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Social Medi 24-Hour Media Blackout

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24-Hour Media Blackout Social media has been an essential part of my day for years now and the idea of challenging myself to go twenty-four hours without any type of new media genuinely made me uncomfortable. The amount of media use I logged for a single day was enough to make me question my priorities and reveal that I possibly have a severe case of F.O.M.O (Fear Of Missing Out). Questions of self-doubt like, “How am I going to do this? How will I stay connected to my friends?” circulated through my head. Scrolling through Instagram or Twitter, my media’s of choice, has always been second nature to me, subconsciously opening those apps even when I have no purpose to be on them. Though I was hesitant to challenge myself to go without something …show more content…

I knew that the hardest mediums to cleanse myself from were going to be Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. My free time spent during breakfast allowed me to plan out my day in advanced rather than mindlessly scrolling through twitter. This new habit continued throughout the day, instead of surfing the Internet I replaced my time with productive assignments only. Occasionally, my mind would subconsciously go to Instagram or Twitter, but this only happened a handful of times during day. By employing this routine of replacing my social media use with something beneficial to my time, my homework was finished before I even left school! My school day was completed with minimal media use, but when I found that being at my home was a bit more challenging to abstain from all new media. I decided to go for to the gym for to work out but it is very hard for me to complete a workout without some sort of distraction like using my Spotify account. Unfortunately this was when the media black out challenge defeated me and I succumbed to referring back to my old habits by using media. Though I was able to make it through most of the day without my media, I could not sufficiently complete the full twenty-four …show more content…

My main problem that I possess when it comes to my phone dependency is how to fill my free time with efficient activities like reading, homework, or other things. When I went through school without using social media, I was much more attentive in class and I did not really miss the connection I had with my phone. I also discovered that I do not deal with the “fear of missing out” because in actuality I did not miss out on a single thing. Identifying this fact enabled me to understand that thinking I need my phone because something important could potentially arise is a complete lie that I feed to myself to give a “valid” excuse that I need to be connected to my phone at all times of the day. This challenge revealed to me how detrimental social media could become if I keep using it extensively. I have read several articles about how media are physically altering our brain in a bad way and leading to a lack of essential skills in people, mainly in the millennial generation. This made me question if new media has contributed to the rise of social anxiety in individuals or aided the downfall of literacy in America today. This project has truly opened my eyes with my personal media use and the potential risks that can spawn from abusing

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