Taking Part in Scroll Free September

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The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) launched an initiative called Scroll Free September. The aim was to encourage people to step away from social media for a month in an effort to improve mental health and well being.

The Challenge

Scroll Free September ran for the whole month – the intention was to encourage people to stop or at least cut down their use of (personal) social media accounts on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

There were a number of ways to take part:

Cold Turkey

Give up all personal social media accounts for 30 days.

Social Butterfly

Take a break from social media at all social events.

Night Owl

Take a break from social media every evening, after 6pm.

Busy Bee

Improve productivity – Take a break from personal social media accounts during school or work.

Sleeping Dog

Give up social media in the bedroom and improve your sleep.

How I Took Part

I decided to grab the bull by the horns and go cold turkey. However all of my social media accounts are connected to my blog I also made the decision to take a 30 day break from the blog.

Almost all tips and advice you read about building a blog, gaining a readership and increasing a social media following state that in order to do these things you must post regularly and consistently. This is fine advice, so I imagine many people would find it strange that anyone would suddenly take a break.

Why I Took Part

I wanted to test my dependency on social media – I’ve had some form of social media presence since 2007 but to be honest I’ve never felt massively dependent on it. I have always been more comfortable in my own company so the notion of building a large following has always seemed a little strange.

I just wanted a break – I work full time as well as blogging on the side, so sometimes it can be exhausting trying to manage everything: work, blogging, social media, travel, photography, eating and even sleeping.

I was taking a trip – I was heading to Guernsey for a week and even though I had content planned I didn’t really want to be thinking about posting blog posts or social media content whilst away.

The Result

Blogging and social media go hand-in-hand, however I never felt particularly obsessed with the idea of posting and self-promotion, in some ways I am happy with this – I don’t feel like I have an unhealthy dependency with gaining followers. Scroll Free September has given me the chance to rethink how and why I use social media, something I look forward to investigating further.

In terms of analytics the number of people who visit this blog did drop (as expected) but what was a surprise was that I only lost 9 followers across all of my social media accounts.

It didn’t help that I was ill – This was not planned but not having to think about blog posts, Instagram posts or Twitter chats whilst suffering with a horrible cold was a relief.

The best thing about taking a significant break was that it gave me the opportunity to step back, re-evaluate and think about the direction I want to take the blog.

Did you take part in Scroll Free September?

Have you ever taken an extended break from blogging or social media?

Let me know in the comments.