After reading the book entitled ‘The Anxious Generation by Johnathon Haidt - I’m a lot less inclined to spend time on social media or my laptop at all.

I’m also less inclined to tolerate ads on TV willing us to ‘buy’, discussions online that become divisive, and scare-mongering information set to send us clattering for the latest supplement, health food, gadget etc.

Social media has been designed to get to stay online for as long as possible.

Let’s think about what this means exactly.

Social media is designed to be addictive. It's also designed to fragment your attention. In children and adolescents, this is concerning and is associated with increased levels of ADHD.

The more time you spend staring at a screen, scrolling, watching, and listening - the more someone in the Meta world gets a green tick. And the more your precious time is taken away from anything and everything else you could be doing.

If you’re an occasional user and you watch a few funny videos and then put the phone away - this probably isn’t for you.

For those of us that get sucked into the vortex of social media, eliciting troubled emotions, distrust, a feeling of sadness, anger, frustration and a need to reply to ‘some idiot online’ - this is for you.

Some Statistics

The US teen spends about 7 hours and 22 minutes looking at screens each day. Entertainment screen time among children in the US has risen from 4 hours 44 minutes in 2019 to 5 hours 33 minutes in 2021. OECD data in 2018 showed that youth in Aotearoa New Zealand used digital devices 42 hours per week on average, compared to 35 hours globally. And studies have shown that children’s screen use has increased (significantly) since then.

As of 2024, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 143 minutes per day, down from 151 minutes in the previous year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/)

And surveys of teens suggest that almost half of them are either constantly online or use the internet several times daily, with girls being more likely to use the internet constantly than boys. (https://www.statista.com/topics/2016/teenagers-internet-usage-in-the-us/#topicOverview)

Social Media and Mental Health in Teens

The more time a young female spends on social media, the more likely she is to be to be depressed. Girls who say they've spent five or more hours each weekday on social media are three times as likely to be depressed as those who report no social media time.

For adolescents who moved from basic phones to Smartphones, their sleep declined in quantity and quality. Their time with (real) friends face-to-face also plummeted immediately from 122 minutes a day in 2012 down to 67 minutes a day in 2019, and then Covid hit.

When children get hold of smartphones - they push out or reduce all other forms of non-phone-based experience which is a kind of experience that young brains need. This includes face-to-face interactions play with peers, and physical activity

Social media is the cause of anxiety depression and other ailments not just a correlation

In the last month or so after the loss of my father and the awareness of the death of a few other people in my circle and having COVID-19. I've had a lot of time for reflection about how I spend my days and time here on earth.

One of the things I am more aware of and exhausted by recently is social media posts that provide fearmongering or division.

I love the educational posts or the entertaining kittens and cute dogs - maybe even a few on how do bake a good loaf of sourdough.

But really, I think I want to spend my time doing other things.

I am purposely restricting my time on these platforms.