Personally I don't think I'm a big user of social media, though I still found that taking 48 hours off of social media was troublesome. Other than through the internet it's is difficult to get in touch with me, mostly because I live a ways off from most of the people I know and I'm not big on using my phone be it calling or texting, I would also categorize myself as an introvert. Though there are many other things to do other than things related to social media, this definitely was not easy.
First off I'd like to say, I did cheat. Most of the time by accident, but sometimes times intentionally. There are just some things I can't do without social media. One of these is to keep in touch with my friends. Yes I can do it on my phone by texting and or calling them, but as I stated I'm not big on either of those and not to mention i have a very basic cellphone plan (200 minutes of calling and 125 texts.) I even have a friend who does not have a cell phone, so contacting him is almost impossible due to recent events concerning his home. So I did go on Facebook or Skype to converse with my friends, but I will say this, I did not once update my status during the last 48 hour diet from social media (I don't generally do that in the first place, If people care about how what's going on, they'll ask, otherwise it's just something I do when something big happens. Social media is the core of my contact network, especially since I have online friends I've gotten to know because we're interested in the same stuff on Facebook, and social media is the only way for me to contact them.
Now, in general we're in classes to learn, but sometimes in the middle of class I'd find myself drifting over to social media, namely Facebook (I don't use twitter or anything else really,) to look up look up with CBC or Global on any news. It also really helped me during that time, because Rogers mobile phone service went down last night, couldn't figure out what was going on with the phones since apparently my parents were calling me, but I wasn't receiving any of the calls. Through Global News via Facebook I was able to find out what the heck was going on ( I probably could have googled it but Facebook is the first thing that pops up when I Mozilla Firefox.)
Intentionally not using Social Media for me was pretty difficult. Other than when I'm out or playing video games I'm on Facebook and surfing a bout the internet and checking my email is a must for me. Sometimes I get things I need to respond to asap, so I was constantly on that (plus I have a blackberry playbook which constantly flashes red when I have a new email.) Without social media, I have very little contact with friends (I'm not big on family) and sometimes E-mails are the only reason I remember about school work that I have to get done.
I can say with my utmost belief that this was a difficult task to fulfill. As I'm not someone who needs to be on Facebook, in fact I'm probably actively on social media tools for no more than two hours a day. I could only imagine how difficult this would be for those who live out their lives on tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, e-mail and the like, not to mention those who need these tools to work. I found this to be incredibly troubling, I would assume the majority of people with access to these tools would also find it very troubling to be without them for even a day. Though I've learned that sometimes I'm just needlessly on social media tools to kill a bit of time, and I've found a few other ways to entertain myself, and I found time for things that I kept putting off. I figure I can probably reduce the time I spend on social media and get a lot of the projects I've been starting for myself completed. Social media itself is a semi necessity, people spend a lot of needless hours on it, but sometimes it's all we have to stay in contact with some people or even a need to do certain jobs.
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