What my social media detox taught me.

1. I really DO have self-restraint!
2. I have a profound need to feel connected. When I feel disconnected, I cannot relax.
3. In theory, Google+ is a better idea.                                                                                                 a. The changes facebook made are good.    
4. There were only a few people I really missed "seeing" while on my vacation. 
5. I missed seeing the pictures everyone posts way more than I had expected. 
6. My children rely on my online presence to keep themselves connected.
7. Once a person uses facebook for communicating, stopping is impossible. I had to check my facebook messages several times over the month (but I did not check a single status update EVER!).
8. Unless it is being used for promotional purposes, twitter is useless.
9. I did not really start to miss facebook until I had been away for about three weeks. I will remind myself of this if I ever start feeling like I "need" to check it 27 times per day.
10. I don't need to be friends (in real life or online) with everyone I have ever met.
11. The people who really needed to found a way of contacting me during my break. I was only gone for a month, so I imagine that if I left forever, a couple of other people might call me eventually....
12. I have very complicated feelings about my own motherhood, parenthood and stay-at-home-motherhood specifically with or without reading other people's (artificial or sincere) status updates. The feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, guilt and general confusion are still there.
13. The feelings competition, however, are gone. My detox did fix that. I guess if I do not know what 306 people are doing, I cannot compete with them in my head.
14. When I left, I had 305 friends and now I have 306. How did that happen?
15. I did NOT MISS the political or religion-based statements from facebook ONE TEENY TINY LITTLE BIT. If I never learn about how ANY of my facebook friends feel about "The Issues," it would be TOO SOON.

Conclusion:  I learned a lot about myself and how I can use social media so it does not consume me the way it used to. Social media is useful and fun, but addicting. Overconsumption is not healthy, and I am glad I took a break. I will probably do it again.