Jenny Bathurst - "How many of us take active steps to take time out from the online world?"

Jenny is studying journalism at the University of Brighton.

"In many of my past columns I’ve written about the crazy world of social media, and to be honest I am never hugely complimentary which is rather hypocritical really seeing as I spend an absurd amount of time scrolling through pages and pages of (probably mind numbing) images and descriptions. I even strongly advocate for it to my friends: “You don’t have Pinterest?! You need to get it, it’s the best, I’m on it all the time!” “Have you followed *insert influencer here who probably earns more for one ad than I did waitressing for a year* on Instagram? You have to see what they just posted!”

"However anytime I am given the opportunity to critique social media and its many states I can write a list as long as my arm of why it’s dangerous and fake and why I would never allow my future children to go near it. But you can bet that before I started writing this article I was knee deep in inspirational quotes, hair tutorials and photos of the Royal Family from 1997.

"And really, this is the problem. It’s entirely addictive. Although it may be nowhere near as severe as an addiction to something as harmful as alcohol or drugs, the pattern remains the same. You recognise that the amount of time you spend on social media apps is probably unhealthy and that the constant threads of content can’t be doing much good to your brain, and yet you continue to be drawn back to it again and again.

"I suppose that a healthy pattern many of us often form is to notice a problem in our lives and then attempt to fix it, not just allow it to sit and worsen. But how many of us take active steps to take time out from the online world? I’ll be the first to say that I don’t. And even after this article is published I can guarantee you that I’ll be laughing at memes on Facebook and saving stupid Tik Toks to annoy my boyfriend with.

"Perhaps I should end this article with something inspiring or deeply thoughtful about how we should use social media for the better or when we should and shouldn’t be scrolling through the endless posts and pictures, but in all honesty I just don’t know. If anyone has the answers then please let me know, but in the meantime I’ll be watching gender reveal videos and saving recipes I’ll never make."