quitting tiktok cold turkey
In my misguided Gen Z youth, I often found myself wondering how people used to spend their time before the internet was as much of a time-sucking vacuum as it is these days. It's not like I was a total iPad kid or anything, I still read books and played outside, but I spent a significant chunk of my day on YouTube (more recently TikTok) until pretty recently (#embarrassing). So, when TikTok seemed like it was getting banned for good (my thoughts), I took it as an opportunity to get off of the app for good. As far as I'm concerned, TikTok is banned, because I banned it.
Because TikTok was actually banned in the US for 24 hours, I didn't delete the app off of my phone. For the first day, I kept instinctively clicking into it whenever any free time presented itself, and was greeted with a message telling me the app was banned in my country. After 8 hours of that, it only took gesturing to the app without clicking into it to remember it was banned and I couldn't use it. When it came back, I stayed on for ten minutes before leaving. In the week since, I haven't been on TikTok, and I've already noticed a few things I wanted to talk about.
First things first, I was bored out of my mind for the first few days. As it turns out, not being able to easily shut your brain off and scroll for a few minutes means you have to work hard to be entertained! For context, my only other social media is YouTube and I only watch YouTube on my TV, so when I wasn't home and on my college campus, I had to bring books to read to fill the few hours I have between classes. When I was home, YouTube got boring after less than an hour when I'd caught up on all my favorite creators, and then it was back to reading. I also like watching movies, but I don't watch them every day, so I spent most of my free time this week with my face in a book.
For spending my free time at home, I started on a papercraft book I got at the bookstore with very detailed watercoloring pages at the back. For three hours, I listened to music and colored, and it was totally awesome. I've also found time to clean, go biking, call my parents, or do homework when I had previously convinced myself all I could do was scroll for the closing hours of the day. Overall, I've noticed I feel a lot more productive, and like my day is never wasted on doomscrolling.
Something I was worried about before deleting TikTok was getting news quickly, but I downloaded the BBC and Guardian apps before the (now reversed) TikTok ban and check them almost daily, and haven't felt out of the loop in the slightest. If anything, I'm consuming more news than I was before, and with more context than can be provided in a 30-second TikTok.
I always thought I was a thoughtful social media consumer, but I still wondered every now and then how people who delete all their social media spent their time. Turns out, there's plenty to do when you're not on TikTok. Good to know!