How To Control And Reduce Your Social Media Consumption | Apps That Help

During and also after the pandemic, social interaction online has become increasingly crucial, both in our daily lives and in business. Now you can have easy access to see what people are doing through social media, and share your stories and passions with them virtually. Thanks to social media, we can now easily connect to people all around the world. 

However, the allure of scrolling down the feed, swiping through stories and videos, and commenting on each other’s posts can easily lead to excessive consumption and, in turn, negative impacts on our mental health and well-being, such as addiction. It's essential to find a healthy balance between our online and offline lives. In this article, we will explore how to control and reduce our social media consumption, which will keep our productivity, focus, and clear mind.

HOW TO REDUCE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CONSUMPTION

SET CLEAR GOALS

Define your goals for using social media, and set boundaries. What are you using it for? Are you using it to stay connected with friends, stay updated on news or inspirations, or are you just looking for fun? Is it necessary to use social media right now? Keep asking yourself questions everytime you open your app. If you are working or spending time with your family and friends, you don’t really have to open it. It is also important to set daily time limits for your social media usage. If you are using social media 2 hours a day, try to reduce it by 20 minutes every week. 

TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS

Notifications are always the biggest distraction. Even when you aren’t thinking of social media, the notification on your phone screen makes you automatically get into social media, and your precious 30 minutes will be gone. Unless you are waiting for an important message, Turn off non-essential notifications for your social media apps to reduce the urge to check them constantly. It’s the easiest thing to do within 20 seconds, but it will give you the immediate effect.

ENGAGE IN VARIOUS ACTIVITIES

What do you do after work or school? Do you just lay in bed and watch stories and feed on social media for hours? Then it’s time to find something that will interest you. Find hobbies and activities that don't involve screens. Engaging in physical activities such as sports or workout at gym, or spending time with loved ones outside. If you are on a long ride in a train or in bed, you can read some books, or listen to podcasts (of course with the screen off). Anything you can find around you that can make you more creative or interested can help reduce your reliance on social media.

DELETE OR TEMPORARILY DEACTIVATE ACCOUNTS

If you find that social media is bringing you so much negative impact in your life rather than positive, you may consider temporarily deactivating your accounts or deleting certain apps. There might be some apps that you only scroll down the feed for fun without giving you any positive impacts such as social interaction, inspiration, or educational contents. This can give you a break and help you reassess your relationship with social media. It doesn’t have to be permanent. You can see where it goes and you can always come back to it when you are able to control your consumption.

ASK FOR HELP

After all these methods, if you are still struggling to control your social media consumption on your own, consider seeking support from friends, family, or even a mental health professional. It is not something embarrassing to ask. They will give you various solutions to find your healthy lifestyle back.

APPS AND SOFTWARES THAT CAN HELP YOU BLOCK DISTRACTING IN SOCIAL MEDIA

It could be a little difficult to control everything on your own. Sometimes you would need someone or something to force you to control using social media for a while. There are also some apps and softwares that can help you to control your social media consumption. 

StayFocusd

StayFocusd is a Chrome-compatible software that is designed to prevent access to various websites. This application enables users to set time limits for individual websites and social media usage. Once these time limits are reached, the websites will be blocked during the rest of the day, and the users won't have any access until the next day. Users can also block whole websites without time limits, or even the images on webpages.

Freedom

Freedom enables you to restrict access to websites, applications, and emails that cause distractions on your smartphone and PC. The app can also prevent these apps from receiving new contents, posts, and notifications. Additionally, Freedom offers you to connect your devices all together, allowing you to be blocked from engaging social media or websites on any devices.

One Sec

One Sec allows you to set limits on various apps, and it also notifies you tried to open this app within a day. Intention tracking feature on this app forces you to give a specific reason for your app usage every time you open the app. You can also set a reminder system that gives you notification 5 minutes after you open the app. There are some more other features that can help you to control your social media usage.

Toggl 

Toggl is a free desktop extension that allows you to track the time spent on each website or application. At the end of the day or after work, you can review your time usage on each of them and will be able to plan on how to manage your time properly to be more productive. If you are working from home, this will be the best app for you.