Are you addicted to social media? Has it started to affect your mental health? Here’s a few simple ways to limit social media use forever.
There’s a significant dark side to social media use. It affects our concentration, productivity, peace of mind and mental health. It consumes hours of our day and undermines our quality of life.
The more we use social media, and grow dependent on it, the more harmful it becomes.
Tech companies want us to live increasingly digital lives. Connected, engaged and measured 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They design apps that make it easy to get hooked, and that’s their end goal.
But what about us? What’s our end goal?
If we want health, happiness, productivity, peace of mind and engagement with life, we need a better relationship with our devices. One where we reap the benefits of technology, without the negative consequences.
Here are a few simple steps we can take to limit social media use, or eliminate it altogether:
Find your flow
The best remedy for social media dependence is to live a great life. Not a fake Instagram life, but a fully engaged existence.
There are lots of things you can do that are healthier and more enjoyable than scrolling through socials, so focus on them. Build your life around them. Choose a device free hobby and commit to spending an hour (or more) each day doing it.
Reading, writing, painting, design, martial arts, dancing, yoga, walking the dog, cooking. Pick something you love, then give it your undivided attention. And no, you don’t have to take a video or photo of you doing it. It’s better to switch your phone to silent mode and leave it in a drawer.
When you’re fully engaged in an activity, you couldn’t care less about social media, what anyone thinks, or what everyone else is up to. You’re in the moment and that’s all that matters.
The more you practice, the closer you get to that flow state.
Set your social media rules
Once you have a healthy hobby, or better yet, a few healthy hobbies in place, you can start setting some stricter social media rules. Decide when it’s OK to use social media and when it’s not. Decide when to have your phone beside you and when to put it away.
Don’t leave this to willpower. Set clear rules, to ensure you stick to them.
Make a list of times when social media is OK, and second list of times when it should be eliminated altogether. You can then schedule your social media use and set a time limit for each day.
When it’s time for your essential activity, you simply put the phone away so it’s out of sight and out of mind.
For example, I don’t look at social media at all during:
- Writing/deep work
- Exercise
- Meditation
- Reading
- Meals with family and friends
- Playing with the kids
- Bedtime/Sleep
I place the phone in a drawer and forget about it so that I can be fully present, or fast asleep.
Many of us are ruled by our devices, so this simple exercise reminds you that you set the rules, and you choose when to engage. It also prevents you from getting distracted during the important stuff.
Monitor social media use
Every phone tracks screen time and app usage. You can get weekly reports with insights about your screen time and set time limits for the apps you want to manage. This is a great way to measure and minimise the amount of time you spend on social media.
Data like this is incredibly useful, but it does keep the emphasis on the device, and your relationship with it. It just gives you one more thing to measure and get excited about.
The goal should be to limit social media use and reduce dependency on our devices altogether, so that we can get back in sync with nature. That kind of discipline needs to come from within.
Turn off notifications
I remember meeting a client for lunch one day. The restaurant was nice and the meal was excellent, but the meeting itself was absolutely pointless. He had notifications on, and it was notifications from literally everything. Texts, emails, news and socials. The phone pinged every two seconds, and he constantly picked it up to check.
It was clear he was wired into some kind of anxiety spiral, and it made it impossible for him (or me) to concentrate. As you may have guessed, the meeting was fruitless, and we didn’t have many more.
We simply don’t need all those notifications. It just feeds the addiction. People will phone you if there’s an emergency, everything else is just noise.
The only people who should have socials pinging constantly are social media and community managers who need to respond in real time. Nobody else needs to expose themselves to that onslaught.
Make yourself harder to reach and distract, so you can focus on more important things.
Move social media apps off the home screen
Another simple step we can take to limit social media use is to move social media apps off the home screen. When we pick up the phone, it’s much better to have a calendar, to-do list and some productivity apps.
Try rearranging your apps and putting social media on another screen. Do you need to log into Instagram right now, or finish that app, book, song you’ve been writing?
Delete social media apps altogether
If social media use is a real problem for you, or you don’t like to do things by half, then go ahead and delete your social media apps altogether. A total elimination approach is great if you have the ability to follow through.
By design, having the apps on your phone makes them easy to use. Deleting them removes the convenience and clears them from your everyday consciousness.
Maybe you need a 30 day break from social media, or maybe it should be more permanent. Find the balance that is optimum for you and your mental health.
Ask yourself why?
One of the most effective techniques I know to limit social media use, is also the simplest, and that is to ask yourself, “Why?”. Whenever you go to pick up the phone, or find yourself hooked on your socials, question the very nature and purpose of social media. Why am I picking my phone up? Why am I looking at this? Why am I engaged in this debate that’s going absolutely nowhere?
If you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, this should help pull you out of it.
There are many ways to limit social media use, but instead of focussing on all the ‘hacks’ you see online, focus on the activities that you want to replace social media with.
Find some interests (device free) and build your life around them. Practice them often and the desire to see what everyone else is up to will quickly fade.
Scrolling through socials is far less appealing, and not even a consideration, when you have something that you’re fully engaged in.
Focus on living.