(Digital) Detox: They Aren’t Just Juice
Typically when I hear the word detox I associate it with, like many others, a body “quick fix” diet to lose weight such as subbing normal meals for cold-pressed juices. However, the detox I will talk about is a digital detox. A digital detox is a temporary reduction or elimination of using social media with the intent of curbing technology addiction. In addition, those who “digital detox” and psychologists boast many benefits to ones’ mental health.
After learning more about the growing popularity, intent, and entailments of doing a digital detox, I reflected on my own digital habits and if I am overly “connected” to social media. I have like I am sure many others have, experienced stress and anxiety with social media usage. While I have gotten better at managing this, I use to experience anxiety because of the high amount of pressure and attention that is put on body image. There were many celebrities and other people I followed who used photoshop and advertised products that promoted unhealthy diet culture (e.g. think of past promotions from Kardashians of “diet lollipops” and “detox teas”). While there were a lot of other factors that helped me move out of this negative diet culture/headspace, one big factor was reflecting who I followed. I realized one way to reduce my stress and exposure to diet culture was to unfollow the celebrities and influencers who were promoting this content and altering their image and followed people who promoted natural and positive body images.
The other social media concern I have noted while reflecting on my digital usage is known as “headline stress disorder” or “news-induced” anxiety (Spector, 2017). This form of anxiety is the overwhelming feelings and obsession with checking news/social media when there is bad news. Sadly, many people have experienced this over the past year from the pandemic, 2020 presidential election, and police brutality. I have personally experienced these with the issues I mentioned from the past year, as well as this week with the death of Daunte Wright (Brooklyn Park) by police and the trial of Derek Chauvin. I will constantly refresh social media and news websites to stay updated on the trial and the events surrounding Wright’s death. In addition, there has been a lot of crime in MSP and Dinkytown (e.g. the target below my apartment building was broken into last night past curfew), so this has further fueled me to obsessively check the app Citizen (safety alert app). This is the area in which I could benefit from a form of a “digital detox” to reduce stress. My goal is to set a limit of the number of times I can check any news sources, as well as limit my use of social media for only entertainment/enjoyment purposes (instead of using it to check news-related things).
