My Digital Sabbatical

While social media is addictive, Persuasive, takes time and energy. It was not difficult for me to avoid social media because I have already done this before for few days and I have been doing this whenever my exams are near or I have to study. I usually try to avoid checking my Facebook, Instagram and twitter updates and posts when I have to study and also I disable my data connection on my phone so that I don't get notifications from social media applications.

When going offline from social media my friends did get in touch with me through Facebook and I saw it when I logged into my account after going online in two days. since I have some friends in India and Dubai who usually contact me through Facebook and skype since it is the only way they can reach me when I want to talk with them and since my phone doesn't have international calling option so they were not be able to reach out to me.

I was able to stop myself in checking Facebook, Instagram and twitter posts but couldn't stop myself in checking the messages on skype since it was also the weekend many of my friends and family were trying to reach out to me to talk and know about me the only thing which caused me to cheat was since I only get time on weekends to talk to them and also they get free only on weekends.

When I was a kid the medium of communication was simple now we no longer require homes, offices, or cafes to stay in touch with people; we can do it wherever we happen to be. Social media has augmented, rather than undermined, our personal relationships: “Online communication – email, instant messaging, chat rooms, etc. does not replace more traditional offline forms of contact face-to-face and telephone. Instead, it adds on to them, increasing the overall volume of contact. More specifically, people with a great deal of on-line conversations have just as many off-line conversations as those who decline to participate in the former. The Internet just increases the overall frequency of communication. Rise of the social media has helped simultaneously in both local and long-distance relationships. Social media have allowed us to stay in touch with other individuals regardless of location,

Remarkably it wasn't as difficult as I thought it will be the time I spent browsing Facebook and Instagram was spent on working on cleaning my house and actually interacting with my roommates more and also my work was done more quicker. What I liked about the social media sabbatical was that taking a break opened up space to think about the goals I have to achieve concentrate on other things and explore.

I realize that when I am not using social media the circle of friends I connect to gets smaller without social media I only interacted with my roommates and a friend from work through this experience I felt that social media has created a huge impact in society in today's world so that everyone could stay connected.