  In March 2018, a series of anti-social and racial riots in Sri Lanka led to a
government-controlled ban of all social media use in the country for 14 days.
This nation-wide ban included the use of all social media such as Facebook,
Twitter and communication apps like WhatsApp, Viber and WeChat. Until the day
of the sanctions, a population of 23 million in Sri Lanka had never experienced
government sanctions, restrictions or interventions on social media use. This
sudden ban provided a unique window of opportunity to investigate social media
non-use and use and how it might lead to psychological distress. Using a
longitudinal study design of two surveys, analyzing data of 476 and 205
respectively, this study makes insightful preliminary observations of social
media non-use and use continuum.
