Why social media detox is the hottest new diet of 2019

Why social media detox is the hottest new diet of 2019:

It’s become one of those things we do subconsciously; when we wake up in the morning, on the way to work, on the train, walking from the train to work, sometimes at work(!), on the way home, when we get home from work, while we’re making dinner, just before we go to sleep… For a lot of people it’s the first thing we do in the morning and the last thing we do at night.

Despite the recent controversy with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s use of personal data, social media use continues to grow. In fact, the average person spends at least 1 hour and 40 minutes per day looking at their favourite social media sites and apps. This is not only an incredible amount of time that could be spent in other ways, but it is also indicative of our society and the - increasingly virtual -world we live in.

The reality is - social media is highly addictive. Having previously been compared to crack cocaine, social media gives us a buzz that is hard to refuse. Going on social media is like going to the casino, you're anticipating getting likes and you just sit around waiting for a notification to come around so you can go back and start the process again.

In reality, the notifications are mostly fairly meaningless. Sure, you may have friends who promote their music gigs or  send invites for birthday parties, but in reality most of the things that exist on social media would also exist in real life if it were important enough. Lets face it, FOMO isn't real if you don't know what you're missing out on. If there was a party that you missed, you don't know about it so you won’t care! If you’re not seeing people's Instagrams from it and not seeing Snapchat videos you won’t feel like you missed out on anything simply because you’re just not seeing it.

So many writers have shared the head-clearing results of deleting Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and the like from their lives. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to ensure you’re living your real life—instead of your virtual one. However, if there’s one piece of advice, it would be this: take control of the time you spend on social media, don’t just let it run away from you.