My Average Screen Time Was 20 hours a Day
My screen time peaked to 20 hours in a single day
We always find an excuse to be on social media now and then, even to a point where it is harmful to our mental health. I for one faced the same fate a while ago, I was solely dwelling into social media platforms, and even when I wasn't I would be thinking about it anyway.
It all became like a roller coaster ride for me, from Youtube to Instagram, from Instagram to Facebook, and the cycle continued. I was aware of how it was constantly messing up with my mental health, but I was addicted. There's an addiction for everything, mine was social media. I was too caught up with who stalks me and what everyone else was doing with their life that I forgot to live my own life.
It wasn't always the same, Once I too was a person full of passion and charms. My life once revolved around adventure, I traveled, I played sports and most importantly I had real friends to rely on. But all that started to fade away real quick. The one thing I learned from it all is that once you start thinking negatively about a specific thing or a person, you have to distance from it as soon as you can. It is a sign of growing depression, the negativity soon turns into self-depreciation and you start to belittle yourself, you start to compare yourself to all the good sides of people and their glamour. And oftentimes you start getting salty and short-tempered, you start to think negatively about everything around you.
Around May 2019, which I believe was the start of my addiction to social media, I didn't actually realize by then but I was indulging myself more than I should've. Prior to May, my screen time average remained around 1–2 hours a day, but gradually it kept on increasing. By 2019 august my screen time skyrocketed to about 14 hours a day just on my mobile screen alone.
And around January 2020 it reached a point where I was out of control. My productivity was plain ZERO. I never cared to wear my glasses and my eyesight went from 20/15 to 20/35 in a span of a year. Recently AHA(American Health Association) warned that a teen who spends more than 2 hours in front of a screen is more likely be diagnosed with anxiety and depression.
“As a species, we are very highly attuned to reading social cues,” says Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. “There’s no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating — it’s not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a nonverbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible.”
I have thrived, I have lived and I have fallen. There is a solution for every problem, as for my situation having a social media detox really helped me. One morning when I woke up I had a message about one of my friends trying to commit suicide, and it woke me up. in the instant, I kept my phone on the table, had my breakfast, and left to see my friend. The next day itself I started my social media detox, it went something like this: I basically challenged myself to learn at least one new skill in a matter of 30 days and deactivated all my accounts on social media. And the results were magnificent, I did not expect myself to be this relieved, ever. As for learning one skill, I practiced ukulele which I always wanted to learn but never could, I always hung out with my friends in real life, This challenge acted as a catalyst to the major turn around of my life.
Some of the key points to take from this is to always keep on learning new and to think positively about anything and everything.
