How To Social Media Detox

While social media keeps us connected with others, there are times it triggers our emotions too. With those different emotions, it is hard to keep a healthy mental state. On this episode of The New Helix Experience podcast, Tim Frey shares about How To Social Media Detox.

You’ll Learn:

• Why do social media detox?
• What science says about social media and its effect on mental health.
• Common concerns before detoxing.
• Tim’s history with social media and best practices
• Tim’s recommended protocols.

Resources:

Connect with Tim on Twitter and Instagram

00:00:00 Speaker 1
Hey guys, thanks for checking out this episode today. I’m talking about how the social media detox, so why am I even talking about this?

00:00:10 Speaker 1
Well, I just came back from a Bali retreat and it was a topic of conversation on retreat. Something I’ve spoke about with numerous people. We even had some people that were so obsessed.

00:00:21 Speaker 1
With their phone and social media that we put them on the ban for a day.

00:00:27 Speaker 1
To see if it had any positive effects on them, I generally find a lot of people I talk to are quite obsessed with their phone, which personally I think is not a great thing because there is this whole life to live that’s not online. I think the best things in life are definitely not related to your phone.

00:00:48 Speaker 1
A lot of people spend so much time worrying about other people’s lives via social media. They forget to enjoy their own life.

00:00:57 Speaker 1
Which, as you can probably imagine, is quite the conundrum. So what does the science say about social media? And it’s basically it’s effect on mental health.

00:01:08 Speaker 1
The whole podcast here is I’m going to run through essentially what the science says on this and then how to detox in my opinion.

00:01:17 Speaker 1
So there’s mixed evidence on social media and its effects on mental health. Some studies have found that social media use is associated with increased feelings of depression, anxiety, and low self.

00:01:26 Speaker 1
Team other research suggests that social media can have positive effects on mental health such as creativity and social connectedness and support.

00:01:38 Speaker 1
I think it’s important to note here that the relationship between social media use and mental health is complex and dependent on a bunch of factors including.

00:01:47 Speaker 1
Someone’s pre-existing mental health status to top of social media. Use an individual’s ability to use social media in a healthy and balanced way.

00:01:54 Speaker 1
The problem here is that a lot of people will have no ability to use social media in a healthy and balanced way. Therefore we need to resort to some more drastic.

00:02:03 Speaker 1
Means some studies have found that there have been associations between social media use and negative mental health, so I just want to run through a couple of studies here so we have a study that shows increase of feelings of depression and this was the Journal of Depression Anxiety in 2018 found that.

00:02:22 Speaker 1
Social media use was associated with increased symptoms of depression in young adults, I think, especially in younger.

00:02:30 Speaker 1
Our second study here is increased anxiety and that was a study published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders in 2018. Found that social media use was associated with increasing symptoms anxiety.

00:02:42 Speaker 1
My third is low self esteem. A study was published in the Journal of Social Psychology in 2016 that found social media use was associated with lower self esteem.

00:02:51 Speaker 1
#4 we have increased feelings of loneliness and isolation. A study published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology in 2017 found that social media use was associated with increased feelings of loneliness and.

00:03:04 Speaker 1
Relation and then lastly our fifth and had a negative impact on sleep. So a study published in the Journal of Sleep Research in 2017 found that social media use was associated with poor sleep quality and insomnia. I think anecdotally from people you know, you could probably.

00:03:24 Speaker 1
Agree with most of those statements, they weren’t too outlandish. It’s worth noting that the studies are just a sample of studies that have been done on the topic, and if you listen to my podcast on Ice Bath, the thing with.

00:03:37 Speaker 1
Can be proved in either direction depending on a few different factors.

00:03:44 Speaker 1
Additionally, these studies are observational and do not prove causation. They outline a relationship between social media, youth and use and mental health, but it’s quite complex depending on many factors, so I did present 5 arguments and studies that.

00:04:03 Speaker 1
Do prove it.

00:04:04 Speaker 1
It depends if you think this is an issue for you or not.

00:04:09 Speaker 1
How you know it’s an issue is if you cheque your screen time and you know let’s say 20% of your day. You’re on social media just scrolling.

00:04:18 Speaker 1
There are far many better things to do with your life than worrying about what other people are doing. And if you say it’s quote, unquote inspiration, I say it’s ********. You need to get a life.

00:04:30 Speaker 1
So some common concerns. Before detoxing, people say. What if I miss out on everything? I don’t know. I don’t know if you know, but what everything is is usually not much.

00:04:40 Speaker 1
You’re not going to miss ****. The second one is, what if someone’s trying to contact me? I don’t know if you guys know, but this thing called a phone call that works really well.

00:04:51 Speaker 1
I if someone really wants to contact me, they’ll just double dial and I’ll know. Well, this person’s not playing games here.

00:04:58 Speaker 1
I just need to answer my phone and then the third one is what if I get bored? That is the exact reason you.

00:05:04 Speaker 1
Need to get a life.

00:05:06 Speaker 1
So some of my history was social media is probably a .2 years.

00:05:11 Speaker 1
Ago where I.

00:05:12 Speaker 1
Got really fed up with it. Felt all those symptoms or feelings that I did discuss before and I had my admin essentially mute everyone that I was following on all my accounts.

00:05:24 Speaker 1
So I’d log on my feet and I’d say nothing unless it was on.

00:05:27 Speaker 1
Instagram, Facebook. I didn’t use that much. Instagram was the main one for me. And then I went through and unfollowed a bunch of people and then unmuted the ones that I did.

00:05:38 Speaker 1
I’ve got a really nice best practise here, and if you have some ****** people on your social media I call this cult accounts and you just need to get rid of them.

00:05:47 Speaker 1
ASAP unfolded them, blocked them, whatever you.

00:05:50 Speaker 1
But I have like a one strike policy on social media if.

00:05:54 Speaker 1
Comment something ****** on one of my posts or and messaged me some ******** or respond to one of my stories.

00:06:00 Speaker 1
Like natively, I’ll just block them straight away. I’ve got no tolerance for that stuff. I know a lot of people will like.

00:06:06 Speaker 1
Will like to fight Internet bullies, but I’m particularly I just say **** that like cold, the counts get rid of them and then you’re going to.

00:06:12 Speaker 1
Surround yourself with a lot more.

00:06:16 Speaker 1
Productive and nice people. So my got two basically or three recommended protocols. If you want to get social media free and get your life back.

00:06:27 Speaker 1
I like a phone free day or days, so generally if I do this I’m going to do a weekend detox. Maybe Saturday and Sunday or a Wednesday.

00:06:36 Speaker 1
As well. So then I only have my phone with me on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and then three days off.

00:06:43 Speaker 1
I find this really great. As soon as I do not use my phone, I get quite creative because my mind’s not in this period of just having to think about ******** all the time. I can actually think about.

00:06:53 Speaker 1
Things that matter.

00:06:55 Speaker 1
The next two

00:06:56 Speaker 1
Were a little bit harder, so you’ve got a week off in a month off all social media, which I would probably if you listen to me or know me.

00:07:04 Speaker 1
You probably I do things quite aggressively anyway, so I think a week or off or a month off is the best option here cuz you’ll really snap the habit and then the 3rd way here is locking your phone away.

00:07:15 Speaker 1
You can get.

00:07:16 Speaker 1
Like timers and saves that like, really inexpensive inexpensively that lock your phone away for 2346710 hours or something like that so you can really go off social media that way, and I think like the biggest concern people say is like what if something bad happens to someone I know and like they’re *******?

00:07:36 Speaker 1
Likelihood of that happening is very unlikely. So at the end of this podcast our self question is your social media use a problem for you? Do you spend most of your life talking about other people rather than worrying about your own life?

00:07:51 Speaker 1
Those are two questions I want you to pose to.

00:07:53 Speaker 1
Yourself. Thanks for listening.