Entry 1 and Introduction

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Introduction: 

I have known social media can be a destructive outlet since I was about twelve years old. What started as an effort to 'fit in' with my fellow classmates by creating an instagram, turned into a lifelong addiction to scrolling, reposting, and comparing to the figures that come across my screen. For this assignment, myself and my fellow classmates were asked to complete a social media blackout, from Wednesday, March 27th at 10pm, to Friday, March 29th at 10pm. While this may seem like an easy enough task at first glance, it grew difficult as time went on. Difficult because of the urge to grab and scroll, to slide into the next post, the next video, the next comment. Being mindful of avoiding social media was frustrating at times, as it is so ingrained into my daily routine. When I would first wake up in the morning, I would immediately open social media platforms, anxious to see what I had missed while I was unplugged. Nonetheless, this experience helped to challenge my constant use of social media, and actually encouraged me to possibly 'fast' certain apps for good. During this 48-hour social media fast, what started as a short and 'simple' challenge led to anxiety, anticipation, and eventually disappointment, once the fast had ended, being as social media was not as 'exciting; as it had once been. 


Entry 1 (Day One of the Fast): The Reason

To begin, it's important to acknowledge how much social media was used daily before this fast. There was no way for me to quite get an accurate number for the amount of social media use I have had forever. After all, I have been on instagram alone since I was twelve, using the app Musically, now know as TikTok, since I was about ten. I decided to instead look at the numbers for the week of the fast, starting from Sunday, all the way to the end of the week, Saturday, being when I could go on social media again. 

To gather more information about my social media use, I used the feature 'Screen Time' in the settings app, to get an idea of how many hours on average I spend on my phone a day. From that number, I looked at how many of those hours are spent on social media specifically. For that week, the average screen time on social platforms was 3 hours and 38 minutes. While some of this time technically included the iMessage app, over half of this time was spent on social media, TikTok having the most usage at an average of an hour. I noticed that on Wednesday, the hours spent on social media increased dramatically. I spent exactly an hour and 50 minutes on TikTok, the most I spent the entire week on TikTok.


 I believe this dramatic increase in usage was because of the anxiety of knowing I would not be on social platforms for a few days, so I poured even more time into it. Looking back at this factor now that the challenge is over, I find this silly, as there was nothing honestly I watched on TikTok at that time that I even remember looking at now. For the most part, I noticed that anytime I looked at social media, it was out of boredom. For better context, I used TikTok the most, Instagram second, and Snapchat the least. 




Image: My average screen time for the week, a total of 3h 38m, Social Apps taking up a total of 11h and 24m. 













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