Social Media Breaks: Good or Bad?
So by now everyone is on some form of social media. To me social media is not inherently good or bad but sometimes it is just something that you don't need in your life for a bit. I had a break from my blog and my Instagram for the blog last year. I had a ton of personal stuff happen and decided that it was needed. Fortunately I had posts scheduled on the blog till the end of November so I did't have to worry about that but on my Instagram page I was gone from the end of August till the end of October. There are many reasons why people take Social Media breaks and I am going to cover some of them in this post, I will also cover some of the downfalls of a Social Media break.
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Good
Mental Health/Mindfulness
One of the good things about a social media break is that it gives you a real chance to gain some mindfulness and also take care of your mental health. If you don't know what mindfulness is, Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress. I find that practicing mindfulness can help me in my mental health however it is not for everyone.
During you time of social media detox you also are taking care of your mental health. Social Media now is highly focused on looks and body image, and those things can be detrimental to a person. For me specifically I have a hard time seeing skinny girls talking about how they have this product that made them lose weight or when companies only use super skinny girls in their definition of beauty, those images aren't realistic. They are simply showing what there definition is and not taking into account that by doing that you are hurting the younger demographics. When you take a social media break take these things into account when you come back. Go through the list of people you follow and just see if there is a theme of their page, and if that doesn't match with your own views then that page is not the right thing for you to follow. When I came back from those couple months off I did the same thing and now I am only following people that are actively not posting images or anything that I disagree with.
Social Life
Now this is a little different. When you get rid of social media your social life can be greatly affected. It can go either way and really it depends on the person. You can either get closer with friends and then be more present in the moment; or it can go the other way where you see what your friends are truly like and see maybe that they are different then what you thought. The reason I put this under good was because I feel like this is really a good side effect of a social media detox. Try letter writing to friends or get together more often rather than texting or being on social media. I understand that this is harder now because of the environment we find ourselves in, but I will touch on that later on in this post.
Refocus on yourself
A major plus (at least in my opinion) is that you refocus on yourself. You take the time to really see what you need in life and you focus on what your feeling and thinking rather than what someone is thinking about what you just posted. Take the time and relax and do what your body needs, whether thats taking a walk or having a home spa day. Focus on you and not on what's happening online.
However these aren't always the case and a social media break can also have bad side effects in my opinion.
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Bad
Minimal Interaction/Connectivity
If your like me and don't really have a lot of friends that are in your city or in my case even on my country, then you will find it hard to disconnect completely. If you lose connectivity completely then you can feel really isolated and generally this can make your mental health worse.
Not Knowing What's Happening
Another downfall is that because of the social media world, news is generally found online. So if you disconnect completely then you can feel like you really don't know whats going on and that can also have a bad effect on your mental health. This goes for family news as well because you won't know what's happening with them either.
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What can you do?
If you really want to do some form of a detox, harder now because of the environment we find ourselves in don't do it for long.
If you feel good about your level of social media use, keep doing your thing. If you don't, then you might consider changing things up—but even then you don't have to drop everything. You could take a break from social media once a week, or delete some apps from your phone, or simply put your phone into airplane mode for an hour or so each week. You have plenty of options. And the most important thing is that you do what makes the most sense to you.Just as you’ve set the parameters for taking a social media break, you’re in charge of how you ease back in. During this time away, maybe you’ve figured out which social media platforms really stress you out. If so, you can decide to keep those off of your phone indefinitely. Or maybe this time away has inspired you to log back in and unfollow (or mute) some people so that you’re not seeing them on your feed. Maybe you loved your time away so much that you’ve decided to make this a quarterly (or weekly) thing. As you ease back into life post-cleanse, you should also consider keeping any new hobbies or habits you picked up during your hiatus. If getting off of TikTok helped you get outside more, then—by all means—try to keep that momentum as you ease back into your normal social media routine. Mostly, know that you can take small breaks whenever you want—you don’t need to call it a social media cleanse. You can just delete the apps anytime it’s stressing you out and re-download them when you’re ready.
Educate yourself. It really is that simple. Watch documentaries if you need to. One I would suggest is The Social Dilemma.
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Hope you enjoyed today's post. Would you ever do a social media detox? Have you done one? Have an awesome day :)
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