First, here are thoughts I recorded each day:

Monday: I accidentally clicked on my social media apps all throughout the day. I posted a picture to promote my original blog post and caught myself wondering how many likes it had gotten. I seriously considered asking one of my friends to check, BUT I didn’t!! This might be a long week.

Tuesday: I managed to not accidentally click on the apps the entire day. I was tempted because I started getting sick and laid around the second half of the day.

Wednesday: I have gone three days without seeing a single political rant on Facebook. Everyone needs to feel that way, especially in this crazy election season. I’m really only missing Instagram, which is my favorite app anyway. As far as productivity goes, I haven’t accomplished much since I’m still not feeling well. That’s a bummer, but I haven’t dealt with frustration all week.

Thursday: I was admitted to the hospital today for chemo and found myself getting really bored since I didn’t have social media to check. But I survived. I’m very glad I didn’t give up Netflix, though.

Friday: I finally got back on social today while I was waiting to be discharged from the hospital. Within a few minutes of checking Facebook, I had to close the app because I was already getting frustrated.

So what did I learn?

After 5 days of going without social media, I realized how much it has an effect on my mood. We have the potential to spread so much positivity to people all around the world, yet we choose to share about the bad experience we had in Walmart.

Social media doesn’t “take up my time” because I willingly give it away. I trade in 5 minutes in my Bible for 5 minutes of catching up on the latest Twitter fight. It doesn’t leave me encouraged or inspired; but rather, I feel frustrated and drained.

I have major FOMO (fear of missing out), and social media has absolutely made that worse. If I see a picture posted of friends somewhere and I think I should have been there too, I get hurt. Social media just feeds that insecurity that is already there. And I somehow continue to let it. This week, I wasn’t so focused on where I wasn’t, so I was more focused on where I was.

Social media leaves me angry, jealous, bored, or insecure. A lot of the time, that all happens in one night.

There are a ton of statistics out there about the connection between social media and depression in teenagers, but I want to share with you words from people I asked about how social media makes them feel.

“It’s my ‘highlight’ reel, but it’s never as authentic as real me.” “Connected, Inspired, Separate, Close, Proud, Lonely, Anxious.” “My main problem is I spend way too much time on it when I should be doing productive things like schoolwork, spending time with my family or reading my Bible. It just wastes a lot of my time.” “It can be a good thing because you can keep up with people but it can make people insecure about themselves.” “Social media has made me feel inadequate. I feel like I don’t measure up. Everyone else just looks so happy.”

If you have problems with social media like I do, then I challenge you to make a change. Instead of giving up social media forever, I turned off all the notifications for those apps. If I’m not constantly reminded that something is going on, I’m less likely to check it. I also immediately close the app if I see something that is going make me mad, jealous, or frustrated.

I realized this week that I don’t NEED social media like I thought I did. So why does something I keep running back to leave me empty? Oh wait, everything on social media is temporal. I can only be truly satisfied by things that are eternal. As much as I try, social media will NOT fill that empty space in my life. Only Christ can do that. If I try to find fulfillment anywhere other than in Christ, I’m going to come up empty.