Do You Need a Social Media Detox?

We all know that social media can be a great tool for teachers, both in the classroom and for professional development purposes. Here at Edudemic, we encourage you to do things like use Twitter to build your PLN, connect with other educators on Facebook, pin great ideas on Pinterest, and more. But just as we often criticize our students for being unable to disconnect from their devices and actually look up at the world every now and again, we often suffer from the same affliction. So how do you know if you’re just ‘into it’ or if you’re overdoing it?

The handy infographic below takes a look at a few different ways to know if you’re in need of a social media detox. We know that honest self reflection isn’t always easy (of course I *need* to play my stupid iPad game at night before I go to bed….what are you talking about?!), if you suffer from any of the below described social media afflictions, it might be time to tell your social media you need some time to yourself. Do you suffer from any of these? Or any others that aren’t mentioned here? Leave us a note in the comments below!

Do You Need a Social Media Detox?

You might, if you suffer from any of the following:

• You speak in Tweet-speak of 140 characters or less
• You thumbs up everything
• You get depressed if you don’t get enough retweets or other type of recognition
• You say things like LOL and other acronyms in conversation
• You’re an account hoarder – even if the network isn’t popular anymore
• You’re mayor of 30+ locations, and you work to ensure you don’t lose those mayorships
• You’re a fake farmer. Farmville isn’t real!
• You find yourself raging when one of your preferred social networks is down
• You have device obsession
• You have an offline complex: you freak when you leave one of your devices at home by accident

—Via Edudemic

This article was featured on Edudemic on August 25 2014 and was written by Jeff Dunn. The featured infographic was produced by Column Five Media.