How to Manage Your Social Media Use
Social media is great, but many people become frustrated by its addictive nature and the amount of time it uses up on a day to day basis. Many people, after completing the goal-setting course, will set a goal that involves limiting (or eradicating) social media use for a time. But it turns out removing an addictive behavior from your life is hard. Here are a couple tips for building a healthier relationship with social media use.
Social media is an amazing tool and brings many benefits to many peoples’ lives. But there are negative consequences to excessive social media use, including addiction, wasted time, and mental health struggles. Upon completion of the goal-setting course, it’s common for participants to set a goal that limits (or removes) social media use for a time. Over the years I’ve seen individuals take a “Social Media Sabbath” where they select one day per week and abstain from using it (either all media or a specific platform) for a day. If you’re thinking about setting some parameters for your social media use, here are some tips I’ve used (or heard of) that will help you set this up for success. You don’t necessarily have to use all of them, but they may help you approach this goal with intention and meaning.
1) Use language to build an approach goal rather than an avoidant goal.
I know this is hard to do, but it’s important, and I talk about it in my goals course: set Approach goals not Avoidance goals. Meaning, write goals that define what you DO not what you REFRAIN from doing. So please don’t just write the word SOCIAL MEDIA in big block letters and draw a circle with a line through it, because then every time you see that reminder, all you’ll think about is how much you want to use social media. Instead, think of a way to phrase your goal in such a way that it leads you into action rather than puts up a do not enter sign. Try these:
Every Friday for the month of November, I enjoy a social media sabbath.
For the next two weeks, I post on Instagram one time per week and spend 15 minutes scrolling the feed, checking my messages, and responding to comments.
2) Decide ahead of time how extreme you want to be.
I’ve done small social media goals (such as waiting until 10am to open the app every day) and I’ve done large social media goals (deleting the app from my phone for 3 weeks straight) and I can’t say that either one is better than the other. Every person is different, so the lengths to which you go to define your goal are up to you, but just know ahead of time that you can make this as extreme or as minimal as you want. You don’t have to delete your accounts for 6 months (but it’s totally fine if you do!)
3) Delete the app from your phone
One thing that I’ve found to be particularly helpful is to delete the app from my smartphone. Deleting the app doesn’t delete the data in your account (your friends and followers can still view your feed), and the website is still accessible from your web browser if you absolutely have to take a peek. Removing the app just helps break the automatic habit that many of us have that causes us to open up the app without thinking about it.
4) Take time to think about why you’re doing this. What preferable activity or outcome is your current social media use impeding?
Any difficult thing that is worth doing is worth articulating a reason for. Rather than doing a social media fast because all your friends are doing it during Lent, take a moment to really ask yourself why you’re doing this. What important activity or outcome is your current social media use impeding? Are you frustrated by the way your Instagram use gets in the way of your book reading list? Are you troubled by the way you and your spouse scroll your feeds, when you used to connect and engage with one another?
Social media is designed to be addictive, and addictive behavior is always easier to fix when it’s replaced by something more worthwhile. Can you articulate what would be more worthwhile than social media use? Write it down. Remind yourself often of why you are doing this.
Here’s a snippet that goes into greater detail on this concept.
5) Replace the behavior with something else.
In the video above, Peterson touches on this fact: you have to find something better to do that replaces the addiction. One small way I have done this in the past is to delete the Instagram app from my phone and replace it with another app that is way less addictive, and even perhaps productive (like checking Craigslist for free plants or pieces of furniture in my area!) You might also try replacing the social media app in question with a language learning app, or your Kindle reading app (hit that reading goal!) or podcasts.
Okay I hope that gets you started on your journey to have a healthier relationship with social media! Remember that whether you engage with a goal like this for a short time or for a longer period, you will always learn some valuable lessons about yourself, that you can carry into other areas of your goal-setting journey.
