I gave up social media and this is what happened.

I deleted my social media from my phone and our business had the best financial year yet.

I deleted my email app too.

Prior to deleting the apps I justified that I needed it for work. I’m a business owner after all, I need to do my marketing. The trouble was I scheduled my social media posts from my desktop computer and rarely interacted with other businesses online so that argument wasn’t exactly valid.

i gave up social media and this is what happened from a photographers perspective

So why did I need social media on my phone? I needed to be able to compare myself to the world, judge myself and everyone else by a single soundbite. (Not even a soundbite… just a byte or a pixel.) And, I needed something to distract me and help me procrastinate too.

Work-life boundaries

The truth is I had poor work-life boundaries at the time. If I wasn’t stressed about my business all I had to do was pick up my phone and check e-mail. And if that didn’t do the trick I could scroll through all the people in the world that were reaching their goals and living their best lives.

I was anxious and angry all the time. I was surrounded by anxious and angry people (no surprise there since this is a post 2020/21 life I’m talking about.) And the worst part was I had reached some big goals. I had built my dream life.

But comparison keeps moving the happiness bar on us when contentment would allow us to feel gratitude for all we have.

The worst part was that I had few people to talk about it. Most of the people in my life were worse than me. Maybe they weren’t as anxious or angry but their phones were running their lives.

People had become addicted to their news outlets which fueled their outrage and disconnected their empathy. The more connected we grew the more disconnected we were becoming. And the more we listened to our phones, the less we listened to our friends. Cue the loneliness.

The Plan

The plan was to get an ipad or work phone that I would put the work apps on and leave in the office. Instead, I just deleted the apps. I ended up using the ipad to read books from the library and completely neglected my social media accounts. Periodically I would share if I had something to be shared or connect with a new client on LinkedIn but mostly I just took social media out of my job description.

Eventually I deleted email from my phone too. I decided I didn’t want to read e-mail right after my workout, right before bed, or while I was playing with my kids. Reading emails led to me feeling anxious about something I had to do and often I couldn’t stop thinking about it until I did something about it.

But what happens when I can’t do anything about it? I decided I would only check email when I was in my office and could do something about it. In that case, I didn’t need email on my phone.

Next, I decided we would only talk about work in the office. Marc and I make a great team and we’ve been working together for over a decade but when I took a hard look at it I realized work was seeping into every aspect of our lives. And not the creative, joyful, passion side of work but mostly the stressful stuff.

I created crazy boundaries with my work and boy was she (work) pissed. Think about a time you created boundaries with your mother-in-law or your own mother, they hate it. They make it terrible for you.

Peace

Only that’s not what happened. The truth? Peace.

It wasn’t instant. I had more work to do on reframing my thoughts and dealing with my anger and anxiety. I learned that it wasn’t just social media but all the inputs I was allowing to impact my day.

Then I had to find something to fill that mindless scrolling time. I read a ton of books, I wrote millions of words (that will hopefully be a book one day), and I played legos with my kids.

I deleted my social media from my phone and our business had the best financial year yet.

So I guess nothing happened. Nothing. And everything.

about the author

I am Brenda Bergreen, one half of a husband and wife photography team specializing in Colorado wedding photography and videography as well as adventure photography. If you need someone to encourage your creativity, I’m here. (*Links to stuff I like may include affiliate links.)

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