Digital detox

We rely so heavily on social media to promote our businesses that it can be easy to ignore the detrimental effect it is having on our mental wellbeing, writes Hellen Ward

Keeping a healthy work/life balance is something we all aspire to but, realistically, how easy is it? How many of us check our emails long after we should have switched off for the day? Isn’t this intrusion into our private time, even if it is of our own doing, a hugely negative factor in our emotional wellbeing?

Most of us have to use social media in the course of our work. Either we have a business ourselves that we need to promote or we work in one where we have to get involved in the content creation. In fact, even for SMEs (small/medium size enterprises), running the social media can become a full-time job.

Outsourcing the content is costly and often tone of voice is compromised if we let a relative stranger speak about our business. So, many brands find somebody in-house, already familiar with the team, who enjoys this element of the business, to take on this role. After all, it’s the modern equivalent of PR and marketing so it’s quite appealing to many.

But it’s well documented that screen time isn’t the best thing for our social or mental health. Most young people I know (including those I work with and my own children) are constantly on their phones. It’s easy to criticise but even though I’m in my late 50s I couldn’t help but notice I was becoming a little bit too surgically attached to my phone, too. Only a few short years ago I would people-watch and notice couples out for dinner who didn’t engage at all, spending their time glued to their phones instead of talking to each other. Gen X-ers like me would smugly say we came from the right era – before online dating and social media – and that we had the best of everything (including music and culture) without having to endure the downside of the Gen Z’s life that social media brings; comparison is the thief of joy after all, so constantly comparing yourself to others is hardly good for us.

Time poor

Whether your addiction is Facebook (never really got into it myself) or Instagram, X or TikTok, videos are apparently the way to engage so the amount of time we spend on our phones is increasing, and very much to our detriment.

Our ability to concentrate is becoming very compromised. Most people, surveys suggest, can now only truly pay attention to what they are working on for 12 minutes at a time before they get distracted and start checking their phones. That can’t be good for anyone. But just how addicted are we? And is feeding that addiction just making it worse?

Social media has taken over our lives. We can all put on a glittering show and make our day-to-day groundhog existence look glamorous and wonderful. But painting a false picture of our lives is just exacerbating the mental health issues like low selfesteem and depression that so many people experience. How many people do we all know whose Instagram account tells a very different story to the misery they are suffering in their personal lives? Too many, for sure. Keeping it real doesn’t seem to be “a thing” when it comes to how we portray ourself to strangers online.

While we all want (and indeed need) to engage customers with our businesses, and social media is the most valuable and accessible resource open to us to do so, it’s sorely tempting to stop looking at the business element and start looking at the personal stuff during work time and vice versa, crossing over into our private time.

Digital dry spell

I have two Instagram accounts – one public and one private. But the lines blur. Partly due to my incessant denial that I need glasses, I often post work stuff on the wrong account and vice-versa, hence you’ll find drunken videos of me and my sister/bestie/daughter in Pacha or at a Duran Duran concert on my work account instead of assets I’ve created where I’m banging on about VAT reform or analysing the state of the sector (what else?).

So, I’m planning to delete all my social media apps from my home screen for a month. No Insta or X or Facebook alerts will be visible to me – if I want to see them, I will have to consciously go looking for them to find them. The urge to see who has liked or commented on a post will therefore involve a lot of digging, so I am removing the temptation by keeping them invisible, a bit like not having chocolate in the house if you’re on a diet or removing the wine from the fridge if you’re doing dry January. I’m not sure if it will work, but I’m giving it a go.

All rules have an exception and here’s mine – I won’t get through my dry social media month without YouTube. I subscribe to so many yoga channels (Yoga with Kassandra, Charlie Follows, Yoga with Adrienne) that without them I would be lost. My downward dog would be down in the mouth, too. My daily session sets me up for whatever crap is coming my way, whether it’s a power flow or vinyasa – chanting “om” with my YouTube girlies at the end of a particularly strenuous stretch is non-negotiable.

It will be interesting to see whether I miss social media and whether staying away from it is beneficial to me. More time for yoga and reading, more time to reflect, stop and smell the flowers – be present in the moment, connect with the earth, walk by the sea, ground myself …you get the picture. I’ll let you know if that is what happens or if the FOMO gets to me. Who knows – I might feel so liberated I delete it all together? Here’s hoping.

Hellen Ward is managing director of Richard Ward Hair & Metrospa in London, vice president of The Hair & Beauty Charity and co-founder of Salon Employers Association (SEA).