Lent is a time for your faith to flourish. To achieve this, many people give things up. I often coast through Lent by doing something easy, such as giving up chocolate or pop. This year, I gave up one of my most precious treasures: Twitter.

I can confidently say I spend at least 1/4 of my school day refreshing my Twitter feed or talking to people via direct messages. I am a huge advocate for the use of Twitter because I can easily stay updated on current events happening worldwide. I can get the most up- to-date information on the latest NFL free agency signing, political happenings, or the most recent album drops. However, I will be the first to say that I often spend too much time using it. I was curious to see how my daily life would be different without Twitter.

The first thing I noticed was that I had a lot more time in school to do work. I found myself doing work days in advance; this is unheard of for me. I was more attentive and participated more in class. In fact, there were days where I got every assignment done, and I did not know what to do with my extra time. I found myself shopping on Amazon and looking at CNN to pass the time. I even found myself reading the newspaper more often. I was more productive overall, and my test grades were positively affected.

The next thing I noticed was that I was using less data on my phone. In the past few months, I have had troubles with staying within my data limit. Without Twitter sucking up data with the latest meme, I used less data.

Finally, I was more social by turning of the social media. I not only started talking to more people, but I had more to talk about. The less messages I sent them throughout the day, the more I had to talk about with them face-to-face.

You’ve all heard this before, but take a break from social media for a bit. You will find that you don’t need to know what’s going on all the time. There are plenty of other methods to get information besides social media. Take a break; turn off Twitter.