Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

social media fast

Why {and how} I’m Slowly Becoming a Digital Minimalist

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It used to be that before I clipped Josie’s leash to her collar and walked out the front door, I made sure to slip my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. I took my phone with me on our afternoon walks, not so I could be reached in the case of an emergency, but so I could snap pictures along the way. I didn’t want to risk missing the perfect Instagram shot.

These days I leave my phone at home when I walk Josie. The habit began back in February, when I gave up all social media for Lent, and has continued long after the fast ended on Easter morning. Now, instead of fishing my phone out of my pocket when something catches my eye, I simply take note of it.

A painted lady butterfly balances on a swaying blossom, its proboscis nuzzling into delicate petals.  

The way the evening light warms the greening landscape golden.

The Scotch pine bark that fits together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

It’s refreshing, liberating even, to appreciate beauty for its own sake, rather than as the means to an outcome.

My Lenten social media hiatus was transformative, not only because it helped me break my addiction, but also because the time and space revealed the deeper reasons I gravitate toward social media in the first place.

The truth is, while my intentions to use social media to share beauty and encouragement are genuine, underneath those good intentions also lurks a quiet but persistent vying – a vying to be visible, heard and relevant. A vying for approval and affirmation.

As psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman explains, stepping away from social media is a way to “quiet the ego” – and my ego is in constant need of quieting.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately not only about what compells me to post on social media but also about how I use it for entertainment and to quell boredom. Since reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism earlier this spring, I uninstalled Facebook and Twitter from my phone. But those are low-hanging fruit. Instagram, my biggest social media distraction, still tempts me daily, sometimes hourly.

Instagram is where I’m most likely to scroll mindlessly. It’s where I go when I’m bored or to kill time. It’s where I spend the largest portion of my social media time each day. When I finished my Lenten social media fast and had every good intention to keep my digital habits in check, Instagram is what derailed me.

The key to living successfully as a digital minimalist, according to Newport, is to “optimize” what brings you value while minimizing mindless scrolling. In other words, he says, “Take steps to extract the good from these technologies while sidestepping what is bad.” Aim for long-term meaning over short-term satisfaction, and “focus online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support the things you value.”

Instagram does offer some value to me, namely images of beauty and nature when I don’t have access to it in real life and a place to connect with people I know and like but from whom I am physically distant. With Newport’s advice in mind, I recently curated my Instagram feed so that it better reflects what I value. I unfollowed hundreds of people, keeping only those accounts in my feed that align with these values:

— Friends and people I know in real life but don’t see as often as I would like

— People who live in Nebraska

— People whose pictures appeal to me visually (namely, they share images of nature that I consider beautiful)

— People I might not know in person but who I can count on to share meaningful content that resonates with me.

Now, because I’ve curated my feed to optimize what I consider valuable and don’t waste as much time scrolling through content that doesn’t interest me, I actually spend less time each day on Instagram. And the time I do spend there is more fulfilling and meaningful because I am seeing more of the content I value.

It’s not a perfect solution. I still spend far too much time on Instagram, though I’m not quite ready to abandon it entirely. And if I’m honest with myself, I still also post content to social media at least in part as a means to be seen and feel relevant. Slowly, though, I am inching my way toward a more digitally minimal lifestyle that is both quieting to my ego and less consuming of my time and energy.

Filled with the Fullness of Your Own Everyday, Ordinary Life

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A few days ago, as Josie lingered with her snout deep in the weeds – “reading the newspaper,” as a fellow dog-walker once observed – I watched a girl on roller skates sidestep, arms outstretched, down a grassy slope. She wore old-fashioned skates, the kind with four wheels and a rubber stopper like a nose on the end of each boot. Suddenly I was back under a rainbow of disco lights at Interskate 91, Beat It pulsing, skates thumping over the hardwood floor.

Nearby a young man had slung a striped hammock between two white pines. His backpack resting at the base of one tree, bike propped against the trunk of the other, he stood tilting his phone this way and that, angling for the perfect shot, patient as the hammock twirled like a double-dutch jump rope in the early spring breeze.

Making our way through the neighborhood, I caught the almost-familiar scent of something spicy – cumin or maybe curry — wafting through the open window of a basement apartment. The food smelled nearly but not quite like the dishes our Yazidi friends prepare for us when we visit.

Two doors down a new scent, the nostalgic smell of hot dogs on the grill, whisking me back to Fourth of July cookouts on the backyard picnic table. Josie smelled it too, stopping to lift her quivering nose in the air.

Tipping my head back to gaze up at an enormous sycamore, I saw that its bare branches were hung with hundreds of seed balls dangling like Christmas ornaments. I picked one up from the ground and carried it like a cherry on a stem, gently so as not to crush it. When I got home from our walk I put the seed ball on a dish and placed it on my desk.

I’m halfway through my Lenten social media fast. After a month away from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, I feel grounded. My body is grounded. My senses are grounded. My brain is even somehow more grounded. I hadn’t been aware of it until I dialed back the constant noise and distraction, but my thoughts had begun to feel like untethered balloons bumping along with the current, strings dangling.

Being grounded in my own body, in my own environment, in my actual real life, rather than constantly peering into other lives as they are presented on my cell phone screen, has given rise to a keen attentiveness. I notice the girl on the old-fashioned roller skates, the scents whispering through my neighborhood, the regal, whimsical Dr. Seussian sycamore tree.

I see that though it’s April, the magnolia buds are still tightly closed, fuzzed sepals clasping drowsing petals. Even spring’s overachievers, the daffodils, are biding their time, keeping their sunny yellow encased in their papery wraps. Everywhere there is something new and fresh and beautiful to see, to hear, to smell, to touch. Everywhere there is a sense of expectancy.

My life has a different kind of fullness these days – different from the bloated, pants-too-tight-after-a-big-meal fullness created by noise, distraction, input, information, images. Different from the full-of-emptiness one can sometimes feel from ingesting too much of other people’s lives as they are presented online.

These days I am grounded. I am full. Filled with ordinary sights, sounds and smells. Filled with the fullness of my own everyday, ordinary life.

5 Things I Learned from My Six-Week Social Media Fast

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I hadn’t “given up” anything for Lent in years, but when my pastor asked on Ash Wednesday, “What’s keeping you from growing in your relationship with God?” I knew social media was my answer.

Now that Lent is over and Easter has come and gone, I’m back on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, this time, I hope, a wiser, more discerning user. I can tell you straight up: the fast made a difference. I spend a lot less time on social media than I used to, and I’m much less inclined to pick up my phone when I have a few minutes of downtime.

Here are five things I learned from my fast.

Social media can be addicting.
I’d read the scientific research about the connection between social media and the release of the feel-good brain chemical dopamine, but I’d always assumed I was somehow immune…until, that is, I gave up social media and found myself picking up my phone two dozen times a day. It was almost like I’d trained my brain and my body to need to have my phone in my hand.

I was surprised by how long it took to break the addiction; more than two weeks passed before the urge to reach for my phone finally began to diminish.

Social media is distracting.
Turns out, there was a pattern to my social media habits. I typically scrolled Facebook or Twitter and then, when I glimpsed a headline that piqued my interest, I clicked over to the site. I rarely read an article from start to finish, but instead quickly skimmed the content before clicking over to something else, repeating this process a half-dozen times before finally clicking off the Internet altogether.

The cycle left me feeling fragmented, rushed, distracted, and vaguely anxious. Stepping away from social media allowed me to identify this pattern and see the harm it was causing my mental and spiritual well-being.

Social media impacts our ability to think critically.
My social media fast helped me see that my critical thinking skills had grown rusty. Instead of forming an educated opinion of my own, more often I simply regurgitated the opinions and arguments of others. Away from Facebook and Twitter, I was better able to ask myself, “What do YOU think about that?” and figure out my own answer.

Social media blunts our sensory perception.
Two days after Ash Wednesday I sat in my front yard, eyes closed, faced tipped toward the early spring sun, and listened to the birds. The longer I listened, the better I was able to identify distinct calls from the cacophony of chirps and cackles. I realized then that it had been a long time since I’d heard the birds. Without my nose in an app, I was more present to the nuanced beauty of God’s creation.

Social media is not the spawn of Satan.
I missed my long-distance friends during my six-week fast, the people with whom I’ve formed real relationships across the cyber waves. I missed the random pictures of sunsets and beach vacations and birthday celebrations. I missed the conversations, the curious musings, the bits of goodness scattered here and there.

My fast helped me see where my social media habits cross the line into unhealthy behavior, but it also reminded me that I needn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Although it was challenging for the first few weeks, my Lenten social media fast turned out to be an enlightening and fruitful experience. And while I’m mostly glad to be back in the world of hashtags and emoji, I have a clearer understanding of why it’s better for my spiritual and mental health if social media is enjoyed in moderation.

An edited version of this post was first published in the April 29 edition of the Lincoln Journal Star.

What I’m Learning from My Social Media Fast

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It started with a purple slip of paper on which I’d penned one word.

“Distraction.”

“What is keeping you from growing in your relationship with God?” my pastor had asked at the beginning of the Ash Wednesday service. “What sin is standing in the way?”

I wrote the word “distraction” on my purple slip of paper and dropped it into the basket as I walked forward to receive the ashy cross.

Smart phone in hand, I spend a lot of my in-between time scrolling and swiping, liking and emoting, clicking and skimming. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email — I go from one to the other and back again, my eyes on a two-inch by four-inch screen. In line at the post office, in the dentist’s waiting room, idling at the curb at my son’s middle school, swiping and scrolling, liking and emoting, clicking and skimming.

Distraction.

I vowed to give up social media for Lent in the middle of the Ash Wednesday service. It wasn’t my intention. I hadn’t seen it coming. I haven’t “given up” anything for Lent in years, but the moment I scrawled “distraction” on my purple paper, I knew: social media had to go.

I did not go gently. I argued with God for most of the service. I bargained for Instagram. But it seemed pretty clear; it had to be an all-or-nothing fast. When I got home, I moved all my social media icons on my phone to the very last screen, four swipes in. I’d be less likely to see them there, less tempted to tap.

I noticed the birds first.

Sitting in a sunny spot in my front yard two days after Ash Wednesday, eyes closed, my face tipped toward the early spring sun, I heard the birds, an indistinguishable cacophony of twitters and cackles from the trees, the roof, the power lines. I listened as the blur of chatter began to separate into distinct calls — the screech of a blue jay, tap of a nuthatch on a tree trunk, scuffle of sparrows in the rafters, melodious house finch in the backyard.

More sounds announced themselves while I sat with my eyes closed.

Wind in the white pines, snapping cloth of the neighbor’s American flag, thrum of a bass from a nearby car, skitter of dried leaves cartwheeling across the concrete, chain saw buzzing in the distance.

It had been a long time since I’d listened to the sounds of my neighborhood.

There have been moments like this in the last two weeks. Moments when I listen and breathe. Moments when my soul is stilled.

But mostly, nearly two weeks in, I still get itchy fingers in those in-between times. I’m restless, a low-level agitation humming below the surface.

It’s a near-constant act of discipline to leave my phone in my purse.

Fighting writer’s block, I will myself not to check Facebook or Twitter. Instead, I look out the window. One day, struggling to write the notes for an upcoming talk, I spent most of the afternoon gazing out the French doors into the dull gray of my backyard.

This might sound like a lovely picture of peace. It wasn’t. It was frustrating and boring.

And lonely.

I hadn’t expected the loneliness. I don’t miss the politics. The caustic comments. I don’t miss clicking and skimming until my brain fogs with a swirl of facts and opinions. But I do miss my friends – the real relationships that have formed across the cyberwaves. I miss the pretty pictures of sunsets and vacations and birthday celebrations. I miss the conversations, the random musings, the bits of goodness scattered here and there.

I spend a lot of time on social media in my everyday, ordinary life. Some of it is necessary for my work. Some of it is good for my well-being. Most of it is not. It’s one thing to know this in theory. It’s another thing entirely to understand it in the day-to-day.

So for now I’m listening to the birds and the whisper of white pines in the wind. I’m looking out the window into my gray backyard. And I’m waiting for whatever, if anything, might rise from the depths to the surface.