A few weeks ago I forgot my phone at home one morning, first noticing while on line waiting for coffee and experienced a moment of panic when realizing I wouldn’t be able to go through my usual check email and social media routine while I waited for my latte. It was a bit alarming to notice that not having my phone for these idle moments left me not knowing what to do with myself, so I decided to do a mini social media detox.

Since my day to day is so rooted in social media with both blogging and my full-time job, I couldn’t exactly go cold turkey and take a total break from every social platform, but I could make one big change… Deleting the apps from my phone.

Facebook? Gone. Twitter? See ya. Foursquare? (Yes, I may be the only person who still checks in everywhere she goes…) Bye. I’ll admit it freaked me out a bit to hit delete on so many apps at once – it was amazing to see just how much of my screen space had been dedicated to social media and how many apps I had on my phone solely for keeping up to date with social media while on the go. I had one rule: anything that was non-essential to blogging and could be checked while on the computer had to go. So off they went and the experiment began.

For the first few days I found myself instinctually reaching for my phone at multiple points in the day to scroll through my social feeds for no reason at all other than to fill a moment of downtime. Over time I found myself reaching for my phone less and less, without as many interruptions and notifications. Life went on and it’s felt good to break the habit of feeling like I need to know everything that’s happening at every moment. It’s been a refreshing change of pace to get comfortable with downtime once again, soaking in the offline moments and detoxing a bit from my social media addiction.

If you’ve also been finding yourself glued to your phone at all times, I challenge you to do the same. Try it. Hit delete. See what happens.