Posting on Facebook and Instagram, tweeting on Twitter, snapping pictures on Snapchat to keep the streaks on, and scrolling hours after hours of newsfeeds and stories for no apparent reasons have become a habit for us.
While the newsfeed and stories are never-ending, our time is limited in this world. Often, while we are working, our hands automatically grab the phone to take a glance at the newsfeed. Though there is nothing interesting that has happened the last time you checked which probably was a few minutes ago.
Social media are a great platform for connecting to friends and family. It is also a good way to showcase your talents and skills as well as sharing exciting news. But nowadays it has become a place where people usually show off more and to certain extreme fakes. Studies have found it is affecting our productivity more than we let on to believe.
Continuously being on social media can be a reason for your stress and anxiety. Cause there is a continuous stream of bad news, fake news, or exaggerated happy pictures that are not real sometimes.
So if you realize that social media has become a monotonous and bad habit and can be a cause of your stress and anxiety, it’s time you should do a cleanse.
What Is a Social Media Detox?
Social Media detox is eliminating the use of all social apps that might be draining your energy and motivation. The detox can be 7 days to 30 days long for most people and for some it can go for a year.
Just like we prepare detox water filled with the essence of organic fruit to cleanse the toxins in our body, we also can take a break from toxins of social media by being closer to nature and our immediate surroundings.
There are lots of benefits of this social media detox. It brings you clarity for what you want to prioritize in your life, it makes you mindful of emotional, physical, and mental health. It increases your focus power, the drive to achieve your goals, and decreases the anxiety that comes from hours of scrolling and reaching nowhere.
Social media detox might make you less social but you will be closer than ever to your friends and family that really cares about you. The real relationship grows during this detox period and this should matter to you rather than the hundreds of fake friends.
1. Uninstall All the Social Media
Take a deep breath and drag your social media icons to uninstall. This is the very first step that you can start with. Give yourself a target that you will not use any social media for the next 6 hours.
This might feel uncomfortable at first but take it as a challenge to yourself. Go old-school, do mundane activities, experiment how long you can be without the connecting apps.
You can reinstall apps whenever you want to, during this time you can check your behavior, how well can you distract yourself and you may question yourself do you even need to be on social media so often. Once you accomplish one target you will be confident enough to give yourself more challenging targets.
2. Find a Healthy Distraction to Occupy Your Time
To lose your shackles from social media, find a regular activity that you love to do. Get more passionate about your skills. Nourish the skills and hobbies that you like to do and take interest in.
If you love music then listen to it, concentrate on the lyrics, if you love playing instruments or singing even better, practice them every chance you get. Do paintings if you love it, learn to do crafts and origami, this will keep your mind occupied.
Read books like paperbacks and hard copies, not from ebooks or pdf, nourish your mind with mindful reading and activities, spend time writing or making picture journals. Go through fashion or sports magazines, learn a cooking recipe, learn tricks of gardening or stitching.
Moreover, you can solve the crossword puzzle, there are plenty of books out there with this game, solve a Rubix cube. Whatever floats your boat, but distract yourself with something that is good for you and you love to do, not something you will easily get bored of.
3. Detox with a Friend
Whether you want to lose weight or free yourself from being irresistibly attached to social media, a friend can always help. Find a partner who wants to unwind from social media with you, like that you will get a company and motivate each other through the detox journey. It will also help you remember that you are not alone in this.
Make plans and fulfill the targets together at the same time remind yourself and each other you are doing this for a greater good. Or you can ask a friend to continuously remind you of your detox so that you can keep going on in your journey and you will have a friend you can lean on to.
4. Create but Keep It to Yourself
Say it is an addiction or just following the trend but you do not have to always post your activity on social media. I know it’s so fun to show what you are up to, where you are going, what you are making.
But sometimes it does become monotonous and it also becomes demotivating when one of your posts receives a like or share less than your previous one or your friend’s posts receive more reaction than your one.
We need to realize people’s likes and reactions are not everything. Rather when you are detoxing, create but don’t share. Go to marvelous places and take in nature and click pictures and make a journal of it. Write about your activities, I will say put more effort into it. But when it comes to sharing, show it to the closest people you have in life.
5. Limit Your Time on Phone
More people use social media through their phones, their clinginess to phones leads to clinginess of checking the apps. So what you can do is create a fashionable lock that takes more time to give access to your phone.
Put a screen lock with quotes that will help motivate you to not open the phone and make you return to what you were doing. Create a complicated password that will take time to open, this will give you time to think you can decide if you really need to be on the phone or not.
Forsake your phone after 8 or 9 pm, put it to charge and get rid of it for the day. Put it in a place where your hand cannot reach it. Meanwhile, do some skincare, and spend time with family, play board games, read more.
6. Get a Journal and an Alarm Clock
Well, minimize the reasons why you use your phone as much as possible. The first thing we do after getting up is to check our phone. We set our alarms in it, we fix reminders of our task in the to-do list app.
So instead of setting alarms on the phone buy a manual alarm clock for yourself and turn it off on your own each day. No option for snoozing, so you won’t be able to stay long in your bed.
Maintain a journal, write down your task of each day on your notebook, and properly maintain it with dates and time. Return back to the time when life was not so digital.
7. Create Obstacles to Reach Your Social Apps
Make several folders in your phone and keep the most unnecessarily used app inside those folders separately. This will create obstacles on the way to reaching and opening the apps and you will get time to realize if it is necessary to open the app.
One more thing you can do is access your social media account from desktop or laptop. Phone can be instant but the laptop and desktop take more time to open and there are lots of steps that you have to go through to open a laptop or desktop. That way you will feel lazy to do that activity.
8. Practice Meditation
During this detox time do meditation. Meditation helps you get relief from stress and anxiety. It helps you with mindfulness. Burn some scented candles, play soft music, and concentrate on inner peace. Our body makes helpful hormones while meditating which boosts our mood and makes us feel more active.
You will feel the weight will lift off your shoulder. You will be able to concentrate more on your life and fulfill your target.
Throughout this journey, we need to remember that we are not missing out on anything important. The world is revolving and you have people all around you to inform you what’s going on. If anything interesting happens to your friends they will inform you in person that’s why you have each other. Even if you are left out of anything you will get to realize who your fake friends or real friends are. Most importantly there is a life outside social media where people travel, eat and create without sharing online.
Leave a comment below if this article is motivated to a healthier lifestyle and you can also share your own detox journey.