Exactly one year and one week ago, I stepped away from social media (happy anniversary, Alyanna!). In Part 1: Social Media Is a Shit Show, I explained how my social media addiction had led me to make that decision. At the time, I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing; my gut was telling me I was but she may have been slightly biased seeing as how I’d just permanently deleted my Instagram and Twitter accounts.
In retrospect, it’s clear that stepping away has changed my life for the better. So here in Part 2, I want to share the mindset shifts and practical strategies I’ve adopted that have made stepping away from social media healthy for me in the past year. I want to share these tips with you because it’s hard to step away from social media without a game plan (yes, we have a game plan for this—it’s that serious!).
I think it hasn’t even occurred to most of us that it’s possible to use social media in a healthier way. So remember, the key here is not to necessarily quit social media altogether but to be more intentional and disciplined with how we use it.
PART 2. Living an Offline Life.
It’s difficult to say how much time I spend on social media now because it fluctuates. Some days, I don’t use social media at all but on some days, I use it to talk to friends or promote my blog. For the most part, I just hop onto social media sites, gather the information I need or reply to someone briefly, then immediately log-out. Of course there are those rare days when the scrolling compulsion kicks in and I’d find myself on YouTube for more than an hour. I’m not too worried when that happens though; it only proves I’m human!
If you think about it, spending 3 hours each day on social media—which is the reported global average for 16 to 24 year olds—adds up to 21 hours each week. 21 hours is a lot of time; that’s already a part-time job right there.
So because I stepped away from social media, I was able to reclaim 21 hours each week to do things I actually wanted to do. That’s why I’m able to juggle studying full-time, reading books, writing for my blog, sleeping 8 hours each night, hanging out with my family, and keeping up with close friends without burning out (unfortunately I’m still too much of a potato to exercise regularly).
Because there are no notifications distracting me from my work anymore nor any compulsion to check my phone, I find that my attention span has lengthened and I’m now able to work more intensely in shorter amounts of time (i.e., “deep work”). Leaving the dopamine kicks and constant chatter behind has given me the space to nurture my own thoughts and a more stable sense of self. To put it plainly, stepping away from social media is freedom. We reclaim our time, autonomy, and self-worth back to ourselves.
Honestly, I’m still not sure what disadvantages there are to stepping away from social media. I’m still connected with my friends and updated with the news; I still find opportunities for professional growth and am constantly being exposed to new ideas. I don’t lack entertainment options either, but that’s probably because I live with a bunch of clowns.
Professor and author Cal Newport put it succinctly when he said, “Not only am I okay without social media but I think I’m actually better off.” I feel the complete exact way. I hope to one day reach a point in my life where I can afford to be completely off social media too. But for now, let’s just focus on using social media in a way that supports our priorities and needs!
MINDSET SHIFT
Mindset is everything! A proper mindset lays out the foundation to support your habits. Knowing the “why” behind your habits is going to be what makes your habits stick. Perhaps you can imagine your mindset as the compass to your habits; it’s supposed to guide your actions according to where you want to go.
The following are the mindsets I’ve adopted that help me live an offline life. They suit my particular personality and priorities though, so they may work for you or they may not. Just treat them as points to reflect on and see if any of them resonate with you!
Rethink friendship.
Someone once told me, “A lot of us equate having more friends with more love.”
That was my mindset towards friendship, whether I knew it consciously or not. Perhaps it was a simplistic mind that made me see a positive causation between amount of friends and amount of love. Perhaps it was my ego or my want to expand my “network” or my perpetual need to be socially accepted by as many people as possible. It can be any number of things but at the end of the day, I had equated more friends with more love.
Now I know that math doesn’t adequately capture friendship and that quantifying complicated things like those are futile. But I think human beings still gravitate towards numbers because numbers are concrete—numbers are easier to understand than abstracts.
Our online profiles count how many “friends” and “followers” we have, which makes it even easier to see friends as a number that, just like money or grades, we want to see increase, no questions asked. Perhaps this is why in our hyper-connected world, more and more people find it scary to be alone or to only have a few friends even though the more time you spend on social media, the lonelier and more isolated you can feel.
Social media grants us the power to collect friends, to keep alive the equation that says “more friends = more love.” And as long as we see friends as people to collect instead of individual people we learn from and invest our time and efforts into, it’s going to be hard to step away from social media.
Perhaps we’re on social media to cling to friendships too. Apart from losing so many friends, my biggest fear before deleting my social media accounts was that I won’t be able to preserve the friendships I’ve made. I was that type who wanted to keep all the loose connections, acquaintances, and friends I’ve made in my life forever, which is why I kept being on social media to stay updated with 1,000+ people even though we’re all on vastly different paths now. I kept wanting to cling even though there’s nothing to cling to and because of this, I’d been unable to accept the reality that in our lives, most people just come and go.
In that case, I’ll pass on what a therapist told me to you. It helps to imagine yourself riding a bus called “life.” You’re taking the bus because you have a destination you need to get to, as do the other commuters on the bus. Some people have already been on the bus before you hopped on. Some hop onto the bus and stay with you for 50 stops. Some hop onto the bus, stay for 3 stops, then get off at their destination. Some hop onto the bus, stay for a few stops, leave, then come back again. And this is all natural because we all have different destinations we need to get to.
So when the time comes, it’s perfectly okay to let people in your life go. At the end of the day, all of us aren’t heading towards the same destination. I think social media has given us the impression that all these people can stay on the bus forever but I’m not sure what we gain from that. I’m not sure what we gain from a friendship if we just treat it like a relic at the museum, instead of something to learn from and engage with and laugh with and grow with and be happy with.
Research says the same thing. Considering the size of our brain’s neocortex and time and energy constraints, anthropologist Robin Dunbar estimates that people can only have a maximum of 5 intimate friends and 150 social connections at a time. Of course, these numbers aren’t decisive but the point here is that having a few close friends doesn’t make you lonely at all and that letting go of friendships is natural. I’m encouraging you not to shut people out, but to be comfortable with having a few friends if that’s how you want to roll.
This new attitude towards friendship gave me the push to step away from social media. I was able to delete my accounts and Facebook friends not because I hated any of these people, but because I was finally ready to say goodbye to all those who left 5 stops ago. There’s no need to cling. There’s no need to keep scrolling to be updated with their lives.
Say goodbye to FOMO!
Ah, the fear of missing out.
I used to have very bad FOMO and wanted to be updated with everything that my friends were doing. I didn’t have any good reason for this other than I just didn’t want to miss out on anything (that’s FOMO for you!). Especially because I was following some friends’ dump accounts, I wanted to keep my front-row seat to their lives. I supposed that’s why social media is sometimes called “reality TV starring your friends.”
But one day, I asked myself, “did I really want to stay on social media—that is, stay trapped in the comparison cycle, stay distracted, stay addicted, and keep wasting my time—just to see what my friends are up to on a daily basis?” Suddenly, it didn’t seem worth it. It felt like trading a sack of diamonds for a kernel of gold.
The truth is, when you quit social media, you will miss out on things. You may feel terrible about it for a week or two but you’ll eventually realize that you’re only really missing out on the small things—and then at that point, you’ll already be happily missing out on things.
My social media bible Digital Minimalism articulated this conundrum well, “The sting of missing out dulls rapidly, but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists.” Indeed, it has been so empowering to have more control over my time and attention; I feel less like a digital zombie now and more like an autonomous human being. And that liberating feeling persists.
You’ll miss out on small things, definitely, but you will gain great things in return now that you aren’t hooked on dopamine kicks. Now that you’re not constantly updated with your friends’ lives, the next time you talk or see each other you’ll have plenty of things to gush about too!
"Not having time" is a myth.
“I don’t have time.” “I’m too busy.” We all know these lines, but Professor Alyanna instructs you to banish those phrases from your language! Train yourself not to say “I don’t have time” and “I’m too busy” because they’re a myth. The truth is, we always have time. It’s just a matter of making time.
If you’ve been studying for the past three hours, it’s not because you just had those three hours lying around. It’s because you made time to study. Similarly, if you’ve been scrolling through your phone for the past hour, it’s because you made time to scroll through your phone.
How you spend your time is a reflection of your priorities. If you’ve been studying for the past three hours, it’s because you’ve made it a priority to study for the past three hours, which is why you made time to do it. Similarly, if you’ve been scrolling through your phone for the past hour, it’s because you made it a priority to scroll through your phone for the past hour, which is why you made time to do it.
If you spent most of your day learning how to code, then learning how to code is your priority. If you spent most of your day working at the office, then working is your priority. Thinking of your priorities as the activities you spend time doing helps you to become more mindful of how you allocate your time.
So, instead of saying “I don’t have time to cook,” you can say, “Cooking is not a priority right now, which is why I’m not making time for it.” When you catch yourself scrolling through your phone for two hours, you can tell yourself, “Social media is a priority right now, which is why I’m making time for it.” When you tell that to yourself, you get to pause and think if that’s really where your priorities lie.
This mindset shift has helped me a lot. Whenever I find myself scrolling through Facebook, I immediately stop and tell myself, “Facebook is a priority right now, which is why I’m making time for it right now.” Because that doesn’t sound right to me, because I know that scrolling through Facebook isn’t actually a priority for me, I’m able to exert the mental push to get off the platform immediately.
I’m going to sound incredibly morbid but because we’re talking about time, it also helps to think about death and the indisputable reality that we only have a limited amount of time here on earth. I’m not saying this to dampen your day but to light a fire up your ass to spend your time more wisely and to finally spend your time according to your priorities. It’s scary to think that we might spend 6 years of our lives staring at our phones instead of chasing after our goals. So yes, you always have time; it’s just a matter of making time for your priorities.
What do you want social media to help you with?
When it comes to using social media, the most important question you have to ask yourself is, “What do I want social media to help me with?” Social media is supposed to be there to add value to your life, not distract you from it or replace it.
Are you on social media to be updated with the news? To expose yourself to new ideas? To coordinate with people on group projects? To talk to friends?
Personally, I want social media to help me with talking to people and promoting my blog. And because this is my guiding principle, I’m able to stop scrolling through people’s feeds and doomscrolling the news. I can quickly tell myself that I’m on social media just to talk to people and promote my blog so why the hell am I scrolling through people’s feeds and doomscrolling the news, then quickly get off the platform.
Once you’ve determined what you want social media to help you with, think about not only which social media sites are the best at helping you achieve your goals, but also how to use these sites. Ask yourself, “How am I going to use this social media app to maximize its value and minimize its harms?” (taken from Digital Minimalism). Then, tailor those social media sites according to the answers you’ve come up with.
For example, you decided that you just want social media to help you with promoting your fantastic art (and I’m sure it’s fantastic). You then decide that Instagram would be the best social media platform to help you accomplish that goal. Once you’re on Instagram, you can then just follow Instagram art accounts and refrain yourself from following or even searching celebrities, friends, and other kinds of accounts. Remember, you’re just there to promote your art.
So, with any social media platform that you use, always keep in mind, “What do I want social media to help me with?”
STRATEGIES AND TIPS
Now that we have a solid mindset, we can now talk about some strategies we can put in place to use social media more intentionally.
I’m warning you though, the first few days or weeks are probably going to be painful. I experienced some sort of withdrawal and kept opening and closing my phone repeatedly throughout the day. I had that nagging thought I was missing out, and a background hum of anxiety came along with it.
But don’t worry. As long as you try your best to stick to your newly cultivated mindset and put some strategies in place, you’ll eventually get through it! I’m rooting for you!
Get a hobby!
I know, I know. What do hobbies have anything to do with social media? Well, Newport has an answer ready, “Compulsive phone use is due to a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life. Hence it’s important to cultivate high-quality alternatives to the easy distraction social media provides.”
This is so true! Back when I wasn’t reading books and I didn’t have my blog, I’d just keep scrolling through social media and that’s it, that was my leisure time when I was just by myself because it felt so easy, and I didn’t feel like I had the time to do anything else. Of course, when I batch all the disparate times I had spent on social media, I’d find that I had spent hours on my phone each week—hours I thought I didn’t have.
So now that you’ve decided to reclaim 21 hours of your week by stepping away from social media, try to fill it up with a “well-developed leisure life,” or in other words, hobbies.
First of all, what’s a hobby right? I personally think of a hobby as a craft that pushes you to cultivate a skill that in turn produces something valuable. That can be cooking, exercising, painting, reading, learning a new language, playing an instrument, and so on. A hobby is an excellent replacement for social media because while we do both things for leisure, a hobby allows you to discover and develop valuable skills while social media doesn’t.
It’s true that hobbies don’t provide instant gratification kicks, but cultivating hobbies rewards you with a deep source of pride that’s just lightyears away from the shallow pride we get from likes, comments, or views. The key thing here is to replace passive consumption with rewarding activities that require your attention.
I’m sure you have an activity you’ve been meaning to try out. Now’s your chance! Stepping away from social media can afford you the time and concentration to invest in your hobbies, and the more you invest in your hobbies, the more you’ll realize that cultivating hobbies is way more rewarding than scrolling through your phone. Once that happens, the less likely you’ll go back to social media.
When I started regularly reading books again last year, I didn’t know that I was exposing myself to new ideas that are of much higher quality than the ideas I was being exposed to online. And the more I was exposing myself to high quality ideas from books, the less attractive social media became as a medium to expose myself to new ideas. Now, I just don’t rely on social media to educate myself anymore.
If you don’t have any hobbies to replace your social media use, you may find yourself unable to kick that phone compulsion away because you don’t have anything rewarding to fill in your leisure time. So, give yourself the chance to try out new hobbies! You might never know, that hobby may just turn out to be your passion as well.
Delete ALL social media apps from your phone.
I have zero social media apps on my phone. That means no Facebook, no YouTube, no Pinterest, and so on. I deleted literally anything that might tempt me to scroll mindlessly, which has forced me, for more than a year now, to access all my social media from my laptop.
Central to this strategy is a thing called “Activation Energy.” It’s the time and energy required for you to get started on doing an activity. Productivity Youtuber Thomas Frank explained that if you want to do something more often, you have to decrease the activation energy required to get started on that task. But if you want to do something less often, you have to increase the activation energy required to start doing that task.
This means that if you want to decrease your social media usage, you have to make it more inconvenient for yourself to access social media. Increase the activation energy required for you to access it, because the more friction there is between you and the activity, the less likely you’re going to do it.
You’ll think it’ll take too much time and energy to boot up your computer, go to Google Chrome, type in “facebook.com,” put in your email address, and put in your password every single time you want to use Facebook. If Facebook is just on your phone, you’ll only need one second to tap on the app and use it. But if Facebook is only accessible through your computer, then it’ll take you minutes and some steps before you can use it. Increasing the activation energy has certainly made me too lazy to log into Facebook a million times already.
Deleting social media apps from your phone is also important if you want to boost your attention span and concentration. Whenever I’m writing or studying, there will always be that one second where I suddenly feel incredibly bored. When I used to have social media on my phone and that pang of boredom hit me, I’d immediately grab my phone and scroll. But now that I don’t have accessible dopamine kicks available to me, I just suck it up and soldier through that one second of boredom to continue writing or studying.
If you increase the activation energy required to access social media, if you only access social media on your computer, then scrolling will be a lot less tempting to do. In this instance, trust your laziness.
Of course, if there are urgent things that you need to communicate or someone wants to urgently reach out to you, then you need to have an accessible communication channel open as well. This is where the next tip comes in.
Use text-messaging platforms to communicate, not social media.
Text-messaging and social media platforms are different. Although text-messaging apps can still notify you with updates and be distracting, they aren’t addictive slot machines that encourage you to scroll mindlessly. I’m talking about WhatsApp, Viber, and Discord—apps that are designed solely to allow you to text or communicate with other people.
Because even though we’re happily missing out on things, we still have to be relatively easy to reach just in case anything pressing comes up. This is why while you will have zero social media apps on your phone, have at least one text-messaging app where people can still reach you. But I suggest giving that contact detail selectively so that you’ll only receive the more urgent messages as you go through your day.
It’s up to you whether to turn your notifications and Wi-Fi on for these text-messaging apps. I personally keep my notifications turned on but my Wi-Fi off so that I won’t get distracted while I’m working or doing my hobbies, and then I just turn my Wi-Fi on at set times during the day.
If you’re using social media platforms (e.g., Facebook) to talk to friends or communicate with groupmates, first consider switching your mode of communication to a purely text-messaging app. If the preferred mode of communication is still Facebook, then ask yourself again what you want Facebook to help you with. Is it to be updated with the news or to laugh at memes or to communicate with groupmates and teachers? If you’re on Facebook just to coordinate with groupmates and to promote your club’s activities, then you can hide your timeline or reduce your Facebook friends to only your classmates. Again, it’s all about tailoring these social media sites according to what you want them to help you with.
Still, I recommend transferring all kinds of communication to text-messaging apps more, especially if it’s regular communication. Because you may login to Facebook with the intention to discuss group projects, but the temptation to keep checking your timeline and reloading your feed and looking at other people’s posts is staring straight at your face. Students may then login to work but end up staying because of the dopamine, so use text-messaging sites to communicate instead.
Lastly, schedule set times during the day to check your text-messaging apps and/or social media. I usually open the Wi-Fi on my phone after I finish doing a task and access Facebook once a day, either during the morning or evening. Scheduling when to access these apps may sound robotic and overkill, but it works to fend off the compulsion to regularly check them!
A Real Talk Pep Talk from Me to You
The fact that you’ve made it to the end of this article tells me something about you (that’s right, I see you girl). It tells me that you really want to step away from social media. It tells me that you want to reclaim your autonomy, spend more time on things that matter more to you, and improve your mental health. So I don’t know what else to say other than just give yourself the chance and do it! Just try to step away from social media and see if you like it. If you don’t, you can always go back. But if you do, then you’re in for a new way of life.
If you want to succeed at doing something, you have to build systems that will make it easier for you to succeed. Relying on just blunt willpower is not the healthiest way to go about it. So, if you want to reduce your social media usage, you have to set up strategies and a mindset that will make it easier for you to reduce your social media usage. And this article has given you some tools to do just that.
Freeing hours and hours of your day is such a huge deal, and it can be life-changing. Life is too short to spend years of it passively consuming the highlight reels of other people’s lives when you should be living yours fully; it’s too short for you not to be kind to yourself; and it’s certainly too short for you not to invest in your own growth.
After one year of living an offline life, no way am I going back to the way things were. Having hobbies, reclaiming my time, and cultivating my attention have given me a sense of fulfillment, peace, and happiness that I can’t even begin to describe. I struggled with social media for the better part of my life and now that I’ve gotten out of it, I hoped to show you that there’s a healthier way to approach these technologies.
Ultimately, I hope that this two-part series on social media was able to help you help yourself. I admire you for wanting to take care of yourself and for that, I’m rooting for you all the way!
Further Reading
Atler, A. (2017). Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Penguin Press.
Lanier, J. (2018). Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Picador, Henry Holt and Company.
Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Hachette Book Group.
Newport, C. (2019). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Portfolio.
What are you still doing here? Get off this website and go back to your hobby! You’re still reading this? Okay fine, now you have to tell me your thoughts on social media in the comments. Rules are rules. 🙂
If you haven’t already, check out Part 1 of this article which provides a backstory to my social media addiction. If you’re wondering why I kept mentioning dopamine here, the answer’s in there.
And if you like this tips-based article, you may also find 3 Self-Help Books That Actually Help helpful. I generally don’t like telling people what to do so those are all the “tips” I have on my blog. Let me know if you like these kinds of articles and maybe I’ll make more of them!
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Thanks so much for reading!
— Alyanna
