Family Fitness Expert Warns About Social Media

ROCHESTER, N.H. - Sept. 16, 2013 - PRLog -- Family fitness expert and nutritionist Sarah Clachar offers a new way to understand the impact of social media on relationships. Clachar explains social media impacts people's ability to build solid relationships like sugar impacts health. She offers several solid tactics for making social media part of a balanced relationship diet, instead of allowing it to undermine the ability to relate.

Clachar's contention is based on current research that indicates people are becoming more lonely and detached with social media. In 2010 The AARP published a groundbreaking study showing that in 2004 twice as many people as in 1985 reported they felt they had no one to turn to. Most of the people who indicated they were lonely acknowledged that increased use of the internt to connect with people contributed to their feelings of isolation. Several studies have shown Facebook to factor significantly into divorce rates.

"Social media is like sugar whereas offline 3-dimensional relationships are whole grains," explains Clachar, "Like sugar, social media can add some sweetness to your life. But it’s something to use carefully, with discretion. Like sugar, it’s an easy fix. Easy to accumulate hundreds of friends. Easy to look and sound your best. Easy to feel like you’re smart and sophisticated. Easy to connect. But due to the quick satisfaction it can rot your ability to really work on relationships and build real bonds."

Clachar challenges people to ask themselves how often they avoid grappling with tough feelings and interactions and instead go to Facebook to feel connected.

Clachar adds, "Even worse, social media is an addictive, hard-to-curb, sweet-tooth habit, once you get started. Eat too much of it and you won’t want anything else. You’ll crave it when you’re not getting it." She points to research published by the Council of Higher Education indicating young people displayed symptoms similar to withdrawal from drugs when deprived of social media.

She points out how our children, in particular, are suffering since most kids are growing up with social media as part of their lives, unlike adults who had a few decades of grappling with offline relationships before the advent of social media.

Warns Clachar, "We’re destroying our lives with too much sugar. We’re heading towards heart disease, diabetes and cancer of the soul.Our children don’t know how to relate. Our children are jealous of our phones. Our families are falling apart."

To counter this trend, Clachar lays out clear advice based on her experience of how to use social media as a useful tool - but wisely. She encourages people to examine their purpose when interacting online and wach how it's impacting relationships at home. And finally, she advises spending more time together as a family, getting physically active together. She explains this provides an excellent counterbalance.

Says Clachar, "We’re finally coming around to seeing the damage soda and desserts do to our bodies. Now we need to look at how the sugar-coated reality we’re creating on social media is destroying our relationships . . . our lives . . . and our sense of self."

To learn more, please read the entire article at http://fitfamilytogether.com/social-media-sugar