I awoke this morning excited to launch the app store. It had been a full month since the enticing icons of the most popular social media platforms had begged me to click on them. Soon those bright yellow, blue, or even rainbow-styled icons would once again be within my grasp. On the last day of April I deleted any and all social media from my phone including Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. I wanted to see if life was different without these things, and if it was, then it would be time to evaluate if there’s something that needs tweaking.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with social media, in fact I kind of love it. I’ve not only kept up with folks I care about, but I’ve made some true friends through Facebook and Instagram and wouldn’t trade that for anything. I did, however, want to get away from it for a while just to make sure it was under control and that I wasn’t really relying on it for anything more than entertainment and valuable relationships. What I found was unexpected.

Early May was odd. I realized that I was reaching for my phone pretty much any time there was a quiet moment. Letting the dogs out back and standing on the porch, a few dead minutes between meetings at work, or even standing in line at a restaurant were apparently all times I felt it necessary to click some buttons and scroll through pictures of whiskey or long narratives written by someone I haven’t seen in 15 years.

As soon as I deleted those apps my daily screen time dropped by about half. While I wasn’t using my phone in those quiet moments I mentioned, they actually accounted for a fairly small slice of the social media time spent pie chart. The evenings where Kate and I were just relaxing on the couch and watching TV was really prime time for mindless phone-staring. This made me feel a bit better as one of the questions I had was “will I be more productive without social media?” and the answer was pretty much no as the bulk of the time spent on the apps were not getting in the way of otherwise productive time, but rather complementing down time.

With that question answered the next goal was to figure out what I really missed about these platforms. In other words, was I actually getting anything out of them? I had a theory that, for me at least, social media acts like a FOMO machine, wherein I see photos of new whiskeys, beers, restaurants, etc. and I need to have them. I figured a dark month should break that, and it did. Mission accomplished.

Going into May I predicted I would miss seeing updates more than I would miss posting about stuff. This ended up being completely incorrect. I quickly got used to not seeing random comments or photos from friends or strangers I follow, but if I was doing something fun I found myself really wanting to share it. That sounds very self-centered, and maybe it is, but I enjoy it. Over the years I’ve felt like Barrels and Mash is less about me sharing what I’m doing and more about trying to spread the love regarding things I like. Helping restaurants, breweries, or whatever get some more publicity in whatever small way I can is incredibly fun and I missed it.

While missing comments and posts from friends wasn’t a huge issue as I was still keeping up with those close to me via text and phone calls, it became clear very early on that I rely on social media for valuable information way more than I realized. One of the apps included in this experiment was Reddit. If you asked me in April what I got out of it I probably would have focused on gifs, or posts on niche topics purely read for mindless entertainment. Now I’m realizing that the vast majority of current events or other information I care about is coming from that platform. I tried to use Apple News to stay caught up, but it was full of Game of Thrones theories, links to Buzzfeed articles, and sleazy entertainment news and was actually more mindless that the platforms I had given up.

There were a few other inconveniences as well including not being able to track new beers I tried (Untapped), or look up candidate experience when I was interviewing someone at work (LinkedIn). I also couldn’t get cute pics of my wife or my dogs (Snapchat) which always bring me small moments of delight throughout the day.

As I logged back into these services this morning I grew tired of them quickly. While I’m sure that will fade and I’ll be full blast liking and commenting in no time, I’m guessing I’ll be spending less time overall on the parts of these apps that I didn’t miss and focusing on the real value I find in them. I missed the funny comments from Facebook beer and whiskey groups, informative articles from Reddit, Instagram and Snapchat stories from friends, and the nice reminders from Snapchat that I have a pretty damn good life with a kick ass wife and some adorable puppies.

If you’ve ever tried something like this, or have any other ideas on fun experiments to do, drop a comment as I would love to hear from you.