I wanted to share my story of quitting social media.
Sort of. I'll explain.
Noice. Sorry, buddy.
You can sit there.
All right. Let's get a little bit cloooserrrr;
my mental health journey is something that I'm still on a path of discovering.
And I might make a few other videos in this series about mental health, though
I am not an expert. So take all this with a grain of salt.
This is just a story time.
This is just for me to share,
because I have seen many other people share their stories.
I found that valuable.
I've seen a lot of these videos online of I quit social media,
but as a social experiment, which is fine, really cool.
I actually did it because a series of events
pushed me into quitting it for my mental health.
Covid didn't help that at all.
And I needed a change.
I needed a drastic change.
Why I quit. I realized I had so many unhealthy habits.
I was on social media way too much, and I never thought I had
too much of an issue or I never really thought about it
because I wasn't flooding my brain with all these Instagram
models and all these influencers and stuff like that.
It was all positive quotes Millennial Therapies,
Rising Woman things like that, and manifestations.
And so I was like, oh, I don't really like it's all good, right?
But then you realize that every time you wake up in the morning,
you're reaching for your phone.
You're spending 30 minutes rolling in bed on Instagram, kind of mindlessly.
Even though it's all good stuff,
you would still see sometimes random sponsored ads.
And there's so much more of those now
when that's the first thing that you do in the morning
and you haven't even had time to just collect your thoughts.
Think about what you dreamt about, if you can remember them.
It's not a great way to start your day.
You're - all the news, all the noise.
It's going to come anyway. So why begin your day like that?
Give yourself at least an hour. Just get into the groove of things.
Just wake up, make a cup of coffee, have a little self care routine, you know,
stuff like that.
And I started realizing I was reaching for my phone all the time.
It never allowed me to have any dead time, any boredom, any dead space.
I was in line at the grocery store.
I had my phone out.
Work from home now,
but even when I wasn't working from home, I would just Instagram random stuff.
I would just be on my phone.
Way more than I probably should.
Way more than anybody should.
It started to own me instead of me owning my phone as a tool.
There are moments when you drive somewhere and you don't even realize
that you were there or you left your house.
You didn't even realize if you lock your door.
It just became a part of my daily routine, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Granted, this is also during Covid when things peaked
and one of my emotional needs, which I've identified
through some self development coursework, is emotional connection.
Now, during the peak
of Covid in quarantine, I wasn't exactly getting that anywhere.
And I was working from home and I didn't realize how much of my social
connections came from work and chatting with your coworkers.
And when you lose that and you don't have any pets
and you don't have any roommates putting googly eyes on my Roomba
didn't quite count.
I mean, I still talk to talk to her, but it's not the same because it's
just not the same.
I was trying to fill that need with Instagram
and it got to a point where it was kind of unhealthy.
Yeah. I had people reach out to me.
I spoke to people, but wasn't necessarily a fulfilling connection.
Don't get me wrong,
these tertiary connections, these weak links,
whatever you call them, I forget the term for it.
They're important, too.
It's a lot of quantity, but it's not a lot of quality.
And when you start filling a lot of quantity,
but you don't have that quality, sort of just drags you down a little bit.
Anyway, that was the case for me.
I also thought I needed Instagram because of my YouTube channel,
and I thought that'll help for growth.
And then I had my Instagram in my socials for a long time.
Everywhere on my channel.
And honestly, not a lot of people follow me on Instagram
that were following me on YouTube.
That weird pressure I gave myself or justification
for keeping Instagram didn't make any sense.
There was no validity to it.
So I removed my socials and honestly, nothing's changed.
I don't really have an issue with Facebook.
I don't use it that much other than to really sell items.
I don't have Tik Tok, thankfully.
So for me, quitting social media was really just Instagram in particular.
So how did I quit cold turkey?
I quit on May 1st. Coincidentally, it was the beginning of the month.
Didn't delete my account.
I uninstalled it from my phone, completely uninstalling it from the phone.
Just made it that much more difficult to reach for it, to post, to go look.
Sometimes I would find myself wanting to waste my time or wanting to...
you know, you're bored.
There's some moments in your day and I couldn't because it wasn't there.
I mean, yes, I can reinstall it, but it's just so annoying to do that.
I don't want to have one of those apps that counts my hours.
I don't want something that locks it.
I just don't want it on my phone.
For me, mentally, knowing it wasn't there anymore made a massive difference.
I did find myself randomly going to other apps,
and I actually listened to a talk on digital minimalism where he was saying
participants and stuff to quit social media,
and they would go into weather
apps and refresh it periodically just because they needed something.
And I did find myself
mindlessly going to the place that I had Instagram on my phone and.
And realizing it wasn't there, I replaced that app with other apps
that like my affirmations or my podcast app instead.
And.. I just.. it was ridiculous
when I would find myself doing that, I would look at the phone and just
I wouldn't punish myself too much because there's just no point to that. But
it made you realize.
How bad this stuff is.
They designed this stuff to be very addictive, let me tell you.
The pull to refresh, that mimics a slot machine.
They have very smart people working on these things.
It's not for nothing that these apps
are worth billions or millions of dollars or whatever they're worth.
Like lots of zeros after other big numbers.
I also started realizing I was checking my YouTube so much more,
which I never really paid attention to as much. Those stats and stuff I wasn't.
But at the same time, I was a little bit more focused on my YouTube growth.
So I'm not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg.
Either way, I was mindful of that, and then I had to replace that energy
with other things. So there's three major things that I started in that time.
In the beginning of May, all the way till now, May 30th.
So it's been a full month.
I started a morning selfcare routine, which consisted of yoga, meditation.
I also journal almost every single day, which is a great way to self connect,
which is not something
that I ever really realized and put the two and two together .
And I only did realize and put the two and two together after starting a self
development course that I've been looking at for a long time
called the Personal Development School with Tyrese Gibson.
It's based on cognitive based theory, identifying something,
then reframing it and being just aware, just being aware and identifying
and then willing to change makes such a difference in all of this.
She gives a lot of tools and tips and she brings...
there's just..it's a very, very
big course. There's a lot in there.
Had tried other times to do yoga, meditation, stuff like that.
And I had done it periodically, but it never stuck.
And this time it stuck because I didn't have that wasted time
for Instagram in the morning, that 30 minutes when I wake up.
But also, I just there was such a flip
in my brain, a flip that I just needed to commit to myself.
Instagram was just a great distraction to not do that.
I also in that time started new therapy.
I had done MDR for the last year.
It was more or less successful in clearing out some of my childhood traumas.
But I'm now doing art therapy, which is I've only done two sessions
so far, has been very interesting and fruitful.
So I'm really hoping that we'll do other things.
I started being way more mindful and not mindful in all the ways
that I had done before, which was like, I'm
being mindful and being present, breathe the air , feel the breeze on my face,
like, yeah, I'm here, I'm drinking this tea, this great, but fully mindful.
So now when I cook, I'm I'm enjoying everything I'm doing.
I'm fully present.
I even will narrate to myself what I'm doing, which seems strange,
but pulls me right into the activity I'm doing.
And as I'm doing it, I'm very cognizant of nourishing.
My body is great.
I have the ability to buy food. I'm very lucky. This food tastes great.
There's going to be
an amazing recipe there when I eat it, like, oh, my God, this is amazing,
this pasta I made.
And usually it is amazing and it just puts you in a whole different mood.
Well, this is like, OK,
I'm starting to get into a whole other mental health thing.
But anyway, this all ties in with better habits
that I replace compared to Instagram. So I'm not going to lie.
I went back on Instagram like two times.
I installed it, didn't really browse, just posted something
that I really wanted to post the result of uninstalling Instagram.
And this whole cleanse is it really made me double
think about what I posted and why was it coming from an authentic place?
Did I really want to share? What was the purpose of this?
Was I just seeking attention?
Was I seeking outside validation?
Approval? Was I bored? All those things.
Did I really need to post that?
Do I really need to post it on that medium?
So I post a lot still on Google Maps to review places, share and be altruistic.
I love doing that. That's something that I did.
I was one of the local guides.
I got invited to Google and Google local guides and back in 2019.
That was super amazing time.
Also have a link for that if you want to check that out.
I started realizing like I don't have to post everything I can, just enjoy it.
It seems so stupid for some people that are like,
well, well, I don't do that. Fine, you're not that audience.
But I'm sure there's a lot of people that are addicted to the phone because,
you know, the stats are out there. It's a thing.
But I just didn't have to post everything all the time.
Or I would take a photo and share it with very specific people.
Like I have a friend that love sunsets.
I would send photos to her about sunsets or I would send it to my family.
It was a lot more concentrated one on one and intentional,
which made such a difference also on my mental health,
not just like doing, doing, doing.
And you throw it out there and you don't really
you know, you're hoping something might come back
or you don't even remember posting that.
I honestly started rejecting it
when I reinstalled it, that once or twice I started to feel quite anxious.
I didn't want to install.
I didn't want to see certain people on there.
I started to get a little bit a little bit of the heart flutters,
a little bit of the panic attacks didn't go into a full fledged one.
But yeah, it didn't feel great.
And it was so strange because I never had that feeling before.
If anything, it was the opposite.
It would give me just probably a bunch of like vague, weird dopamine.
And now I was getting the opposite reaction.
I was starting to not enjoy
being on Instagram and that whole process of it,
especially because I had watched a lot of talks about digital minimalism
and all the stuff that it does in your brain.
Also link a bunch of really cool talks down below that.
You should check out if you can.
And as a result of posting less and thinking about the whys and stuff,
whenever I did post, it was a lot better.
Creatively speaking.
Now, this depends on what type of poster you are,
what type of content you have, or how you use Instagram.
If you're a visual person or not, I am in the creative field
and I am a visual person.
And so I'm not saying to take a cleanse so that you can then be more
creative on Instagram, although kind of it does boost your creativity again.
And that's what it did for me.
And I started channeling a lot of that creative energy
into other things, like I really like doing videography.
So I had a lot of videos that I started working on.
I got a brand new idea for this video for 100GB
I have shot from Morocco in 2019 before this all went down.
And I didn't know what the heck I was going to do with this travel video,
because I don't want to do another travel video vlog.
And I got a really killer idea in that time.
Who knows if I would have had it or not quitting Instagram.
But I feel like having all this free space and energy allowed me
to think of new ideas, having that boredom, sitting in that boredom
and being a little bit antsy and not posting all the time mindlessly .
And that just sucks away your energy each time.
And now I have a really killer idea for my Morroco travel video.
I just have to execute it at some point.
And I would only post if I had something to say.
And now I'm only going to post when I have something to say,
because I don't want to add to the noise that's out there.
There's just so much noise.
And honestly, honestly, nobody really cares that much.
Yeah, I had people write me or like they like my latte art or whatever else.
Funny things that I post, which I love sharing funny things.
I think it's super entertaining. And I, I think it's funny.
So I laugh and I want other people to laugh.
And it's nice, you know, sharing a little bit of humor and positivity.
You know, there are meme pages for that.
I don't I don't need to do that now.
Not at the detriment of my mental health.
Before uninstalling Instagram is like, oh, are people going to care
or are people going to wonder where I am?
Is it weird that I'm just going to be going from posting all the time,
several times a day to just disappear like that?
You know what the thing is? Nobody cared.
Which is kind of like sad, but then also like, who cares?
Why do I care on Instagram?
These people are not necessarily that important to me.
Yeah, I have some pretty cool connections on there and some
some nice like good friends and stuff, but.
The good friends that you actually have will actually
be present in your life and reach out and find a way to connect with you.
It's not because you don't have Instagram that they won't keep up
with your life and stuff.
It's kind of sobering when you do
that, you're like, oh, guess I'm not that relevant.
What is being relevant anyway in this day and age?
Do you need to have social media to be relevant? It's kind of dumb.
So. In conclusion, will I go back?
Um naaaahhh Don't think so.
Kinda, hybrid model. I don't really miss it.
Now it's summer, too, so life is going to be kind of in full swing.
We're all getting our Covid doses.
So things are going to be changing up a little bit.
All of this time I've went internally instead of externally.
I've always worked hard on getting to know myself
and being a better version of myself.
But I took this to a whole new level, just being alone and quiet.
By choice and reflecting on everything
and connecting, truly connecting with myself, my needs,
how I'm feeling, and really understanding it and connecting the dots.
So I feel a thousand times better right now without it.
And I'm not sure that going back on it will really add
that much to my life at the present moment.
I want to focus on rebuilding my inner
circle of friends and not all that outer circle, which
I started to have a lot more of, which is fine if that fulfills you.
But it wasn't fulfilling me.
Yeah. Sometimes I'll go back to post something because I really want to share
something that I created,
but not necessarily care too much about the views and accounts and the likes.
But really, just because I want to share and I feel like this would be something
cool to have out there in the world
and not necessarily, like I said, just add noise.
And I think I could contribute something and then I'll I'll do it.
Or if it's something that's really hilarious
or really creative, just whatever whatever I feel like doing.
But coming from authentic place, that's it for me.
Like this video, if you found this helpful or
if you want to see more of this type of stuff,
I have a couple of ideas on other mental health content that I can
make just to share my story.
Not an expert or anything, just somebody with a lot of.
A lot of stuff happened up here,
and um, just a human trying to make my way
through this life alive and well.
It's quite the journey.
Comment. Let me know your thoughts of you weaned off Instagram.
Have you found this value with it?
I feel like in the 21st century,
less and less people are on it, but I could be wrong.
I'm also hanging out with a lot of yogis, and they're very much not on their phone,
which makes it very difficult to connect with them sometimes.
It's very interesting being in a different back in the day
when I was partying and raving and stuff like that.
And, you know, everyone's just like constantly on their phones.
And it was just a very different world.
And then now with yogis that are just like calm and quiet
and namaste, And it's just a very different world. And it's..
a it's a world that I'm quite happy to be in and surrounded by and.
It shows me a completely different way of living,
which sounds ridiculous, but it's 21st century.
So, at the same time, I guess, it's not ridiculous.
It's how the world is right now. One day we'll have flying cars.
Not looking forward to that.
Yeah, comment. Let me know your thoughts.
Let me know. Have you..are you kind of addicted to social media
or are you thinking of doing some sort of cleanse as well on your end?
Just like to hear what everyone has to say. It's a.
It's an interesting.
It's an interesting time to be alive. OK, bye.