WHY YOU NEED A DIGITAL DETOX

“digital detox” A used to mean shutting down all devices and retreating to a quiet corner. But as our screen dependency grows, we need a different approach. ELLE enlists the internet’s rising voices to debate the emerging slow-tech movement and how we can

Put down that phone – we dare you.

AN INSTAFAST MAY BE THE ANSWER When journalist Pandora Sykes took an extended break from Instagram, the effects were lasting

Recently, I took a two-week sabbatical from Instagram. An Insta-fast, if you will. It was during Paris Fashion Week, amid the incessant slew of Zoolander-meetsthe Truman Show Instagram Stories, that I realised I needed a break from blinkand-you-miss-it visuals. Over the previous five years, the longest I’d ever spent off Instagram was two days. Before I went freelance in January, the thought would have filled me with horror. Going off the photo grid meant digital suicide.

And then I quit, for a bit, right in the thick of it. What a shoddy fashion journalist I must be, to press that little wobbly “x” by the Instagram icon and forfeit this reel of information during the fashion industry’s most important period. And yet I survived. I read the runway reports on my desktop and clicked through some streetstyle galleries to see what surprising new trends were parading along the Parisian pavements. I would describe the adjustments I made over those two weeks of my Insta-fast as small but meaningful. I took fewer pictures and, instead of mindlessly scrolling through my feed, I read books. I didn’t get FOMO, my anxiety diminished and I’m pretty sure my urge to shop was curbed by at least 70 per cent. I found myself on Twitter much more – a platform with which I have a wholly positive relationship because it’s less visual – rooting out brilliant pieces of journalism from all over the internet.

Since then, my relationship with social media has shifted a gear. I try to post a picture no more than every few days, rather than my previous habit of two pictures a day, plus furious scrolling. I follow a vague routine of one scroll in the morning, one in the evening (yes, I’m aware I’m starting to sound like a Weight Watchers ad, but for phones), and while I don’t always stick to this self-induced regime, I do try not to touch that square-by-square drug at other times of the day. To be clear, this is a tale of caution and not redemption: I have not quit Instagram and probably never will. As a journalist, brand consultant and podcaster, I need it for my work. But I have found a way to create a healthier, more distant relationship with the platform. The word I now use when I talk about it is “disengagement”.

Much has been made of how the fashion industry, by dint of its focus on the aesthetic, has been altered by Instagram and its 800-million-strong community. “If [a brand] has one influencer in the audience with one million followers, what will [those] one million followers experience?” Eva Chen, Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships, recently said when talking about the so-called “ripple effect” of shows. The money that brands now invest in Instagram marketing is unprecedented: Chiara Ferragni, 30, one of the most influential influencers, with some

12.5 million followers, allegedly commands more than $15,000 for a single sponsored post.

Instagram allows the fashion world – a previously closed industry, accessible only to the elite – to be experienced in a 24/7, real-time loop. A recent image of a front row full of editors at a runway show in Beijing during China Fashion Week made me baulk – not one was looking at the catwalk, all were furiously ’gramming (yes, it’s a verb now).

“Instead of enjoying and then digesting a show, Instagram forces us to spit out gut reactions,” says popular blogger Camille Charrière, 29. “Before the show even starts, I am anxious – I know that I have to please both the people who have invited me to the show and my own audience, who are expecting great coverage.” For Charrière, who has

650,000 Instagram followers and works with brands such as Dior, Mango and Chloé, there is scant choice but to be Insta-hooked. “Instagram is a big part of my job, and while it hasn’t replaced blogging, that really isn’t a priority anymore. I’m conscious that I’m working with brands that care about the content they’ve paid for.”

Charrière, like many, admits she’s addicted to communication. “First it was email, then MSN, then Facebook, and now Instagram and Whatsapp. If my battery dies in the middle of the day, I will buy a charger and sit in a cafe to charge it. I cannot survive without my phone. If my phone is on the table, I will check it every five minutes, so I try to keep it in my bag when I’m with friends. It’s definitely a bad habit of mine.”

”I GOT A FLIP PHONE [THAT] BARELY TEXTS. PARTICULARLY WHEN YOU’RE HAVING A TEXT ARGUMENT WITH YOUR HUSBAND, IT’S [REALLY] SLOW.” – ZADIE SMITH

It may be a bad habit, but it’s not one Charrière is willing to give up. “I always detox over New Year, when I allow myself to post one picture every two days, but to quit would be to bite the hand that feeds me,” she says. “Try to give it less meaning and work on other projects with more depth? Yes. That’s why I co-created the podcast, Fashion: No Filter.”

A few years ago, none of us really knew what dopamine was. Now, we talk about the chemical neurotransmitter, which controls the brain’s pleasure centre, constantly. We post, like and comment in the hope that likes and comments will also come our own way. “That expectation of reward encourages dopamine-seeking behaviour,” says digital psychologist Nathalie Nahai. “It’s exactly the way gambling machines work.” But, she adds, these “little hits” are “inherently unsatisfying” and anxiety-inducing. “Instagram has created a more brittle sense of self, where validation becomes external, rather than internal.” Yet another vehicle through which we can feel less confident about ourselves? Oh, joy! No wonder you see women in real life who, with the aid of retouching apps, look nothing like their Insta-image. And who can blame them?

While this might have crept up on us as we were busy positioning our selfie sticks (disclaimer: I’ve never used one), it certainly isn’t a surprise to the hubristic app creators. “[This] socialvalidation feedback loop [exploits] a vulnerability in human psychology,” Sean Parker, the co-creator of Facebook, said last year. “[We] understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

Like Parker, many of these creators are now speaking out. Justin Rosenstein, a tech executive who helped create Facebook’s “like” button, has admitted he’s installed “blockers” on his devices to avoid Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and limits his use of Facebook. Brian Acton, co-founder of Whatsapp, which was acquired by Facebook for a cool $25 billion, was calling on followers to #Deletefacebook earlier this year in the wake of revelations that the platform had shared the personal information of 50 million users without explicit consent (the figure was later updated to 87 million). The information ended up in the hands of election consultants Cambridge Analytica. (After Facebook’s value plunged by almost $65 billion, CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised for the “breach of trust” in full-page newspaper ads, saying the site was now “limiting the data apps get when you sign up”, and was “investigating every single app that had access to large amounts of data” before it fixed the problem).

Facebook also acknowledged in a recent blog post that social media can harm mental health, and has introduced new features such as Snooze (which allows you to hide a person for 30 days without having to unfriend them) and Take A Break (helping people get through a break-up by limiting access to an ex’s activity). The conclusion of the post, written by Facebook’s director of research David Ginsberg and research scientist Moira Burke, was telling: “Our research and other academic literature suggests it’s about how you use social media that matters when it comes to your wellbeing.”

“I’D RATHER HAVE A RECTAL EXAMINATION ON LIVE TV BY A FELLOW WITH COLD HANDS THAN HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE.” – GEORGE CLOONEY

“I TOOK 90 DAYS OFF [AND] DID NOT HAVE MY CELLPHONE. IT WAS THE MOST REFRESHING, CALMING, REJUVENATING FEELING.” – SELENA GOMEZ

Feeling guilty about app usage is a ridiculous-sounding but very real problem, but we shouldn’t blame ourselves, says science journalist and author of How To Break Up With Your Phone, Catherine Price. Distraction is our brain’s “natural preference” and social media merely reinforces “the same mental circuits that made it hard to sustain our focus to begin with”. How To Break Up With Your Phone is vital reading for those addicted to the mindless scroll, or looking to create distance between their brain and smart phone. Price’s suggestions include putting your phone “to bed” before you do so yourself and “getting it up” later than you do, and using Aeroplane Mode (which can feel less scary than completely turning it off). I’ve introduced all these changes and feel calmer and more productive as a result. “The point of this book is not to throw your phone under a bus,” says Price. It is to turn your phone back into “a tool, not a temptation”.

I couldn’t agree more – although it does piss off my friends sometimes (I have missed important news, such as a close friend having a baby, when I was merrily airplane-ing away). But what if you aren’t able to switch to Aeroplane Mode regularly? It’s not a total dystopian doomsday, says Nahai. “If we can raise awareness around social-media use, which is absolutely happening, then we can start to think more consciously about our actions online.”

Tech hysteria, perpetuated by the media, would have us believe that Instagram is rotting our brains. In 2016, a set of terrifying stats went viral: that the average attention span is down from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to eight seconds now. But panic not: these stats are unsubstantiated – cognitive psychologist Gemma Briggs says the idea that Instagram is eroding our concentration span is “a modern myth”. “There’s no credible evidence to suggest that social media is affecting our concentration span, nor damaging our brain. What we do know is that if you multi-task, then your concentration will vary” – and therefore, diminish – “as you shift between various tasks.” After all, how often are you on Instagram while cooking, talking to a friend or searching Netflix? You may be doing all four at once. It’s that flittery sense of not being present in any given moment that has led us to believe we can no longer focus on one thing.

The answer lies in balance. We hear it all the time: in food, work, tech. But that’s because it makes sense – if only when you realise you’re the only person not Instagram Storying the “cute” dinner table.

“Anonymity will become prized again,” says Nahai. “When a social trend becomes too big” – in this case, the utter here’s-everything-i-did-today transparency of Instagram – “there is a kickback in the opposite direction.” For all the worries we have about app-addicted teens, gen Z appears more cynical about Instagram than millennials do: a Digital Awareness UK survey conducted last October revealed that 63 per cent of teens said they would be happier if social media did not exist. There’s hope for my daughter, then, at least.