Social media platforms are indeed entertaining and offer such useful features to keep up with the circle of friends and communicate with people in different parts of the world. As it continues to progress, more and more people get addicted. Around the world, more than 4 billion people use social media, with most people spending 144 minutes on it every day.
Despite the temptation, it is imperative to learn how to take a break to improve your physical and mental health.
Social Media Break is Important for Your Health
According to Neha Chaudhary, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, social media is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it can help keep us stay connected to each other and entertain us. On the other hand, social media can be an unpleasant place, with cyberbullying, social comparison, and other phenomena detrimental to our well-being.
To ensure that social media has a positive impact on your health, it is important to be conscious of how you are using it. That means you must know when to log off and focus your attention on something else.
According to a study published by NCBI, Social media is a sedentary behavior. Even though it allows you to talk to your family and friends, it still limits your capacity for personal interactions, and it makes you spend less time in the real world.
Also, social media can cause stress, depression, and anxiety if you consume the wrong content or find yourself comparing other people's lives and achievements to yours, as reported by Forbes.
Katara McCarty, the creator of EXHALE, a wellness app for Black and Indigenous Women of Color, social media, can affect our self-esteem. It can lead to us comparing our lives to photos of others that seem perfect.
McCarty added that being online for hours hinders us from being productive. It prevents us from taking care of ourselves and enjoying life outside of social media.
Signs You Should Take a Break from Social Media
There are a few signs that may indicate it is time for you to take a break. First, you don't find scrolling through your accounts fun anymore.
Sites such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are meant to be entertaining, but if you find that it is no longer a source of joy, it is a sign that you've consumed too much negativity, according to Bustle.
If you are constantly comparing yourself to others online and feel worse about yourself after you're on social media, it means it is already affecting your emotional well-being and mental health.
Instead of going through the posts of your friends and family, it is best to focus on yourself and turn your attention to other activities that you enjoy.
Doomscrolling is another indication that you need a social media detox. It means that you are mindlessly and continuously scrolling through your accounts, checking on every post, and reading through every caption.
You may not even realize that time has passed, and you are still sitting in the same position, looking at your phone or computer.
Also, if your phone is the last thing you see before you go to bed, you may need to pull the plug on social media for a while. Checking the sites at night may disrupt your sleep because it keeps your mind active.
Your cell phone has a blue light that contains melatonin, which is a hormone known to control sleep. Since blue light is a color that imitates daylight, your mind will think it is daytime and keep you awake, thus preventing you from getting enough sleep.
As the saying goes, too much of something is bad, which applies to social media. No matter how fun or exciting the online world is, you still need to take a break and participate in the real world.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Sophie Webster
