I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m trying to avoid spending excessive amounts of time on social media. Recently, I’ve started finding ways to actually succeed in doing so instead of just talking or thinking about it. Here are some things that I’ve found helpful.
Perhaps the simplest thing I’ve done is refrain from posting stuff that’s intended to upset people and start fights. This is hardly a new thing for me, but it’s taken me a long time to see just how effective that is. If nobody’s interested in fighting on my profile, that gives me fewer notifications to check. Many of my positive posts will get reactions and a few comments, but nowhere near as many comments as my past provocative posts. This makes me less inclined to log in and get caught up in something that takes up a great deal of my time.
After that, simplifying my social media presence has made me less interested in checking it. One way I’ve done this is by posting less stuff than I used to. The less activity I have online, the smaller the chance of someone commenting on something of mine or contacting me, which gives me fewer reasons to log on. Making my life more interesting and exciting has also made me less interested in taking a break from it. I’d much rather do fun things with cool people (or by myself) than mindlessly scroll through a website. I do take regular breaks from socializing so that I can recharge, but even then it’s nice to stay away from social media.
Last but certainly not least, preventing certain things from appearing on my newsfeed has worked wonders for me. It’s easy enough to hide, unfollow, unfriend, or even block people and posts I don’t want to see. I have used and will continue to use each of those features to avoid upsetting posts, frightening images, trolls, excessively negative people, and other similar things that remove value from my life. In short, I don’t want to have a messy, stressful social media presence that’s going to drain me every time I check it. At this point, I’d much rather use it to share things I find helpful with the people I love and have it serve as an occasional break instead of a second life. I’m sure I’ll find more life hacks for taking time away from social media, but so far, these have all worked well to give me more peace of mind and helped me spend less time online.