Next Practices

Last month I wrote a blog post about my decision to walk away from Facebook and Twitter for a month. Now that the month of self-imposed exile is behind me, it’s time to reflect on the experience.

Not surprisingly, there is both good and bad that comes with ignoring channels of communication where one is accustomed to being very active. I still had 24 hours in my days, but now about two or more of those hours would not be spent in social media outside of work as had been my habit previously. So what changed?

There were definitely some things I missed – things I found myself instinctively reaching for my phone to pursue before remembering they were off limits. (It helped that I deleted the icons for the apps from my phone for the month.) Some of those moments were deer-in-the-headlights times when I thought, “Now what do I do? This is a time where I know I’d normally be on my phone.”

Specifically, the things I missed while away include:

• Seeing photos of family and friends on Facebook;
• Keeping current with important events in the lives of friends, extended family, and acquaintances I’m only connected with on Facebook or Twitter;
• The doses of humor I get regularly from my funnier friends;
• Dog photos;
• Assisting with the Facebook and Twitter efforts of my church on Sunday mornings during our worship.

However, the things I enjoyed more while away is longer:

• I read more. The 1.5 books I read during the time isn’t a lot, but it’s about 1 more than I usually read in a month.
• I slept more. My body keeps telling me to do more of this. Not wasting an hour sitting in bed watching Facebook videos before going to sleep helped.
• I felt freer to take more and longer walks with my dog, Callie. Add to that the now mandatory working from home due to the coronavirus and Callie worships me now more than ever if that’s possible.
• I had to get over the temptation to narrate my life online and just live it instead. Living it is better.
• I enjoyed wonderful meals without feeling the need to take a photo and post it somewhere. I just savored the food and the moment.
• I had more time to do needed volunteer work in my role as Sunday School Director for my church where we are in the midst of some significant changes.
• I enjoyed seeing far fewer political rants that just get my blood boiling and change nobody’s opinion.
• I spent a little more time initially on LinkedIn browsing content related to my profession, but I eventually set a 10-minute daily limit on that through my phone’s app timer. I didn’t just want the month to be substituting one form of social media for another.
• I more frequently browsed NextDoor.com as well to see what was going on in my neighborhood, but also set that to a limit of 10 minutes per day.
• I took the time to more thoroughly explore Reddit for the first time. I can’t believe that hasn’t been in my regular repertoire of social media sites, but it hasn’t. I found it just as addictive as the others and deleted the app from my phone within 24 hours of first checking it out. I haven’t been back.
• I fed my election year political hunger through regular visits to RealClearPolitics.com, but gave it the same 10 minute limit daily.

It would be nice to say that I did far more meaningful, transformational, important things with those 2-3 hours of time daily previously given to Facebook and Twitter, but this was an experiment to see what I would do – not a planned effort to do any predetermined list of replacements.

So what are the main takeaways for me from this experience?

1. I’d rate my life as generally better for the month without Facebook and Twitter than how things were previously.
2. If it was better without them, it would be silly to return to the earlier practice after the experiment.
3. If I return to some degree to social media, it would be foolish to contribute to that which I was glad to get away from (such as politics), and wise to do more of what I missed (humor).
4. Since there is some good in social media, I’ll return to it but in a time-limited capacity. For now, I’m going to use my phone’s app timer to limit each social media platform to 10 minutes a day outside of work or church-related service. That’s still more time in total than I should give to it if I max out all channels any given day. However, I usually didn’t hit the timer limit on many, if any, apps during the past month, so I don’t expect to do so going forward, either. You don’t have to choose either total addiction or total abstinence when it comes to social media. You can find a healthy balance and be disciplined in how you approach it.
5. I encourage everyone who is on a computer or phone outside of work for an hour or more a day to seriously consider such a time away as I had this past month. So many people are addicted to their phones or other devices. You keep your head in it at home, at work, on the go, and in gatherings where life can be better and more meaningful if you are present in the real world and not in social media land. Try it! It will reveal some things to you about yourself and what you’re missing. If you’re like me, the detox will be time well spent, and social media has been my profession and personal passion for the past decade! I promise you’ll survive without it.

Life is a journey. We come to crossroads and we choose a path. At this point in my journey, it seems right to dial back to a reasonable daily limit how much non-work time I give to social media. There is too much else that is more important to do – including relaxing and doing nothing at times.

Peace.

Social media has been my profession since 2010. I manage a large, 70,000-person internal community for a company that’s #56 on the Fortune 500 list. I served many years on its social media team and now perform those same functions from its Corporate Communications team. Through the years, I’ve had responsibilities that include the company’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts as well as some external customer-facing communities and our employee advocacy program. I love my work and the company that allows me to have this much fun while working with amazing people and getting paid for it.

Personally, social media has been a huge part of my life as well for even longer. I’ve had an active role in my church’s social media for a number of years. Like many of you, I check my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts multiple times daily in addition to other online communities that are important to me. I’ve been in a pattern for many months where my main way of winding down at night before going to bed is to enjoy a number of Facebook videos that make me laugh or smile. It isn’t uncommon for me to spend at least a couple hours a day outside of my work duties browsing personal social media – mostly Facebook with a little Twitter and LinkedIn thrown in.

It is no small decision for me, then, to take a break from Facebook (and Twitter) for the next month beginning today – February 17, 2020 – and going until at least March 17. Why am I doing this?

Not in reaction to any particular stimulus.

Not as a protest against anyone or anything.

Not because I’m angry (I’m not).

Not to try to convince anyone else to do the same.

So why? Because I want to see what my life can be like if I reclaim that 2+ hours a day spent voluntarily online and invest that time elsewhere. I need to read more. I need to sleep more. I need to volunteer more. I need to do more around the house. I need more real-life, face-to-face time than Internet-based interactions with people.

I’ve thought about taking a short break from social media for years, but have never made the decision to do so because I enjoy it so much. It’s fun. It’s my profession. I connect with so many other wonderful people (and a few jerks) online. But I don’t like what I sense is a huge negative impact on time and meaningful relationships because of so much time with my head staring at a screen when it doesn’t have to be. So I’m putting that part of me on pause for a month.

I make no promises of what will happen after the month is up. Maybe I’ll go back to exactly the way things were. Perhaps I’ll learn some things in the next 30 days that cause me to make some permanent changes. We’ll find out together.

After this blog post is published and shared on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, I’ll be signing off Facebook and Twitter until March 17. I’ll still check LinkedIn with my usual once-every-few-days frequency for a few minutes since that’s mostly professional. I’ll visit the professional community of my peers around the globe hosted by The Community Roundtable. But I will try to get my head out of the Internet personal cloud and back on earth where I suspect it is better off.

If you need me in the coming weeks, call or text me if you know my number. If you don’t have that, my personal email is jeffkross@yahoo.com.

Peace. Enjoy the next month.