The Unplugged Challenge: An Issue

The Unplugged Challenge seemed like a good idea at first, but when I went to try it at my school, many problems came up that prevented it from being successful.

What is an Unplugged Challenge?

An Unplugged Challenge is an extended period of time where a person, or group of people, will go without social media. It is meant to be a time to reset and find a good balance between life online and life in the real world.

My Goal

So, after finding out about this challenge from one of my friends in my entrepreneurship class, I decided it would be my goal to try this. I wanted to test this with some of my friends and then try to get my whole high school to try this for the week before finals. But, even when it came to starting the tests, I ran into many issues.

The Problem

I ran into my first complication while trying to experiment with the second person I tested. I had previously asked one of my closer friends to just go a day without looking at her social media platforms, and then the next day surveyed her on what she found. She said that she got back into reading and actually decided to organize her room with all the time she had, so overall she found this a success. But, when I went on to asking my second friend to try this, she said she wouldn't even want to try. Even for just 24 hours! This is when I realized how bad of a problem this was. I assumed maybe it was just her, so I tried to find a couple more people. It took a while but I found two friends that did it to support me, not because they wanted to. Although I found people to unplug for 24 hours, I wanted to try a week. This was an impossible ask. Every response I got was a no. They said that was too long, they have to keep up with others' posts, and lots of other excuses came my way. If I couldn't get my close friends to try this challenge, how could I expect to get my whole high school to? So, my plan completely backfired, and I needed a new idea on how to explain this issue to my peers and get people to realize they were addicted.

In The End

After all of this, I decided not to do this challenge at my school because there was no way anyone would participate. No matter what incentive I gave, nobody was willing to go without scrolling. I needed a new approach. After thinking outside of the box and consulting with my school advisor I came up with an easier path to educate and engage my peers. My plan is to create tools for student led mental health clubs to use when discussing social media.