It's been a great disappointment...

I had assumed that staying off social media would be really difficult for me; it simply has not. Earlier in the week I had the complaint that the one thing I was missing was the collation of interesting articles from the Guardian that Facebook gave me. Turns out I can get a daily email from the Guardian that does the same thing. Problem solved.

So I don't feel that this is burdensome, or difficult. Not really a lot to say about it on the blog, so I don't think I'll bother giving you updates unless something interesting happens. What might be interesting is how I react when it turns February and the doors of Facebook are once more opened up to me. I'll let you know!

Day Three and a normal schedule returns

I’ve now been back at work for a couple of days, and that means I have much less ‘free’ time – time for hanging around when having a look at Twitter seems a good idea.

I’ve found I’ve been out of bed quicker the last couple of days – simply because I don’t have ten minutes of social media to do. Can’t say I’ve really found a great way to use that time yet though. I listen to Radio 4 and drink tea, but rather than rushing for the train I’ve found myself with plenty of time.

On the journeys to and from work I’ve been catching up with the podcasts I didn’t listen to over Christmas, and picking up the German Courses am doing on Memrise. It’s free and is definitely working, although as with all distance learning the lack of a place to practice is what is missing.

I’ve tried a few of the language learning Apps. I actually prefer DuoLingo but Memrise has so much more material and quantity has won out over quality this time. I can’t use the app while walking, but still manage to do between 30 and 50 minutes most days.

In the office we do of course have an IT policy but incidental personal use is OK, so checking FB at lunchtime would be fine – plenty of people seem to anyway. But the temptation just isn’t there – if I have ten minutes there is plenty of proper news (or just look at Wikipedia and follow the interesting links) without needing to reach for Twitter.

I am looking at less news – I’m getting the headlines but not digging into more peripheral things that I would see because someone had shared them on my timeline. This is what I had hoped – because much of that will be ‘bubble’ stories – ones I am likely to agree with or be interested in, because I have selected the people whose posts I see in the first place. It leaves me worried about what I am missing though – is there really so little happening (ex Trump’s latest Tweets*) in the world? It’s the first few days of the year when everything is full of review and resolutions, so it’s possible, but I worry I am missing something. I think I might try to find another news-based podcast just to ensure I’m missing nothing that matters.

* Which I am of course only aware of due to the Main Stream Media

Bank Holiday Blackout

When I wake up in the morning, I put my glasses on, and then reach for the IPhone. And of course this morning was no different, except that Twitter and Facebook have been uninstalled from my phone. So I felt a bit lost. Quick check of the BBC news site to see if the world has ended. But no real desire to look behind the headlines. Wonder what amusing messages post New Year's Eve I will be missing.

It's a Public Holiday today so news is likely to be a bit slow, but equally people have time on their hands so there is probably a lot of stuff which is either funny, or (perhaps more likely given the date) about self improvement. But not for me.

So I put the radio on. Radio is a feature of my work mornings but less often at weekends - it is a news medium for me rather than an entertainment one. It seems a bit pedestrian - is that in contrast to social media or is it actually just a sleepy Bank Holiday? If a social media-free month has driven me into the arms of Radio 4 it probably hasn't distanced me from the metropolitan elite.

Out and about later on, and getting a train down into Kent for a bit of a walk. Waiting for the train it feels natural to check the phone, but I can't. And there is no free paper today. I could stick headphones on and either dive into my backlog of podcasts, or some music, but that seems far more antisocial than the phone. Headphones are a barrier to conversation in a way that social media is not.

In other news I've done a lot of sorting out of my phone (uploading pictures, indexing music etc) largely because it fills the time I would otherwise by Tweeting. That's all done now, so I wonder what's next? Tomorrow is a normal working day so probably a much more representative test for me.

A month without Twitter

In addition to the usual trinity of resolutions* I have decided to give up social media entirely for the month of January.

I’m going to blog about this experience, although given I won’t be able to publicise it, you probably won’t be reading this until the experiment is over.

I am a regular user of Twitter and Facebook. I don’t use anything else except LinkedIn (to publicise a few work-related things). Having decided to abstain pretty much at the last moment, I’ve not done the numbers on how much of my time social media takes up. It tends not to be big runs of time – but it will be a few minutes, several times a day. Certainly more than an hour a day and probably more than two. 

Some quick calculations suggest I tweet about 150 times a month. But I spend a lot  time using both as a news/information source; Twitter through the people I follow and Facebook through pages I like (The Guardian, NPR etc) and which find their way to the top of my news feed. Not all that time is going to be saved, particularly if just I find myself on the Guardian App rather than pulling down articles via Facebook.

Why am I doing this?

Firstly there is that classic ‘alcohol-free month’ approach – just proving to myself that I can stop any time I want. Honest.

Secondly I don’t have a lot of free time and I’d like to think there are better things for me to be doing with it. I’ll try and cover what these might be, and how I get on with them, in future posts.

Third, I am increasingly aware (thanks to the likes of Michael Gove telling me) that I live in a bubble of comfortable ‘metropolitan elitism’ where the news that is curated for me on social media reinforces my existing views. This of course happens with many of the people I meet in real life, but I tend to be far less likely to be involved in political discussions there, and it is much harder to avoid human social interaction. I could have chosen to source my news from Breitbart and the Daily Express for the next month to try and rectify this, but that’s just too painful to seriously contemplate. So this is an attempt to, if not step out of the bubble, at least try to spend a bit less time inflating it.

Finally, the world over the last year or so has been a pretty rubbish place to live. (I mean this in a general sense –  my own life has been really good in 2015/6.) Stepping back from the hate and worry for a month feels like a nice break.

That’s the plan, and 16 hours into the New Year I’m still sticking with it. I’ll post in a couple of days on how things are going.

If you have any views on this, feel free to Tweet me at @rossofpenge. Just don’t expect a reply before February.

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* exercise, alcohol and smoking