six months ago i deleted social media as a little social experiment for my youtube channel
and i didn't realize how much and how little it was actually going to impact my life as someone
who grew up online it's been crazy learning how to get off of my phone and live more presently
with my friends family and even the city i live in as youtube has been following me throughout
this whole process i felt as though it was only fair to share my closing thoughts with you all
that's right this is the last video where i'm going to talk about social media i hope but
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i feel like i want to start this video talking a little bit about my journey
throughout the whole six months i actually deleted social media for a few reasons
firstly as a youtube experiment because i was into self-help videos at that point and i thought
it'd be something fun to try secondly because in general it was something i'd always wanted to try
as someone who grew up online my whole life i felt like i'd never really experienced a world
without it or at least not one where my brain was old enough to remember it thirdly because
with the continuous lockdowns and spending most of my days in a bedroom scrolling continuously
and not getting up to much productive things i felt as though i was really wasting my time
and it was starting to get the better of me a little bit and i could definitely see my mental
health going down a slippery slope i have this one image um when i think about why i wanted to
delete social media in the first place and i was staying in bordeaux with my boyfriend
and i spent the full day in bed didn't get out and i just watched tick tock videos i think for around
eight hours and i thought to myself this is not healthy this is not an app that you are capable
of using and i'm not saying that no one in the world should use tick tock but it was definitely
not an app that benefited me in any way in fact it was deteriorating my health to such a scale
that when i stopped and realized what i was doing i thought okay this needs to change immediately
when i finally deleted social media i remember feeling really great and overly productive for the
first couple weeks to month i was going on daily walks which i still do i was reading it a book a
week i was getting all my emails done i performed really well in university for that semester
and i just felt really good about the change but it didn't stay like this the whole time it wasn't
always an easy and happy experience i remember maybe around the three month mark i said to myself
okay three months i think this is enough and i think i'm ready to go back now and go on instagram
and i was fully committed to going back i was actually thinking about making a video because
i felt so hard to explain myself to the internet on why i decided i want to come back and when
i was in the process of writing the video i said to myself i can't even justify why i want to come
back to instagram i think it was just to be nosy towards celebrities and because since deleting it
i wasn't taking any photos and i was losing out on some picture memories and so when i realized that
was the only two reasons i said okay no you can fully live with our instagram you don't need it
so i really wanted to make sure everyone realized that when you delete it it isn't this upward
scale of life is amazing and i'm so productive and i'm so much happier sometimes you feel the
addiction kind of come back and sometimes you question whether you should delete it or not
one thing that i thought i was going to miss with social media which i did not at all
was being in and out of all the fashion trends and tick-tock trends and the news turns out i actually
feel a lot better without being involved in them yeah okay sure i'm maybe not as cool because i
don't know half of what's going on with tick tock right now and why a chair means a laughing face
but that's actually fine with me i would rather be more aware of what's going on in the real world
so in deleting social media i realized there was a lot of things that i thought i cared a lot about
and it turns out i really didn't another big change that i noticed was i suddenly had a lot
more time in the day and a lot more time to fill up with things in the day all of these hours i
was originally spending on tick tock or instagram scrolling was now empty time and at first i almost
saw it as a negative because i thought okay i'm still on a lot down i still have nothing to do
and then i realized there's about a billion things you can do even from the comfort of your own
bedroom one huge thing i got into at the start as i mentioned before it was reading and i think this
is actually one of my most productive habits that has come out of deleting social media i
don't know i find it crazy that our generation has subconsciously been taught that when we have a two
to ten minute break the only thing we can do is go on our phone it's something i really admire
about older generations that when you see an old lady waiting on a bus she waits patiently
or maybe takes out a newspaper never with the phone it's definitely a habit i'm trying to
create myself one thing in my first deleting social media video that i saw all for the comments
was the topic of friendship and whether you would lose friends by deleting social media i had an
opinion back then and i still have the opinion today that if deleting a little app makes you lose
friends they clearly were not real friends in the first place and from my own personal experience
i've noticed that i did not lose a single friend that i thought i was going to lose from social
media yeah of course there were the people that would maybe comment on my posts or dm me from time
to time that i completely lost contact with but my real friend stayed and i feel almost a bit happier
that when i think of my friend group now i think of the people i see physically or
talk to almost every day rather than all of the people that would like and comment under my photos
as i mentioned earlier one of the main reasons i deleted social media was to improve my mental
health and i can absolutely say with certainty that i succeeded with that i felt as though with
a mixture of the lockdowns and my excessive use of social media i was really starting to develop
uh social anxiety or even going to a coffee shop made my hand swear and made me stumble over my
words and act stupid and it was getting really bad and so i'm really happy to say that after
six months where now really my main interactions are with people in person the social anxiety has
finally disappeared i feel like i've gained so much confidence now i'm not so worried about what
other people think and since most of my real life now is in person rather than online i feel better
as a physical person rather than an online person and i know this sounds pretty sad but
i think before i gave more value to my instagram self than my real self so i'm really happy to see
this change in my last video on this topic named why you should take a social detox i mentioned
and i really tried to stress it if there's a social media platform that you benefit from or you
feel great using and you don't have any negativity towards don't delete it then like when people talk
about delaying social media it really needs to be uh i'm gonna delete every single one of them i'm
gonna go completely off the internet i'm gonna get rid of my phone and laptop and it's just not the
case and i also don't think it's sustainable for example i love youtube i love creating videos i
love watching videos with my favorite creators i don't want to give it up i don't overuse it
i don't find any toxicity towards it and so i'm gonna keep it even after six months where i've
got rid of everything else youtube isn't something i'm prepared to give up and that's totally fine
as long as it isn't causing me negativity i'm cool with that if you love instagram you love catching
up with celebrities on it or you love seeing what your friends are up to don't do the instagram
same with facebook it's completely up to you and you don't have to go 100 to still see a change
so as promised in the intro my final thoughts on this social experiment first of all i don't think
of it anymore as a social experiment i think of it as my life because it's been half a year and
i'm pretty used to the fact that i don't have an instagram app to scroll on anymore secondly it's
really not as dramatic as people make it out to be myself included i know i love a dramatic intro
but at the end of the day all you're doing is deleting a couple of apps it changes your life in
some ways by the end of the day it doesn't change much you're still really the same person before
and after you just maybe have a couple better habits and like i said before i still have youtube
and i still have a phone and laptop i maybe have a screen time of one to two hours now which again
is better than nine hours but i still have it and so i would almost rather use the term digital
minimalism like the car newport book because it's not necessarily about getting rid of 100
it's about minimalizing and using media to your advantage we've all seen that documentary
on netflix where it makes you feel like the algorithms are controlling you and you're gonna
end because of these robots but really you can also use them too whether it's
to make a job as a creator have limits on your screen time or just not even use them at all
at the end of the day the choice is up to you and i hope if you were thinking about
deleting social media i've encouraged you to and if you didn't want to delete social media before
good for you i hope you don't delete it i hope you're happy on it okay thank you very much for
watching this video i hope you enjoyed if you did here are two videos i think you would watch
on the social media series and if not that's okay i hope you have a lovely day and bye bye