Can a Mobile News Feed Blocker Help Solve Social Media Addiction and Improve Mental Health?
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Written by
Jessica Thodas
By Jessica Thodas
Social media is intertwined with our daily lives. From school, work, and our social lives, we use social media in almost every area of our lives now. Because of its ability to instantly connect us, social media can be a helpful tool. However, with its addictive nature, social media consumes a lot of our time. For this reason, disconnecting from social media can benefit many aspects of our lives. So, let’s look at the eight main benefits of disconnecting from social media.
More often than not, when you start scrolling through your feed and reels on social media, you spend more time scrolling than you originally intended. Once you start, it is hard to stop because social media is designed to be addicting. Because scrolling through social media is hard to stop once you start, it can be a huge distraction. When you spend too much time scrolling, you may neglect your work, school, and other elements of your day. Also, once you stop scrolling, the urge to pick up your phone and start again can linger for a while, causing your focus to be on social media and not on the tasks at hand, even when you aren’t on social media.
By disconnecting from social media, you take away the distraction. Instead of spending your time scrolling mindlessly, you can focus on your work or other daily tasks. With your mind able to put all its focus on your work, you will be more productive. There are certain ways to ac to be effective
Social media can take a toll on your mental health. Two main issues you may face when using social media are:
When scrolling through your feed, it is easy to compare yourself to others. You may compare your looks, weight, clothes, lifestyle, eating habits or wealth, among many other things. These comparisons cause pressure to look, dress, act, or live your life differently. However, many of these pictures are photoshopped, posed, or taken by influencers or models whose job is to eat healthy, exercise and look beautiful or handsome. So, this standard set by influencers, models and others who edit their photos is impossible for most people to reach. So social media has you compare yourself to a standard that is impossible to meet, making you feel stressed to meet these standards and disappointed with yourself when you can’t reach them.
2. Feeling left out:
Seeing your friends on trips, at parties, or out at places without you can make you feel left out. It is normal for you not to go to every event, party, and plan. However, being bombarded with photos of your friends out without you will inevitably make you feel left out and alone. This fear of being left out is called FOMO (fear of missing out), which is the fear that you are missing out on social events because you were not invited, could not go, or did not want to go. This fear has become more popular with the invention of technology, and a recent study even found that “FOMO is experienced by 56% of social media users.”
Disconnecting from technology can help avoid these harmful feelings of jealousy, fear, loneliness, and self-loathing caused by social media.
By constantly being connected to people on social media, it can be difficult to find solitude. However, time alone is essential for self-reflection. Disconnecting from social media allows you to have time alone in the quiet. During this time, you can self-reflect to see how you are doing. Sometimes we are so busy that we forget to check in with ourselves to see how our minds and bodies are feeling. Checking in with yourself allows you to connect to your mind and body and listen to what they need. Being alone in the quiet can also ground you in the world again. Disconnecting from social media to listen to your mind and body's needs will allow you to be happier and healthier.
Social media has such a grasp on our lives that it causes us to miss out on the world happening around us. When you are on your phone scrolling through social media, you are missing out on life. And when you focus more on getting the best photo to post on your feed or story than enjoying the moment, you are missing out on the moment. If you think what you are doing is so incredible that you must share it on social media, then you shouldn’t want to miss it.
Disconnecting from social media allows you to experience the constantly changing and moving world. Also, disconnecting permits you to enjoy the special moments without missing anything since your eyes aren’t glued to your phone. If you even spend one day without your eyes glued to your phone, you will see how much happens around you that you typically miss while you scroll through your feed.
You may often avoid quiet time because it may feel boring. Being bored is considered a negative feeling. With busy lives and constantly stimulating technology, you likely rarely get bored. And when you do start to feel bored, you probably pick up your phone to scroll through your feed or highlight reels. However, being bored can be beneficial for your brain.
Boredom allows your brain, which is constantly working, to take a break. Taking breaks in the quiet without stimulation can help your overworked brain relieve stress and tension. Also, with boredom comes reflection, which can also lead to creativity. During this reflection, you may also find time to create goals for yourself or a plan for self-improvement. In a world of constant stimulation, giving yourself a break in the quiet will allow your brain to function easier.
Using social media impacts your sleep for several reasons. The most known reason is because of the blue light that technology produces. An article by Harvard Health Publishing discusses that “while the light of any kind can suppress the secretion of melatonin, blue light at night does so more powerfully.” So, being on social media at night suppresses the secretion of melatonin, which keeps you up later.
Another reason social media affects your sleep is that your fear of missing something on your phone may cause you to sleep with your phone. One study found that “almost half of the cell owners have slept with their phone next to their bed because they wanted to make sure they didn’t miss any calls.” When you are worried about missing a phone call, or a text, it is harder to fall asleep, and you may even wake up at night to check your phone. Also, having your phone in bed makes it more tempting to go on your phone at bedtime and throughout the night if you wake up.
The last reason is that social media is addicting, so it is hard to turn off your phone once you have started scrolling. So, you often tell yourself you will go to bed at a set time, but once you start scrolling, you end up going to bed a few hours later than intended.
By disconnecting from social media, your sleep quality will increase, and you will sleep for longer. Since you will not have the feed or blue light keeping you up late, you can go to bed earlier to get a longer sleep. And without the fear of missing out, you will be able to sleep without worry or fear, giving yourself better quality sleep.
Scrolling and posting on social media takes up plenty of your time, especially since there are now so many different social media platforms to check and update. One study found that “global internet users spend an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day on social media.” That is a lot of time on social media that you could spend on more productive things. By disconnecting from social media, all the time you spend on social media will now become your free time.
In this free time, you could:
The best way to see your dependence on something is to walk away and see how strong the pull is for you to return. By disconnecting from social media, you can see how addicted and dependent you are on social media. Also, you can see if there is a time or situation that you tend to want to go on your social media more. Once you have that information, you can work on finding other alternatives so that you do not rely on social media.
Since social media is so addictive and intertwined in our daily lives, it can be hard to disconnect from it by ourselves. However, BeTimeful is here to help. BeTimeful blocks your social media feed while still allowing you to message people on the platforms so you can stay connected with your friends and family without the temptation of the social media feed.
So download BeTimeful today to help you successfully disconnect from social media.
You can also check out BeTimeful to learn about how to detach from social media.
Here are some of the other helpful resources from BeTimeful:
Sources:
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The cost of not trying Betimfeul: 1-2 hours of lost time per day.
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