The U.S. healthcare body Advanced Dermatology recently surveyed 2,000 U.S. citizens to discover how many people are practicing self-care in 2019, together with the top reasons for practicing self-care and the most popular self-care routines.
The survey found that 84 percent of respondents consider self-care a necessity rather than an indulgence, reflecting the costs and complexities of the current healthcare system. With this high proportion of people engaging in self-care, the gender division is fairly even with men and women spend the same amount of time on self-care per week, which is a typical 83 minutes.
Engaging in self-care activities does result in the majority of people feeling guiltily about the amount of time they are spending on the activity, which 57 percent of respondents stating they have felt guilty after making more time for self-care.
In terms of why people are practicing self-care, the top reasons cited for practicing self-care are:
1. To reduce stress.
2. To feel more positive.
3. To improve mental health.
Other reasons are to improve physical health, to deal with depression, to increase motivation and to boots productivity.
The most popular forms of self-care are: walking, spending time with family, watching television, music, hobbies, learning new skills, and reading. Mediation is also proving to be more popular, with this specific form of self help driven by practices shared via social media.
In terms of what is driving the increase in self-care practices, social media appears to be playing an increasingly big part. The survey finds that 50 percent of men say they have seen self-care on social media compared with 40 percent of women. However, women state they are twice as likely to let what appears on social media influences their practices. Care is always needed with social media, given the balance of useful information compared with misinformation that appears across social media channels.
