Hey, y’all. Welcome to No Invite Necessary. I’m your host, Nolita, a. k. a. TheMonaLita. And this is where I share real stories of the hustlers, grinders, dreamers, and doers who faced life’s toughest challenges and came out on top. Stronger, wiser, and way more fulfilled. I’m talking about practical resilience, growth, and transformation.
This show is for anyone who’s ever felt sidelined or underestimated, whether you’re finding inner peace, rebuilding after a crisis or making waves in your community, here is where I spill the tea with my guests on their hustle and the lessons learned along the way. Remember it’s your journey, your hustle, your rules.
Let’s get into it.
Now today we’re diving into something I think that we all need to talk about, right? The pressure of perfection of social media and the power of taking a detox. As many of you know, I’ve been in social media, influencer marketing for years. And that plays in the space of digital apps, digital devices, right?
So that’s just a part of the lifestyle. Of being in this, in this career field, but there is always a pressure for perfection with social media and it does have an impact. So, you know, we gotta be real about it. It has a huge influence on our lives from the perfect photos on Instagram to the curated videos on Tik TOK.
It’s very easy to feel like we are not measuring up. Studies have definitely shown that there is a direct correlation between our use of social media and mental health and how that connects to anxiety and depression. Now for me, like I said, as someone who works in social media and influencer marketing, people do expect for me to be online 24 7, but then I have to think about it.
If this was 1942 and we were working at the post office and you had something very important to tell me, you had no way of contacting me at 11, 18 PM and expecting a response. People were not calling each other’s landlines that late at night. There was still an attempt, there was still an attempt to respect boundaries and have an understanding of personal versus professional and also just not crossing the boundaries of how much Of something can be too much of something.
Now for me, as someone working in social media, the pressure is, and has been very intense for me at times. People expect me to be online 24 seven, posting content, engaging with followers, staying on top of trends. It can be a lot and it’s exhausting at times. So I got a couple of questions for you. Have you ever felt pressured to present a perfect life online?
How does social media make you feel about your own life and achievements?
So first of all, you know, some people, have you ever heard of the term doom scrolling? No. This is where you just literally sit back and you scroll for hours, on hours, on hours. So a social media detox is definitely needed for somebody in that realm of what’s going on with them and just being overly stimulated because essentially you need to take a break from Social media in general that can benefit you in a ways of your mental health, just your wellbeing, your ability to focus.
And you want to have deeper real life connections. You don’t want to live on your device. I get it that the devices are a part of our everyday life. They are very helpful in a lot of ways, but it can be a bit much. So when you find yourself slumped on that side and you just scroll and scroll and take a moment, pause.
Look at how much screen time you’ve had for the day. And then start to think about seriously taking a detox. Oh, I’ve definitely taken breaks from social media. I took a break probably at the top of May. And I’ve been on social media for about 12 years, I want to say. So to go without posting, on my timeline to go without posting, you know, and stories, things of that nature.
That was all the adjustment for me. But I needed it because I needed to hit the reset button super, super hard because like you just want to always have a good grasp on what is influencing your thoughts and what is also What are you coming into agreement with to be willingly distracted? Cause you can’t complain about not achieving X, Y, and Z, or you can’t complain about not processing one, two, and three.
If you literally are spending hours upon hours, every single day just scrolling and looking at what everybody else is doing. But is there a difference or a distinction between your job and social media versus just like a person that might have a different, industry and they’re stuck on social media.
Absolutely. Like with work, the same way that I have no expectation at the person at McDonald’s who’s flipping fries, you know, from nine to five, they are flipping the hell out of those fries. But when they get off, they’re probably not concerned with the fries. So it’s like when I’m at work and I’m in that mode, that’s what I’m focused on.
And I have the ability to balance what my consumption is, because I know that it is goal focused. It is for work, but for there to be this trend almost that for someone in my particular field that you are to be available to do work for social media 24 seven, that is where social standards can kind of push us into these, um, It can kind of corner us in a sense to not honor our own boundaries.
It makes sense because effectively social media itself as an industry doesn’t have any boundaries. It doesn’t have any boundaries. It’s social media does not have any boundaries. It’s 24 7. It’s 3 65. It requires us to constantly be stimulated. It requires us to constantly even on a very basic level. be in agreement with opening ourselves up to comparison because we’re searching for something that we want or something that we we want to be and when are we taking the time to really reflect on our own thoughts our own emotions our own just season that you’re in where you may be going through a setback you don’t really create the space to digest what you’re experiencing.
If you’re always looking out and you don’t spend any time looking in. That makes sense. Yeah. And like, how does that feel? Because it’s, that’s, it’s like a drug. It is a drug. Social media is a digital drug that gives us a dopamine that we, and myself included, I feel like we’ve all become a little bit lazy in.
Investing the time to create those type of connections. with other people through conversation, through time spent, through experiences, through spending time with ourselves, you know, developing hobbies and gifts and things of that nature. We want that dopamine fix so quickly. And we get that from a timeline because 60 seconds or less, you can watch something that makes you feel good.
You can watch something that makes you laugh. You can watch something that makes you cry. So you can go through all of the different types of emotions. Using social media, whereas that seems a little bit safer versus you don’t know what you’re getting when you’re interacting with another human being that you can’t control, but you can control what you type in your search bar.
We know how positively yours detox impacted you in your life. Yes. Because you’re glowing. The glow is real. Okay, man. Um, but for somebody that might be hesitant about taking a break, what would be your advice? My advice to someone who is hesitant about having a social media detox would be, I ain’t getting churchy y’all know I love God.
So I was just talking to Dom earlier, talked to you about this earlier about asking the small question. So just taking a moment to counter the thought that tells you, no, I can’t be off social media. No, I can’t be off of Instagram. It may feel as if you’re posing a question to yourself, but it’s really a conversation between you and God where you can say, why don’t I want to be off Instagram?
And I think that that presents an opportunity for God to speak to us to expose those vulnerable moments of if I’m not scrolling, what am I doing with myself? Is it going to expose the fact that I don’t have any business about myself? Is it going to leave me vulnerable to face the feelings that I’m willingly not working towards the things that I tell everybody that I’m passionate about and I’m willingly inviting distractions into my life so that I can continue to have the narrative of I can never, I have never, I will never complete because if you create the space for you to just Be and not be stimulated and not be on these devices 24 7, 365, you will get a better understanding of just how much time you have in the day and how much more of an opportunity you have to utilize that time strategically to get through the setback, strategically to get to the success.
Yes! That is deep! You’re so silly! I’ll let Lord pull that about you. You’re so silly. Pull it, Lord. Pull it. Pull it. Pull it. Pull it. Prophet says pull it. He says pull it down. Pull it down. Pull it down. Bless me! Pull it down. Pull it down. Just deep. Okay. I feel like we might do a whole episode of that later on, folks.
Okay. So, stay tuned. Maybe a deep dive? A deep dive! Bye! Okay, so we know what a detox is. Now, the importance of detox.
The importance of detoxing after a setback, I would say it’s especially crucial after experiencing the setback, right? Or adjusting to a new success. What it does, it allows us to process our emotions. We gain clarity. We refocus on our personal goals and we get to do that without the noise of social media because it can be very noisy.
Comparisons can happen. Jealousy can derive from being too heavily engrossed. In social media every single day for hours at a time. Social media, it, like anything, can be healthy. But when you need a detox, it is to the point where it’s no longer healthy, and it is impacting your life in a way that, in real life, you’re not getting sleep.
In real life, you’re not accomplishing any goals. You’re not nurturing the relationships that you have in real life, because you can’t. You can’t exist on these platforms that, like we learned the other day, if a particular glitch happens, the world stops in certain areas. So for the people who do spend 16, 18 hours online, I would love to hear what the hell did they do that day?
How did, how did you feel having to re engage in real time? Is, is time the only factor that you know that it’s time for a detox? Is there any other signs that, that can kind of wake that person up to like, Oh my goodness, I’ve been on this platform too long. I need a detox. I would say the awareness to know that you’ve been online too much is.
If when you come out of it, right, and you look at your reality and you are instantaneously depressed or you don’t find value in what you have right now, especially for the people who, if you’re struggling with consuming so much of everyone else’s wins. that you are not able to sit in a moment to find value in even your smallest win.
That means that you’re consuming too much of everyone else’s experience and you’re not really in a space or creating a space for you to value the seat that you’re in right now. Now y’all know if you know me, you know I love a good tip. I love a good hack. Because we have to have some practical ways of applying the things that we learn, right?
So here’s some practical tips for a successful social media detox. Steps to starting it. Here are some steps. Number one, set specific goals and time frames for your detox. Two, inform your followers and clients about your break. I don’t always think you got to announce it, but y’all get what I’m saying.
Three, find alternative activities to replace the social media time. Reading, hobbies, spending time with loved ones. Because alternatives to social media is something like exploring your interests. Try to pick up something new, like spending more time outside, connecting with friends. Again, in family, in person, connecting.
In person, do things with this time that you’ve carved out that you can’t through social media. Okay, so let’s do a little reflection and talk about some takeaways, right? So reflecting on my own detox journey, I realized how much clearer my mind felt, without the constant influx of social media. I found myself more present in the moment and way, way more focused on my personal goals and my growth as well.
So I want to encourage you all to consider taking a social media detox. Whether it’s for a few days or a few weeks, give yourself the gift of mental clarity and real life connection. You will be amazed at the positive changes. I’m trying to tell you. Highly, highly, highly suggested. Okay. All right. So today we talked about the immense pressure of social media and how taking a detox can benefit our mental health and overall wellbeing.
Remember, it’s crucial to recognize when it’s time to take a break and refocus on our personal goals. If you’ve ever struggled with social media pressure or taking a detox, I’d love to hear your stories, share how you’ve dealt with it and what’s helped you overcome those feelings. Let’s create a community of support and encouragement.
Let’s close with a quote that resonates with today’s topic. You don’t have to be perfect to be amazing. Thank you for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment and share this podcast with others who might benefit from it. Until next time, this is No Invite Necessary. Your journey, your hustle, your roots.