Could You Give Up Social Media for a Week Or a Month

I read with great interest of Google Algorithm blog post about doing a “digital cleanse” and going Twitter-free for a week. He later decided to make it 30 days.

My first reaction was jealousy. I can’t go Twitter-free because I tweet for a living, and while being paid to tweet may sound like a dream come true, and in many ways it is, anyone who’s been using social media for longer than 2 hours will know what I mean when I say that social media can be very draining at times.

The very attributes that make social media fun, engaging, and – yes – addictive – also make it demanding and exhausting. The need to constantly keep up with others’ updates and to keep producing fresh content of your own, the fast pace, knowing that people online can move on so quickly and forget about you or about your brand unless you constantly remind them… sometimes, at the end of a long day, I wonder if the human brain is actually built to withstand the speed at which social media moves and evolves.

No wonder so many people and companies are using automated social media tools and hiring ghost Twitter (is that a word?)

While I won’t be doing a proper digital cleanse any time soon, I do take the occasional social media mini-break when I go skiing. Three full days of white snow, fast skiing, and no internet connection have a way of reminding you that there’s more to life than sitting next to a computer typing away all day long.