This social media detox app is, according to experts, the secret to preventing the deterioration of your brain
Social media. We all know that we spend too much time on it. You're lying in bed thinking, “Oh, just one more TikTok won't hurt,” and before you know it, it's suddenly three in the morning and the alarm goes off in five hours. Where one goes to color to halve screen time, there is also something else to get you off those apps: a detox app. And unlike a juice cleanse, where you have to live on two juices all day, this one actually works according to experts. It's even so good that it can repair the damage from all that scrolling. Which app is it? You can read about it here.
An app is going to help? Seriously?
It may sound ironic that an app is going to ensure that you spend less time on social media. But believe me: it really is true. You can try to pick up all sorts of analog hobbies, but according to psychology professor Kostadin Kushlev a detox works best. “These digital detoxes sound like nonsense, but a large study in PNAS Nexus shows that even a small detox has enormous positive effects,” the researcher told the Washington Post. In this study, 467 people had to refrain from using social media for two weeks. The only thing they were allowed to use their phones for was calling and texting. This was monitored by the detox app Freedom. And it worked surprisingly well.
How the Freedom app helps against the deterioration of your brain
During the detox, a fairly predictable result quickly emerged: the screen time of the participants decreased by more than half. That makes sense, as there is no longer a reason to doomscroll. You can reread messages, but after reading the same conversations three times, you've seen enough. That phone goes off and you start living more in the real world.
Besides the amount of time that phone is on, the scientists noticed something else. The more the screen time decreased, the better the brain functions became. By the end of the period, it seemed as if people had gone back in time. And not just a few years, but ten years. For example, they could all focus better and felt mentally much better than before they started the detox. The effects were immediately visible on the brain scans. What turned out? This break worked better for mental health than antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy. Isn't that insane? You don't need an expensive retreat at all; this app provides a whole lot of changes for free.
Even the people who cheated and occasionally checked social media still experienced the same positive effects for a long time. So it really is true that this app can improve your brain – and you don't even need a DeLorean time machine for that.
So can you never go on social media again?
Mmm, it's not that black and white. While it's almost certainly much healthier for your brain to swear off all those apps, it wouldn't be realistic. We live in a digital society after all. Once you step away from TikTok, Instagram, and all those other socials, you miss out on a lot. News, beauty trends, gossip – almost everything everyone is talking about, you'll miss. Whether you think it's worth missing is the question, but it's not necessarily required. Since you notice so much from short breaks, you can also detox for a few days. Try a weekend without those apps. Go outside, sit on the terrace, read a book, color a coloring page. Really: make it as crazy as you want. Then start fresh and fruity on Monday again with scrolling, and you'll notice that you ultimately benefit from it. Are you looking for something to do during your detox? Then we know a lot of analog hobbies that will help you through it.
So you don't necessarily have to ditch social media completely, but using it a little less is good. This app can help you with that very conveniently.
Image: Instagram | nikkirodriguez
