“Get off your phone” used to be something my mum would say to me. But since she recently became addicted to Temple Run about five years after the initial craze, we’re now both glued to our phone screens. While she’s running away from an imaginary monster in some ancient ruins, my mindless scrolling on social media can no longer be considered a way of distracting myself but as a facet of my life. 

As Sarah Wilson eloquently articulated in her recent article, there is a frustrating trend for so-called authority figures to constantly criticise millennials and their supposed reliance on these technologies. I know that I can live without my phone, proven after I stupidly managed to lose it twice on two separate nights out in Life. But it’s difficult for anyone to argue against the countless ways that recent apps improve our everyday lives: Tilt will hopefully remove all chances of arguments about splitting the bill at restaurants; Deliveroo has made it possible to eat that food without changing out of your pyjamas; Uber has made making it home after nights out affordable; and I can watch Netflix on my phone during the ride. Staying connected has never been easier and life on many levels is vastly improved because of this.

“Beneath the aesthetic pleasure I can derive from these images negative thoughts about my own self-image tend to resurface”

What should be talked about more is the way that our routine addictions to various social media sites has a daily impact on our wellbeing. Nowadays we have constructed another realm in which to exist: there is the real world and then there is the plane of social media. We are so engrossed in the world of social media that it feels very much analogous to our realities. But because we know it isn’t physically real or visible we do not quite take social media seriously enough.

By the time this article is published, London Fashion Week will have just finished, after which the models will be carted off to Milan and then Paris. Along with famous cute animals (primarily pugs), fashion labels, brands and bloggers, they form a large percentage of the content that I follow on Instagram. It is an exciting time to scroll through my Instagram because I love fashion on a creative, intellectual level. Yet I am also someone who has struggled with their body image and eating over the years. Images of size zero, 5 foot 10 white girls strutting down catwalks do not encourage me to look at my own reflection with even a grain of self-respect. Beneath the aesthetic pleasure I can derive from these images negative thoughts about my own self-image tend to resurface.

“Delete your account!” or “unfollow them!” are the generic pieces of advice that people tend to offer. But I think this avoids the real problem. People use Instagram as a way to brand themselves, therefore no one is posting pictures of themselves when they’ve been crying, having a panic attack, or binge eating at 3am. I’m sure that even the most elegant fashion bloggers do sometimes eat McDonald’s after a night out, throw up over their hair or forget to do their makeup. But they don’t post these, so we understand their perfect Instagram feeds to be a reflection of their realities, reminding us of the unfiltered misery of our everyday lives.

So we need to start rethinking our relationship with the nebulous world of social media. We act as though they provide a form of escape, we browse our Facebook timelines or Twitter feeds as a way to take a break from work in the library. But instead of being relaxing, the content we read or the conversations we have during these moments is often mentally draining.

Our chemical library romance

People discuss their phone usage as though it is a dirty addiction. Social media usage is something we all think we should try to limit, we profess to one another we are going to try and cut down and then some may deactivate their accounts during exam season only to ultimately return with an even greater reliance on it than ever before. I find that at my lowest, watching Snapchat stories and scrolling through Facebook to be greeted by status updates and new photos has a real impact on my anxiety but because phone usage is so habitual, I rarely consider it as the cause.

To break from this we need to shift our thinking and start viewing the lives we lead on social media as a part of our daily routines that we can assert total control over, something we can choose when to engage or disengage with. Yes, you can delete you Facebook account, but it has become so central to the everyday organisation of our social lives and events that this is unlikely to be a solution for many. You can unfollow people who have caused you harm or avoid triggering content, but this still does not work towards finding new codes of behaviour we can implement when conducting our social media lives