The Selfie Social Media Cleanse

I would like to start off this post by saying that I, Laura, am a social media addict. My parents have always loved to tease me about how I'm not able to survive without my phone or social media, and for the first time I saw that they might be right. In honor of the new ABC comedy, Selfie, I was challenged to take a social media cleanse. There were four different categories and I qualified as a "mobile maniac." What that means is that my phone and I are attached to the hip and if I don't have it with me well... Then I get a little anxious. In this blog post I will be telling you about my social media cleanse and also a little bit about Selfie, a show about a young woman who loves social media even more than I do.


As part of my social media cleanse I had to challenge myself to go 24 hours without using my phone. That meant no texting my boyfriend, no tweeting about what my dog is doing, no Instagraming my meal, and definitely no phone in my hand. I thought this challenge was going to be an easy one for me, I really did. I texted my boyfriend telling him that I would be taking the challenge the night before and I thought "well it's going to be smooth sailing from here." Wrong.

On the day of the cleanse I went up to Los Angeles with my parents to pick up my brother from LAX. I assumed that having an activity such as that would distract me from being on my phone but it only gave me a little bit of anxiety. You have my dad who has two phones on him at all times, my mom who is now barely understanding how to use her iPhone, and then you had me staring outside the window at the southbound traffic.

During the whole day without my phone I found myself very anxious, bored, and definitely irritated much to my parents’ dismay. The reason why I didn't have an easy day wasn't because I couldn't check my Instagram feed or Facebook- it was because I wasn't physically holding my phone. Mind blown, right? For the whole day I did not know what to do with myself, let alone with my hands. I resorted to playing around with my rings instead of making eye contact with my parents and brother. I then realized that I use my phone to do a lot more than just sharing my life with the world. My phone is basically my escape when I'm bored and my friend when I want to tune out my surroundings, which is something that Miss Eliza Dooley and I have very much in common.

The new ABC comedy, Selfie, centers around a young woman who is obsessed with everything that is social media. Karen Gillan, who you might recognize from a certain TV show that a lot of people on Tumblr are obsessed with (*cough cough* Doctor Who) plays the Eliza Dooley. The series follows Eliza's life after she realizes that having all those likes and followers online doesn't really mean that you have true friends in real life. Sounds like a pretty depressing realization, right? Well as you can guess Eliza isn't necessarily respected by her peers and she wants to change all of that. Her solution? Have someone "re-brand" her into a more respected and charismatic young woman. That someone is a marketing guru Henry Higgs who is played by John Cho.

If the plot sounds a little like the classic movie My Fair Lady, well you're sort of right. Selfie is much like that but it's set in a world that you and I are very familiar with. I saw the pilot and found the show extremely charming and relatable. You would think that Eliza would be this very narcissistic and irritating person, but she really isn't. I found myself rooting for her to start enjoying life outside of Twitter feeds and Instagram notifications. I'm looking forward to seeing how her character grows throughout the series and I think I can learn a thing or two about enjoying life outside of social media by watching this show.

If you're interested in watching Selfie, well it premieres tomorrow night at 8PM/7PM Central on ABC. Now if you're a social media or phone addict like myself, I encourage you to take a day off. Yes, I'm challenging you to disconnect from the world even if it's for one day. The goal is to start living in the moment and maybe you'll have a life changing realization like Eliza did, or strange one like I did.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by ABC through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about ABC Selfie, all opinions are my own.