Social Media Detox

I started practicing a therapy which I name it as “Social Media Detox” or “Social Media Fasting”, after spending quite some time on extensive research and study (books, articles, and latest research) for the last few months after my office and gym hours.

For the last few years, since I decided to dig deep into Islamic Studies especially Quranic Science & Psychology, my first step was to adopt a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle (physical activity), and I always try not to compromise on it.  I believe health is the most important blessing from Allah SWT which we usually undermine, and we never pay heed towards it (especially our youth days).

The purpose of this therapy i.e., “Social Media Detox” is mainly for our mental health, mental stability, and psychological wellness which leads us to have a positive and fresh mindset. Just like physical well-being and diet, our mental well-being is also extremely important if we sincerely reflect on this aspect.

I decided to practice this detox therapy for my personal and professional growth, personality, self-development, better focus towards day-to-day activities and to work much efficiently on my important tasks. In short, to enhance my productivity to work on much better goals and apply time management skills in my life.

Now let me walk you through my personal notes/thoughts, which will help you all to understand my viewpoint:

What is social media detox and what steps should we take?

I did take these steps in the past and it gave me excellent results.

• Practicing developing a habit to spend only a fixed amount of time per day (limited time) on social media apps. Instead of scattered time consumption after every few minutes.
• There is a syndrome called “phantom vibration” which is our false perception that our cellphone is vibrating, it has a new notification, or it is ringing, when it’s NOT!
• Turning off all social media apps notifications from your Home Screen and Lock Screen, which will prevent us from triggering our attention and shifting our focus towards our screen, when we’re working on a more important task.
• Moving the social media apps from the first page of your Home Screen to the very last page of your Home Screen, so that we can take control over our addiction of just randomly unlocking our cellphone from time to time, just to scroll through our newsfeed and checking out status updates without any specific purpose.
• We don’t realize how much time we waste per day, by just scrolling through our newsfeed and other peoples’ posts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat etc.)
• According to research, an average person spends almost 6 hours on social media apps everyday (not continuously, but in bits and pieces, time to time within 24 hours)

How do we reach to this conclusion if the person has fallen into this addiction? 

I will also be mentioning psychological and spiritual effects of our modern social life in my next blog i.e. Social Dilemma

• We don’t realize it but it’s an addiction. I usually call it as “digital addiction” because this is something people usually crave for when their internet is not working, or phones are away.
• Our focus and attention are again and again shifting towards our phone screen notifications. At first, it’s better to turn off unnecessary notifications.
• Our attentiveness and focus get compromised while working on a specific task because after every 15 to 30 minutes we just randomly scroll through the social media newsfeed.
• It becomes our habit to see new updates and posts, how many likes/comments did we get on our posts, how many people have seen our status and posts, and then we immediately feel like capturing a useless picture and put it on our status, or share a meme, just to satisfy our digital addiction.
• We are more interested in what other people are sharing and how are they perceiving our lifestyle, instead of focusing on our own REAL lives, our present moments excluding digital life.
• Before going to sleep we start spending hours on just scrolling our social media apps which is the cause of our disturbed sleep patterns. Also, when we wake up in the morning, the very first thing we do is grab our phone and again waste few minutes on unnecessary notifications and posts.
• We start to develop a kind of weird disorder inside ourselves, i.e., proving it to our social media audience how engaged we are and how happening our life is, which is why we pretend to be someone who we not actually are, or a life which is not true as we portray online. I usually call it a dual personality disorder because of social media.

Rabia Tariq