Quit Social Media For A Week

Updated: Sep 29

After spending an average of 6 hours on my phone everyday during the Spring Festival, and spending so much time on the new game Cyberpunk 2077, I finally decided to do something about my electronics usage: quit all electronics for a week!

Quit electronics seems impossible nowadays, especially when I told the people around me, they wondered how they can reach me if I don't use social media anymore. Hence, I decided to quit the majority of the apps for a week:

social media (such as Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp)
short video apps (such as Tiktok)
video platforms (such as YouTube, Bilibili)
all games

People can only reach me by phone calls. The following are what I felt and did during the 7 days:

Day 1

Today is the first day of this experiment, I am really looking forward to see how I would react to a life without my phone.

Things I have done:

Tennis training
Signed up for tennis competitions
Started to take lessons from MIT 6.0001 to learn about Python. Entering a new field with zero previous experience
Revised and did my calculus studies
Started reading Love in the Time of Cholera, read 100 pages

How I felt today: Good.

Excellent state of mind to study and train for tennis. As today is the first day that I stopped spending meaningless time on time-consuming apps, I felt that I am not used to having so much time and sometimes just pick up the phone without being aware of it.

Total phone usage: 1 hr 13 min

Day 2

Things I have done:

Tennis training
Read 50 pages of Love in the Time of Cholera
Finish second lesson of MIT 6.0001
Study Calculus

How I felt today: Good

Having more energy to enrich my knowledge and enjoy my life. However, the feeling of wanting to check my social media starts to grow. I can see clearly that this is a choice between a fulfilled life or having fun browsing videos and pictures online.

Total phone usage: 1 hr 30 min