There are so many addictions that a person can have, but one of the worst isn’t a substance at all. Social media can have many impacts on your life and, while it may seem harmless to scroll aimlessly on your slew of apps, it can be quite difficult to take some time off.
To be fair, some people need certain social media tools as a part of their job and might find it difficult to separate business from personal. Although it may seem difficult to disconnect from online and get in touch with the real world, there are many helpful tips to assist you with your social media fast. It won’t be easy and you may be tempted to take a peek, but here are some useful strategies to aid you in getting a grip on an unhealthy habit.
Designate Time Limits
Quitting cold turkey is possible, but it isn’t ideal or realistic as you might find yourself not easily able to adapt. Setting up time limits is a good move so you can choose when you might tap into your accounts. We typically check socials when we wake up, on downtime at work, and before bedtime. For some who don’t watch the news, getting on Instagram or Facebook might provide updates on what’s happening in the world.
Most phones now have a setting that tells you what you usage looks like which is a perfect tool to help you visually. Actually seeing a tangible number or hours next to the apps your frequent most can really put things into perspective for you. Try to determine how you want to reduce your time, much like when people fast with food for 16 hours and allow themselves to eat during the other eight. Maybe you can elect to decrease your usage one hour less per week until eventually you find yourself relying on social media less and less.
Hide Your Faves
We all know how true the saying “out of sight, out of mind” is, and this option is tailored to exactly that. When we pick up our phones, we kind of naturally click around to the same few apps via muscle memory. That’s how you know you’re down bad when you don’t realize how attached you’ve become and it’s just second nature. We recommend building a folder to tuck away your most used apps that you want to spend less time on.
Notice we said spend less time, not fully cut off. We know that going ghost will be more of a challenge and we want to present a a realistic approach. By storing away the tempting social media apps, you’ve now removed them from your sight and have mentally placed a hurdle between how simple it once was. Sure, you can easily get to them, but that isn’t the point; the purpose is to put things in place to remind yourself of your overall goal is to operate as if they weren’t there at all. You can even take it a step further and lock the folder, putting an extra level of security in place to make it a tad bit harder on yourself. These options work if you have uphold the self-discipline.
Allocate Your Time Elsewhere
You might have noticed that you typically spend anywhere from 6 to 10 hours a week on social media, which is a lot. But what happens when you do cut back? What do you do with that extra time? Try picking up a hobby, like reading a book you always meant to pick up or start a new show you keep hearing about. This list can go on as there are so many different things that are important to each of us. Maybe you have a project for school or work that you can get ahead on to further take less stress on you around the due date. Put in some extra time at the gym or go through old clothes you’ve been wanting to donate for months (double down and throw them on Posh Mark or Mercari and make some extra money there!). It might not seem like a lot, but you’ll soon realize that when you incorporate new habits or hobbies, those hours spent on social media definitely add up.
Hopping from app to app is such a mindless habit we take part in that can lead to an unhealthy obsession with constantly being in the know. I’ve personally known people who have made assumptions about other people’s personal lives sole based on what they see in their posts.
Stepping away for a while is a great choice for your mental state and if you find it to be difficult, that right there shows just how much you actually needed that break. It’s also important to let your friends and family know that you’ve taken a step back as some people start to become worried when they don’t see you active (to think they’d resort to freaking out about not seeing a post from you in a while rather than simply texting or calling to check on you).
We acknowledge that this isn’t an easy task, but it might benefit you in more ways than one. We as a society have grown so attached to our devices that it would be nice to prove to ourselves we are capable of stepping away.