ScienceDaily: Replacing social media use with physical activity

“She and her team recruited a total of 642 volunteers, assigning them randomly to one of four groups of roughly equal size. The first group reduced the daily social media consumption by 30 minutes during an intervention period of two weeks. Since previous studies had shown that physical activity can increase well-being and reduce depressive symptoms, the second group increased the duration of physical activity by 30 minutes daily during this period, while continuing to use social media as usual. The third group combined both, reducing social media use and increasing physical activity. A control group didn't change the behavior during the intervention phase.

Before, during and up to six months after the two-week intervention phase, the participants responded to online surveys on the duration, intensity and emotional significance of their social media use, physical activity, their satisfaction with life, their subjective feeling of happiness, depressive symptoms, the psychological burden of the Covid-19 pandemic and their cigarette consumption.

The findings clearly showed that both reducing the amount of time spent on social media each day and increasing physical activity have a positive impact on people's well-being. And particularly the combination of the two interventions increases one's satisfaction with life and subjective feeling of happiness and reduces depressive symptoms. The effects last for a long time: even six months after the two-week intervention phase had ended, participants in all three intervention groups spent less time on social media than before: namely about a half hour in the groups that had either reduced social media time or increased their daily exercise, and about three-quarters of an hour in the group that had combined both measures. Six months after the intervention, the combination group engaged one hour and 39 minutes more each week in physical activity than before the experiment. The positive influence on mental health continued throughout the entire follow-up period.

"This shows us how vital it is to reduce our availability online from time to time and to go back to our human roots," concludes Julia Brailovskaia. "These measures can be easily implemented into one's everyday life and they're completely free -- and, at the same time, they help us to stay happy and healthy in the digital age.".”

Some Insights From This Article

• Replacing 30 minutes of social media with physical activity can greatly improve one’s mood and mental health! In this article, researchers found that volunteers who gave up their social media time in place for physical activity showed much more satisfaction, subjective feelings of happiness and even decreased cigarette consumption.

• As the article says perhaps reducing our availability online and instead increasing our availability with real life non-virtual stuff can help us maintain a positive outlook on media usage and understanding how to live a happier, more satisfying life.

What are some habits you do that help you live a happy, satisfactory life?

Full article is here!

#SocialMedia #Exercise #PhysicalActivity