Those little red circles can haunt you!

Last week my wife and I decided to stay off of social media for the entire week, and you know what happened? The world kept right on going, and I’m not sure anyone even noticed we were gone except for the two of us. Isn’t that amazing?!

It sounds silly to say something like that, but if you look at the way most of us stay CONSTANTLY plugged into our various devices, you might think that the fate of the world actually depended on our next tweet or status update.

As a culture, we have become consumed by technology. I never thought I would fall into that trap. For the longest time I fought it. In fact, I have been late to the party on just about every social media platform because I have been so darn stubborn. People were blowing up Facebook, and I was just starting to text. Then Twitter took off, and I was just figuring out how to update my Facebook profile pic (I’m still rockin’ the same one I put up 6 years ago when I created my account). I didn’t start using Twitter on a regular basis until about two years ago, and I just got an Instagram account about 8 months ago.

It’s funny how things change over time. Social media (especially Twitter) has become a very important part of my development as a teacher and a coach. Through social media I have been able to connect with teachers, coaches, and administrators from all over the world, and those connections have made me a better educator. I even refer to some of the people that I’ve never met as “friends” because we “talk” regularly on Twitter. I thought that was a little weird, but when I asked about it, I found out that I am not alone (at least that’s what my “friends” on Twitter told me).

As I grew more and more connected with people through social media, I found myself spending more and more time staring at my phone. I thought I was doing a decent job of not obsessing over it when I was supposed to be spending time with my family, but I recently realized that I wasn’t doing as good of a job as I thought.

My wife and I serve in the student ministry at our church as community group leaders, and last week our student pastors challenged our kids to go on a “technology detox” for the week. KB and I decided that we would participate and model that behavior for our kids.

It was one of the best decisions we have ever made. This week was so good for our family. We spent QUALITY time together. We sat at the kitchen table and talked long after our meals were over. We worked together at taking care of the house (I dominated the dishes this week). We played more. We read more. We laughed more. We prayed more.

It really was awesome, but it wasn’t as easy as you’d think it should be. Monday and Tuesday were difficult. I can’t count the number of times I picked up my phone to run through my Twitter timeline before remembering that I wasn’t doing that this week. It quickly became obvious to me that I look at my phone entirely too much on a regular basis.

I am not saying that social media is evil, and I am certainly not renouncing my digital citizenship. However, I am saying that we need to be more careful about how much time we spend looking at it because it’s so easy to get lost in it. I mean, honestly, who hasn’t lost an hour (or several) bouncing from Youtube video to Youtube video?

As I said earlier, social media can be a wonderful tool. It can provide opportunities to learn from and communicate with some phenomenal people, and it’s a great way to share your own ideas with an authentic audience… IF IT IS USED WISELY.

My suggestion going forward is to set limits on yourself. Actually pencil in specific times on your calendar for social media. If you limit yourself to some specific blocks of time on a daily or weekly basis, you help ensure that you will be “investing” your time on social media rather than “wasting” it. This is definitely something that I am going to do, but first, I will be taking another entire week off from social media. Anybody feel like joining me?

Remember: You have to control your use of social media, or it may end up controlling you.