As we reach the last day of a month-long campaign designed to reduce the amount of time we spend on social media, our latest blog asks whether appreciating its place in society is the starting point to a healthy relationship with it.
Today is the last day of the awareness campaign Scroll Free September that challenges people to reduce their use of social media. I wonder how many people actually did rest their thumbs from scrolling through various accounts for the past 30 days?
Hand on my heart, I struggled.
Of course the intention was there. I know I need to spend less time on my phone, I am aware of the impact on my mental health and I appreciate that constantly being a thumbprint recognition away from catching up on news from friends is not how I should be prioritising my life. But the fact is that the convenience of being able to connect with work, family and friends at any time of day makes it tricky to ditch the device completely.
It is not so much the fear of missing out; it is more about how we are communicating these days. The lines between work and home life become blurred when belonging to a WhatsApp group, the multiple clubs that the kids belong to typically use social media to update parents and on a professional front it’s vital I keep up with news from industry as part of my job.
Recognising that this is how we are increasingly ‘speaking’ to each other also makes it difficult to role model less time on our devices to our children. Like it or not social media has become a significant part of the communication landscape we live in.
Even if some of us didn’t manage to ditch the status updates for a whole month, the campaign did give people a chance to take stock of their use of social media and evaluate whether we need to consider boundaries and question how much time we are investing in it, versus contact with real people face to face.
It was an opportunity to have those conversations with ourselves and others about what a healthy relationship with social media looks like. Many suggest that where young people are concerned an outright ban on mobile phones, particularly in school is one way of cutting down their use. But is that really the right approach?
Like most things simply telling young people, or anyone for that matter, not to do something, often just provokes the exact opposite reaction. In the same way we can tell our children that eating fast foods and choosing sugary drinks over healthier options, we have to question what would happen when we aren’t there to give them that advice. If they don’t really understand for themselves why their health would benefit from a different choice then would they ever really make a sustained lifestyle change? The approach at LifeLab follows that concept, empowering young people to make healthy choices by allowing them to discover, investigate and come to their own conclusions.
Is this then how social media, and the use there-of, should also be tackled? By having healthy conversations that recognise its place in our lives and by modelling and discussing healthy habits and behaviours, can we not embrace social media as a means to effectively communicate with young people in an environment that is supported and appreciated by the rest of society?
Taking a holiday from social media is a way of resetting our relationship with it, but given its ability to influence and shape the world around us we need to appreciate its value in connecting and then tackling some of the issues we face particularly when the future is in the hands of generations to come.