We deleted social media for 3 days- Mental Glow Up Diaries Episode 3

Social media is the best example of a double-edged sword. If you can use it effectively for your favor, it can be life-changing. You can learn a bunch of new things, you can make friends, you can even make money out of it. But social media facilitates an environment in which people are comparing their realistic offline selves to the flawless, filtered, and edited online versions of others, which can be detrimental to mental well-being and perceptions of self.

Excessive social media use can not only cause unhappiness and a general dissatisfaction with life in users but also increase the risk of developing mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Constantly comparing oneself to others can lead to feelings of self-consciousness or a need for perfectionism, an order which often manifests as social anxiety disorder. Another thing that makes social media so dangerous is the addictive side of it. The phenomena of social media addiction can be largely attributed to the dopamine-inducing social environments that social networking sites provide.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram produce the same neural circuitry that is caused by gambling and recreational drugs to keep consumers using their products as much as possible. Studies have shown that the constant stream of retweets, likes, and shares from these sites causes the brain's reward area to trigger the same kind of chemical reaction seen with drugs like cocaine.

"Hi guys, it's me! Today, today I'm back with another video. Even though I was consuming content that is meant to be beneficial for me, I was comparing myself to my heroes constantly and feeling miserable about myself. And since we're on this journey together in the mental globe series, I decided to fight against my toxic productivity and I decided to take a break from social media. But since I failed on the 30-day reading challenge, now this time I decided to invite two of my friends so that I don't feel alone and we can get this together."

"Before starting the video, let them introduce themselves. So, yeah! Hi, my name is Izzy. I'm a final-year medical student at Cambridge University, and on my channel, I like to talk about healthy productivity, language learning, and lifestyle systems for well-being."

"Hey there, friends! I'm Matt, a joyful human working to live life on purpose. On my channel, we discuss how to live life more purposefully, mindfully, and effectively. If you want to see the full version of Izzy's and Matt's experience, I'll link that channel down below so that you can skip there and watch their videos as well."

"And also, we set a fancy rule, so throughout this challenge, if you click to social media, you have to run one kilometer. Throughout this video, you'll see if somebody went for a run or not, or if we accomplished this challenge. Anyways, it was a fun experience, so let's get into the video."

"It's me, Dory! What's up? So today is day one. Normally after I wake up, I chill a bit, like maybe five to ten minutes in my bed checking my social media, but since I don’t have my social media on my phone, I didn’t check my phone. I just straight up went to the bathroom and I took a shower. I took a cold, cold shower, and I feel so good right now. Like, I'm so glad that I didn’t lose that five to ten minutes. Some days, mostly on Sundays, I spend like up to 30 minutes, maybe an hour on my bed just like checking my social media, answering my DMs and mails and comments and stuff."

"The hard thing is once you become a creator, you get like an enormous amount of DMs and comments and mails that you’re gonna respond to. Obviously, I can’t respond to every single comment or every single like DM that I get, that’s for sure, but I try my best to answer most of them. I don’t really use Instagram, so I don’t really look at my DMs, but when I log into my Instagram, I check my DMs as well."

"The thing that I don’t understand is like when I can’t or when I don’t answer to my comments or DMs, people get like very angry, especially on my DMs. Like, I can’t, I can’t physically answer all of them. We don’t have that much time in a day. And then the second thing is also there are like some questions that I don’t want to answer as well. Like if you're asking about my parents' marriage or if you're asking about my brother's relationship issues, I can’t answer to them. Like, that is a very private thing, and it's not even about me, it's like about my family. So, of course, I’m not gonna answer them, but like when I don’t answer those things, people block me. Like, people are very angry at me, but yeah, it’s okay."

"And also, if you’re gonna like send me a DM, you can just like leave a YouTube comment because most of the time I don’t log into my Instagram. And secondly, when you like comment on YouTube, other people help you as well so that like your question will be answered. I get like a lot of questions about like languages and about different stuff. You can just simply comment on my latest YouTube video so that people will see an answer to your question."

"Let’s start my day! I feel so nourished. For a long time I haven’t felt that motivation coming from the inside, so we’re gonna use this motivation and do some stuff. But before that I have to get some coffee to function, so let’s go."

"Okay, guys, so I watched like Ali Abdullah's PTYA course for a couple of hours. The BTYA courses just like ended a couple days ago but I had like some lessons that I didn’t watch, so I did watch them. I got pretty tired, so I decided to take a nap. It’s currently 3 p.m. Hang on, this is like staying on my usual look. Oh well, that's fine."

"Okay, ready? Yeah, wait, what do we got? I had my daily call with Matt and Izzy. We talked about how our day is going, how we feel, and the differences, and we also talked about our lists, our goals, how much we did, and stuff. But overall, me and Izzy feel really refreshed taking a break from social media, but because of the time difference, it’s currently 8 a.m. in Matt's place, so Matt didn’t have that much to say. But me and Izzy feel very refreshed, centered, and overall very relaxed and more concentrated on the things that we have to do. And also, like we didn’t lose the time that we usually lose scrolling Instagram, which is like a super thing."

"I also took my nap. I feel so refreshed after my nap. I always try to actually take a nap, but then I like scroll through social media, and rather than taking a nap, I end up like just scrolling through social media, which is not good, obviously. So, like this is the first time after a long while taking a really good nap and relaxing and refreshing, and I just like feel much better physically and mentally right now. I'm probably gonna start studying or I'll read a little bit of the book called 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', something like that, and continue my day like that."

"So, it’s currently 4:57 p.m. I just can feel this pace in my head, which is like awesome, meanwhile. So it has been weird not having Instagram on my phone. I’ve already tried to check it like about five times, but I am committed to this challenge. So I’m going to head out to the garden and do some morning yoga to wake up just after I’ve already cleaned my room and done all my morning routine except for my yoga. So I’m feeling pretty productive today so far. Yeah, I’ll keep you updated meanwhile."

"Alright, day one is in the books and I am actually addicted to social media. I don’t think that I wanted to admit it before. Maybe there’s a stigma that’s attached to it. Maybe I wanted to think that I was better than that, but the reality is that is not true. There were so many times where I was reaching for my phone knowing that it wasn’t available. I definitely just was able to get so much more done. It was really astounding whenever I really thought about it, how much I was able to get done. And it makes me think about how much time I really was wasting. So it was a great start to the week. I got all of my tasks finished, or at least all of my daily tasks finished. I’m excited for day two. We’re gonna be getting some rest now, getting prepped, getting the mindset for a 5 a.m. wake up tomorrow. Alright, let’s see what happens tomorrow. See ya!"

"Meanwhile, hi guys! This is the second day of me deleting social media. I kind of started to miss social media. Like this happened to me a couple of times this day. Like I wrote YouTube on the search bar, but before like clicking the enter button, I realized that I’m actually taking a break from social media. And it actually made me realize how much like watching YouTube became a habit of mine and breaking that habit is pretty hard. I started to kind of miss YouTube so much. Like before going to bed, I usually like watch YouTube videos for 30 minutes to about an hour, sometimes like much more than that. And these days because I don’t do it, I listen to like some podcasts and I also like listen to some audiobooks before going to bed, and then I just like went to sleep, and it was like a very good experience actually."

"And also like I tried to take a nap during the day, and I most of the time like lay on my bed and instead of taking a nap, I check my social media. But after taking a break from social media, I actually achieved to take naps, which is fantastic, and I feel like so energized. But at the same time, I really miss YouTube, and yeah, so I kind of like feel weird right now. I feel very disconnected from the world, but in a good way. I kind of feel like I stopped the time. Time passes like really slowly. Currently, 3 p.m., and I got like a lot of things done. Probably the biggest effect is the concentration that I have. My concentration lasts more than 90 minutes right now. When I had like social media on my phone, I used to check my social media after 60 minutes or like I used to check my Gmail and stuff to see if there is like an email. But right now because I don’t have like something entertaining on my phone, I just don’t check my phone that much, which is a big win for me."

"If you’re struggling with concentration, I would recommend you to delete social media apps from your phone. That’s what I learned today. Yep, so day two is generally going pretty good. Meanwhile, okay, so I just now had a trio Zoom chat with Ruri and Matt. I made my confession to them that I have been a bit of a cheeky monkey and I accidentally opened YouTube on my computer. It was just on autopilot because I have my bookmark right there on Google Chrome. So it looks like I’ll be going for a one-kilometer run in the heatwave later today or tomorrow, which I’m not looking forward to. I actually hate running, so this will be a challenge for me. I will keep you guys posted."

"Okay, just taking a quick little break. I mean, we didn’t say one kilometer in one go, right? So apparently, I’m halfway there. It’s actually pretty fun to be honest. Quite like running at this time of night as well. Meanwhile, summary day two. The focus on day two was even better than that of day one. After getting up at 4:45 a.m., I did my morning reflection and some research and got some work finished before our morning Zoom call. Feeling absolutely energized after that call, I headed back to my favorite café for another full day of work and creating. For me, I’m most astounded that I actually created two video scripts in two days because one of them in the past could take me multiple weeks to complete."

"That’s the superpower of doing these challenges with friends. Since my life is pretty routine-oriented, the structure of my afternoon was largely the same where I worked. I had a Spanish lesson, I bought water from the nicest old lady, chatted with my parents in Tagalog, and hit the hay. The mental clarity that I had from a lack of distractions was way more than I ever would have expected. Structure and focus really do bring freedom."

"So hi guys, this is the third day of the challenge, and I have something to confess. A sponsorship mailed me and they wanted my channel data, so about like the age range and the geography and like a lot of different stuff. So in order to send that, I just like logged into my YouTube Studio account without thinking anything, and I just like screenshotted it and sent it to them. But as soon as I sent it to them, I realized that I was actually taking a break from social media. So now I have to run for one kilometer, which I obviously don’t want to, but I’ll get ready and we will run for a minute."

"Oh, I’m just like so sad, so, so sad. Okay, so lost 200 meters. Here we go, okay? I never thought one kilometer is this hard. I’m like so out of shape right now. I should probably do a 30-day running challenge or something."

"Meanwhile, so today is the last day of the deleting social media challenge. It has been pretty wild, actually. So today, Ruri gave us her confession that she has opened YouTube Studio, so she has also gone for a one-kilometer run. And I’m not feeling super focused today, but I’m generally feeling quite calm and quite balanced. Today, I’ve actually not once reached for my phone and automatically tried to click on Instagram. What I’m really curious to see though is that after the challenge, am I going to go back to this autopilot reward loop or how long will it take me to go back to that state? So I’m going to keep track of that, and I will update you guys."

"Meanwhile, summary day three: I failed in my 5 a.m. part of the challenge since I stayed up a bit too late reading the night before. However, that happened, none of us were perfect, so I meditated and gave myself some grace. I think we can all give ourselves a little more forgiveness here and there. As you can probably guess, my routine was largely the same, so I’ll spare you the play-by-play. Instead, I have some takeaways."

"The first is that teamwork makes the dream work. I went into this wanting to simply win, but we came out with two closer friendships and a new perspective on competition. The second is that the way that I approached this challenge was not really sustainable for the long term. I really missed going to the gym each morning, I did not eat all that well, and I neglected other relationships. I’ll need to work on finding a happy medium moving forward."

"The third is that I think I was selling myself short. With a timeline in place and no distractions from social media, I got so much more finished than I thought in just a few days. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t always pretty, but real growth came from the challenge. What more can I want from life?"

"Okay guys, so it’s currently 12:01, so the challenge has ended, and I can tell you how excited I am to download my social media. The thing that I realized during the social media detox is how I'm addicted to social media and how it became a habit of mine. A part of mine, a big chunk of my life, actually. And yeah, I'm just like so glad that this challenge has ended. Now I'm just like gonna chill a little bit, I'll take a shower, and then I'll probably sleep. I'll update you tomorrow more about what I learned. Stay tuned!"

"Okay, so let's talk about the conclusion of the challenge. So I realized after the challenge how social media became a habit of mine, and breaking that habit in three days was not a realistic way to do it. We shouldn't look for quick fixes, and we should rather focus on developing a healthy relationship with social media. Because when you use social media in the right way, it can make wonders. For example, I learned English using social media. So I think I should really develop a healthy relationship with social media, and I think I should like experiment with it. So that was the conclusion that I have, yeah. Quick fixes don’t work. You have to sacrifice your time and build a healthy relationship. That's my conclusion, guys."