What Is A Social Media Detox? A Guide For Bloggers & Content Creators

Have you ever thought about quitting social media cold turkey?

It may not be enough to block social media apps on your phone. You may need a complete detox from social networking sites and the online world in general in order to improve your focus and life satisfaction and regain your mental energy.

In this post, we cover what a social media detox is as well as how to survive one if your customer base should ever consider taking part in one.

We then share a few tips you can use to prevent your brand from contributing to the ever growing need to take breaks from the digital world.

What is a social media detox?

A social media detox is the practice of limiting or completely eliminating one’s use of social media apps, usually for a few days to as many as 30.

Some social media detoxes happen on a daily basis where a social media user limits their use of social media platforms by giving themselves a maximum daily limit, such as 30 minutes.

Some detoxes involve reducing the number of social media apps you use or unfollowing accounts you don’t really interact with.

A social media detox can also be part of a complete digital detox where you ignore the digital world in favor of “real life.”

The practice is meant to improve mental health by reducing addiction to social media.

What are the benefits of a social media detox?

Those who embark on social media detoxes do so for one or more of the following supposed benefits:

• Reduce social media addiction
• Improve focus
• Boost productivity
• Improve mental health
• Strengthen relationships

Let’s briefly touch base on each one of these benefits.

Reduce social media addiction

Do you know how much time you spend on social media? How about your phone in general? It can be pretty surprising when you look this up for the first time.

Many of us have become reliant on our phones for far more than communication these days. Whether it’s looking up bus schedules, ordering food, keeping track of our bank accounts or managing other aspects of our schedules, smartphones have become integral parts of our daily lives.

When you throw boredom, downtime and social media into the mix, you may be surprised by how much time you spend scrolling on a daily basis.

Social media reduces boredom and makes us feel more connected to communities that matter to us. It’s very easy to get addicted for these reasons.

A social media detox is meant to alleviate this addiction.

Improve focus

When you become addicted to social media and your phone in general, you might find it difficult to pay attention to one thing for long periods of time.

This includes work, conversations, daily responsibilities, commuting and more.

A social media detox is meant to improve focus by helping you to stay in the present and pay attention to whatever it is you’re supposed to be paying attention to.

Boost productivity

When you’re able to focus more, you’re also able to be more productive.

This means you get more work done, become more physically active and even complete more tasks in your personal life.

A social media detox is meant to help with this by removing a constant distraction from your day.

Improve mental health

Social media is seen as a contributing factor to many young people’s declining mental health.

Because we’re able to control how others perceive us on social media, we can create unrealistic representations of our appearances and day-to-day lives.

This can make others feel less worthy and give them a sense of “fear of missing out,” better known as FOMO.

Reducing social media usage is meant to improve your mental health by blocking off your access to content that can give you an unrealistic outlook of the world.

Strengthen relationships

Work, school and other responsibilities already keep you from spending time with the people you love the most.

When you also spend what little free time you have on your phone or on social media, you ruin your chance to strengthen the relationships you already have in your life.

Taking a social media break might encourage you to make more time for the people in your life.

Is a social media detox worth it?

If you only take personal anecdotes into account, you’d think a social media detox would be completely worth undertaking. Those who do partake in one claim the practice improves their mental health, productivity and stress.

However, two different studies on social media detoxes came to two different conclusions on their effectiveness.

The first study analyzed 31 young adults, who undertook a lightweight social media detox for two weeks. Participants reduced their social media use to just 30 minutes a day.

According to the study, the detox reduced the participants’ addiction to social media and their smartphones in general. It also improved “sleep, satisfaction with life, stress, perceived wellness and supportive relationships.”

The second study involved 51 participants who engaged in a reduced use of social media.

Analysts did not witness withdrawal symptoms in participants nor did they notice any significant improvements in participants’ overall well being.

In reality, social media may be less of a cause of anxiety and depression and more of a vice we use to deal with these emotions.

Therefore, we’re better off reducing screen time and finding other ways to deal with stress, depression and boredom.

How to survive a social media detox among your customer base

With social media and smartphones becoming so prevalent in the last 15+ years, so are ways to cope with overuse of these two new fixtures in our lives.

Unfortunately, this could mean your customer base leaving or limiting their use of one of your primary sources of traffic. After all, social media users are more interested in using social media sites to connect with friends and family and less with brands.

So, how do you survive the first social media detox among your customer base?

The best answer to this question is actually for you to be more persistent with your social media marketing efforts.

If you increase your presence on social media, you’ll always find new followers even if part of your customer base deserts a specific platform.

Here are a few additional marketing tactics you can build on the side to help you survive a sudden decrease in social media traffic:

• Email list
• Evergreen social media content
• Podcast
• YouTube channel
• Create products customers can use while they detox

An email list, podcast and YouTube channel give you additional ways to build an audience.

An email list, in particular, allows you to build an audience from those who actually visit your website. A podcast and a YouTube channel allow you to extend your audience to third-party platforms.

Evergreen social media content is social media content that has the potential to go viral in your niche but does not follow current trends or cover current events.

This is because it’s not unusual for platforms like YouTube and TikTok to put old content in your feed if it thinks you might be interested in it.

Finally, if you create a product and mostly attract customers to your website to buy that product, your business will survive whether or not you participate in social media marketing.

This is a difficult journey to undertake and involves you marketing your products well enough to become a household name.

How to avoid contributing to the need for a social media detox

Smartphone addiction and toxicity are the two driving forces behind most social media detoxes.

But consumers are growing tired of being marketed to on social media, so escaping brands and influencers are quickly becoming additional reasons to shelter oneself from all the noise that social media brings.

This leaves us with one question: what can we as bloggers and content creators do to avoid contributing to the need for our customers to take breaks from social media?

There are a few things you can do, what it mainly boils down to is redefining your social media marketing strategy to focus more on providing value to your target audience and less on boosting your own stats.

Yes, increasing your engagements and follower counts across all of your social media accounts is important, but if you approach social media with the intent to provide solutions and entertainment to your target audience, you’ll find achieving those engagements and follower counts much easier.

As you brainstorm post ideas for social media, consider what value they provide to your target audience.

You may have the perfect video idea for an affiliate product you want to promote, but how about including content that doesn’t promote anything in your social media calendar?

Here are other tactics you can include in your strategy to avoid annoying your customer base on social media:

• Be personable.
• Keep your content positive. You can be honest and vulnerable, but don’t be toxic or mean spirited, especially to your competitors.
• Post original content to each social media platform you use.
• Participate in social media trends and challenges, but do so sparingly. Hopefully, you know your audience well enough to know if they’d find your participation amusing.
• Don’t post too often. Most social media platforms operate on an algorithm, anyway, so your core audience may not see your content until a few days or even weeks later.

Social media can be a difficult form of marketing to master.

If you want more ideas on how to promote yourself on social media websites, read our guide on the best tips for social media marketing.