Is TikTok a Hobby?

Is tiktok your most practiced hobby? It was mine. In a spirit of vulnerability, I'll tell you that my screen time was averaging 4 hours a day. Okay, maybe even 5 some weeks. I'm very embarrassed by that but I also think it's more of a norm than we're willing to admit.

I think that for our generation, Tiktok is all encompassing. It can be a great place. It's where you find inspiration and create. It's where people hear news and learn answers to questions they hadn't even thought of. It's a place to learn recipes and find book recommendations. It doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way. But every week when I would get my screen time report I felt my gut clench. I can make excuses about learning and creating all I want, but seeing that I was spending 4 hours a day on my phone was a wake up call that I wasn't spending enough time in my real life.

How many times a week or even a day do you find yourself thinking, "I just don't have the time for that." Most of us tend to feel that way. It's exhausting to think about adding one more thing to our life! We're too busy for all the extra. Too busy for all of the things that actually matter. The truth is, we have the time, we just don't even know where it went because we accidentally wasted it away. I've learned that when I seek my phone as a source of "unwinding" or "relaxing" I don't feel better, and when I refill my cup in real ways like baking, reading, meeting up with a friend, or reading my Bible, I walk away feeling accomplished, satisfied, encouraged, or fulfilled. So, I deleted my TikTok cold turkey seven months ago and I have not missed it once.

Like with any other decision, first, I made a pros and cons list. I really thought about why I use tiktok, why I make videos on there, and why I would not want to do either of those things anymore. I used tiktok for multiple reasons. I made videos as a creative outlet. I made videos to capture a moment and bring life back to a memory. I made videos to offer advice or inspiration. I even made daily vlogs because I felt like it was the easiest way for people back home to still feel connected to me. I scrolled tiktok as a "mental break" after a long day as an introvert living in an extrovert's world. An escape. A distraction.

(This applies to all types of things- TikTok, Reels, Video Games, etc, for me I just spent the most time on TikTok.)

I thought about what my life goal is. What my "why statement" is. Who I want to be and how I will become her. Everyone has a goal that they work towards. For some it may be becoming a doctor or going to the Olympics or traveling a lot. For me it's being a good mom. It always has been and I'm not embarrassed about that. I started putting the two thoughts together and deciding if spending so much time on my phone is going to effect my end goal of being a good mother one day. I know at this point your thinking "girl please, it is not that serious." But I actually think it is.

I don't want my future kids to be obsessed with having screen time. Kids soak in everything they see. I don't want to be so eager to get back to my phone's world, that I'm sitting my kids down in front of the tv so I can have 15 minutes to scroll in peace and dissociate. I don't want scrolling to be such a habit that my kids are curious about my phone and they want to play on it too. I don't ever want to think it's okay to share overly personal things about my children or marriage on the internet. Even though part of me really was making videos as a creative outlet, I can think of five other hobbies that I'd rather teach and share with my future family. So I decided that if I didn't stop using tiktok as my escape or my "me time" then I wouldn't be the mom that I one day want to be. The same week I made this decision, I felt like I got some confirmation that I was right. I saw an article about a big Youtuber I used to follow, that left her kids in a park while she went into the woods to be on her phone. She left her handicapped toddler on a blanket right next to the street and her other toddler was left alone so long that he figured out how to climb onto the roof of their minivan. A few days later I was at the mall and I saw a mom standing right next to her son that was on one of the stationary play cars. She was leaning right against it, but was so enthralled by her phone that she didn't even realize that her son had climbed on top of the toy car that was her height. I watched until she noticed and when she looked up she got mad at him and he was the one who got in trouble.

I know these both sound like pretty extreme examples but I truly do believe that this is something that will get so much worse and more prevalent as my generation becomes parents. And I refuse to be a part of it.

It's really not that easy though. Is it? You can't scroll on your phone for four hours a day and then quit cold turkey. It's an addiction like anything else. Tiktok is all encompassing. Remember? It not only entices you to keep scrolling for one more video and one more video and one more video, but it also literally shortens your attention span. It makes your fingers itch to scroll and your mind bored after one page of even a captivating book.

This is actually kind of the reason I started sourdough. I figured I needed a time consuming hobby to focus on and that sourdough would be the perfect answer. Now it's my favorite creative outlet and it brings me a lot of satisfaction and accomplishment!

I had found myself thinking in tiktok. Thinking "Oh I wish I would've filmed that," "Oh I want to make a video saying this," "It would be more bearable to do my chores if I made a satisfying Sunday Reset video."

To help ease myself off of it, I made another list where I wrote down when I find myself scrolling (any social media not just tiktok), what I want to do more of, and then I matched times to hobbies. It looked a little like this:

I find myself scrolling when I wake up, waiting in a line, on the couch after work to decompress and be brain dead for a second, and before bed.

Some things I want to do more of are reading my Bible, praying, embroidery, reading books, moving my body, sitting outside, and writing.

So when I wake up I will read my bible and pray. If I'm waiting in a line I'll read a book that I thought ahead to bring with me. After work I'll go to the gym then sit outside for a little. Before bed I'll read a book or embroider or pray. Honestly, all of last year I was obsessed with reading Amish novels. They made me crave a simple, modest, satisfied life.

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I was raised by a really good mom. Her reading all the time fostered my reading all the time. Her interest in crocheting and ability to sew inspired my interest in yarn and string hobbies. Her willingness to let us play in the mud all day or climb the trees until we had 12 bruises on each leg is exactly what I want my kids to spend their summer days doing. I'm not a mom yet, and I don't know when that will be the phase of life I'm entering, but I do know that good moms work really hard at it. It doesn't just happen over night. Waiting until I have a newborn to break a social media addiction and regrow my attention span would be way more work and very overwhelming. If I want to be the mom who runs to her Bible to get filled back up, if I want my children to witness me worshipping God every single day, see me serving in church, watch me carry the Fruits of the Spirit instead of being quick to anger and impatience, I better do the hard work now!

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One Sunday after I started this journey, our sermon at church was on Ruth. She had to turn her back on Moab to walk towards Jerusalem. This one decision of loyalty that she made changed not just her life but the course of history. (Jesus is a descendant of her.) Our Pastor asked "what do you need to turn your back on to walk towards a better life?" And as silly as it sounds, social media popped into my head.

I believe in asking God to help us with every small thing.

I don’t think it is dumb to ask God to help you wake up on time or give you the energy to clean your house. I don’t think it’s stupid to come to Him about our mundane every day life- in fact, I believe that’s exactly what He desires so deeply.

I believe in asking Him to make you annoyed by the repetitive content you see, to give you a distaste for trying to capture every moment throughout your day. I believe that we can ask Him to strengthen our desire for a more simple and traditional life, and He will. And slowly we’ll get “the ick” for the same trends and videos we see all over that we once wanted to participate in.

I do stuff like this all the time. I'll ask God for help for the silliest things. I did for this and I got so sick of what I was seeing- thinking about how weird it is to really see inside these mom's houses and their kids lives. It can be beautiful and encouraging, but even then, it's intrusive at best.

So while I'm not a mom yet, I know that these are all habits that are formed and nurtured. Now is the time to water the person I want to grow into.

Please hear me when I say that this is not a Better Than Thou post. I mean that. I haven't looked back since I deleted TikTok off of my phone, but that doesn't mean I don't unwind without a couple reels before bed most nights. I'm not perfect. No one is. And like I said, this was a huge personal conviction with several confirmations for me. So if this makes you feel some type of way, there might be some introspection to be done, OR maybe I just accidentally wrote this in an off-putting way. The bottom line is I want my life to honor God. Nothing that I said here is a commandment or a rule in the Bible. My desire to lessen my social media use is a personal conviction. It honestly doesn't make anyone, including me, a bad person to be a little addicted to social media. But I do want to encourage you to reflect a little! To consider what you spend most of your day doing, and how that compares to how much time you give God. Maybe it is social media, or reality tv, or video games, or sports, or you're enthralled by these new age romance books that are nothing short of written porn.

Let's decide together to turn our back on it and walk towards a more fulfilling and simple life.

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"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." Colossians 3:1-4

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My prayer this year is to seek God and the body of Christ as my main way to become reenergized. I pray to be satisfied with a simple life. I pray the same for you.

I love you so much. I am glad you found yourself here and I pray that if this resonates with you in any way, that you will tune in to that nudging you feel and have the courage to ask God to help you. If you have any questions, comments, or prayer requests you can head over to my "about me" page, scroll down, and send me a message!

Love ya! Bye!