I Broke Up With My Phone

Opens app, scrolls through timeline digesting inspirational videos, quotes, traumatizing and triggering information.

Hoping after the 5th scroll through any of my timelines, I will find something to stimulate me as I lay there bored. Watches my own story for what is possibly the 50th time (don’t act like you don’t do this), check my notifications, like a few photos, close the app, and on to the next one. I found myself in this cycle day after day, and it happened more often than not being in this pandemic. Social media wasn’t only intended to connect us. It was also designed to get us addicted, coming back for more. More of whatever it is they want us to have. They do updates and introduce us to new features to receive instant gratification and keep us entertained. They know that if we continue to receive instant gratification, the addiction to it and the potential of us remaining on these apps will increase. Whether we want to admit it or not. So, even with nothing new to see, we have a habit of moving from one app to another. Being fed ads to click on, headlines to that trigger us, and relationship advice. Tips to growing our business, inspirational quotes that motivate us at the moment, 5-minute sermons that make us feel like we had church, funny videos to make us laugh, and more. We do life with our heads down buried in our phones.

 They give us the platform, and we either push the content out, eat it up, or both. We aimlessly scroll as time passes by. There’s a ton of other things we could be doing. That I could be doing. But there I was lying in bed, after working from home with a toddler and a kid in middle school, just scrolling. Calling myself resting, but was I really? That isn’t proper rest.

How can I genuinely rest and process my thoughts if I’m allowing social media to feed me informational junk?

But I thought I was resting. I would beat myself up for this so-called resting I was doing too. Feeling guilty. I would think to myself how further I could be, or my business would be if I would just work more and stop “resting” so much. Resting, yet still feeling drained.

I even felt like I needed more time in a day at one point; the truth is I really just needed to repurpose the time I did have. I had to evaluate what was most important in my life and much better use of my time and mental space. Constantly feeling tired even after 8 hours of sleep, thinking it was because I needed vitamins when really, I needed a break from my phone. 

 So, I woke up one day and decided I just wanted to break the cycle. Break up with social media. Break up with my phone. Be more present in life and use my time more wisely. I was thinking of all of the work I would get done, lol. You’ll find out why that’s laughable if you keep reading. I deactivated all of my social media accounts. I never thought I was really attached to my phone until that moment. Social media definitely has its pros, and I’m not here to take that away. But it also has its cons. We are glued to these phones even when we’re spending quality time with real people. We are being told how we should think and constantly feel on these apps. We have made capturing the moment for the gram more important than being in the moment with loved ones and friends. It’s become more about making money than it is about making connections. 

My first week off of social media was kind of challenging. As the days and weeks went by, I noticed I moved more and more mental clutter out of the way. It was so easy after a while, I considered never getting back on. But as I said, it has its pros, so I’m back active. I was no longer falling prey to whatever the worry of the day was on my timelines. For someone like me who feels things so deeply, this was great for me. That anxious and depressing feeling that would creep up on me started to decrease. 

 I started really living in the moment with friends and family. I love taking a good picture, capturing moments that could last a lifetime. But it was no longer about capturing the perfect image for the gram and more about being in the moment with people that mattered most to me. Really listening and not being preoccupied with my phone. Giving my undivided attention with no distractions from the vibrations of notifications. I even started forgetting my phone and not looking at it for hours at a time. 

 It made me realize how addicted the world is to these devices and apps. How addicted I was. The things we would record and the positions we would put ourselves in to get the perfect image. Don’t take this as me bashing and get offended but consider what social media is doing. I realized what it was doing to me. Take this as a reminder to use social media and to not let it use you. To know what limits to set and when to take a break.

 Taking this break, I felt like it would get my creative juices flowing again. I thought less time on social media meant I had more time to work. God had other plans. More than anything else, while being off social media, I was in a state of rest. Mental rest. I had people tell me I should get back to social media. How my business was doing so good, and then I just disappeared. How this break would hurt my business. I know their intentions were good and out of love, but sometimes you have to go back to get further ahead. That’s when it hit me; I wasn’t taking a break to work more. I was taking a break to truly rest. Trying to rest with a phone in my face wasn’t going to do it.

 Rest – cease work or movement to relax, refresh yourself, or recover strength—an instance or period of relaxing or ceasing to engage in a strenuous or stressful activity.

 Rest is vital to our mental health. Sometimes days just scrolling through social media is a stressful activity. Watching black people be killed just because someone else is threatened by their skin color. Watching people degrade themselves and others. Seeing how people just tear each other down and cancel one another for human error. The comparisons and competitions. The arguments and petty shade-throwing. This pandemic and how COVID is killing so many people. It’s a very stressful activity. That’s why some of us are so tired! Sleeping isn’t the only form of rest, and it’s not enough.

 God says to rest! SO, REST! 

 Social media would lead you to believe resting is for the weak. I think it takes strength to rest. God didn’t design us to only work and rest when we’re dead. Even He rested after all of His work was done for the week.

And on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Genesis 2:2  NKJV

Resting is accomplishing something. God created rest just like He created work. He commands us to rest. 

I encourage you to find your balance.

I’m in the process of finding mine.