The 5 Stages of Social Media Withdrawal

I was completely and shamefully addicted to social media. So much so that in my mind, a moment of silence was sickening. The stimulation I craved, the satisfaction of knowing I was loved, and the superabundance of easily accessible information were all incredibly missed after I made the decision to give up social media for fourteen days.

I did not feel alone through this addiction, as everyone around me was just as obsessed or worse. Delaney Sandner, a Scituate High School junior, shared her insights on being a teenager in a generation surrounded by influential social media with hundreds of millions of users on these apps. The toxicity is present, as many young women are forced to follow such high standards and societal norms that social media brings. Sandner said this “makes it hard for young women to feel comfortable in their own skin when they are surrounded by this every day.”

There were five stages of ridding myself of social media for fourteen days. Throughout these stages, I learned more about myself than before this challenge. But most importantly, I realized that I have the power to allow or prohibit social media from controlling who I am on the inside.

Stage 1: Instant Withdrawal. The withdrawal was instantaneous from the moment Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok were removed from my phone. I found myself tapping the empty space where the apps once existed. I already missed scrolling through Instagram and seeing my favorite fashion influencers’ feed and recent politics that were so easy to obtain. I knew that I needed another outlet of information to survive the two weeks without extreme boredom.

Stage 2: FOMO. This was the stage I dreaded the most—the fear of missing out. The prominent feeling of exclusion filled me, as nothing was available to me. Sandner said that to give up social media for fourteen days, she would have to gain the confidence she will not be absent from any important or exciting information during this period. With the knowledge that I am not the only person to experience FOMO, I realized that we live in a time when communication relies solely on social media. Other contact methods, such as texting, calling, facetiming, or face-to-face interactions, are entirely different. Conversations start with “What did you post?” “Why did you post that?” and “Where were you when you posted that?”

Missing out on that aisle in life pained me; therefore, I became ever so grateful for having social media available to me in my life. Rather than a curse, I started seeing social media as a gift that I needed to use more wisely. I began to think: How will I use these platforms differently to get the best experience possible?

Scituate High School counselor Jen Lopes encourages students to exclude the negativities that hide in these apps, like face tuning, photoshopping, and the increasing popularity contest. Lopes has her own social media involvement, but she uses this platform to bring people up, not down. She runs @SHS4mentalhealth, promoting the importance of vocalizing mental health, educating teenagers about mental illnesses, and how to help those who are suffering. Lopes establishes a comfortable, safe environment for students at Scituate. It became prevalent that everyone should consciously use these big platforms to make the world a more welcoming place, with Lopes setting a strong example.

Stage 3: Unnecessary App Purchases. With my epiphany, which occurred rather quickly during my social media cleanse, I couldn’t wait for the two weeks to be over. Because of this, I needed something to fill my idle time. I was just as productive with school work and other activities, but what would I do before I went to bed at night? I downloaded a few games to fill up my free time and prevent boredom. When my mother, Jennifer Thielen, was a teenager, she used her free time to hang out with her friends at the mall, attend school dances, go to football games, or talk on the phone. However, thanks to social media, I don’t have to leave my house (or my seat) to see my friends’ faces, learn what they’re doing, or hear how they’re feeling. I would spend my idle time checking up on my friends’ posts, videos, or messages.

Stage 4: The New Normal. Although I missed social media, I developed new routines: communicating and socializing through text, calling, facetime, or in-person interactions became a new habit for me. When I saw my friends in real life, I cherished them greatly since I did not see their updates on social media. This made me wonder–did I love seeing people as much now as I did before the cleanse?

Stage 5: Redownloading. After two weeks, I redownloaded two out of three applications that were deleted. It seemed weird to start communicating through Snapchat again, but a greater appreciation and better understanding of how social media can be used more positively resulted in this experience. On Instagram, it took me a while to catch up with everything, but I realized I did not miss it as much as I anticipated.

I came out of these two weeks looking at what social media does to help the world. My mother expressed the importance of technology in her own life and how it fast-tracks almost everything. Going through graduate school online, building her business through social media, and staying in touch with long-distance friends are some of the things she could not have done as quickly and efficiently when she was seventeen.

My mother made another good point: A Covid vaccine would have been much more challenging to accomplish without the accessibility of information between doctors and scientists.