From offering prayers to morning walk, from wishing elders to giving respect, everything has been left behind, and the whole focus is just on social media. Social media is in the limelight now, leaving all the other things behind. Every time you wake up or go off to sleep, your eyes are just on your phone, checking notifications, Instagram, Facebook, and the list goes on and on. We have almost stopped enjoying our life, trying to impress other people, and are trapped in a virtual world. You have no idea how much energy you waste on using social media, and the level of mental stress and distractions, it causes are far more than expected. Earlier social media was just a mode of entertainment and fun, but now it has a great influence on one’s social life. Nowadays, people who want to take the benefits of avoiding social media have started cutting off or reducing the use of social media just to derive some positive energy from the real world. It is better to detox social media to come out from stress, depression, or anxiety issues, and opt for something innovative and productive, which can relieve your mental pressure. For example, spending time with your family and loved ones who are in thirst for love and happiness.
What is A Social Media Detox?
A social media detox is cutting off, or isolate ourselves from social media and the setting of a certain time to use it. Social media detox varies accordingly. Many people do it for 30 days or 7 days, but some also do it for the weekend. So, it depends on person to person. The basic idea behind social media detox is that you have to completely cut off its use for that particular set time, i.e., you have to delete all the apps and your account also till that time temporarily. It is a social media break, and you are taking a break from social media to improve your physical and mental health.
Why is Social Media Detox Necessary?
If you are always using your phone, checking messages or notifications every time, scrolling Facebook and Instagram after every two minutes, then you should probably go for social media detox. Taking a break from social media is very necessary in cases where it:
becomes a hindrance to your work and your personal life, causes mental stress and harms your relationships, keeps you busy the whole day, checking others’ profiles and updates.
Then, it is the time when you have to think of social media detox or social media break.
Revive Your Mental Energy and Be Productive
If you have thought of clearing your mind, the best idea is social media detox. We are so much busy in this virtual world that we forget everything and everyone else in our lives. Instagram updates, profiles, likes, dislikes, reviews, caption, taglines, posts, and much more has just clogged our brains, and we forget the real world and real us. Can you believe how much of our productive time we are wasting on it? Suppose this much amount of energy we put on something else that is really beneficial to us will make us far better citizens. For instance, prioritize the important things in your life first, go on for gyms, and yoga, which will improve your inner health and bring positivity by clearing all that junk caused by social media in your life. It will help you to become productive in your personal and professional life.
Keep Your Interests Secret on Social Media
Social media detox gives you back control of your digital habits. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and all other social media apps, likes, comments all have caused addiction and distracted you from the real world. From posting something new to updating status and uploading pictures every time you go out ends up scrolling up and down the screen just to see how many likes and comments you got leads to temporary happiness and satisfaction, but can you imagine how it can affect your mind if some or the other day you didn’t receive any likes or comments? They collect data about user behaviors, interests, likes, and dislikes, etc. to serve you personalized ads and content of your choice to make money.
These social media and apps are just to gain promotion and incentives by maximizing the number of users they get. What are you getting from it? It is just their way of making money. You are wasting your time and affecting your health by making them earn. We are concluding, social media is becoming a hindrance in your personal space and quality time you spend with your loved ones. Therefore, it is necessary to take a social media break and opt for social media detox. Track your screen time, spend time with real people, and do your business to make money. Don’t work for free for these social media, instead start a blog and earn money from Google and affiliate marketing.
The Benefits of A Social Media Detox
There are innumerable benefits of social media detox. These are as follows:
Give Time to Yourself
Yes, I personally agree that social media detox is not so easy as easy to hear, especially for the ones who are more addicted to it. Initially, it might lead to boredom, but you have to find ways for it. You will have to find something productive, which gives you happiness and doesn’t affect mental health.
There are many ways you can opt for in your free time when you are on social media detox:
Nature lovers can go for a walk to feel the beauty of nature. Photographers can also opt for eco-walk, where they can capture the beauty of the world. All foodies can try out new recipes in their free time, and one day might become a food blogger. You never know. Fitness lovers can do gym, yoga, aerobics, Zumba, and much more, which will improve their inner strength and mental peace. You can also do paintings in your free time, and you might become a versatile painter one day. Spend quality time with family and loved ones.
There’s a lot more to do. You can explore it by yourself.
Calm Your Anxiety
Social media detox will eliminate all the junk from your mind leading to inner positivity and happiness you need. You can spend good times with your friends by emailing or sending letters or by having a face to face conversations. On seeing another person’s accomplishments through social media, now you will not feel low or jealous by detox. All your stress and mental issues will lessen subsequently. Positive and spiritual discussions can help you to be a better person.
Positive Morning Routines
With the help of social media detox now, your mornings would be far better than expected. Instead of checking the phone and notifications as soon as you wake up now, it is the time where you sit in the garden area with a cup of tea or coffee and chill and relax there. Give some time to yourself sitting peacefully meditating out there in the greenery and soothing breeze of morning, offering prayers to God and loving your family. Read newspapers and some books so that you get the information about the outside world and the latter improves your vocabulary and reading skills. Stay calm, stress-free, and yes, BE POSITIVE.
Explore Your Passion
Earlier, I was just busy with social media apps, and whenever I woke up, the first thing where my eyes went off was my phone to check the notifications and messages. Social media detox became an eye-opener for me. I became much more mindful during this period, and I started exploring myself by finding the real me. It was the time when I gave started focussing on my areas of interest. Listening to music, traveling, improving vocabulary, working on myself, reducing stress levels by cooking innovative recipes, including desserts, painting, drawing, and much more, this is what I started doing. It made me more resourceful and creative by transforming all the junk from my mind to all those creative ideas and thinking. You can’t even imagine how much relaxed my mind was during this period, and the amount of positivity I attained was remarkable. Finding your inner potentialities during this time period is the best idea you can have.
How to Detox from Social Media?
Anything new you plan or do takes time and requires patience. Social media detox involves a series of steps. The process may certainly take time, but success paves a long way in which you have to wait patiently. As everyone knows, good things take time.
Inform Your Social Circle
Telling people who really are attached to you or are your closed ones is the first step towards social media detox. Foremost, before going for a break, informing your best friends whom you are in touch with is the best idea. Not all are your friends, some might not even care whether you are offline or on a social media break, so tell only those who really care for you. This is helpful because they will keep you update through other means or face to face conversations, and they would know that you will be back soon. Secondly, you will continue to detox without any interruptions, as they would already know. It will also remove their worries for you if they actually care.
Delete or Disable Social Media Apps
This step is the most important in this process. It is very necessary to delete the social media apps and block the websites on your phone. I would personally say that deleting is only the best option to detoxify. If you think that without deleting it will work, then the answer is a big NO because it would crave you towards your phone and will hamper the process of social media detox. So, you will have to delete it completely.
If you still can’t do it, then the best idea is not to use your smartphone till that period and give it to someone trustworthy, and you can take it back after the process is over. Deleting the apps will help you to focus on other things you want to do or achieve in your life. It will also help you to find the Real You and will help in curing your mental health issues like stress, depression, anxiety, etc.
Block Social Media Websites on Computer
You definitely use a laptop or personal computer. There you may block social media websites through applications like Cold Turkey or Freedom. These are free apps. It will help you to control yourself browsing social media using your laptop or desktop computer system. You can take the help of your family member to put a password on these apps and can get access after completing your social media detox. It is the best way for social media addicts.
Plan Activities for Social Media Detox
This is the most interesting and the last step to planning what you want to or willing to do during your social media detox so that you do not feel bored, and it reduces your monotony. I suggest preparing a time table for your own and allocating proper time to each, and every task will help you out in a better way. Replacing social media with something innovative, productive, and creative is the need of the hour.
There are many useful ways that I personally from my experience can suggest you which would be of great help to you: So, you can plan these ways during social media detox, which will keep you engrossed also and make you do something productive and creative for yourself and children too. There are ways also to replace the social media screen time with GST (Good Screen Time) through virtual learning:
How to Deal with FOMO?
What is FOMO?
FOMO, i.e., Fear of Missing Out, most of the people try to escape social media detox for the only reason that is FOMO. They have the mindset that how will they come to know about what is happening in their social circle or outside world. Many people fear that how would they come to know about the world’s happenings or while others have a fear of staying connected with long-distance friends. The fear of how to know about the world is not the point to worry, because there are many means and ways to get the information. For instance, they could get information from the news, newspapers, family, colleagues, and many more. So, there is nothing to worry about it.
How to Get Rid of FOMO?
Today, the big question is, “How to get over FOMO?”. Now coming to the fear of staying connected can be removed by real-time face to face conversations with their friends or by meeting them personally, planning some trip with them can make the connections worth more than social media. These were the ways that I personally opted during my social media detox. I use to call them at my place or chit-chat with them over the phone for 10-15 minutes. These steps created inner peace, and I got more relaxation time for myself. Books are our best friends, you can read them, can watch documentaries, or listen to podcasts to learn something new, if missing your inspirational social media buddies.
Social media detox is a kind of relaxation phase you go through.
Social Media Detox Challenge
Try it. I can bet you on this that on entering the phase of social media detox, you would never like to come back or leave in between. Such an immense peace and satisfaction it gives, you can’t even imagine that. Firstly try it for 2-3 days, and based on that experience slowly and slowly you can extend from 7 days to even a month. It will calm you, relax you and make you feel refreshed. From my own experience, I am suggesting you try once. I hope everyone likes to feel stress-free and calm. Give some time to yourself. Find your potentials and capabilities and become a better citizen instead of a social media addict. Be positive, be the real you, and find inner peace. Sit and relax. What do you think? Are you ready for social media detox? Co-author: Ms. Manpreet Kaur
