A Digital Sabbatical

                Avoiding social media has become difficult. The rise of such accessible platforms has changed communication and makes the chance to escape from digital media a bit frightening. Tammy Strobel’s ‘A Magical Block of Time: Lessons Learned From My Digital Media Sabbatical’ is a great read that reminds us to take a step back, but sometimes practicing an idea is not so simple. In a digital world ignoring so much can become quite a chore.

                Even though I say that, when making a conscious effort, social media can be avoided. During my forty-eight hour sabbatical, as soon as I told myself to avoid social media at home it was easy to remind myself to stay away. Of course there were a few near clicks, not so much failures on their own, but I am not the average social media user. I’d even say I got a few projects done I wouldn’t have normally taken a look at when scrolling through websites can be so much simpler. 

                Part of my experiment with the sabbatical was not telling anyone I would be staying away from social media. For the first day no one noticed, as this is not unusual. I do little more than like a few posts and reply to a few tweets should I be mentioned. Sometimes I even link to outside sources, but for the most part I use my accounts to look about news and interesting topics for a quick scroll. After the second day I mentioned what I had done to a couple of friends and was meant by something I didn’t expect—they were impressed! The idea of committing to a step back was well received even if it seemed like they would hate to commit. I didn’t find it that awful, but at the same time, I had to cheat a little bit!

                Working without social media became impossible—so much that I would consider this attempt at remaining social-network free a technical failure. Over the forty-eight hours I needed to keep up with advertising and answering patron questions from the variety of channels kept open. My workplace, a public library, relies on social media to connect with customers, and follows several of the practices suggested in a post by Sujan Patel, titled ‘How Businesses Should Be Using Social Media in 2015’. These require active participation, something I don’t always find necessary but keep up with to maintain a presence.

I suppose that might be why I found catching up a bit daunting at first. Information moves quickly. This is especially true on social media. Sifting through what I missed was a bit of a task. Then I came to a new revelation—it was easy to throw away the information delivered during those forty-eight hours. None of it directly affected my life, and I certainly didn’t need a lot of it after all. I’m simply used to having that social media stream there when I want to look at it. Even if I don’t continue to step away from online presences in the future I can be a little more selective in the future of what I do take in. For me, that makes this idea of a sabbatical something of a success in my books.

Social media has changed communication, and while making it at times cluttered and other times invaluable, has also become all but unavoidable. Two days was alright to catch myself when work didn’t break the sabbatical, but I think much longer would be a bit difficult. The total change in media and communication really has been all thanks to social channels being developed and gaining a foothold. Even for someone like me who has very few to look through I find them important and sometimes, unavoidable. 

This forty-eight hour sabbatical was a nice chance to look at where I use social media. I managed to teach myself that not every piece of information I receive needs to be read. I’ve also taken a look at how most of my usage goes into work, and that I might need to submit a better plan of how we can use our channels without falling into overuse outside of patron questions. I would consider this time out to be a great learning experience.

Works Cited

Patel, Sujan. “How Businesses Should Be Using Social Media in 2015.” Forbes. Forbes, 24 June 2015. Web. 14 June 2016.

Strobel, Tammy. “A Magical Block of Time: Lessons Learned from my Digital Sabbatical.” Rowdy Kittens. Rowdy Kittens, 20 Sep 2010. Web. 14 June 2016.