I’ve decided I really need to disconnect from social media and phone addiction. Both Joe and I have committed to not using our phones in the evening after Joe’s home from work and before the kiddos are in bed. I noticed that we both tended to check our phones a lot throughout the night and I can see Enzo’s eyes on us. In a world where he’s growing up around technology, I don’t want him to become addicted. And once he’s older and has his own devices, how am I going to reinforce screen time if I’m on my screens all the time? Eventually we’ll have rules for him and it’s a good practice to use those rules on ourselves right now and make it a habit. Is it weird that I already have a list of rules for screen time that I want to incorporate once the kids are older? Like, no devices in their rooms at night or at the dinner table. And by the time our kiddos are older who knows what it’s going to be like. It might be crazy, but I think it’s good to at least consider how we want to handle these things as they come even if we change our minds later. I would also like to have a day a week where we don’t use phones at all (likely Sundays) but I haven’t been able to be consistent with that yet. The one exception to phone use at night (and on the day we choose to go entirely phoneless) will be talking to family via video chat.
Along with no phones at night, I’m going to stop using social media, ie. Facebook and Instagram, for at least a month. I am likely going to still post on the blog and will share those posts on social media but that’s it. Every time I post something, I catch myself constantly checking to see if anyone has liked or commented. I feel like I’m relying on that feedback and craving it. And I don’t see that as a good thing for me in my life right now. I want to focus less on that and focus more on face-to-face communication which is hard for me! It’s hard to be intentional and ask people to hang out, especially when I’m home during the day. It’s easy to just keep myself busy and not take the time to reach out to others. But I’m trying to really work on that. We’re also trying to invite people over to our house on a regular basis for meals. It’s a good chance to catch up with people and make new friends as well as try out awesome new vegan recipes! Joe already has a list of people from his work that we haven’t hung out with yet that he wants to invite over.
One thing that is really beneficial for social media for us is sharing pictures and videos of our kiddos for family that is far away. Maybe I can find a solution to that and still post stuff about them periodically but turn off notifications so I’m not constantly checking for feedback. I haven’t figured that out yet so we’ll see.
I’m not saying everyone needs to get off their phones and social media, but for us in our life right now, this is a change we want to make at least for some time. Joe has already deactivated his Facebook account after I told him I was going to stop using Facebook/Instagram outside of my blogs posts. Hopefully, I’ll have some positive experiences to share after this and maybe it will become a habit that sticks for a while.
If you need a response from me, you are always welcome to email me at [email protected] or text me (if you don’t have my number, shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you). And if you live in Austin, let’s get together! Any comments on the blog, Instagram and Facebook will likely remain unanswered for now.