Johan Hari, the author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – And How to Think Deeply Again, provides insight in Chapter Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You, on how the biggest corporations are spending all of their time trying to capture and keep your attention for as long as possible. This follows Hari’s quick and disheartening relapse into social media after his 3-month hiatus from the internet.
Although I didn’t take on an endeavor that extreme, completing a 5-day detox from all social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter) had me thinking about how successful these corporations are at stealing our time right from under our noses, and what steps I can take to get it back.
Below is a day-by-day breakdown of how I approached this 5-day detox, the preventative measures I took, and the thoughts that came up when I didn’t have social media to fill my time.
Day One – Tuesday, September 8th
Because of the effects of nightly scrolling the night before, I got a pretty typical 6/10 quality sleep. Going into this, I knew the first day was going to be the hardest – and it was.
To track my data over the five days, I decided that every time I picked up my phone / moved my fingers with the intention of looking at social media, I would immediately switch to the notes app and type a single dot. To make it more interesting, I split my days in two: urges while I’m at work and urges when I’m outside of work. I liked this idea to be able to physically see if my urge to break the detox decreased as the days went on.
Before I got out of bed, I looked at all the app icons one last time, then deleted them completely from my phone. The next time I got ready, commuted to work, and got debriefed about the day, it was easy, and I had no urge to look at social media. Once my morning got settled, that’s when the compulsions started to show themselves.
The first day, I tracked that I wanted to look at social media 28 times. 21 of those urges occurred at work, while the other 7 occurred outside of work. That day, I had my first realization about my phone habits: I typically felt the urge to check social media after reading or answering text messages. Very rarely did I pick up my phone intending to go on Instagram or TikTok; those urges arose when I was already using my phone for something else.
Day Two – Wednesday, September 9th
Even though my daily notification count increased by almost half from Tuesday (94 to 127), the number of times I picked up my phone total on Wednesday decreased by 35 (147 to 112). My screen time also decreased to only 4 hours and 33 mins.
This was interesting to me – If my phone was being riddled with more notifications, what kept me from looking at my phone?
I believe a large part is attributed to it being busier than usual at work between deadlines, customers, etc., but I also related this experience to a solution Tristan Harris, former Google Design Ethicist, proposed to save people from spending so much time looking at their phone: Batch notifications.
Although I had 147 notifications that day, I looked at them in batches because of my busy schedule. Looking at multiple notifications at once, sifting through the ones that are important and not important rather than looking at your phone every time your phone buzzes, seems to decrease screen time. The decrease in screen time started to show its effects with better sleep and less time being taken to fall asleep, as recorded.
Day Three – Thursday, September 10th
Thursday was interesting. Part of me had become accustomed to not having social media; I tracked only 5 times when I had the intentional urge. However, my screen time was only 46 minutes less than when I had full access to all social media sites, ending the day at 8 hours and 46 minutes.
I spent 2 hours and 16 minutes of that time on iMessage. Given the context of the day (my last day at work before a long weekend vacation), this makes complete sense. However, my habit of checking social media apps after answering / looking at text messages dropped significantly.
One way I used my newly found free time was by hanging out with my friend, Sophie. Sophie has been on her own social media detox for as long as I’ve known her; No TikTok, no Instagram, no Twitter. When we were together, we both reached for our phones to check someone’s Instagram and confirm what we were discussing through their posts. This made me realize how much access I have to people through social media.
By the third day, I could fully feel the effects of not spending time on social media and felt less stressed by the end of the day.
Day Four – Friday, September 11th
There wasn’t much to report for the fourth day. Since it was a big travel day, my access to my phone was limited. With a screen time of 3 hours and 20 minutes and recorded urges finishing at 2 for the entire day, this was the first day in a while that I felt completely disconnected from my phone. The effects of this showed with my sleep quality being the highest it’s been this whole detox, falling at an 8/10, and my stress levels landing at a 3.
(I actually spent the weekend by myself in Cape Cod – I felt like I was channeling Hari!!)
Day Five – Saturday, September 12th
The last day of the detox came with a lot of reflection. Yes, a big part of this project was to collect quantitative data, but today my focus was really on how this detox has affected my day-to-day life. For context, I was on a solo trip to Cape Cod on my last day. It was almost like the universe was testing me to see if I have actually acclimated to not having social media – and I feel like I succeeded.
My stress level was the lowest it’s been in a while, and the thought of being on the phone was virtually non-existent. It felt like second nature to occupy my time with something other than my phone. To fill my time, I tried new coffee shops and spent most of my day at Lighthouse Beach in Chatham, watching the beach and tourists on their phones. I believe that this was a perfect end to the detox.
Going Forward
I haven’t downloaded any of my social media yet. The thought of it seems disappointing – like I would be returning to a lifestyle that so blatantly hinders me in many ways. Avoiding that feeling of being sucked back into the social media loop is a priority in my life now, but as we know from Hari, the lessons we learn from a detox like this can be fragile because, at the end of the day, it is so much bigger than us.
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