Whether you want to accept it or not, the use of social media is continuously rising and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. When I was younger, I was sitting in my room tinkering with Legos and reading comic books. Kids of that same age today are watching YouTube, tweeting, or scrolling through photos and videos on Instagram.

The other day, I went to the settings on my phone and took a look at my average screen time. Every day, I was on my phone for an average of 10 hours, nearly half of the day.

A large part of the reason this time was so high is because of my use of Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. So, in an effort to reduce my amount of screen time, I chose to log out of all of my social media accounts for a week. I wanted to see if the lower amount of screen time would result in an increased amount of productivity.

At first, there were many instances where I was fighting the urge to re-download the apps. This urge lasted for the first couple days of this experiment.

Finally, though, after those first couple of days, I didn’t even acknowledge that I was without social media. It just simply wasn’t there, and I didn’t need it to be. I was able to keep myself busy with exercise, sports articles, and other things such as scholarship and college applications.

This experiment is not uncommon. It has been done thousands of times by thousands of people. I thought it was a bit pointless until I was able to give it a try for myself. And once I got past the fighting urges to get my apps back, the feelings was freeing and very rewarding.

If you ever find yourself spending an excessive amount of time on your phone, or on social media in particular, I would highly recommend logging out for a week and seeing what benefits it can offer you.