I was packing my backpack when I finally decided to leave the headphones at home and to delete all my social media apps before starting my journey. The one I wanted for myself, my brain, my creativity and my social skills. I had enough, doing a digital detox was a way to take back control of my thoughts, thinking patterns, and actions with the aim of setting myself and my creativity free.

I’m definitely not here to tell you to throw your phone out of the window and quit the digital world - forever. Nor am I someone that follows health and wellness trends pretending to know everything about the topic. I’m just a young designer who was addicted to social media for a while and I still am.

However, a while ago, I realised that this addiction was impacting my productivity at work and on my personal projects. Social media became a hobby that was feeding my laziness more and more in my spare time. The hours spent on my phone could be used for more interesting professional projects or personal improvement. I put things off because this addiction was absorbing too much of my time. So, I decided to break free from it.

Spoiler alert - it’s definitely not easy to stop. I had wanted to do this digital detox for a few months but never felt totally ready for it. I let the idea grow in my mind and when it was time for my solo trip to Finland, it felt like the perfect and obvious time to try it. I chose to put my energy into other things than social media or digital entertainment. “Choisir, c’est renoncer” - to choose is to give up, as the famous French writer André Gide said, emphasising the sacrifice that comes with making decisions.

When I chose to cut out social media and leave my headphones at home for a 10-day trip around Finland, I renounced my daily dose of dopamine. I renounced having news from my friends. Along with news from strangers on Instagram that I actually don’t care to hear from. I said no to being informed about what is going on in the world and no to letting my creative inspiration depend on the digital world. I refused to listen to my favourite podcasts the first day they were released on Spotify. Instead, I chose to train my brain.

I wanted to reclaim my patience, my ability to concentrate and be attentive for more than 30 minutes, my good sleep, my social skills, the ability to be present, appreciating the beauty, the weird, the unexpected, the ugly, and the authenticity of the people and places around me, here, now. I chose the real reality and not the distorted one. I said yes to talking to people and connecting with them. I decided to appreciate every detail around me and focus on the concrete and tangible.

So, by choosing, I renounced, but renouncing doesn’t mean missing out forever, and there’s nothing to feel guilty about being offline. The friends who proposed to hang out when I was gone, I met with when I was back. All the content I used to consume, I saw it when I was back, or not, and that is really not a big deal. A digital detox shows you that social media can be everything but fundamental for your life and that you can perfectly live without it.

For me, during my trip, I found meaning in finding which path I wanted to take in the middle of the Finnish Taïga or what I wanted to cook for dinner, or observing the architecture of this little house lost in the middle of nowhere. Nothing about work, or what happened last week or what will happen next week, just the present and the simple. It felt like clearing up the brain. In fact, without all that superfluous information from social media, there is way more space(and time!) for creativity and interesting thoughts about yourself. What would you like to fix? What did you realise? What makes you feel fulfilled or uncomfortable? What are your projects in the future? Your eyes are not overstimulated by screens or the effervescence of the city, so it helps the brain to focus on things we don’t have time to think about in our busy daily routine.
 

Doing this digital detox allowed me to meet and talk to more than 20 people during this 10-day trip. Even if it was just a little chat, I remember the name and the face of all of them. I know how important it is to be comfortable talking to people, being open, and starting conversations in the creative industry. It has always been something I worked on during my travels, and it has never been something that came naturally to me. So leaving myself no other option than facing the present and the people around me, rather than hiding behind a screen really made a difference.

Talking to strangers is not such an easy thing to do nowadays (crazy huh?). There are other things to train your brain like reading, writing, observing people, or doing sports. Those activities push you to live in the moment and not be drawn by an infinite amount of useless data. You’ll see your concentration skills get better and also your stress levels going down, mentioning of course just a few benefits.

It is definitely easier to switch off social media when travelling. There is a lot to discover, so it doesn’t feel like missing it that much. Back in Copenhagen, I downloaded Social Media again and went back to my routine before the trip. I am still addicted, but way less than before and I have drawn lessons from this experience. I can now walk around the city without headphones, I can spend a day without checking Instagram. But I can still feel the deep-rooted habit of pulling the phone out of my pocket when I am waiting for the metro alone or for a friend in a café to not feel the social pressure of “being alone”.

I could really see advantages in being off social media. As a creative, it also means missing out on so many great work inspirations on the internet, but you’ll find not more, but better around you. You’ll also have a better understanding of people’s behaviours, needs, and so considerably improve your social and empathy skills. Those are so useful when working in a team, with clients, and with any person you’ll find on your way in life.