I used to be the queen of Snapchat.

Yes, I understand that this is a bold statement and I know it’s probably not the world’s most lavish claim to fame, but ask any of my friends, they will back me on this one.

During the second semester of my freshman year of college, I was well-known for my excessively long Snap stories not only documenting the meaningless tasks of my life but also full-on, scripted sagas posted in 10-second intervals. It escalated to the point where I had over 200 people viewing the stories and was wasting an unhealthy amount of time filming my life.

One day, as I sat and watched a 150-second Snap story from the night before, I became disgusted with myself. I had wasted the entire night Snapping when I should have been enjoying my time with my friends.

I needed an intervention.

“Alex, you’re not Kylie Jenner,” I lectured myself. “Nobody wants to watch every damn minute of your life. Put the phone down.”

Cue my first social media detox. I erased Snapchat and other social applications off of my phone and attempted to — apologies for the cliché — live in the present.

It didn’t last very long.

The only positive ramification that came out that experience was that I made a new Snapchat that had significantly less friends and I began to Snap far less — which was honestly still more than most people.

So, when my IST 486: “Social Media in the Enterprise” professor told us that our first large project this year would be a three-day long “social media detox,” I was wary. I had already tried this sort of experiment and failed.

Nonetheless, I decided to give this go around my best shot. And despite caving a few times, I actually did much better with the detox this time. As expected, I was — wait for it — remarkably more efficient with my time and was even able to snag a little extra sleep.

I think we can all agree that, while social media is great, without it, many of us would be more productive. Just looking at the project-required log of my usual social media usage, I tend to start an assignment and, within 5 minutes, stop to reload my Instagram feed or see if anyone has posted a new Snap story. It has become a part of my routine.

I decided that the best way for me to flourish in this detox would be erasing all of the platforms off of my phone. During the first day I found my thumb consistently twitching to hit the part of my iPhone screen where my Snapchat app once lived.

I was so used to instinctively Snapping my roommate pointless pictures of my whereabouts that not doing so felt unnatural. But, as I settled into not constantly grabbing at my phone, I began to find myself focusing on assignments for 15 or 20 minutes at a time, and while this doesn’t seem extensive, for me it was huge. I was finishing my homework before 2 a.m. and the products were far superior.

I was also no longer laying in bed aimlessly bouncing from application to application until I couldn’t physically hold my eyes open. Since there were no apps on my phone, there was no need to bring my phone into my bed. The result: Sleep was almost instantaneous.

While I do think social media is a glorious thing, it’s not acceptable for it to affect my sleep and my health. So even though I’ve re-downloaded Snapchat, Instagram and the Facebook Messenger application, for now I’ll keep my Twitter and Facebook use limited to my computer.

Social media shouldn’t be able to take stronghold of your life. It should be used to enhance your exposure to the world but not hinder you from living.

Alex Archambault is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. You can email her at [email protected] or follow her @Alex_And_Raa on Twitter.

Published on September 21, 2015 at 8:41 pm