Nowadays, it is no lie that teenagers are heavily addicted to looking at their phones. There are a variety of reasons that draw teens to their phone, whether it’s for entertainment, communicating or scrolling on social media, or watching the endless streams of stories and videos posted each day.

As a teenager in 2022, being on your phone is something that has become normal. From going to my phone when waiting for things to catching myself logging into social media for no reason, I have felt the stranglehold of phone addiction. 

I have always thought about doing a social media cleanse but did not think I would ever be able to complete it. Right now, as the new year begins, it just felt like a good time for a personal challenge, so I decided to attempt it and go completely off social media.. I deleted Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. 

Here is a day-by-day look at what my week was like without social media. 

Day 1:  1/19/22 

Today is the first day without social media. When I normally wake up, I usually scroll through social media for a while. Without that to turn to, I instead played a game on my phone and listened to music . I really enjoyed it. I listened to a calming music playlist that cleared my head for the day and made my day a lot better. 

Day 2: 1/20/22

Today was really boring for me, I found myself really bored for the first time in a while. I hung out with friends and could tell that I already had a bigger attention span and a better ability to focus. I started reading The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, which is good. I hung out with friends again at night to kill the time. This was better than being bored at my house. 

Day 3: 1/21/22

It’s the third day of no social media and my day started off well. One positive about this is that I do have school so that takes up a majority of my time. I came home and found out that I tested positive for COVID-19 but I only have three days left of my no social media challenge, so I still need to focus on completing it. 

Day 4: 1/22/22

I woke up and was almost immediately bored. Because I’m in quarantine and can’t do anything, I looked up ideas to do. I had friends pick up supplies for me to make friendship bracelets. I also read a lot of my book that I am really enjoying. 

Day 5: 1/23/22

I’m getting really tired of not having social media. I think the platform that I miss the most is TikTok. However, I will say that I have a clearer mind. I’m not thinking about what I can post on my private story or who has posted. I’m living more in the moment and absorbing what is around me (even though I am now isolated in quarantine). 

Day 6: 1/24/22

I realized this morning that I have only one more day of quarantine. I have spent a lot of my time working on classwork from the past couple days that I hadn’t started. I have also been watching a lot of Netflix and making friendship bracelets to fill the time spent alone in my room. 

Day 7: 1/25/22  

It’s my final day of no social media. I did realize how much time I had been wasting. However, as a teenager in 2022, it’s impractical to say that I am deleting social media forever. It’s a way that teenagers communicate and I would not be in contact with as many people if I continued this abstinence. 

Over this difficult week, I learned that social media isn’t good for our brains, especially as teenagers when our brains are still developing. Yet, there’s no stopping the use of social media or slowing down its popularity. Young people just have to figure out ways to keep the use of it to a manageable amount so that it doesn’t cause problems in the future.