5 Reasons To Take A Break From Social Media.

On January 25th I made the decision, (that I had been building up to for a while,) to deactivate my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I came to finally make this decision partly out of frustration. I was struggling to finish reading an academic paper for my cultural studies class and had temporarily given up. My focus was shot. I went out for a walk with my dog in the cold winters evening to get some fresh air and clear my head. I knew why I was having trouble focusing. It is hard to focus with all the mental noise that follows a few hours of scrolling through social media feeds. On that walk I made a promise to myself to stay off all social media until May 1st. I arrived home and immediately went on and deactivated my accounts.

Now, I am just 6 days into this social media break, and in part to validate my decisions, but more importantly to perhaps inspire you to take a break from social media too, I am going to share these five reasons to take a break from social media.

But before I get into the reasons, I want to mention why I chose May 1st. That is just over three months, and I have read that it takes approximately 90 days to hard-wire a new habit into our brains. (google: 21/90 rule) Earlier this year I took a week break, and then month-long break, they both felt nice, and had many benefits, but it didn’t take long after for me to step right back into old habits of racking up undesirable hours of screen time. So, I am going for 90 days, I might get there and decide to never go back, or I may go back with a clear mind and ability to set stronger boundaries.

If you feel inspired by this article and want to take a social media break, but three months sounds like a long time, start with a week.

Okay without further delay the five reasons to take a break from social media.

1. Improved motivation.

Now, I am not a science expert by any means, but I have taken a first-year psychology course and learned a little bit about neuroscience. Disclaimer about my lack of expertise out of the way, I am going to stay basic and talk a bit about a neurotransmitter called Dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical largely responsible for our motivation to get the things done that really matter. This is a survival mechanism that served the purpose of giving our long-ago ancestors the motivation to get food, water and build shelter. When our brain releases dopamine we feel good, so we naturally want to do things that provide Dopamine. An interesting thing about dopamine, is that it has been shown to release when we anticipate a reward. In research done on learning, specifically operant conditioning, the best reward schedule is what is called a variable ratio reward schedule. Think a slot machine. You could pull it three times and get a reward each time, and then pull it 100,000 times and not get a reward. This is why casinos make money, and this is the same sort of effect that happens when we open our phones hoping to see red little hearts. When we get too hooked on these easy sources of Dopamine, it takes away from that natural drive to do more important things, like doing your homework, cooking a nice dinner, exercising, or cleaning your house. When we cut off our phones as a primary source of dopamine, our brain goes looking for it elsewhere, and you are almost certain to get some things ticked off your to-do list in search of a little dopamine.

2. Stronger focus.

On the surface this one may seem to go hand in hand with motivation, and in some ways it does. But I am going to talk about mental noise, and the effects of the immense amount of stimulation that social media triggers in our brains. To make this point I am briefly going to mention my experience at a 10-day Vipassana meditation course, a very extreme example of removing all stimulation. For 10 days there was no forms of verbal or non-verbal communication, no reading, no music, no journaling. Only a couple walks through the forest a day, about 10 hours daily of sitting in meditation, and 3 healthy meals. The result: the first few days my mind wandered in a lot of randomness, thinking about past days, months, years. But once I got through sorting through all the stuff that I had never given my brain the chance to catch up with, things got really clear, creative, and it felt good. I have never since had such a deep clarity of focus, and I probably never will unless I go back there. Now to compare ditching social media to such an extreme removal of all stimulation is a ridiculous stretch. But my point lies in looking at spending hours on social media feeds as the opposite extreme. By filling every second with stimulation your brain is constantly swamped in a pile of other people’s thoughts, opinions, ideas and whatever else you get into. You never give yourself the opportunity for quiet, to process through things, and thus when it comes to time to actually focus on something our brain is still working on overdrive to try and process the overload of information that has been thrown at it and is likely going to be focusing on a sub-par level. Giving up social media isn’t going to give you monk like focusing abilities, but it will help you get the shit done that you need to.

3. More time to do things that matter.

This one is self-explanatory, and I am going to keep it short and simple. Prior to starting this social media break, I was spending a rough weekly average of 3 hours per day on social media. That is 21 hours a week. Therefore, by removing myself from social media, I now have an extra 21 hours weekly to focus on something more important. For me this has meant putting more energy into my schoolwork, exercising, and doing some reading for fun, (I am currently reading the Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac). Think of some things you have been wanting to do but have told yourself you “don’t have the time”. Then look at the screen time app on your phone and ask yourself again whether you have the time or not.

4. To stop comparing yourself to others.

It is so easy to get hooked on looking at peoples carefully cultivated feeds (highlight reels) and compare it to your own unfiltered reality. I never thought this was something I did, as this is often a topic talked about when it comes to body image, wealth etc. For me it came up around lifestyle. I looked at people who were living a seemingly perfect lifestyle, and sometimes it made me feel like shit that I wasn’t living that lifestyle. I think this can be compared to skill levels in activities, or arts. Or “perfect” relationships, or whatever. I invite you to reflect a bit on your expectations for yourself and ask yourself where they come from. Are these things you actually want with all the not so pretty implications that lie behind the filter? And if you still do want those things, will removing yourself from the constant comparison boost your motivation to actually go out and achieve your goals? I have no clear answers here, but I think this is worth pondering.

5. Ethics.

The ethical matter of apps like social media comes down to an opinion, but it is one that is important to me, so I am going to talk about it. I have had a huge moral dilemma supporting companies that I feel are, at their business model, ethically and morally evil. They provide a service that has many benefits. It makes it easy to get in touch with people, to consume content you like, to sell things online, to market yourself, to learn about current events, the list goes on…. But this all comes at a cost, and this cost is one that it is easy to turn a blind eye to. That cost is firstly, your entire internet privacy, in using these apps, we openly give these companies the rights to a large amount of data about us, and this data goes beyond what we do on their platforms, we give them permission to see what we do on the internet, as well as other apps. This data is later used to target us with highly personalized content, and ads that is used to keep us on the apps longer, and hopefully open our wallets to buy stuff. And I want you to think, that this highly personalized content isn’t necessarily content you like, but the content that you are most likely to respond to. Meaning you could be spending hours hooked on looking at content that is highly irrelevant to your dreams, aspirations and goals, but is for some reason desirable to your subconscious. Now, I am not going to get into any of the scandals, but there is a lot of information of how these companies could be negatively affecting the world culturally, psychologically, economically, and politically. If you are interested in that I will leave you to do some digging.

Wow, okay. If you made it through all that rambling. I want to say thank you. I really hope that reading this will inspire you to take at the least a week break from social media, or more if you feel up to it. But a week is great to test the waters.

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