe that it helps us;

• Deceive us into thinking we have more friends than we actually have; and

• Much, much more.

As I sat on the couch that night, I was certainly succumbing to negative side effects #2 and #3. I didn’t want to do that anymore. As I set out to accomplish everything I want for myself this year, I needed to drown out all the noise and influence of others. I wanted to focus just on myself and the Holy Spirit’s voice. So I decided to fast from Instagram.

I committed to taking a social media hiatus from Instagram for one solid week. I would not open the app, post to my story, view other’s stories, view my feed, or search for anything for seven days. I thought it would be difficult. I thought I would fear missing out on what people were doing and saying. But I didn’t experience that at all.

Instead, I found those 7 days to be incredibly peaceful. My day wasn’t punctuated with the thoughts, images, or pressures of others. I was more in tune with myself, my daughter, and my tasks. And I had more time on my hands! You don’t realize how often you open the app and how much time you spend scrolling the app until you consciously decide not to. It’s incredibly revelatory.

The 7 days came and went. Afterward, I opened my Instagram app, posted to my story, scrolled through my feed. But I did take advantage of Apple’s app time limits and put a one-hour time limit on my Instagram usage. I also schedule my Instagram scrolling time to occur during my lunch hour. Oh, and I turned on post notifications for my close friends so I don’t miss anything. But that’s about it. And with that, I rarely even come close to the daily hour time limit. I’m enjoying the peace and solitude too much.

Have you ever taken a break from social media? What were your results?