Social media may be fun, but just like most other things, too much is terrible for your mental and even physical health. When used without moderation, social media has been known to cause issues like loneliness, depression, anxiety, and more. It’s easy to fall into the deep end and start using it too much, so a great idea may be to take a break from it. Here are four reasons why you should consider ditching social media and finding a different way to spend your time.
1. You’ll Form Stronger Tangible Relationships
When you ditch social media, you’ll have the chance to focus on your real-life and tangible relationships. You’ll be able to build them up and enjoy the stronger interpersonal relationships that you’ll start to form. While you may say that you use social media to keep in touch with your friends and family from afar, you’ll see a difference when you cut social media out of your life. You can now set aside time to actually visit them and spend time with them in a tangible way. You could even go shopping for something that you’ve seen in a catalog with a loved one if you’ve received one of late. In 2016, 10.6 billion catalogs were mailed, so there’s a chance you may receive one that catches your attention.
2. You’ll Feel More Confident and Self-Assured
When you ditch social media, you’ll feel more self-assured and confident. Without social media, you can start to see your true beauty and appreciate what you have. You won’t compare yourself with people who may have actually edited their photos to make them appear more appealing. You’ll be less likely to fall for the temptation of getting plastic surgery, something that a number of people have ended up doing. This is backed by the fact that nearly 11.36 million plastic surgery procedures were carried out around the world in 2019.
3. You’ll Become More Productive
Another benefit you’ll experience from ditching social media is that you’ll become more productive. You’ll notice a difference in the amount of work that you can get done successfully when you don’t get distracted by your phone buzzing every five seconds. Checking your phone while you work takes away a reasonable amount of time that you could have spent working. While it may just be a few seconds each time, this adds up to a lot of time in the end. This is not considering the fact that you may need to work extra hard to get your mind back to work after scrolling through the feed for a few seconds or responding to a few comments.
4. You’ll Experience Less Stress
Cutting off social media will allow you to experience less stress because you may no longer feel inadequate when you compare yourself with other people online. You won’t feel compelled to argue with strangers online every day because they post something that you don’t agree with. Keep in mind that humans develop stereotypes during their lifetime. They develop at a young age and shape people’s thinking to a large extent. That said, you’ll come across people from all walks of life on social media, and may often see negative or hateful comments on people’s posts based on stereotypes. Consuming this constant negativity can be a detriment to your health. When you take a step back from social media, you’ll be able to focus more on the positive in life.
From these four benefits of leaving social media behind, it’s clear that you can improve your lifestyle when you walk away. You could do it as an experiment and see how long you can go without social media. You may be surprised at how much better everything is without it in your life.
