Social Media Usage and Digital Detoxification on Teenagers

in Medan

Yovita Sabarina Sitepu and Hendra Harahap

Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Jl. Dr. A. Sofian No. 1A, Medan, Indonesia

Keywords: Social Media, Digital Detoxification, Teenager.

Abstract: This research is about social media usage and digital detoxification on teenagers in Medan. It aims to know

how the teenagers, especially high school students in Medanspend their time on social media, what the

impact of the social media usage on their health, and their efforts to reduce their social media addiction.

Descriptive Method is used in this resaearch and data is collected through questionaire and focus group

discussion (FGD). There are 300 students from six high schools in Medan as sample and 14 of them

representing their school as informants in FGD session. This research finds that 93% of the students use

Instagram and Whatsapp and they spend more than 1 hour per day to access their social media site. From

FGD, it finds that the students feel their life become meaningless without social media. All of the

informants never hear about digital detoxification before but they are willing to try such as make a no phone

zone in their home and dim their phone screen light so that they can not distract easily when notifications

come in.

1 INTRODUCTION

Today, most of people around the world are talking

with one another using social media. We use social

media to share our ideas, feelings, opinions,

experiences, and many more. People even use social

media for activities such as selling products or

services, shopping, online gaming, and looking for a

romantic relationship.

Digital Around The World in 2019 released that

there are 4.388 billion internet users or 56% of the

world total population. It also said that 3.484 billion

people as active social media users. Then, 3.256

billion users access the social media via mobile

devices (Kemp, 2019b).

As in January 2019, Facebook is social media

platform that has the most active users accounts. It

has 2.271 million active users accounts. Youtube is

on the second with 1.900 million active users

accounts and followed by Whatsapp and FB

Messenger with 1.500 and 1.300 million active users

accounts (Kemp, 2019a).

How important social media is in our lives now

can be seen from the time people spent everyday on.

Average time that people worldwide spent on social

media is 2 hours 16 minutes. Philipphines is the

country with the biggest average amount of time per

day spent using social media. It spent 4 hours and 12

minutes per day. Indonesia is ranked fourth with 3

hours and 26 minutes per day (Kemp, 2019a). The

amount of time people spent on (social) media

increases every year than they devote to any other

activities.

The percentage of millenial aged between 25-34

as social media users is 32% and followed by people

aged between 18-24 years old (27%).Meanwhile, the

percentage of users aged between 13-17 years old is

7%. It is said that youth (ages 15-24) is the most

connected age group (Kemp, 2019b; UNICEF,

2017).

There are many reasons why children engaged

into online activites. Childwise’s Monitor Report in

2017 found that children aged 7-16 use internet to

watch video clips (59%), listen to music (56%), play

games (54%), complete homework (47%), interact

with family and friends (47%), social networking

(40%), look up information (38%), and upload

videos, photos and music (Livingstone, et al., 2017).

Those portray the importance of new media in

children’s lives.What Indonesian children do with

the internet is just as like as children in Europe and

North America.

There are plenty researches about the impact of

smartphone to children (Borzekowski &Rich, 2011;

Sitepu, Y. and Harahap, H.

Social Media Usage and Digital Detoxiﬁcation on Teenagers in Medan.

DOI: 10.5220/0010021403510355

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 3 2019) - Social Engineering Governance for the People, Technology and Infrastructure in

Revolution Industry 4.0, pages 351-355

ISBN: 978-989-758-472-5

351

Bassett et al, 2016; Chang, et al., 2018). But, only

afew about social media addiction and especially

about digital detoxification.

Concern about social media abuse is tracked

back to a 2011 report by The American Academy of

Pediatrics (AAP) who claimed that “Facebook

Depression” could develop when children spend a

lot of time on social media (Berryman, Ferguson

and Negy, 2017). O’ Keefe et al. (cited by Basset et

al., 2016) said that like “classic” depression,

“Facebook depression” may cause social isolation,

promote substance abuse, unsave sexual practices, or

aggresive or self destructive behaviors.

Because of the excessive time using social media

in teenagers lives, some commenters have expressed

concern about the effects. How many hours per day

do the teenagers spend on social media? Is there

difference amount of time they spent between school

days and weekends. What the impacts of excessive

social media use on their health and quality of life?

What have they done to reduce their social media

addiction? This study aims to address these

questions to the teenagers.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Social Media and Mental Health

When we hear about addiction, the first thing comes

to our mind is drug abuse. The concept about the

dependency of physic to drugs is used to describe

the condition of excessive internet use (Holden in

Niculovic et al., 2012).

Griffiths (cited by Chang et al., 2019) said that

smartphone addiction is a subset of behavior

addictions and could be categorized as a

technological addiction.

DSM-V from American Psycological

Association (APA) defines behavioural addiction as

an addictive dissorder that does not involve the

ingestion of a psychoactive substance (Wilcockson,

Osborne and Ellis, 2019). Smartphone addiction is

not included in the DSM-V and need further

research encuraged by the APA.

Symptoms of substance use disorder are grouped

into four categories: impaired control (a craving or

strong urge to use substance); social problems

(failure to complete major tasks at work, school or

home,m etc); risky use (continued use despite

known problems); drug effects (tolerance,

withdrawal symptoms) (Parekh, 2017). As said by

Lin, et al. (cited by Chang et al., 2018) that

symptoms of smartphone addiction paralleled with

substance use disorders.

As symptoms of substance use disorder, we also

expect that these symptoms also happen in

behavioural addictions, however, their measurement

is often problematic (Wilcockson, et al., 2019).

People accesses social media from their

smartphone and the internet. Several issues arise

from the overuse of smartphone and the internet,

they are:(a) psychological effects such as anxiety,

lack of concentration, sleep disorders; (b) social

effects such as relationships break, loss of sense of

community; (c) physical effects such as harm from

accidents eg. Texting while driving, repetitive strain

injury (RSI)(van Velthoven, Powell and Powell,

2018).

Stiegel and Lewetz conducted a research and

found that social media abstinence led to an increase

in craving for social media, but mood and anxiety

were uneffected (Wilcockson et al., 2019).

2.2 Social Media Usage Habit

Social media usage habit should be understood

as an umbrella term for different platforms such as

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. All of those

platforms have distinct group of users and used for

disctint communication, businnes, and other

purposes. It contains statistical data about amount of

time people spend on social media platforms,

reasons why they use each social media platforms.

This is also portrays the differences between

countries, age, gender, income, and so on.

There are several aspects of teenagers’ social

media usage that need to be found out in this study.

They are, exposure or time spent with social media

and individual motives in using social media.

2.3 Media Dependency Theory

Dependency theory tells about powerfull masss

media and how that power makes audience members

depend on media content. It also argues that people

become more and more dependent on media and

media content to understandwhat is happening

around them (Baran, 2010).

Through media, we learn about how to do or to

behave, to interpret what is going on around us and

most of all we use media to escape from our routine,

reality or situation. The media dependency theory

can explain people media use and the impacts on

their lives (Baran, 2010).

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2.4 Digital Detoxification

Smartphones, laptops, computers and all services

that associated with internet, Wi-Fi are known as a

product of digital technology. Those devices using a

binary computational code (Hadlington and Scase,

2018).

Digital detox has emarged incredibly in the field

of behavioral science as a solution to the overuse of

digital devices. Digital detox is restraining self from

using digital or electronic devices for a certain time,

as a way to reduce the distractions that caused by

always being connected (Basu, 2019).

Newport, the author of Digital Minimalism

proposes digital declutter that people can begin by

taking a 30-day break from optional digital

technologies. These include any applications such as

social media, online news and entertainment sites,

games and streaming videos (Newport, 2019). Those

are kinds of digital detoxification.

3 METHODS

This study aims to analyseteenagers’ social media

habit that consists about the amount of time the

teenagers spend on social media in the school days

and in the weekends and also their motives.

Moreover, to analyse the impacts of excessive social

media use on their health and quality of life and the

efforts to reduce their social media addiction.

A survey was conducted to get quantitative data

about teenagers’ social media habit. Teenagers were

asked to answer a questionnaire relate to their social

media addiction through Social Media Addiction

Scale-Student Form. The sample comprised of 300

teenagers from 6 senior high school in Medan City.

The sample included both female and male

teenagers.

Focus Group Discussion was used to dig

teenager’s opinion and feeling about the impact of

social media into their lives. The informants was

choosen from the respondents in the survey that has

been conducted before. There were 16 teenagers

participated in the FGD.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Results

We collected data fo N= 300 from 6 high schools in

Medan. Participants were predominately female.

Age range between fourteen to seventeen and the

biggest representation was aged sixteen. Monthly

allowance varied and only few of them who spend

more than five hundred thousand rupiah per month.

Most participants have smartphone for the first

time at aged between eleven to thirteen. Summary

statisticcs for demographics of respondents can be

seen in Table 1.

Table 1: Respondent demographics.

% of Responses

Gender

Male 47.5

Female 52.7

Age

14 6.3

15 24

16 40.7

17 29

Monthly Allowance

<300000 45.3

300000-500000 34.3

>500000 20.3

Age when using

internet for the first time

7-10 40

11-13 47.7

14-17 12.3

Age when having

mobile phone for the first

time

7-10 43

11-13 43.3

14-17 13.7

Age when having

smart phone for the first

time

7-10 14

11-13 52

14-17 34

Most of the respondents have been using internet

since they were in primary school. They also have

had devices that connected to the internet since then.

Those depicts confirm that generation Z are very

familiar with technology (Adam, 2017).

Whatsapp and Instagram are the most used social

media by the respondents. Ninety three percent of

respondents use those platforms. Hootsuite confirms

that Youtube, Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram

are the most used social media platforms in

Indonesia.

Sending or exchanging message with family or

friend is what the most respondents do with their

social media. Besides, as students, social media is

the platform that can help them doing assignments

Social Media Usage and Digital Detoxiﬁcation on Teenagers in Medan

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given by teacher. Moreover, Youtube is an escapism

tool when they feel bored. Respondents listen to

music from applications such as Spotify, Joox, etc.

Their dependency to social media are quite high

especially to communicate with family and friends.

Table 2: Reasons using social media.

% of Responses

Watch video clip 92.7

Listen to music 95

Play game 80.7

Do homework 93.7

Send message with

friend and family

Social network 88

Look for information 96.3

Upload picture 83.3

See other’s post 92

More than 50% of the respondents use Facebook

less than 1 hour in weekdays or school days. But,

the amount of time they spend on Whatsapp is still

high because it is used to send messages and discuss

about assigments in whatsapp group.

When weekends come, the duration they spend

on social media is significantly increase. Whatsapp

and Youtube are two social media platforms that

have been acessed more 5 hours per day by the

respondents.

Results from social media addiction scale-

student form show that 46% of respondents state

Agree over statement I always want to check my

social media. Moreover, 42.2% say Agree over

statement I realize my productivity decrease because

of social mediaand 34% say Disagree. The

decreasing of teenager’s productivity is one of many

negative impatcs from social media overuse. It can

cause distractions of attention disorders

(Borzekowski and Rich, 2011).

However, Maggie Sibley (in Chadd, 2019)

suggests distraction that happen in younger people

as a caused from digital media use is not a

developed ADHD symptoms. So, parents need no

worried if their child does not have ADHD

symptoms and there is no family history about that.

There are 36.3% of respondents who always

search for internet connection whereever they be just

to check their social media. Besides, 13.7% of them

say Strongly Agree and 30.7% Agree that accessing

social media is their way to stay informed. This

condition is consistent with reasons why they use

social media and what platform they use the most.

That condition is also a manifestation of a fear of

missing out (FoMo). FoMo is often characterized by

a desire to continually find out what other people

doing on social networks (Beyens et al. and

Przybylski et al. in Hadlington and Mark, 2018).

About 54.3% of respondents confidently say that

they areDisagree over statement A life without social

media becomes meaningless for me. Only a few or

about 12% of respondents say Agree over it. It

seems like most of respondents feel no problems

whether there is social media or not.

Another result shows that 47.2% of respondents

chooseStrongly Disagree over statement I use social

media so frequentlt that I fall afoul of my family.

Only 1.7% say Strongly Agree. It means that many

respondents not do phubbing.

There are 16 teenagers who came as informants

in FGD session. All of them had sleep disorders

caused by always stay connected even a minute

before they sleep atnight. They also said that the first

time they do after wake up is check their smartphone

including their social media. All of the informants

said that they ever and usually bring bring their

smartphone while studying at home, even when go

to the toilet.

An informant in FGD said that he ever felt

depression after always saw what others post in their

Instagram accounts. He follows a lot of selebgram

and artists accounts. After that he felt that his life not

as lucky as others and began to hate himself. He

even began to hurt part of his body (arms). His

parents took him to psychiatrist. This happened

when he was in junior high school.

Mostly respondents from survey never heard

about digital detoxification. Only 30% of them have

heard about it. But, when being asked again in FGD,

many of informants have doing something that also

means of digital detoxification.

Here, parents and teachers play important roles.

While at home, parents give rules about when and

where children can not use their smartphone. Like

some of the informants say that thay can not use

their smartphone while eating with parents.

At school, they can not use their smartphone

while studying. However, there are also certain

subjects in which they are allowed to use

smartphone to finish the assigments.

At the end of FGD, participants agreed to reduce

their social media usage. There are several ways that

agreed to be tried as follows: broadening their no

phone zone not only while eating or watching with

parents but also try not to bring into bed and while in

the toilet; mute notification from one or more

applications from their smartphone; dim the phone

screen light; delete unnecessary applications from

smartphone; set a day in weekends as a no phone

day.

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5 CONCLUSION

This study has highlighted the amount of time used

by the teenagers on social media. The duration

increases in weekends. In weekdays or school days

many of them onle spend less than 1 hour on social

media while in weekends they spend between 1 to 3

hours per day or even more than 5 hours per day.

Whatsapp, Youtube and Instagram are the big

three as the most used social media platform by the

teenagers. The reasons why they use social media

are for educational purposes, entertainment,

escapism, and as media to expressing themselves.

They can post photos, videos that have been created

or recipe they have been tried.

Most of respondents of this study realize that

their attention easily distracted by notifications from

social media. They feel hard to concentrate while

studying at home or while doing something. They

also feel fear if they become the last person who

know the latest information (FoMo). The teenangers

also experience sleeping disorders. They do not have

enough time to sleep in the evening because still

connected into the social media until late night.

Digital detoxification is something that never

been heard before by most of the teenagers. But,

they are willing to do as a means to reduce their

social media use. For example to broaden their no

phone zone at home and set one day in the weekends

as a no phone day.

ACKNOWLEDMENT

This article is an output from research that has been