SOCIAL DILEMMA
3 Ways to Consume Less Social Media
Are you spending too much time on Facebook or Instagram?
Have you ever scrolled down your Instagram feed for just 5 more minutes before realising it had been an hour already?
Stop treating time as if it were an unlimited resource.
Take some days off
In “Digital Minimalism”, Cal Newport exposes the few benefits social media can have along with the massive inconveniences it can cause.
His book takes the reader through a programme of 30 days to distance yourself from social media and to evaluate your relationship with this tool, which makes for a wonderful servant but a terrible master.
He advises to cut it off completely for a month (as long as you don’t need it to keep your job) and to replace it with other more fulfilling hobbies.
Then, if you choose to do so, be intentional about how to reintroduce social media. Design strategies to benefit from the value it has to offer without becoming a slave to it again.
One strategy he offers is to dedicate time slots to social media use on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, so it doesn’t get out of hand.
Another way is to make it social, for example, you can set a rule to only watch Netflix when you’re with someone else. That way, your previous gate to oblivion becomes a social activity to gather people around.
Make it hard
Another approach is one that James Clear introduces in his book “Atomic Habits”.
You’ve probably heard people tell you to put your gym clothes right next to your bed if you want to exercise first thing in the morning, or even go to bed wearing your activewear. Doing so suppresses some friction in building the positive habit of exercising.
The opposite is true to deal with a negative habit, instead of removing obstacles, you can add one or several.
Check your screen time to assess your use of certain apps and experiment with time limits.
It can be easy to just ignore the pop up window and keep going within the app even though you reached your time limit.
If that’s so, you need to make it even harder for yourself to change your habit. You can delete the app from your phone so you’d have to use your laptop to access it.
That extra step might be enough to break the habit. You can always get creative on how to make it even harder like having someone else change your password weekly and only giving it to you if you’ve completed your tasks.
There’s no limit to extra steps you can add between you and your bad habit.
Negotiate with yourself
The last strategy is to use social media consumption as a reward and apply conditions on how to get it.
For example, you can tell yourself to deal with a certain amount of work before you get to watch one YouTube video. Or you need to address all the items on your to-do list before you open Instagram.
The stick or carrot strategy isn’t always ideal, but some days it’s the only thing that keeps you moving towards your goals.
I’m also not a huge fan of treating social media as a reward in itself.
See how you can best use it in a way that aligns with your values and what’s most important in your life.
We always claim how busy we are, and how we are unable to meet with friends or family because of it. And yet when Instagram notifies us, we come running.
Those 3 strategies can help you retake ownership of your free time by revisiting your relationship with social media and using effective actions to create healthier habits.
I guess the only question you ought to ask is: what would you do if you had the time?
