So I recently finished my 24 hour digital media fast. It began Saturday evening at 9:30 PM as I left my phone off on my desk and departed for the evening. It was not long before I encountered trouble without my phone. At around 11:25 PM (which I knew exactly thanks to my wrist watch) I had been separated from the group of friends I had gone out with. We had been bouncing around different suites in Atwater for a couple of hours when I encountered another football friend who I talked with for a bit, and before I knew it they were gone. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket to shoot one of them a txt asking where they had gone, but, of course, it was not in my pocket. Thus, I decided to go about it the old fashioned way and went into the stairwell yelling their names. Still no response. I would venture to guess that the volume of the music made it an even more difficult task, but I don’t think anyone was willing to quiet it down while I looked for my friends. After poking my head in a few more suites with no success, I decided to check Coffrin. When I didn’t see them there I did not know what to do. I could have gone back out with some other people, but at that point in the night, I didn’t think it was worth it, and instead simply headed to bed. The next morning I discovered that my friends had gone to Homestead, which would have been and easy walk if only I had known.

The next day I had a JV football game that my parents and some other family were coming up to watch. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to have my media fast because I would be busy for a good portion of the day with the game and catching up with family. I turns out I did not anticipate my Uncle having some trouble finding the field. As he drove around aimlessly through Middlebury, my parents were in the mountains without service, rendering them totally unhelpful in this situation. He left me multiple messages, but my phone was still off. Eventually my parent got service and met up with him, but it would have helped if I could have simply answered his call.

Aside from these two incidents, I actually kind of enjoyed my media fast. Every time I felt the tick to check my Facebook or Twitter, I told myself that I couldn’t because of the media fast, and it actually felt liberating. Its not necessarily that I am addicted to these social media sites, but forcing myself to say no to them and instead do something productive felt good. I organized my room and got ahead on reading. I did not feel as distracted as I usually do when I read because I was not rushing through it so that I could reward myself by reading barstoolsports.com or scanning my newsfeed. Overall, it was a good experience, and I hope it will push me to  deny social media more in the future.

-Nick