December Guided Group Social Media Detox
A Communal Detox
After taking a month off of Instagram on my own in August, I thought it would be fun & fruitful to invite others to join me for a little communal social media detox together! I was so encouraged when over 100 people signed up. It made me feel like, hey, I’m not the only one making a cost benefit analysis of social media’s role in my life & wondering what I really believe about all of this.
I think that it’s healthy to take regular breaks from social media so that we can stay attune to the ways that it is changing, the ways we are changing, & the possible ways it is changing us. I think we can only reflect & reevaluate the impact social media has on our lives honestly when we take a step back from it completely.
Each morning, I sent out an email to everyone who signed up with a question, an encouragement, & a practice. The responses that were shared with me were encouraging, enlightening, challenging, & just all in all so enjoyable because I believe this is a valuable conversation to have with others and I love hearing what others are learning as I am processing things for myself, too!
My Biggest Personal Takeaways
After this detox, these are some of the biggest changes I made and will be making moving forward! You can read more about my 2022 intentions for social media on this blog here, but here is the gist of it!
I will be spending considerably less time on social media overall with regularly planned breaks from it altogether. I loved doing this detox with others and have more planned for 2022! Get on the waiting list, here.
I learned a lot about online safety & with some of that research in mind, I will not be sharing as much content about my kids publicly.
I will be sharing more content that actually serves others & serves a purpose. (Sure, I’ll still share bits of my personal life & the work that inspires me, but I want to create things that educate, encourage, provide resources, & spark important conversations.)
I deleted the Facebook I’ve had since about 14 years old and I created a new one that serves a limited & specific set of purposes. (Mainly Facebook Marketplace, HA!)
Biggest Takeaways from Others
Overall, the theme I gathered from several of the conversations like you’ll see snippets of below are that removing social media for an extended period of time allows people the space, mental clarity, & awareness to reflect on what really matters to them. We considered the types of things we use social media to avoid & the types of things social media steals time from that we want to be more intentional about moving forward. Here are a few things people shared that I felt were encouraging and/or thought provoking.
