Ladies, have you ever decided to take a break from social media because you started to feel addicted, depressed, and lonely, and it made other aspects of your life fall apart?
You're not alone. Many social media users do the same thing to remove the "poisons" that have infiltrated their minds, often called a "social media detox."
But can a social media detox restore your mood and mental health?
What's Wrong?
The feeling of addiction when we use social media is closely related to dopamine, a hormone that operates through a "reward system" mechanism.
What does that mean?
In the 1950s, two researchers from McGill University, Canada, James Olds, and Peter Milner, conducted experiments by implanting electrodes into the brains of mice. When pressed, the mice were given a button that stimulated their brains with electricity.
The mice reacted positively, repeatedly pressing the button to receive brain stimulation. One mouse pressed the button 7500 times in 12 hours, becoming "addicted" to the stimulation.
The researchers found that dopamine was the hormone responsible for the mice's pleasure when pressing the button. Additional research confirmed that mice stopped pressing the button if given a drug that blocked dopamine activity.
Several decades later, scientists discovered a similar mechanism in humans: dopamine is activated during activities that trigger pleasure, happiness, or joy, such as using social media, watching movies, playing games, or listening to podcasts.
Conversely, a lack of dopamine can lead to feelings of sadness, anxiety, and depression. Thus, our addiction to social media is akin to the mice in the experiment.
However, dopamine is a part of our brain, not a toxin to be eliminated. So, the term "social media detox" is not quite accurate.
What Can Be Done?
If that's the case, will stopping social media use for a while have no effect? Not exactly. While it may not solve the problem entirely, it can still have some benefits.
First, you need to identify the root of the problem: are your feelings of anxiety, sadness, loneliness, or depression caused by an addiction to social media, or is it the opposite? Without identifying the root cause, you risk repeating the same pattern.
Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, shares a personal case study. She was once so addicted to reading romance novels that it disrupted her time balance. She decided to abstain from romance novels for a month.
What happened?
Her brain still craved romance novels, leading her to "break the fast." Upon investigation, she realized her addiction's root was not romance novels but pop songs, most of which had romantic lyrics.
Since then, she stopped listening to pop songs, and her addiction was finally overcome.
Indeed, excess in anything is not good. So, try to live a balanced life by chatting and socializing with friends, family, a partner, or a community.
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