Treating it like a real relationship!
I’ve always looked at social media as the biggest guilty pleasure and distraction. I felt that I got so carried away with social media that I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts twice. And there were two periods of time when I stopped using social media for months and months at a time.
This was because my relationship with social media was not at its best. Since I started creating content for my blog, I had no choice but to regularly use social media. Since the 2 years that I started regularly creating content, I’ve picked up a few habits and ways to help me improve the relationship I have with social media.
In this blog post, you’ll learn of 13 ways to help you have a better and healthier relationship with social media. This is definitely for anyone who wants to use social media more intentionally and stop being distracted by it.
And let me know if there are any other techniques or struggles with social media you’d like to share! I’m the only one that sees the comments so you can be as open as you’d like!
Anyways, let’s dive in.
1 – Don’t Let Social Media Be the First & Last Thing You See on the Day
While social media can be a valuable tool for connecting, it’s important to be mindful of when you use it. Here are a few reasons why you want to avoid looking at social media first & last thing in your day:
- It can affect your mental health and set a negative tone for the start of the day. Plus, ending your day with social media can affect your ability to sleep as blue light from screens can interfere.
- It’s a big-time waster – how many times have you said that you’ll only spend 2 minutes on social media, and then it ends up becoming an hour?
- Social media gives so much room for comparison especially when comparing your life to others. You don’t want the first and last thing you do to be comparing yourself to someone else.
The next point will outline some examples of some alternatives you can do instead of going on social media.
RELATED: Social Media Habits That Are Mistakes
2 – Have alternatives to using social media in the morning & evening (so you don’t do number 1!)
Continuing on from #1, you want to have alternative activities instead so you don’t ruin your morning routine or your night routine. It’s important to have certain activities (even just small ones) that can help set yourself up for the day and wind down at night.
For example, in the morning, instead of going on social media, you can read, journal, or make a cup of coffee and have a mindful moment.
In the evening, instead of social media scrolling, you can also read, put on a face mask, or do some coloring. There are plenty of self-care activities that you can do even in a short time.
3 – Don’t use it as a time filler
Sometimes during your day, you find yourself with free blocks of time where you have nothing planned. It’s during those time blocks when it’s so easy to just pick up your phone and check social media.
For example, when you’re in the doctor’s waiting room, you usually find yourself with nothing to do so you’ll go on your phone and scroll. Or maybe you’re in line for something and it’s taking longer than expected. In that free time, you’ll scroll.
Or maybe you’re just working and taking a short break. You’ll use that time to scroll.
While this is harmless and there’s nothing wrong with checking social media when you absolutely have free time, it may be worth considering some other alternatives on what to do.
This is so you can ensure that you’re not going to procrastinate on any other important tasks and you’re not going to continue to be distracted by social media when it is time to get back to work.
Just like #2, it’s worth also coming up with a few alternative activities that you can do during that “dead time”.
RELATED: Time Management Tips To Make The Most of Your Time
4 – Mindful Downtime Use
When you have downtime during your day and you want to go on social media, by all means, go for it! As long as it’s done in a mindful way and it doesn’t completely take over your life, social media can be a good source of entertainment, connection, and even information!
That’s why it’s important to set good digital habits so you can avoid getting sucked into endless scrolling and wasting too much time. Here are some tips that can help with this:
- Set limits – I know that as an iPhone user, you can set time limits on your phone to shut off the app whenever you reach it. If you have GOOD discipline, you can just stop yourself from further scrolling once you reach your time limit.
- Be mindful of the content you’re consuming – we’ll talk about this later on in this post.
However, if you don’t want social media to take up your life at all, you can also think of another alternative activity of things you can do aside from scrolling. This is something to think about if you feel like you should limit your scrolling time even more.
5 – Don’t post stories in real time
There are a few reasons for this but the most important reason is that you never know who is watching. Can you say for sure that you know 100% of the people who are watching your stories? (especially if your accounts are public!). Even if your account is private, you never can be too safe when it comes to social media.
Second of all, trying to post a story at the moment can take time away from actually enjoying it. What I personally do is that I take my photos, and when I’m not at that place anymore, I’ll post the story.
The last thing I want is to remember a memory and realize that I was so fixated on posting an Instagram story right then and there.
RELATED: Best Personal Development Practices
6 – Detach your worth from your likes, followers, and views!
It’s crucial to remember that social media is just a tool and should never define your self-worth or value as a person.
I know that this can get challenging especially since I post blog content on social media. In fact, I need to compare these metrics so I can see how I can improve my content. Sometimes, I’m guilty of feeling upset because of those metrics.
However, there are a few things that help me detach my worth from these metrics as much as possible:
- Remembering that all those likes, followers, and views are just a bonus – I remind myself that when I post a piece of content, it’s because I am SOOOOOO proud of it and I truly believe it’ll add value. Any likes, followers, and views are just a bonus.
- Speaking of which remember this… people see your posts, but they won’t necessarily always like them – How do I know this? Because I do this all the time! I have a habit of really enjoying a piece of content, but genuinely forgetting to give it a like!
- Create a ME LIST – a Me list is a self-love habit where ahead of time, you write everything about yourself. What you do for a living, your amazing qualities, what you love doing for fun, quirks, fun facts, life stories, and beyond. It’s a great method where you can look back at it whenever you feel like you’ve lost yourself or need a confidence boost. You remember how amazing you are. This can be a great method especially when it comes to feeling discouraged because of your social media metrics.
7 – Hide Likes
If you want to take #6 a step further, you can utilize some social media features to not see other people’s likes. For some social media (like Facebook or Instagram), you can choose to hide likes and not see them on other people’s posts.
Sometimes seeing other people’s likes can cause us to feel bad about our own social media metrics. That’s why, this can be a simple but very effective social media feature to use and improve the relationship you have with social media.
RELATED: Self-Love Habits For Self-Discovery
8– Create Social Media Boundaries
Just like how you would have boundaries with anything else, also have boundaries with what you’ll tolerate with social media! You’d want to have social media boundaries in relation to:
- Who you follow
- What content you follow
- What content you don’t want to see
This can help make sure that the content you see on social media will be a more positive experience rather than a negative one. In the next points, it’ll go through some examples of how you can set these social media boundaries. After all, boundaries is an underrated form of self-care!
9 – Be mindful of who you follow
Make sure that you’re following accounts that make you feel better about yourself, is positive, inspiring, and informative. Set the social media boundary to only follow accounts that have those criteria.
You can also create your own personal criteria as well on what accounts you would follow! Here are some examples:
- Informative/Educational
- Inspirational/Motivational
- Entertaining/Funny/Can Make Your Day when you’re not having a good one
RELATED: Your Diet Isn’t Just What You Eat
10 – Unfollow accounts that don’t add value
On the opposite end, you also want to set social media boundaries for things you don’t want to see. For example, there may be content that you find triggering, and negative, and make you feel bad about yourself. Therefore you follow or unfollow accounts based on that.
Just like #9, you can create your own personal criteria with this one as well! If you wanted to, you can also make it a weekly personal growth habit to unfollow accounts that you don’t get value from anymore.
11 – Create Time Limits or ONLY WHEN limits
There are two types of social media limits you can do.
The first is the time limits. The explanation for this is quite obvious. You set an amount of time you can scroll on social media (e.g. 30 minutes) and once that 30 minute is up, you stop scrolling. The other time limit is when you set an exact time to stop scrolling (e.g. no scrolling past 9 pm).
The next one is only when limits. This is where you will only scroll on social media when you’re doing something. For example, there was a period of time when I would only scroll on social media when I’m standing up. So, whenever I wanted to scroll on social media, I had to be standing up. When I didn’t want to stand anymore, I had to stop scrolling.
You can even combine the two together! (which is what I’ve started doing). For example, I set a limit to stop scrolling past 9 pm, however, if I wanted to scroll more, I had to stand up. Most times I feel tired that I just stop standing and scrolling.
RELATED: Essential Non-Negotiable Daily Habits
12 – Treat social media as a tool
While social media can be a distraction, it can still be a powerful tool. For example, many business owners and content creators use social media to grow their communities and business.
But, to avoid those downsides of social media, here are a few ideas on how you can treat it as a tool:
- Have a set time for when you’ll go on social media to post & engage.
- Have a routine for when you’ll post & engage so you’re not on it 24/7.
- Engage with intention – make sure you’re indeed engaging and not spontaneously scrolling.
Ultimately, you can still use social media for its benefits! Just remember to be intentional with how you use it.
13 – Create Social Media Folders
Here is what I mean, social media folders include:
- Instagram folders on Instagram.
- TikTok Collections on TikTok.
- Playlists on YouTube.
- Boards on Pinterest.
You can make social media an even more positive experience by having these go-to folders for whenever you need something.
For example, you can create an Instagram folder for posts on self-confidence. So, whenever you feel like you’re lacking self-confidence, that’s the folder you can go to. Same with TikTok and Pinterest.
Or, you can even create a playlist on YouTube of motivational videos on days when you’re in a funk. Same with TikTok!
Even if you want to create a folder/playlist/board of specific educational material that you can go to so you can easily find it.
This is a great way to make social media a more positive and beneficial experience so you can associate social media as a tool rather than something negative.
RELATED: 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Do Self-Care
Take a SMALL STEP
Here are some small steps to help you get started with each of these tips:
- Don’t let social media be the first & last thing you see in the day – go to the next tip for the practical small step to help with this!
- List down at least 5 alternative activities to using social media in the morning & evening
- List down at least 3 alternative activities in your “dead time” as opposed to going on social media.
- List down at least 5 alternative activities to scrolling during your “downtime”. – e.g. working on your passion project, hobby, self-care time, etc.
- Don’t post in real time – I think this explains in itself.
- Create a me-list – Write down the lists of things about you! What you do, what you love, what you enjoy doing in your free time, your amazing qualities, your life story, quirks, fun facts, and more!
- Hide likes – If you can, turn the feature on to hide the likes you see on social media. Facebook and Instagram does this!
- Create your social media boundaries – Create your personal criteria for who you will follow, the type of content you’ll consume, and the content you’ll stay away from.
- Review who you’re following and the content you’re already consuming – Ask yourself if the content is adding value to you.
- Unfollow the accounts that don’t add value – Or even muting them can be fine too!
- Create TIME limits or ONLY WHEN limits – This is all personal to you and it’s up to you how you do this! Go back to this point if you need a refresher.
- Create a routine for when you’ll use social media and how you’ll use it – This is so you can use social media more intentionally.
- Create your social media folders – Create your TikTok collections, Instagram folders, YouTube/Facebook playlists, and/or Pinterest boards, and continue to save posts onto them over time! Remember you can make any types of playlists/folders that you can go back to and save time on social media.
To Wrap Up
Although social media is known to be a big distraction, you can still use it for its benefits! That’s why we talked about different ways to have a better relationship with social media to use it to our advantage, rather than letting it take over our lives. Sometimes, it’s just about being aware of other alternative activities, creating boundaries, and utilizing tools to help you make the most out of social media.
These are all just small steps to help you progress! If you need more tips on taking small steps, you can read my book, Small Steps to Progression which you can download for free here! You’ll also have access to many free resources in the Free Resources Library!
In the meantime, just remember to take control of your social media life and not let it control you!
-Lauren 😊
P.S I recommend you read these blog posts next:
- Social Media Habits That Are Mistakes
- Digital Habits For Growth & Happiness
- Essential Daily Non-Negotiable Habits
Share This Blog Post Here:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi, this is Lauren! I’m a law grad from Melbourne, Australia. On laurenbarri.com, I create content on all things personal development, productivity, self-care, and habits! I am super passionate about these topics because of how they helped me in all areas of my life, and I want to share it with others!
CONNECT with ME!! 🗯
Instagram:
@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)
If you got value from this blog in any way, it would mean the world if you could show your support on my Buy Me a Coffee platform! (otherwise I am just really happy that you’re here 😊)
