No Scrolling for 40 Days
At some point this year, I needed to ask myself, “Where do you dedicate your time?”
With the whole pandemic, scrolling on social media has become easier to do for longer periods of time. This wasn't something I wanted to develop as a part of my daily routine. I felt God telling me to take a step back from Instagram. There was a significant amount of time that could be spent on developing my relationship with God, building my blog and YouTube, or simply expanding my knowledge in certain interests.
It was time to cut down. I set up a challenge for myself to not scroll on Instagram for 40 days.
Was this challenge hard? Yes.
I needed to disconnect and eliminate unnecessary distractions. I created a few ground rules to maintain a bit of my sanity:
Only view my Instagram page.
Upload regular posts and story content and but cannot view others.
Respond to comments only on my posts or story replies.
Turn off notifications from Instagram.
Did I mess up during the fasting period? Yes.
I found myself automatically clicking the app out of habit. I also had accidentally clicked on a friend's story and scrolled a few times. They were mindless actions and I stopped myself as soon as it happened. I pushed to gain self control because I did not plan to delete my account permanently.
Although I was not on Instagram, I still used Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok (limited time), and LinkedIn. The remaining apps were filled with content that was catered to my interests, related to Christianity, fashion, home decor, recipes, pets and babies. I did not see my favorite influencers, friends or even family on my timeline anymore. I became slow to form a judgement and limited in being able to compare myself to others.
What happened during all that time I was not scrolling on Instagram?
I was blessed to find my dream condo in Seattle. I jump started the moving process quickly and began exploring the city.
Finally read an entire book. (This is huge to me because I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.) You can see some of my takeaways on the blog about Live by Sadie Robertson soon!
Built stronger relationships with friends and family by having more active communication through phone calls instead of likes or comments.
With less noise of everything happening in the world, I feel like my ears were opened up a bit more. I was more aware of gaps in my life because I was not as distracted. I could see more of what God wanted to place in my life. It was a feeling of relief and joy for new habits with true and everlasting benefits.
Moving forward from this experience, I want to push myself to limit scrolling for all platforms. This will be an ongoing battle and I will continue to take breaks when needed. I encourage anyone who is considering taking a social media break - just do it.