A recent study published in Qscience revealed that impact on time, distorted values, health and well-being, or an instigating incident are the main reasons for people to deactivate or quit social media. The study titled ‘Deactivated: Exploring why adults quit social media’ by Ghenwa Yehia and Karen McIntyre also explored the most prominent factors such as behavioural capability, observational learning, reinforcements, expectations, and self-efficacy that support an individual’s discontinuous social media use.
All of the respondents have made either direct or indirect references to the impact that social media use had on time as a contributing factor to deactivation. The study said that many people described how their social media use was nothing more than “mindless scrolling” and “a complete waste of time.”
Respondents’ health-related grievances ranged from an increase in negative feelings — social comparison, stress, anxiety, insomnia, and panic attacks after excessive social media use to headaches, eye strain, shoulder pain, finger pain, back pain, and heart palpitations. Over 58 per cent of respondents identified their mental or physical health and well-being as key factors in their decision to deactivate. About 65 per cent had clear expectations that deactivation from social media would be a positive choice that they would greatly benefit from.
However, none of the male respondents cited mental well-being issues as the reason for deactivation. 38 per cent identified a key external event that leads to their deactivation from social media use. It ranged from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; to the death of an immediate family member or the holidays. Another factor contributing to deactivation was that social media had lost its value in terms of the initial reasons a respondent signed up for.
“All of the respondents have identified as having deactivated one or more social media apps, interestingly, only three remained completely deactivated from the social media network they had identified as one they cut off,” said the study. “Interestingly, many respondents described a cyclical-type use of social media, and not complete and total deactivation, where they would decide to deactivate based on the factors mentioned above, and then they would reactivate for various reasons,” it added.
In terms of users, Indians are the most likely to quit social media with an average of 4,97,940 online searches a month indicating their intention to leave social media for good, revealed Reboot Online, a digital agency. When considering the amount of active internet users in India (755,820,000), 0.066 per cent of Indian internet users are keen to quit social media each month.