Social Media Addiction Project Inspires Freedom Retrieval

PORTLAND, Ore. - July 13, 2018 - PRLog -- Any person with a cell phone can sign up to be a part of #60DaysOfFreedom and receive daily text messages created to help boost awareness about the negative impacts of social media overuse for a period of 60 days.

The project was started on July 1 and was launched by Arist, a platform that uses texts to offer college courses to people,

Arist was developed by two 19-year-olds — Michael Ioffe, a Babson College student, and Riley Wilson, a student at UCLA.

"Social media has been linked to significant rises in depression, insecurity, and anxiety in our generation," Ioffe said. "Both Riley and I have suffered some of the side effects of that. So, we designed this initiative to break the pattern of bad habit and by extension break the pattern of addiction."

The project is helping people stay cut back on social media during the summer because, he stated, spending time away from responsibilities can make social media overuse particularly appealing.

"This is a time when a lot of college students are on break," he said. "What we have found from the experiences of our peers and from our personal experiences is that when you have a lot of free time it is way easier to spend a ridiculous amount of time on social media."

#60DaysOfFreedom is a preliminary program that before was even launched had gotten about 200 participants.

"We are trying to see how effective texting can be in breaking the social media habit, Ioffe said. "If we find that it works, then that has some pretty incredible consequences for how we can approach behavior change, habit breaking and addiction breaking in the future."

Arist will be starting 25 new courses in September and #60DaysOfFreedom continuously lets anyone sign up through its duration.

https://www.drugaddictionnow.com/2018/07/13/portland-soci...