Hello and welcome to the next installment of my blog series on personal health. As it is suggested by the title, today I will be diving into what actually happens to us when we stop using social media. Social media, as a whole, offers a variety of ways to connect with the world around us. It allows us to broadcast our talents and passion to the world around us, as well as helping us grow life-long friends. There are definitely aspects of social media that may lead to self-improvement, but recently it has become more common for social media to begin to take over our lives. It is estimated that 210 million people suffer from social media and internet addictions worldwide. If we give social media for a day, week, month, or even a year, scientists and researchers say that we will experience some pretty amazing things.
One of the first benefits you might notice after giving up social media is the genuine connections you will make with other people while you are off your phone. Without social media, we are forced to make eye contact instead of passing time with an illuminated screen, mindlessly scrolling through online memes or random Facebook posts from two weeks ago. Secondly, you will notice a strong increase in productivity. Although checking social media to like a post or to view a status only takes a couple of seconds, it takes far more time to refocus on what we were previously doing and additionally disrupts our chain of thought. Checking your phone again and again, time after time, essentially leads you to multitask your life as you balance reality with an online perceived reality. Multitasking your life is certainly no proper way to live as it definitely drains productivity and quality of life.
What else?
Almost everybody at some point in their life has encountered some sort of difficulty with falling asleep and waking up. If I told you that quitting social media would get rid of all of these problems, you probably wouldn’t believe me. That is fair. And true. Quitting social media will not make your life perfect, but recent research has identified a strong disruption in the body’s natural circadian rhythm after prolonged exposure to blue light. While we are busy checking social media we are actually throwing off our body’s natural internal clock, therefore making it much more difficult to wake up and fall asleep. Another important positive consequence of ditching social media to cover is how much more confident you will feel in life. On social media, people typically post the most glamorous moments of their life, showcasing their latest vacation to the beach or fabulous wedding. With all these highlights online, it becomes very easy to compare ourselves to these brilliant lives these people live online. The truth is we do not actually know what is going on with these people’s lives. We only see the highlights but never the lows. Most people online will rarely post very unattractive or unflattering photos of themselves. By getting rid of social media, we are getting rid of so many potential unrealistic lives to compare ourselves to, and in return we will feel happier about ourselves and the lives we live.
In conclusion, there are a lot of benefits that you may quickly observe from giving up social media. Social media has many practical and important uses that help us connect with the world around us but if you are somebody who has noticed that social media has taken up a lot of your time, I strongly suggest limiting your usage or completely expelling it from your life for even a short period of time. Even if you only give up social media for a week, or even a day, I think you will learn a lot about yourself and definitely become more conscious, so why not just give it a try. Thanks a bunch for tuning into my blog, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please drop a message down below. Thanks again, and I will hopefully see you in the next installment of my blog.
Sources:
Madormo, Carrie. “What Really Happens to Your Body When You Give up Social Media.” TheList.com, The List, 6 July 2017, https://www.thelist.com/73673/really-happens-body-give-social-media/.
https://www.bustle.com/p/giving-up-social-media-for-a-month-can-have-these-5-benefits-according-to-psychologists-18224866
I really resonated with this blog! I deactivated my Instagram account in April, and I’ve definitely seen these benefits in my life. For me, I found myself mindlessly scrolling through my Explore page for hours or stalking people for absolutely no reason. At some point, I realized that the app was causing me more harm than good. One worry that I had was that I wouldn’t be able to be as up to date with my friends lives and maybe we wouldn’t be as close, but it’s actually become the opposite. Since I’ve been off Instagram, I’ve been able to have more genuine conversation with people and learn about their lives from them personally, instead of by seeing a post. I still have other social medias, like Snapchat, but I don’t find myself using it a lot anyways, but would delete it if I felt like it was taking over my life. I really liked the points and research that you brought up, and hope that others take this into consideration!
Social media is real pain, isn’t it. Not just social media but technology in general. Just one big distraction waiting to happen. I like how you talked about what social media is doing to our bodies- and well, our mental health- and how we’re basically ruining our minds and health. Recently, with the amount of work, sports and school that’s come across my life, I find myself more and more away from my phone and more focusing on things around me. I remember going out for dinner one night and I saw this couple that was sitting on their phones: not talking to each other or attempting to make conversation. This made me so sad because this is what our society has come to. Not even talking to each other in person when that’s the best way to connect and become personal with someone (which you mentioned in your blog as well). Being off of social media has really helped me become more focused on my homework and allow me to finish it early so I can relax and watch some Netflix. Social media is so detrimental, yet we can’t really see past it because we’re so hooked to it. I liked how you provided solutions to the social media problem, and I hope more people take those problems of social media into account. Great blog!!
Hi Zach,
Loved your post and consistent theme of personal health. I’ve definitely seen the impact of social media on my productivity. Specifically with YouTube and Instagram, it’s easy to find myself lost in the recommended videos or explore page after initially only intending to spend 5 minutes on the platform. It also doesn’t help that these tech companies specifically design their platforms to keep users addicted with recommendation algorithms and cleverly designed user interfaces. While these corporations profit off the increased revenue generated by your additional time on the platform, you see your time slowly drain away. In response, I’ve uninstalled Instagram from my phone. I still occasionally check ig on my computer, but I’ve definitely recaptured some of the time I’ve lost while scrolling through my feed.
This is a really great topic to talk about. Everything on your blog seems to connect with sleep in some way, doesn’t it? I also do many things you say not to do on your blog so maybe that’s why my sleep schedule is so terrible. Anyways, I actually did quit social media earlier this year for literally about six months. It was probably the most content I have ever been. Social media sucks. It’s awful, it’s addicting, and it makes us feel bad about ourselves. I went through a sort of withdrawal the first few weeks after I deleted it, but after that point I was happy. I didn’t miss it. The only thing I was still wanting was the humorous comments or posts on Instagram, but I found those elsewhere. But I started feeling insanely out of the loop. Everyone was making references that I didn’t get and as much as I tried to let it brush past me, it bothered me. I wanted to be included. Nonetheless, I continued on without social media. But then I started checked Instagram. Not often, maybe once every few weeks just to like a friend’s post, see if I had any messages or follow requests. But then over the summer I completely fell apart. I redownloaded Instagram, and Snapchat soon followed. I hate social media but without it I feel like an outsider, so I keep it anyways. I wish it wasn’t such a big part of our lives, but sadly it is. While I love the though and experience of giving social media up, it just isn’t very realistic at this point in time and I feel like almost everyone will come back to it eventually.