Janne is addicted to her phone. She spends about 27 hours a week scrolling through her social media accounts. So 21bis Wired decided to test her by taking away her phone for 2 full weeks. Can she handle life without one or will she cave?

Janne isn’t the only one who’s addicted: just look outside and you’ll see practically everyone on their smartphone. They’re texting, calling and scrolling through tweets; smartphones are everywhere. Statistics from Hootsuite show that 3.48 billion people are currently using social media worldwide. On a global scale, people spend an average of two hours and 23 minutes on their social media a day, some teenagers even use their social media up to nine hours a day.

Addicted to our phone

We are slaves to our phones; we can’t live without them. You could consider some people to even be addicted. Worldwide there are over a 420 million people suffering from social media and internet addiction, according to a study from the University of Hong Kong. 

Wired social media cleanse

Because of these shocking results, we decided to start a social media cleanse. Janne is one of our 21bis colleagues and spends a large time of her day scrolling through memes and Instagram pictures. Is she really that addicted and can she live two full weeks without her phone? Janne vlogged her two week-experience, which you can now watch below.

Stay tuned because next week this time we will see how Janne survived two weeks without any social media.

Text: Jan De Bent; video: Janne Schellingen, Jan De Bent and Michelle Peters; picture: ©Femke Lippens, Janne Schellingen