As I’m sure many of you guys saw on Monday I posted a video on my YouTube channel about how you should enjoy your journey. This is because so many of us look at other people’s journey and compare it to our own. This is something that I do all the time and I decided to try and find someway to change that.
I’ve been noticing for a while now that I tend to look at Instagram a lot. It’s definitely one of my favorite apps and I scroll through it at any chance I can get. But I also notice that it has taken a toll on my mental health. It’s caused me to think that I’m not good enough in more ways than just looks but also personality, my relationships, and also my career. I was looking at my friends lives and getting depressed.
Now I know that everyone posts the best part of themselves on social media but still it’s hard not feel certain pressures in your life when you see people doing things that you want to do. Or see them happy and wonder why your life isn’t like that. I also started to look at how many likes I would get on a picture or who was liking my posts. If certain people didn’t like my post then I tended to wonder if they even liked me or did I do something wrong or maybe they just didn’t see it.
What really made things worse was when I realized I would visit people’s pages (mostly friends) who I felt insecure or jealous of and wonder what was so great about them. I would go to their pages when I was feeling bad and then feel even worse after looking at their pictures or videos. It’s a weird thing to do but so many of us when we are feeling down will seek out things that make us feel worse.
So this got me to thinking about how can I change this? How can I stop comparing my life to other people’s life and start instilling the self-confidence that I know that I have. This led me into thinking about what is causing me to be unhappy and why. The bottom line for me was social media and also the things I was telling myself.
Which led me to thinking of doing a Instagram detox. Now not all social media since most of my social media I don’t seem to mind so much. Just Instagram at least that’s what I’m going to start out with for now. So Monday I decided to remove Instagram from the 1st page on my home screen to a folder on a different page. Since if it’s out of sight then I won’t click on it as often. To be honest this kind of helped but after that first day I realized that wasn’t enough.
I know I could have deleted the app completely but let’s be real I wasn’t ready for that and I honestly didn’t want to. I wanted to start small which led me on Tuesday to look in the settings on my phone and I found the screen time section.
On iPhones there is a section that will tell you how long per day you are on your phone. It will even break it down by apps also. The reason for this is to help you not be on your phone so much and it also tells you each week through a notification how long you’re on your phone each day. But when I looked at my screen time it was staggering how much I’m on my phone. Each day I used my phone at least for 9 hours. But a lot of it was my maps app which I use to and from work. Plus YouTube which I also listen to and also reading since I love to read books.
What was worse was Instagram. My Instagram usage per day was at least 1 hour and 30 mins. That was pretty scary for me to look at. So that’s when I decided to put a limit on how long I can go on it per day. I set the limit that day on Tuesday for 30 mins.
So how did I do that day? Well I honestly didn’t do that bad. By the time I got home from work I had 5 mins left of the allotted 30 mins and by the time I got into bed by 10pm I got the alert that my 30mins was up. To be honest I acknowledged the notification I received but asked it to give me 15 more mins. But I felt guilty after doing this and ended up closing the app after about 3 extra mins.
All in all I felt I did well and I plan to continue with the 30 mins today (Wednesday). So far I’ve only used 6 mins of the 30 but I also didn’t check Instagram until I got to work which is good since I usually check it while getting ready for work.
But each day I plan to keep this blog updated with what happens, if I succeed, what I do with my time instead, how this is affecting my mental health, and also what other steps I’m taking on this road to self-confidence.
Feel free to comment down below about anything I’ve just written. Also I plan to also discuss this on my youtube channel.
~Shay Taree
Shay Taree 