site.btaWell-Known Bulgarians Call for Day Away from Social Media

Well-known Bulgarians have called for a Day Away from Social Media, aiming to reduce the harmful impact of social networks on users by redirecting their attention elsewhere, even if only for a single day, the initiators from the Reading Is Modern campaign said.

The campaign is supported by Desi Bakardzhieva, Georgi Toshev, Iva Atanasova, Ivan Komita, Iliyana Lazarova, Romina Tasevska, Rene Karabash and her writers’ academy The Rabbit Hole, Velina Uzunova, Geri Doncheva, Dimitar Todoranov, Diyan Stamatov, Elizabet Metodieva, Olga Modeva, Orlin Pavlov, Yuliana Doncheva, and Stoyan Apostolov.

The initiators recall that Australia became the first country in the world to ban social media use for people under the age of 16, with authorities deleting 4.7 million children’s accounts just one month after the ban was introduced.

According to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) survey conducted in 44 countries, more than 11% of young people show signs of problematic behaviour related to social media use. Eurostat data indicate that 59% of people in the European Union use social networks, while the share in Bulgaria is higher, at 64.2%. Statistics show that these figures continue to rise every day.