Is your teenager in need of help?
According to data from 2024, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 2 hours and 23 minutes per day. Indeed, the amount of time we spend on social media is growing steadily. Social media has become so connected with real life that it can be almost hard to imagine our real lives without it and all of the cultural references, language, and experiences we share through it. But what would happen if we stopped? How would it affect our lives?
To find out, click through this gallery.
As a lot of our work and productivity is interrupted by checking our messages or even just taking a break to scroll our news feed, we would likely find ourselves a lot more productive without it.
Joanne Cantor, professor emerita of communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says: “When we stop ourselves to check social media, again and again, it becomes another form of multitasking, and multitasking makes whatever you do take longer, and you do it in an inferior way.”
The American Psychological Association estimates that multitasking, the kind of multitasking caused by jumping between work and social media, increases the time it takes to complete a task by 40%.
Cantor also says that social media is very likely to stunt our creative flow. Our creativity is aided when we take regular breaks where we can rest a little (not be bombarded by media).
The way these kinds of sites are designed is so that we are constantly prompted to be engaged when we are on them through notifications. By stopping, we rid ourselves of these nagging notifications.
It's likely that you will feel anxious at first. The source of this anxiety is simple. You might feel like someone is trying to contact you with something important and cannot reach you or that you’re completely becoming out of touch.
This anxiety, like most anxiety, is unfounded. If someone needed to reach you, they could do so through a friend, by calling you on the phone, or through calling around to your house or work.
David Greenfield, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, says that anxiety is caused by a dopamine withdrawal.
Greenfield notes that “if you’re using social media addictively, which some people are, you have elevated levels of dopamine, so when you stop doing that, there is some withdrawal.”
According to Greenfield, social media makes us feel compelled to know what’s going on at all times in the outside world, which increases our levels of cortisol, a stress-related hormone.
Cortisol causes reduced memory, an increased chance of depression, heightened stress, and more negative effects on the brain. But staying away will eventually cause us to feel more relaxed and calm.
How the blue light on our screens affects our sleep is astounding and something you really should and can learn more about. In the simplest sense, it mimics daylight, causing melatonin to be suppressed (the sleepy neurochemical).
This is why when we spend the final moments of our day on our phones and hit the pillow at night we often end up tossing and turning, feeling wound up, and wide awake.
We have to come to terms that there is a finite amount of time in a day. Once we finish school or work, we are normally left with a matter of hours for everything else. If we spend two hours a day scrolling, that’s two fewer hours for some quality face-to-face time.
The longest and most in-depth study on happiness concluded that our relationships mean everything—much more than money or careers. Quitting social media (or at least quitting using it irresponsibly) gives us more time for relationships.
Normally we jump on our phone and start scrolling social media when we feel like we may otherwise become bored. But spending time on social media has actually been proven to make us feel more bored.
Researchers at Kent State who studied 41 college students found that “amazingly, boredom increased over the 30-minute bout of social media use,” according to Andrew Lepp, an associate professor at Kent State University.
The idea is that if we weren’t jumping straight to our phones to cure our boredom, we might turn to more engaging activities to pass the time, like reading.
The likelihood is that if you quit social media, you will sit down less, and as we know, sitting down all day can be dangerous for your health.
Simply check how long you spend on social media on your devices (there is normally a report available). You will soon realize that the majority of the time you spend scrolling, liking, and commenting is spent sitting down.
You’ll likely learn a lot more about yourself if you quit social media. By not engaging with what might please or garner attention from the outside world, you’re likely to discover what motivates you.
The idea that things need to be relevant in the eyes of others will begin to lose grip when we abandon social media because whether it’s relevant or not will come into the sphere.
Related to the prior point, the likelihood is that when you quit social media your decision-making skills will improve because you won’t feel as much of a need to consider what other people will think of what you do.
A lot of the decisions that people make, according to Pew Research, are based on collective consciousness. Tom Kersting, a licensed psychotherapist, feels that we’ll be faster and more efficient with our decisions when we don’t have to consider others’ opinions of our decisions.
We are much less likely to spend our time engaged in valueless arguments online with other people if we’re not on social media.
Ditching social media may also increase our emotional intelligence, as we’re more likely to spend more valuable time with other people and not have an immediate escape route by burying our face in a screen when a conversation becomes challenging or involves tough emotions.
It should be noted that social media isn’t all bad. It might be a good place to start by considering using it more responsibly. It has its upsides, too. One of these upsides may be that social media is a great place to raise awareness of social issues and has been witnessed to be instrumental in changing things for the better (even affecting policy).
Sources: (Statista) (The Healthy)
What happens when you quit social media?
According to the experts
LIFESTYLE Technology
According to data from 2024, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 2 hours and 23 minutes per day. Indeed, the amount of time we spend on social media is growing steadily. Social media has become so connected with real life that it can be almost hard to imagine our real lives without it and all of the cultural references, language, and experiences we share through it. But what would happen if we stopped? How would it affect our lives?
To find out, click through this gallery.