7 Ways to Reduce Social Media Usage
Over the last few years, there has been an intense debate about the harmful effects of social media, particularly after the release of the eye-opening documentary Social Dilemma(2020). In this day and age, we depend upon social media for our business, services, and entertainment. But the overuse of social media can be toxic for your productivity as well as your mental health. So it is imperative that we should set some boundaries.
Following is the list of tips and tricks you can follow to reduce your social media usage.
1. Track Your Screen Time
First of all, you have to see precisely, how much time you spend on social media. A screen time app is perfect for this purpose. Most of these apps not only measure the total amount of time you spend on your phone but individual usage of the apps.
You can take further guidance from my article on 9 Tips to Reduce Technology Usage.
2. Turn Off Notifications
The first step towards reducing social media usage is reducing the number of notifications you receive. Whenever you tap on any notification, it takes you straight into the app and thirty minutes you still find yourself scrolling through your feed. Most of the notifications are not important, e.g the notification about ‘Someone commented on someone’s photo on Facebook’.
However, you don’t need to turn off all the notifications. Rather you can customize notifications so you only receive important notifications.
You can turn off notifications for each app from your Notification Settings which is in the Settings menu of your phone. Alternatively, you can also turn off notifications from the Settings menu of the app itself.
3. Follow Only The Accounts That You Find Value From
Take a few minutes to look at your Friend List or Follow List and Unfriend/Unfollow people who don’t add value to your life or to your news feed. This is a great time to unfollow people you don’t know or the people who post things you don’t like.
We are added to a lot of groups with our consent, be sure to unfollow them. Only keep the groups that you actively follow.
4. Resist The Urge To Share Everything
You don’t need to put a status update every time you eat at a restaurant. Not only this is bad for your privacy, but it is likely to increases your social media usage.
Try posting only on specific days like on weekends or only on Monday.
Think a moment before posting and ask yourself “Do I really need to post this?”.
Instead of posting a photo from your recent college trip, send it only to your loved ones.
5. Implement A Social Media Free Day
At first, start by declaring a single day as ‘Social Media Free Day’. It could be any day of the week. After some time you can increase the intensity to multiple days e.g no social media Sat and Sun.
Another lite approach could be to declare a few ‘social media hours’ instead of the whole day, e.g no screen after 8 pm on Monday.
6. Delete Social Media Apps From Your Phone
Delete all social media apps from your phone. Only use social media in the browser or on a computer only.
Apps are designed in such a way as to keep you glued to your screen. On an app, rewards are high and friction is low. However, using a mobile/computer browser offer considerable friction(e.g need to log in every time you want to use social media), and thus you can resist temptations more easily.
7. Find New Things To Do
In the end, a more productive approach to reducing social media usage is to find other screen-less activities.
You can try these :
Read a paper book.
Walk/Run.
Go outside in nature.
Send a postcard.
Visit a library.
Go to a gym.
