what i learned by testing my stress levels on social media

Our social media producer Sophia Smith Galer monitored her stress levels and social media usage for a week – here’s what she found out.

i wouldn’t describe myself as a specifically confused-out person. i experience my activity, have a reasonably 9-5 working lifestyles and spend the relaxation of my waking hours doing my great to exit and feature a laugh. i’m a social media producer, that means that i run money owed on social networking web sites and produce multimedia content for them. i’m online all of the time, sure, but i’ve by no means seen that as uncommon or stressful; it goes hand-in-hand with being a virtual journalist and it looks as if a herbal development for anyone who spent a great deal of her adolescence online.

that’s how i used to describe myself until i spent every week checking out my strain degrees and found out that they’re really quite excessive. i’ve spent the last month main #likeminded, bbc future’s month-long season on social media and its effect on our intellectual well-being, and it’s made me question my relationship with my phone. turning it on inside the morning and staying wired is as imperative to my existence as garments and meals. is that addiction by some means connected to why i seem to be so confused?

within the pursuit of know-how, i allowed myself to be a human guinea pig for one week, revealing my pressure ranges and social media utilization to my group and, now, to you. i also managed to influence other social media manufacturers to get worried to get a broader idea of our relationships with our phones, each within and outside our operating life. importantly, it showed me how i evaluate to different people – and that’s likely what taken aback me the most.

the check

i used 3 special monitors to probe my intellectual well-being and social media use over the week; a pip, moment and checky. the pip is a touch device that measures your stress stages via your fingertips, something that’s referred to as your electradermal interest. second is an app that measures how a whole lot time you spend for your cellphone, and checky keeps an eye fixed on how usually you check your telephone each day. right here are the outcomes from my pip, along those of three different manufacturers:  dhruti shah from bbc information, eleanor dunn from bbc entertainment news and elie gordon who manages social media for bbc earth.

an essential caveat here is that the ‘test’ is manifestly now not specifically scientific; for one element, we had no manipulate and only a few individuals. this entire take a look at changed into greater approximately self-appraisal and to find out something new approximately ourselves.

i used to be the second-maximum confused. the week wherein i ran the check was a fairly normal one workwise, so i’m now not sure why i used to be less burdened on tuesday and thursday than monday and wednesday; tuesday might have had something to do with a team pub lunch. i spent my saturday out and about and my sunday at domestic and, notwithstanding no longer running, i was simply as stressed as i used to be during the week.

i learnt 3 essential lessons:

1. there may be no weekend effect

i had naively expected that my stress levels could cross down over the weekend, but mine didn’t – nor did dhruti’s or elie’s. eleanor in the meantime, was very zen – something i placed right down to all of the yoga she does.

another colleague, mauro galluzzo from bbc money, also did the test, however over a distinctive duration – the week over christmas, in which he labored every day. his pressure ranges stayed pretty a whole lot the identical for the duration of, which i think is strange, as you'll consider christmas to be extra at ease. he was checking bbc cash’s fb web page every day, but.

my weekend consequences can be defined by the fact that i spend tons of my unfastened time as wired as at paintings, checking personal emails, posting content material on my personal accounts and glancing thru newsfeeds. i spent the least quantity of time on my phone on sunday, but plenty of time on my pc as a substitute. on saturday i spent as lots time on my phone as i did in the course of the working week, despite the fact that i was out all day and nighttime. as predicted, my social media use is as an awful lot part of the cloth of my free time as it's miles my working existence.  

i’m provided with  likelihoods: i either go online to escape from stress, or my time online is making me pressured. many research show that stress contributes to an extended listing of bodily and mental health problems. may want to i be doing extra to loosen some of that intellectual strain on the weekend?

  2. i check my smartphone a lot

eleanor exams her cellphone round 70 times a day on common. rather, dhruti only tests hers among seven or eight instances an afternoon; her fast e-mail responses make me think she’s on her laptop lots rather, and in many face-to-face conferences. studies shows that younger human beings test their telephones about eighty five instances a day, so eleanor’s use is common, as is elie who confirmed similar results.

mine tells a one of a kind story. on saturday i checked in a whopping 154 times; my each day common for my working week became 129 and on sunday i managed a comparatively paltry seventy six instances. undergo in mind that i take a look at my cellphone this regularly simultaneously to computer use – throughout the week i’m on my pc as a minimum six hours an afternoon.

i achieve this this often in element because i am getting plenty of notifications. running nine social media money owed across my paintings and private existence way i’m inundated. i speak to my pals on whatsapp and facebook messenger. i even get phantom vibrations in which i suppose i’ve felt or heard my smartphone perk up whilst it hasn’t.

i’m much less involved approximately this discovery, as i’ve realised that the variety of times you take a look at your cellphone doesn’t correlate with screen time; my repetitive checking is with any luck a sign of habitual use instead of a problem consistent with se. on tuesday i spent the longest amount of time on my cellphone – 4 hours and 34 minutes – but it became the weekday i checked my telephone the least, and i used to be much less pressured than typical too. screen time is every other problem – some thing that we protected in our fb stay with two leading psychologists searching into whether or not we must, or shouldn’t, be concerned about the time spent online – that’s really worth thinking about here. someday elie gordon managed a gargantuan 6 hours 11 mins, despite the fact that she checked her smartphone best 88 times. 

3. i am going on my smartphone for escapism

i’m assured that quite a few my social media use – especially over the weekend or just earlier than mattress – is all the way down to me seeking to overlook non-public troubles and worries. maybe this can be visible as a factor of technological addiction, however i know that i’m now not by myself in this; once I checked out social media dependancy i referred to a have a look at that found phone use makes us experience happier, up to a point. i really like twitter for staying up to date with information, i really like instagram to peer what my buddies are up to and to exercise my images competencies. in reality, that i find so much happiness on my phone might be why i discover my job so fulfilling.

i spoke to maggy vaneijk, bbc 3’s social media manager. she’s just released a self-help book approximately her quest for happiness “in a world defined by way of her melancholy,” and that i requested her how her social media use should suit in with mental nicely-being.

“i think your social media feeds are what you are making of them,” she says. she used to do what lots of us nevertheless do; getting stuck up within the contrast trap on instagram, lurking on her boyfriends’ ex-girlfriends’ profiles. she’s due to the fact that turned her feeds into a safe space with “masses of golden retrievers” – and thinks that “in case you scroll thru and sense yourself getting down and miserable you need to do something about it.

“comply with humans you recognize but don’t sense jealous about. because embracing the mental health community i’ve observed masses more like-minded spirits, now not just folks that need to expose off their engagement rings.”

regardless of this, she thinks she is online too much; she enforces detoxes on holiday but reveals it hard to put in force day to day. “you need with the intention to be reactive to do your activity properly.”

what now?

similar to maggy, i think i’d be worse at my activity if i wasn’t continuously consuming social content. but if #likeminded has taught me some thing, it’s that the factor where immoderate social media use pointers right into a pathological trouble is hazy. one questionnaire psychologists use to figure out whether or not you've got a social media addiction has  telling statements, that are truely relevant to me: “i use social media to overlook approximately personal troubles” and “i spend loads of time thinking about facebook or planning a way to use it”. the complete factor of my process is to hook people on bbc destiny and bbc lifestyle’s content on line; isn’t it therefore in all likelihood i am getting hooked in too?

if social media utilization is inflicting undue stress, then perhaps humans like me must start searching at our jobs a little greater like expert wine-tasters do. we’re spending an awful lot of time online in a manner that has been connected to mental fitness troubles and even dependancy. why aren’t all wine-tasters alcoholics? they find a work-existence stability, have barriers in place and recognize wherein their limits are. they even take apparently small measures like spitting wine out into a nearby bucket.

i’m honestly pleased that i did this experiment. comparing myself to different humans has made me self-appraise and think about how i ought to de-stress. as a part of #likeminded we’re asking you, our readers, what suggestions you have for a healthful and happy lifestyles on social media. we are hoping this has endorsed you to reflect onconsideration on your own online conduct. as for me, something tells me that i won’t be putting my smartphone down whenever soon.