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Your Social-Media Detoxes （脱瘾治疗） Probably Aren't Helping You
We've all heard the supposed benefits of unplugging from digital devices, even for 24 hours. Such breaks are said toself-confidence, reduce social competitiveness and fears of missing out, and make room for more-enriching, in-person interactions. Yet studies exploring those effects have produced results. So a global research team set out to systematically test the idea that social media detoxing delivers meaningful psychological.
The researchers recruited 600 undergraduate students in three places: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. All participants were randomlyto keep away from social media on either the first or the second day of a two-day experiment. On the other day, they were to interact with the digital platforms as they would. Each evening they answered survey questions aimed at various aspects of well-being. Contrary to the researchers' expectations, the one-day detox made no noticeable impact on positive or negative emotions, self-confidence, or daily satisfaction. When it did have an effect, it decreased daily satisfaction and social relatedness, although the changes were not significant once the analysis was adjusted to control for gender. Just as , people didn't use the time freed up from looking at screens for other forms of socializing. In fact, they reported lower levels of face-to-face, phone, and email interactions on their detoxing days.
Even short social-media breaks can be hard to -- indeed, only half the participants in the experiment did what was required and these results suggest that they may not be worth the . "We did not find any evidence that social media detoxing for one day had significant positive impacts on psychological well-being," the researchers write.
