Why you need the social media fasting challenge

How are you feeling these days?

A little burnt-out, a little worn down, a little anxious, a little tired — but wired?

Yes, me too.

It seems every day that more things are suddenly bolting out of our control and I don’t know about you, but I am gripping on tightly, trying to find my foundations lest I get swept away in the madness as well.

One part of me wants to give up and just drown myself in news, social media, and online entertainment, along with an extra-large pizza and a pint of ice cream until 4 AM — but something innate tells me this would only make things worse.

I don’t like getting up at 5 AM just as much as I don’t like eating steamed vegetables over potato chips or exercising instead of becoming one with my couch — but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t help.

The problem with “healthy habits” is that they are minuscule little steps toward optimal health versus the giant dump of dopamine spikes that usually are linked to their unhealthier counterpart habits. Often, we don’t experience the benefits of doing well for ourselves unless we pile and stack a collection of healthy choices for a prolonged duration of time.

This unfortunate reality often requires us to put limitations on the things that really bring us pleasure, entertainment, and distraction. The danger of not creating barriers around these addictive escapes is that we can get so sucked in that we don’t even realize that they have become the very thing that is causing our pain.

When we open up social media, for example, we experience an appreciable surge of dopamine and adrenaline, which are neurotransmitters part of the rewards-system pathway in our brains. This is well and good except that once the neurotransmitters have been ejected into the synapse, creating that rush for us, they require time to replenish before they can fire again.

Constant stimulation of the reward-system puts the brain into overdrive because it cannot keep up with the demands of the hyper-stimulated online environment. The amount of time spent online has diminishing returns as our brains produce and release less and less neurotransmitters and eventually we exhaust and deplete our resources.

Think about the last time you spent a little too long on social media.

How did you feel?

I bet it was clear-minded, joyous, and hopeful, right?

No! We get muddled, headaches, brain fog, mild depression, scattered and non-linear thinking, poor memory recall, decreased attention span, sleep deprivation, fear and anxiousness, and on and on.

So we should just give up our devices then, right?

While I am not against a digital detox of sorts the reality is like any diet, a total tech-elimination is not realistic or sustainable.

The reality is that many of us are addicted to our devices and like any addiction; giving social media the ultimatum gives it power and meaning.

Instead of fighting against it with declarations of ‘never’ and deleting ourselves from the social universe, why not just create some small, realistic boundaries?

Fasting is a wildly popular way for many people to control insulin sensitivity, cellular autophagy, hunger cues, and much more that has taken off in the health industry in the past few years.

Food is a vital source of energy and information that we undeniably need to survive.
If we can fast from food, surely we can fast from social media and technology!

I am not going to argue that we don’t need social media. I think now more than ever, in fact, we do need it. We need it to stay connected, to share and learn information, to be informed, to laugh — there are so many powerful uses.

But as you whittle down your time to just a few hours per day, you will engage with technology much more intentionally and consciously than if the door is always open.

If you only had one hour a day, would you still be watching cat videos or reading people’s arguments in the comments section?

Maybe! If that’s your jam, eat it up and enjoy it.

Now one hour a day is pretty extreme and I recommend starting with a more traditional fasting protocol: 12 hours on, 12 hours off. I usually fast from 8 AM — 8 PM so the last hours of my day can be dedicated to winding down through a tech-free evening routine and the first few hours of my day are spent preparing for a day of intention and purpose.

Like any diet, you will cheat, you will slip up, you will fail. But when you get back on that horse, take a pause to reflect how much better you feel. How much more productive you are. How tuned in you are to your environment, your intuition, and your relationships.

It’s not easy — there will be hunger pains and you will miss a lot of viral cat dancing videos — but it will be worth it.

#socialmediafastingchallenge