March 5th 2020: Social media ban

I took a day off of social media, which is recommended to do often and for longer stretches of time, by many mental health experts. I have done this many times in the past for weeks or months at a time. I felt awesome while avoiding it, but eventually fell into the same patterns of mindless scrolling after returning. However, some of my breaks in the past were brought on after I'd already reached my peak frustration with social media. When I was already feeling less than, depressed, and irritated with the "dumb" stuff people posted. I know now that it was only because of my unhealthy mindset at that time that I was bothered by any of it and the break was needed long before it came. I have been limiting my time online since sometime early last year. I try only spending a maximum of 15-30 minutes on social media a day, and have unfollowed anything that may put me in a negative head space. I do enjoy the memories shared and the ease of seeing posts from friends and family. But I strongly feel like social media makes it too easy for people to not actually talk to each other. Everyone is more likely to just go to profiles and find out what everyone's been up to, rather than reaching out. Side rant, I'm sorry, but it's relevant. Social media stuff is just upsetting, especially since having kids. They can't read the comments people post on the pictures I share, and even when I read them outloud, they don't mean as much to them because, to them, it's still coming from me- their mom. Ya know?... It's always made me sad that I'm expected to do the legwork on people's behalf because they can't make the time to call or send a cute card/letter to my kids. Instead they just assume I'll relay the message via social media to them. When it's not my job to make anyone relevant in my children's lives and anything I do relay is out of my own kindness towards them. I really shouldn't have to "so&so said to say so on and so forth" to a child for anyone. End rant. This all being said, I don't have anything exciting I did with my time away. It was only a day- on a school day where I'm preoccupied with my kid's lives anyways. I didn't miss it, didn't really have the chance to. I hope everyone recognizes social media fatigue and puts a limit on how often they scroll through it. Also, I really recommend filtering the negative people and pages, it really does make you feel better.