One of the major highlights from Facebook’s recent 6-hour long, unprecedented outage includes the revelation that, while many huffed and puffed, others enjoyed the unannounced break from monotonous jumbling between various social media platforms, having an unexpected but yet welcome ‘social media detox’ session, albeit brief.
“Social Media Detoxification (Detox) is the term used to describe voluntary attempts at reducing or stopping social media use to improve wellbeing,” says a paper Characteristics of social media ‘detoxification’ in university students published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the United States’ National Institutes of Health.
Far away from the United States, in New Delhi, the extent of social media dependence became evident yet again recently when 23-year-old Revtaa Bhardwaj’s friends and family members frantically began reaching out to her through phone calls when she suddenly disappeared from all social media platforms overnight, a year ago. Quitting social media cold turkey, Bhardwaj, a biotechnology engineer is one of the many adults choosing to periodically quit social media, mainly to improving their mental health.
“After spending more than 5 hours each day on social media for years, I started to feel stagnant, watching and reading the same type of audio/video content. One night, I quit all my social media and did not log back again for the next three months,” Bhardwaj tells Media India Group.
She says that she felt a renewed sense of self and more physically connected to the world after quitting social media.
“I join back social media every few months when I feel like joining the virtual world and then quit as soon as I start to see stagnancy symptoms,” she adds.Social media and mental health
Earlier this month, Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen who previously worked as a product manager on the civic integrity team at Facebook alleged that the social media giant was aware of the detrimental impact that it was having over teens.
According to report by The Wall Street Journal, an American business daily, 32 pc of teenage girls surveyed said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.
“There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. Yet, Facebook over and over again chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money,” she revealed.
While Haugen specifically called out Facebook for its negative impacts, many studies have lately found that using social media platforms can have a detrimental effect on the psychological health of its users.
A research paper, Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review, published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science notes that teens who use social media are more likely to experience depression, with 70 pc of subjects reporting an increase in depressive symptoms.
Detoxifying the mind from social media scenes
Vashnavi Chauhan, a final year Masters in Psychology student from Gurgaon advocates social media detox and says the practice of social media detox is definitely gaining prevalence among the users.
“It helps to break the chain of constant, mindless scrolling that often brings about anxiety due to feelings of inferiority, the fear of missing out, toxic competitiveness and many more such sentiments,” Chauhan tells Media India Group.
She says that taking regular breaks from social media can actually reduce the control that social media exerts over mind and bodies.
“Not being on social media for a month really opened my eyes to the feelings and motivations I have while using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Immediately, after my first 30-day social media detox, I felt a sense of freedom. To me, that’s a huge takeaway. It literally felt like ripping shackles off my mind and body,” writes Jason Zook, founder of an American advertising company.
A recent report by research firm App Annie estimates that Indians spent 4.8 hours each day on mobile apps in the September-ended quarter.
“The numbers reveal the ‘mindshare’ dominance of the smartphone among the world’s consumers – especially those in developing countries,” App Annie said in a blog.