Should You Take a Social Media Detox?

As an influencer, you may find that social media takes up a large portion of your life; sharing your story, engaging with your audience or even just online shopping, we spend a lot of time on the internet. Whilst this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, studies have shown that spending too much time on social media influences your personal wellbeing.

If you can’t remember the last time you went about a normal day without checking your socials, then you are among the many who will benefit from even a small detox from the online world.

How can this help?

Social media is not a bad thing –it’s ability to bring people together from all around the world is rather amazing but lately, a lot of negativity can be found online or can stem from these platforms.

The ability to share moments in your life can be an amazing thing, allowing people to stay up to date with your life from wherever they are is a blessing for those of us with friends abroad and long distance relationships. However, studies have shown that this feature can lead to people feeling inferior about their own lives – believing that all their peers live a life of ‘highlights’. We’re not sure there are many people who post about their low moments in life as in-depth as they would their highs.

Now, we’re not suggesting that everyone should post a day-to-day account of all their misfortune’s – but a social media detox can be good for people to step back and stop comparing their life to another’s. Realising that these posts aren’t representative of a person’s whole life is a good way to allow yourself to appreciate and be pleased for their achievements without feeling jealous or upset.

Taking a break is also a good way to escape the hate and negativity that people post online. The ability to post things anonymously and from another part of the world limits how you can confront people over what they say online – making it easy for people to be hateful and negative towards one another. Removing yourself from these comments may allow you to realise how little weight they should hold on both your life and mental wellbeing.

Joining the craze

We’re sure you’ve heard of the many celebrities like Adele, Ed Sheeran and Essena O’Neill who are all advocates of taking breaks from social media – especially when it takes up a large part of your lifestyle. Whether it is just reducing and being more aware of your time spent on there or stepping away from a platform altogether (as Ed Sheeran has done with Twitter), it can hold a many of benefits.

Through either removing the ability to go on them or reducing your time, you will become aware of how much time you spend on social media in everyday life. Think about how long you would normally spend scrolling absentmindedly through feeds, not even to fulfill a purpose, but just out of habit.

There are many apps and extensions now available online to help reduce the distraction of social media and to make you aware of the time you’re spending on them. Apps such as  Moment, allow you to set daily limits for social apps, whilst AppDetox which allows you to lock them completely. There’s also Work Mode, a chrome extension which blocks all social media platforms when it is enabled.

Your thoughts?

So, would you consider taking the plunge and being more mindful of your time on social media by undergoing a social media detox? For ideas on what to do with all this spare time you’ll have, why not check out our blog post on six essential books for bloggers!