Digital Detoxing Doesn’t Necessarily Improve Personal Well-Being, New Study

"Contrary to their expectations, the researchers found that avoiding social media for one day did not result in participants expressing improved personal well-being, such as higher levels of positive emotions and lower levels of negative emotions, higher levels of self-esteem or higher levels of satisfaction."

One day? I don't think that's nearly enough time to see the benefits, and it really only allows enough time for FOMO. Knowing that you will be going back to it tomorrow, why would you make an effort to use another form of communication?

I gave up social media a while ago. I think it's hard to see when you're in it, but spend 3 minutes in an Instagram feed and say "ad" out loud every time you view a promoted item or influencer. You will realize that you're essentially looking at a feed of advertisements with some friends mixed in. If that's how you like to spend your time, fine, but recognize it for what it is.

Any substantially more fulfilling activity will take weeks or months to get into, so I don't view abstaining for a day as worthwhile.

Lastly, these studies are often done on students. I think social media has a more significant benefit in college and grad school when there is low friction to join in on things you see on social media. You might see ads for events, or friends are going to an event, and it might take 10 minutes to go there and join the fun.

Once everyone moves away, you see the activities posted online but miss out on the social interaction and the event because flying across the country is too big of a barrier to join in on the fun.

One day is really a short period of time to analyze ...

Let's say you take someone who has smoked daily for 5 years, and now for a day they can't smoke ... what do you think the results would show?

(Maybe not the fairest argument either, being online probably isn't as bad as smoking for your health).