7 Ways to Reduce Social Media Usage

Take a few minutes to look at your Friend List or Follow List and Unfriend/Unfollow people who don’t add value to your life or to your news feed. This is a great time to unfollow people you don’t know or the people who post things you don’t like.

We are added to a lot of groups with our consent, be sure to unfollow them. Only keep the groups that you actively follow.

You don’t need to put a status update every time you eat at a restaurant. Not only this is bad for your privacy, but it is likely to increases your social media usage.

Try posting only on specific days like on weekends or only on Monday.

Think a moment before posting and ask yourself “Do I really need to post this?”.

Instead of posting a photo from your recent college trip, send it only to your loved ones.

At first, start by declaring a single day as ‘Social Media Free Day’. It could be any day of the week. After some time you can increase the intensity to multiple days e.g no social media Sat and Sun.

Another lite approach could be to declare a few ‘social media hours’ instead of the whole day, e.g no screen after 8 pm on Monday.

Delete all social media apps from your phone. Only use social media in the browser or on a computer only.

Apps are designed in such a way as to keep you glued to your screen. On an app, rewards are high and friction is low. However, using a mobile/computer browser offer considerable friction(e.g need to log in every time you want to use social media), and thus you can resist temptations more easily.

In the end, a more productive approach to reducing social media usage is to find other screen-less activities.

You can try these :

• Read a paper book.
• Walk/Run
• Go outside in nature.
• Send a postcard.
• Visit a library.
• Go to a gym.