Social Media Detox Impact – Ezgi Biçer

I met Ezgi through one of my peers in the master’s program, Defne, who is one of her friends. She told me how she changed her view of life by doing this experiment, and I asked her to share her experience; she was happy to, which shows me the effect social media might have on young girls. This girl decided to delete all of her social media for a month, except for Snapchat,e to keep in contact with her close friends because this was her form of communication. She started doing it specifically because she was addicted to social media and was always doomscrolling, which led to a large amount of procrastination and left her without time to do anything else. She spent all of her time on social media, and that is why she deleted it to be more present because she started to develop body dysmorphia. After moving to London, she noticed some changes in her body. Now everyone is on Ozempic, which led to her seeing a lot of unrealistic bodies, and the more she gained weight, the more she saw people getting skinnier. She started to consume this type of media; this led to her feeling depressed because she felt everyone had the perfect body and she was fat. Still, she started thinking that skinny fat was the new fat, and she was not even this, but this is how she felt, and as if she should see a doctor, and felt as if she was overweight when she was actually of normal weight, and she was worried. Every time she would like herself in an outfits and she would look at her phone and this girls with their bodies she would look at the mirror and feel as if she was larger and that was why clothing did not look good on her which lead to her stoping wearing the outfits she wanted to wear because she presided herself as fat and after deleting social media she had more time to be taking care of her body and dealing with the addiction to scrolling. She realized that she stopped snacking and would eat even if she knew she was full, and she had issues with bingeing. Maybe it was because she was determined to lose weight that she started to restrict herself, but she did not crave anything, which was weird for her. The best thing is that now that she does not see these girls on social media, she started to feel more confident in her body because she was not exposed to unobtainable bodies all the time; she does not have that reminder on her phone. She thinks everyone is having filler faces and having a lot of work done on their bodies as well; it is now a different beauty standard. She feels as if she has to do all of this and look like these girls as well. She is now more mindful of how social media affects her and realizes that these girls are only showing their best moments. It was good to get a break and talk about how easy it is to get lost in social media. Going through this and hearing about her experience, I think a lot of girls have this same issue and think a lot about comparisons with other people on social media, and one important thing is to understand that this is these girls’ job; it is their career, and that is also why they look the way they do.