Social Media Binge and Purge

Abby Akin
The media binge was surprisingly a lot harder than I imagined it would be, I’m on my phone and computer scrolling through social media more than I care to admit. But when it came to actively trying to stay on it seemed all the time, it just got dull. It also started to hurt my eyes, which I never really thought about before hand. Constantly staring at some kind of screen put a lot of strain on them. I’m not ashamed to admit that I pretty much always have my phone in my hand, but I’m not on it as much as I thought. The worst part was that it wasn’t for joy or entertainment, it was being forced upon me.

I stare at a computer screen a lot at my job so I didn’t get much of a break there and I ended up needing to take an ibuprofen to help the eyestrain by Tuesday. My fingers and right wrist also hurt a bit from holding my phone and scrolling all the time. Besides the physical part, I didn’t care for the binge because I felt like I had other things I could be doing with my time during dead week. I also felt way too into my friends’ life thanks to the constant visuals I had one their time lines. It was to the point where I felt a little creepy because I saw a lot of what they posted right away, I also felt sucked into their dramas because I couldn’t just close the app or do something else. Power’s reading addressed some of these issues, but especially how our phones can “link us more tightly to all sources of our busyness.”

The purge could not have come at a better time; I had several group projects due so not having the distractions felt nice. Like it was one less thing I needed to worry about, which was already a lot. It also helped me physically recover from the purge; my eyes and my head needed a break. It was refreshing to not constantly be “refreshing” my feeds. Without the distractions I felt more free to focus on my own stuff rather than whatever was happening in the lives of the people I followed. I also noticed I slept better, that could have been because I didn’t have a lit-up screen in my face all the time or it could have been that it was dead week and I was already exhausted but I like to think it was the former.

I felt like my mind was less cluttered than when I’m trying to multitask on things, less juggler’s brain happening. I couldn’t escape the computer for work and school but it was nice to unplug during such a hectic few days during the school year. In the end, unlinking from all the “sources of our busyness” ended up being a lot easier, physically and mentally than I imagined. I felt happier.  I wouldn’t have imagined that I would have felt this way going into it but the timing of it helped make it a nice experience during the latter half of the week.
Overall, the experience definitely made me much more aware of how much time I spend on social media and how much it really does impact my life, even when the screen gets shut off.