Should I Delete All My Social Media Apps?

You’re sitting at your desk and your phone is placed next to you. In between tasks, do you feel yourself constantly picking it up to whizz through your apps? That ping of a notification and the vibrate that comes with it screams for attention. How can you not take a quick look?

According to Ofcom, the average UK based adult checks their phone every 12 minutes in a working day. So why do we check on things so frequently? Is it to retain a constant connection with our friends? To avoid feeling FOMO? To be instantly aware of world news when it happens. Or is it just a physical addiction, a learned behaviour where we can’t stop scrolling?

Have we taken the time to stop and think about why we love our phones so much. What is the constant scrolling doing to my mental health, my sleep, to my friendships? Here at Love the Idea, we are huge fans of all things tech, but our whole philosophy is rooted in human behaviour and making connections that matter. So when considering the role of social media in our lives, we started to walk down memory lane and found ourselves harking back to life before it. 

• We remembered our mates’ phone numbers and actually called people
• We went outside to go shopping
• We had cameras we’d drop off in our lunch break to get printed with our latest holiday snaps
• If we were waiting for a friend to arrive, we’d just wait and watch the world go by
• We’d go to Blockbuster on a Saturday night and hope the movie we planned to watch was in stock
• We had set times to get news, perhaps our favourite newspaper, the Evening Standard slammed in your direction on the tube on the way home that day, or the 10 o’clock news
• If we fancied someone, we asked them out.

Reminding you of an episode of early-days Friends? Simpler days perhaps? We spend an average of four hours a day on our phones; imagine all that could be achieved with this time.

David Mohammadi decided to take a 65-week social media detox and at first he found he had fewer distractions and actually became more successful at work. He was more acutely aware of his surroundings and found he made more effort to keep in touch with friends by purposefully calling. His mind was clear, less busy and generally more able to live in the here and now. But, after weeks of social media being a no-go, he found friendships suffered. We have adapted to always being able to see what our friends are doing on any given day, so when we then speak to our peers in person we have conversation triggers like ‘How was that work trip last week, that hotel looked amazing!’ Without posting occasional updates to his friendship group, David found he was on the outskirts and wanted to be more involved in his friends’ lives.

There’s no denying it, social media keeps us connected with our friends, trends, news and the general pulse of life. Whilst, deleting social media would declutter our internal thoughts, without it, we have to be committed to working harder to stay connected to the world around us.

Detoxing is a great way of allowing for temporary rest bite and perhaps a newfound perspective on what social media means to you. But not all apps are for mindless scrolling. Whatever app we’re building we always seek the purpose behind it; what can this app offer for deeper human connection? Take Olio for example, a recent podcast client, an app created purely for social good, a way of avoiding waste and sharing stuff you don’t want anymore, including all the food you chuck from your fridge before you go on holiday. How awesome is that? 

An awareness of these kinds of apps positively influences society and our planet. By deciding to delete all social media, we would disconnect ourselves from these new initiatives as well as perhaps making our friendships a little harder work. There is no right answer, to scroll or to not scroll. But one thing’s for sure, using social media responsibly, being aware of the time we spend on it, and seeking the social good that can come from it is a good perspective to have.