Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter… Taking a short break from social networks has varied effects on your mood.
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- During a digital break, people who checked social media excessively reported being less bored and feeling less alone.
- Digital detox can simultaneously reduce experiences that trigger negative emotions, but also those that arouse positive emotions.
- Getting off social networks for a week does not alleviate or exacerbate the “explicit or implicit” desire to use them.
More and more people are hung up on their phones and spend their time checking their notifications or scrolling on social media for hours. In order to fight against this addiction to screens, some decide to do a “digital detox”. The idea? No longer use any digital media for a few hours, days or even an entire month. In a recent study, researchers from the University of Durham (England) revealed that in people addicted to social networks, digital withdrawal could lead to the emergence of surprising feelings.
Stop using social media for a week
“Recent studies on the addictive potential of modern technologies, such as the internet, smartphones or social networking sites, have suggested that the emotional and motivational changes associated with digital withdrawal reflect the unsympathetic consequences observed when using drugs is stopped abruptly. This phenomenon has been observed even in moderate users and interpreted as a manifestation of withdrawal, an important marker of physical dependence in substance use disorders. indicated the English scientists.
As part of their work, published in the journal Plos One, they wanted to know if this behavior was representative among adults who consult social networks excessively, or if it only applies to certain people in the population. To find out, the team conducted an experiment with 51 volunteers who used social networks between 30 minutes and nine hours a day. They were asked to take a digital break for a week and report how they felt during the intervention.
“Digital detox”: a reduction in negative and positive emotions
According to the results, participants reported having less difficulty than expected not checking social media. During this digital withdrawal, they reported being less bored and feeling less alone. “While our data indicates a reduction in negative emotions related to abstinence, they also show a reduction in positive emotions,” such as social approval via likes and positive comments, the authors wrote. Another observation: they experienced few or no withdrawal symptoms. Clearly, the “digital detox” had no effect on the “explicit or implicit desires to use social networks”, whereas the increase in these desires is, in general, one of the effects caused by abstinence in cases of addiction.
The researchers revealed that most volunteers “relapsed” at least once while logging into one or more social networks. They also pointed out that their study was small and the results might be different if it was conducted among larger groups of people who had stopped using social media for longer periods of time.
