DOESN’T SOUND TOO difficult a task does it?

As part of a social experiment earlier this year, more than 500 students at Coláiste Muire in Ennis tried to stay off social media for between 24 hours and a week.

A class of 24 teenagers decided to undertake the project to examine whether young people in Ireland had developed an “unhealthy online culture”.

A total of 536 students at the school — junior and senior cycle — took part in the 24 hour attempt. But even over such a short time, there was still quite a high drop off rate — almost a fifth of the students didn’t make it to the finish line.

Even still, more than half of those who took part said they had found it difficult to last the entire day. 58 per cent said they wouldn’t consider fasting for a week, and 25 per cent said they experienced sadness or anxiety while they were offline.

On a brighter note — 19 per cent said they were happier while on the 24-hour-fast than they would have been otherwise.

The class really began to see a difference when they attempted a longer fast of their own, they said. Aiming  to last a week, only five of the 24 girls actually made it.

Many of those who managed to avoid accessing their online personas suffered withdrawal symptoms, like irritability and mood swings, according to surveys taken afterwards.

Missing out

Interestingly, almost two-thirds of the participants said they felt they were missing out or isolated by not having access to social media.

“People even reported disturbed sleep as a result of the withdrawal,” student Fionnuala McKey told TheJournal.ie. 

“A couple of the girls had birthdays during the week and they got really upset and annoyed because they couldn’t look at their profile and see who was wishing them happy birthday.”

Molly Cantwell — who, along with Fionnuala, was one of the few to last the week without caving — felt pangs of withdrawal herself during the project.

“My mum had a little boy when I was off social media, so I couldn’t see pictures and stuff. It was just for a week though, so I knew it would be okay.

It definitely shone a light on the fact that we spend too much time and energy on it. That was a one-off really — but most of us didn’t really miss anything when we were off.

“We learned to communicate more face to face as a result,”  Fionnuala added.

The class from Colaiste Muire.

As part of their wider social media project, the girls also created a short film about the dangers of social media and created two fictitious Facebook accounts as an experiment.

One of their fake online creations accrued more than 1,600 followers on the social media site, before the students took the profile down. Their experiment was replicated by RTE’s Prime Time, as part of an investigation into internet safety.

The class were awarded top prize by  Young Social Innovators Ireland for their work in the group’s national competition for 2014.

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