Offline Assignment- Connor Klosterman

Not being a heavy multimedia user I did not think this challenge was going to be overly difficult.  I thought before it started that I should maybe delete all of the social media apps off of my phone so as to have no easy access to any of it.  I decided though I wanted to have more of a challenge and see if I would be able to avoid using the apps with them sitting right in front of me on my phone and I thus decided to leave them right where they were.  There were some instances where just out of pure habit I almost went on them but caught myself right before breaking the rules.  It has become so natural these days to just go on the sites and see what everyone is up to.  The hardest part, I found, was trying to avoid using them when there was a lull in whatever I was doing.  Whenever I am bored, a quick solution to my problem is just to hop on the social media sites and see what others have posted.  Because of the ban on social media this weekend, I was not able to solve my problem in such a way.  Instead, even if I was in a big group of people, I feel the lack of social media gave me more time to myself.  I was not preoccupied with what is happening elsewhere but was more concerned with what was happening right in front of me and what I was personally doing.  Also, especially when I was alone, I was able to let my mind wander instead of let my eyes wander.  I was not looking at a screen having my eyes glaze over what was happening beyond where I was but was able to just think about anything and everything.  I felt like I had more time to myself, even if I didn’t have any more physical alone time than I typically would have.  As cheesy as it may sound, the lack of social media this weekend allowed me to have more personal time. 

            After coming out of “the dark” from this weekend, I realized I don’t value social media as much as I thought I did.  The nonessential forms of social media, like Facebook and Snapchat, were not as exciting as I thought they were going to be when I came back.  I scrolled through to see if there was anything that I had missed from the weekend and a lot of it was information that I didn’t find important at all.  A lot of people I wanted to hear stories from I had either talked to in person or I had texted/called them; there was nothing left for me to want to find out still on the web.  It made me look at social media as being very impersonal.  Going without the online sites was not too challenging but if the rules were modified to include no texting, I am pretty confident I would not be able to go through the weekend with such ease.  This homework really opened up my eyes to what I “need” and “do not need” when it comes to electronic communication.