When she lost two hours of her life to social media, she knew it was time to get away. She had been looking at something. Immediately after, she couldn't remember anything. She thought that she was winning the war on her attention on the photo sharing website. It was ironic that Biruk had returned to the photo and video-sharing platform after three years away. She wrote about the benefits of spending less time online in her website and newsletter. She wanted to reach people who might need assistance. She got sucked back in instead. It is the scariest part to me. It was back to scrolling and waiting.
Tom Holland said in August that he was taking a break from social media because they were too stimulating. He said that reading things about him online is bad for his mental health. Lizzo and Selena Gomez have already announced breaks.
One study said a week-long break was enough to have a positive effect. Researchers found that the symptoms of depression and anxiety had been reduced in a group that took a break from social media.
A longer period would have a bigger impact. The lecturer in health and exercise psychology at the University of Bath is trying to understand if taking a longer break has long-term benefits. A lot of people take a one-week break to reflect on how much they use social media and why. Was it just scrolling when they used it? Was it being used to connect with friends or family?
Some of the people were interviewed a year later. Some people stayed off social media. Some people went back to it and created rules for themselves. They might have deleted the apps from their phone or not used them in the morning.
Korkor Kanor, a public relations executive, was on social media and found it to be time consuming. She says she couldn't put her phone down. She would sometimes turn off the notifications, but people would message her, because she was using it to give out her phone number. During the Pandemic, Kanor found that it was so much to face on the social networking site. She felt that her silence was seen as some kind of compliance. I took myself out of that space completely. It is hard because you want to speak, but in a safe place with people that you know and trust, you can exchange ideas peacefully.
Kanor left social media for nine months. She realized that the scrolling would drain her energy and that she didn't realize it until she stopped using it. She said she was able to hold conversations with people and not be distracted during her break. I was more balanced in my emotions. She realised that her moods were affected by sad posts.
It took a lot of energy, it drained me, and I didn’t realise it until I stopped using it
Changes made her return to social media. She doesn't use social media as much as she used to. She plans to take a break from social media every month. She says she can't be on it often anymore. It becomes really over stimulating for me. I feel better when I am off, and then I want to see what is happening.
Sneha Morjaria had a social media break and used it to create new rules. She was advised by her therapist to stop using social media. She had used a lot of social networking sites. I would be at a dinner party and not paying attention. I was stressed out by it. You compare yourself to other people because they are on holiday. You wouldn't invite hundreds of people into your home, but that space in your head is your home, and you're inviting hundreds of people there as you scroll past. She says, "You can forget who you are as a person, what your opinions are, what your values are, if you don't know who you are." I didn't realize how bad it was until I stopped using it.
She took more than four months off and now uses social media with rules. Morjaria uses someone else to handle her business account and she only follows people she knows. I put a timer on my phone so I don't spend as much time on social media as I would like.
Dr Roberta Babb says that social media can be hard to use. There is a lot of information we have. There is a sense of being out of control because it is both controllable and uncontrollable. Even if you take a break, it is always going on. People worry that they won't find something so they keep looking. We are aware of the fact that things change so quickly because of the context we live in. It may not be the same world when you leave work.
When we compare ourselves to other people, as presented on social media, we hardly ever come off well
She says that by spending too much time on social media, users are exposing themselves to a lot of traumatic stuff. It can be traumatic for people to have a balance between good and not-so-good things, and that can lead to feelings of pain or rawness. We don't come off well when we compare ourselves with other people's lives on social media It's hard to hold that in mind when you're looking at an image. It makes any feelings of negative even worse. It can be damaging to people's confidence and self-esteem because it's so prevalent and pervasive. She believes that a break can help you connect with who you are, what's important to you, and give you more confidence in thinking you have a choice. What are you interested in learning? You don't feel like you're a passive recipient of all the information that's on the internet.
Some people think the break is permanent. After taking a year off from social media, Eddie returned for another year and then left. It was bad for my relationships and it also meant that there was no space in my life anymore. He said it was making him restless. I brought my phone out on the train. My phone would come out and I would start flicking through the garbage when there wasn't anything else.
He runs a digital marketing agency that uses social media and admits it is odd. I became deeply uncomfortable with what social media is, how it's targeting people, the kind of data that they're using in order to do that The users are the product, and you are being sold, and then sold to, in really full-on ways. He says that making sure that an ad gets in front of a demographically appropriate group has been pushed to its limits. The most egregious example of this is 'Relationship targeting', where your phone identifies which people you spend the most time with, and so those people start getting ads appropriate for you, so that they strike up a conversation with you about it.
Is it hypocritical to work in social media if you don't think it's good? I don't think it's good for me I don't lecture people because I don't know what they're like. I try not to fill my life with too much stimulation. I wouldn't offer it if I had a big moral issue with it. I still have some questions about it. I believe that regulation will come in over time.
Every day, she used social media, mainly Facebook andInstagram. It was the first thing I looked at in the morning when I woke up. If she woke up in the middle of the night, she'd sneak a peek. It was a lot of work.
She thought about social media a lot and felt guilty for not being on it. She remembered a time when alcohol had become a problem in her life. She says it was starting to feel like she was drinking. He decided to do seven days in February. She didn't pick up her phone until she remembered she had deleted the apps, but she soon began to feel better. She didn't return.
People who had taken a social media cleanse were surveyed. The participants took a break on average three times and more than half took a cleanse lasting up to a week. David Robertson is a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde and one of the authors of the study.
Some people said they went back on because they couldn’t find an alternative activity to distract them
Are we close to a point where people are starting to use social media less frequently? The indication that we got from the study was that. The excessive use of social media was more of a self-regulating behavior. People took breaks when they thought they were overusing it. They were aware of the positive benefits to their lives. If they took a break from social media, those things would improve.
The study found that people went back to social media because they were afraid of missing out. They were concerned that friends may not appreciate that they hadn't liked or commented on posts, or that they were missing important information about social groups. He says that many went back to the same level of usage as before, which again speaks to the idea of self-regulation.
One of the concerns that came up in the study was the fear of missing out on calls and texts. Distraction techniques can be helpful. One of the reasons people went back on social media was because they couldn't find a distraction. Try to see people in real life instead of taking a cleanse.
It would take 30 days to lose the chance to reactivate her account on a daily basis if she left the social network. She says that on the 30th day, her account was gone and there was no way to get it back. Three years have passed. She said, "I get to experience myself as is, without all the noise, without other people's lives constantly in my face, but also I don't try to constantly put myself in other people's faces" It's like a private existence for me.
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