Digital hygene — What to do with social media?
The dose makes the poison
Everything in the right amount is fine. Social media also. What is abnormal, it’s the amount of the stimuli we get from having the phone all set and ready for scrolling through them wherever and whenever.
How to use them?
How to approach the use of technology and protect ourselves against the destructive effect it can have?
Those are my suggestions. If you want, you can adjust them to your needs. Whatever works best for you. Here are the rules:
- Delete all social media apps from your mobile phone.
Facebook, Instragram, LinkedIn, Reddit , Twitter — make them all gone.
2. Leave few chat apps on your phone.
WhatsUp, Signal, Messenger — whatever you use.
Tell your friends where they can reach you. Communication is important.
3. Use only your computer for social media.
Those sites were made so you could use them.
Enjoy them whenever you feel like it. But only on your computer.
4. Do not save passwords for social media accounts in your browsers.
Make a little effort to use them. Have yourself type the password. Do not make this activity automatic.
5. If you really want to go for it…
You can install browser extensions on your browser to eradicate your newsfeed and turn it on for given periods of time when you actually want to see the content.
Isn’t it radical? To delete all social media apps?
Not at all!
Deleting the apps from your mobile phone doesn’t mean you can’t use them.
It just means you won’t be using them on your phone, anytime and anywhere.
What’s to gain?
It’s not social media that’s wrong. It’s the use of it.
If you can use it on your phone whenever you want, you miss a lot of opportunities to interact with the world around you. The overflow of news and information progressively makes us loose the capacity to focus on less stimulating things. Also constant comparison does not work well for our psyche.
By changing the way you use it you can regain mental space in your brain. And that is by far the most beneficial aspect of that.
We don’t even realise how much it affects us, until we really delete those apps from our phones and use in a more conscious manner.
