A digital detox could help your love life and more

A digital detox could help your love life and more

Get the top tips from Dr Suzy Green on how to get the most out of social media without being overdependent.

well forget sugar or alcohol detoxes the latest vice to ditches digital yes the average person spends nearly two hours on social media every day which translates to over five years in a lifetime that's more time than we spend eating socializing or doing laundry so how can we break free from our screen dependency for good here with all the answers is psychologist from Breathe magazine dr. Susie Greene great to have you on the show it's great to be here now there's one study that showed people who spent a lot of time in social media and nearly three times more likely to have depression than people who didn't spend that time on social media I not to us it's interesting because there has been a number of studies to show a correlation with depression and anxiety but there's also been on the flip side a number of studies that show that social media can have a really positive effect on our well-being and in fact there was quite a comprehensive study done in Melbourne so it was a you know a local study last year to show that it really came down to who you were in using it and your mood state which can play a big part if you're depressed then it may not be the best thing to be engaging in in a long time but also how you're actually using it as well all right well if it's not working out for some let's get some tips on shaking our social media or addictions after how long should we log off look again there's no set time that the research has found so it probably is an individual thing but I would as a professional recommend that I don't think you'd be wanting to spend more than at least 30 minutes at a time on it but what we do find is you would have experienced yourself you find yourself getting into what we call the flow state and there's been a lot of research on that where you become sort of absorbed in it and you down a rabbit hole you know go from one screen to them to the next and then you look and you go my goodness where's the time go on so if you can set some boundaries that's probably the most important tip is to set some boundaries on how much time you want to spend and then have some sort of alarm system or some sort of automatic switch off system to you know allow you to pull back from it okay so right that's it time to log off now you say it's important I'll be careful with who you follow maybe some people or a favorite toxic definitely so there's also a lot of research in psychology around social comparisons so we know that often when we're trying to keep up with the Joneses if you like or looking at what celebrities are doing it can have a really negative impact on our mood so if I mean it doesn't mean you may not have any interest in what they're doing but it's perhaps better to go to their website rather than having a continuous feed of what people are doing in their lives it's been more time focusing in on your own life and your family's life yeah and when we talk about you know toxic people what do you you know how do you define that what's toxic to one person is different yeah I guess it really comes down to a negativity so if you're having a negative experience through you know observing someone's feed or you know any sort of negativity associated with it we actually know not only makes you feel bad it affects how you function in your life too so it's really good to probably do a bit of an audit of your social media even if your emails think about you know unsubscribing unfollowing and you know time is really precious you want to be really careful where you're using it how you're using it some people argued that you should be giving your passwords to a trusted friend define trusted dangerous well it could be couldn't it and I guess yeah Trust is probably the key word the one thing we do know is that most people generally are not very self regulated what we would call self regulated so even though they have good intentions to you know only use it for say an hour or thirty minutes we find that again most people really struggle with that so it may be in the early stages of creating a habit or setting a goal around your usage that you do you know bring in a trusted friend and but I would suggest it's only for a brief period until you start to master it and you can you know self-regulate really okay maybe just don't share your banking part now you also recommend setting up some new traditions like one day of the week where you just don't use any social media yeah so perhaps like phone free Fridays I've heard being talked about lately so weekends as well but also thinking about the activities that you do so obviously sporting activities it's very hard to be using your phone in a social media or if you're engaged in an act an active activity so I think it's a really good opportunity for people to review their lives and then think about what are the things that are most important sure there's a place for social media but how do I want to use it and then setting some objectives around that very interesting topic thank you so much thanks very much and for more digital detox tips and tricks you can pick up a copy of Breathe magazine on sale now

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