GTG (Go Touch Grass): What 24 hours offline taught me

A few days back, I decided to run a little experiment on myself: I deleted my social media apps and went 24+ hours offline to touch grass IRL instead of virtually. 

GenZ and those phones

Everyone says GenZ is just too attached to their phones and practically cannot live without them. Now as much as I would love to argue with that, I would not be the best person to represent us against this absolutely crazy accusation. So I decided to at least try to prove the stereotype wrong and I deleted my social media. However, I only ended up realising how true that statement was smh.

Now technically I can’t say that I actually went without using gadgets but I definitely removed the main source of my attraction drawing me to use my phone and rot my brain.

Dead brain/lack of innovation

I won’t lie though, the first few hours I had no idea what to do with myself. On a normal day I would probably go out for a walk to the shops, buy a few things and have a picnic. But it was over 30 degrees outside and I was feeling so cranky from the heat (totally not from phone withdrawals). 

I was honestly getting a bit desperate and was ready to tap out and go back to doom scrolling but I had to thug this one out and find something to fill the time I usually used for scrolling. The main thing I did was literally just reading off of my substack (which was pretty fun given that I used to be an avid reader) and also learning how to cook shrimp (disclaimer: don't ever let me cook seafood again).

Detox reality

When people decide to do these detox journeys one thing I have never heard anyone talk about is how bored you actually get. Granted I did do this with absolutely no plan so there was nothing prepared for me to do beforehand. It just felt a little different to what I had been expecting. I was really looking for a breath of fresh air but I ended up getting a harsh reflection on my dependence on social media.

Living in the Virtual World

I think social media really took away the ability to process and feel emotions for an appropriate period of time because one moment I am watching an emotional heartbreaking video and my next scroll has me laughing so hard I can feel myself getting abs. Being online has given us this choice to opt-out or opt-in whenever we see fit and in a way I feel like it creates this sense of detachment from reality.

I feel as though this detachment warps our reality and almost rots our ability to interact with each other in a humane way. Having gotten so used to things like speeding up videos when the narrator is too slow it sort of feels like an inconvenience for most of us to sit there and listen to others speaking at a perfectly normal pace. Putting everything on x2 speed allows for everything to feel productive in a sense, even when it isn’t and it really does help to fuel the illusion further.

Reflecting 

It was a bit embarrassing if I am being honest but I think I really needed it. Deleting social media and creating that distance from my phone really allowed me to see how much of my emotions I was neglecting by attempting to soothe myself with hours of doom scrolling. It feels so great in the moment and it just removes that need to address your problems head on. From this I was able to understand that dependance on social media:

1. Removes my need to look inwards

2. Doesn’t give me the space and time I need to regulate myself and my nervous system

3. Allows me to avoid accountability and instead continue to point fingers at others

Doom scrolling allowed me to fixate on other peoples problems or much vaguer matters that I could relate to. The problem was that I could only relate to said issues to a certain extent, a very comfortable extent since it wasn’t my lived reality; more so my observed one and so therefore provided my brain with no thinking fuel.

What are your opinions on the viral online detoxes, do they feel authentic to you? 

Anyways I have gtg and go touch grass. Thank you for reading, see you in the next post!

Xoxo Angel.N