ARE YOU A SCREEN ADDICT?

Leanne’s tips for changing your relationship with social media

♥ Treat any platforms profiting from your attention with caution. Question everything you’re shown, including posts, news and search results.

♥ Do a self-assessment: how much time do you spend on screens each day? Track your screen time across all devices for a week and multiply it by 52. How do you feel about this? What would you do with your life if you had these hours back each year?

♥ How long can you go without visiting your favourite social media platform? Challenge yourself to be more conscious of using it. Try doing something else before opening apps in the morning.

♥ Use apps such as ‘Freedom’ to block social media apps across devices.

♥ Avoid apps that tell you who has unfollowed you – you do not need to know, and they can fuel insecurity.

♥ Remember that social media can amplify negative feelings, so try to use it only when you feel confident and happy in yourself. Find mood-boosting activities unrelated to social media, such as yoga or writing in a journal.

♥ Identify the people whose profiles make you feel negatively about yourself, or those you return to, despite not liking or even following them. Can you block or ‘mute’ these people?

♥ Think carefully about your posts. Can you identify an overall purpose? Ask yourself what your motivation is for everything you share.

♥ Enjoy real life. How ‘present’ are you when having experiences such as going on holiday? What would it be like to have an exciting experience without then posting it online – can you try it?

♥ Create an experience bucket list, eg, visiting your dream destination, trying out a new activity. Make short-, medium- and long-term goals and think about how you can reach them. Can you make an effort to try to do one of these within the next month?

Top, from left: Leanne aged 13 and already a model, and, in 2018, looking – if not actually feeling – her idea of perfect. Above: she believes social media filters create harmful standards

the shape of your face to create a new, impossible standard of perfection. The Kim Kardashian bodies created by surgery or Photoshop that do not exist.

‘When I was very young, I was allowed to be online for only half an hour a day and remember once finding what I now know was quite horrifying content about eating disorders and how to make yourself sick. Today, a teenager who visits a site like that just once, on a bad day, will fall into a pit. From then on, algorithms will take them to more and more extreme content – one difficult moment and they’ve fallen.’

Leanne blames the social media platforms

themselves. ‘Young people are made to feel like it’s their choice, but it’s not,’ she says. ‘The world’s most talented engineers and behavioural scientists have been paid to get us as addicted to our phones as possible, to keep us hooked.’

For this reason, she is concerned by the focus on policing ‘harmful content’ rather than the platforms themselves. ‘Harmful content is just a symptom,’ she says. ‘The real problem is the business models that exist to keep people addicted.’

Leanne has launched a petition to seek legislation that addresses social media’s addictive features such as infinite scrolling, likes and push notifications. Her petition points out that since Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 (at that point the platform employed only 13 people and didn’t make a penny in profit), there has been a 94 per cent rise in suicide rates for women and girls aged between ten and 24, an alarming surge in hospital admissions for eating disorders and an increase in people seeking ADHD assessments (for which the waiting list is now up to seven years).

What can young people do themselves?

‘It shouldn’t be their responsibility,’ she says, ‘and coming off social media completely is unrealistic, especially when everyone you know is on it. It helps if you treat it like sugar – something you can enjoy, but too much of which is harmful.

‘Approach social media with your eyes wide open. The things you see aren’t real: you’re being directed to more extreme content which takes you ever further from reality.

‘Social media companies aren’t benevolent charities providing platforms for free. They’re also making [profits equivalent to] the GDP of entire countries. You’re the product, not the customer.’

Leanne is still seeking the perfect balance when it comes to her own use – she knows it isn’t easy. ‘I go on LinkedIn a lot now – it’s quite a fun place to be! If you can find a platform that really works for you, then use it, but think about the purpose: why am I on here and why am I posting? Am I seeking some sort of validation and is this really the best way to get it?’

Her relationship with Instagram remains problematic. ‘I go through phases,’ she admits. ‘I have an account and when I get to a point where my use is becoming slightly unhealthy, I deactivate it and take a break.

‘I think I might delete the whole thing, although I’ve been told that if I want people to read this book, I need a big Instagram following. But I don’t – that’s what I’m writing about!’

Although she still accepts the occasional modelling assignment (‘if you can do it on your own terms, it’s not a bad job’), her main focus is helping parents and young people through what she describes as a public health emergency.

‘Kids are having their childhood stolen from them,’ she says. ‘They’re living through screens which are cutting them off from the real world, exploiting their insecurities to keep them hooked and holding them to impossible standards of perfection. I lived in that fake world from the age of 13. It’s my duty to show the mess it makes.’

Leanne’s book The Reality Manifesto is available on Amazon. Visit leannemaskell.com to find out about events and courses