3 Steps to Good Social Media Use
Dear friends,
I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I think a lot of people do. It is so fun and useful to stay up to date on people’s lives, maintain connections, and find funny posts to share with your friends but it can also be a time sucker and, let’s be honest, I don’t think it helps anyone’s mental health.
Which is why today I want to talk about how to use social media in a better, simpler, and more balanced way! I’ve thought about how I created my personal plan for social media usage and have narrowed it down to this. Here are 3 steps I took to recognize my social media weaknesses and how I’m learning to use social media responsibly.
1 – Take note of when social media isn’t making you feel good.
Social media is a fun way to relax. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy some mindless scrolling and peeking in on people’s lives. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and it doesn’t require me to think too hard. This is great for a while, but I started noticing when social media began not feeling very good anymore.
There are a variety of reasons this could be happening. For me it was because I was going back to my favorite accounts and comparing my life to theirs. Healthy? Not at all. But there are a myriad of other ways social media could affect a person.
Are you going back to a specific account? It’s a fact that some accounts and pages are more uplifting than others. Even ones that aren’t inherently bad still may not be inherently good either, and some of your favorites may not actually add to your happiness in the way you think they do. (The first couple lines of the song Graveyard by Halsey speak to this actually! Go look up the song when you have a minute.) Do celebrity accounts affect you more? Or is it those of your friends and family? Is it the amount of time you’re spending on it? Are you using it to procrastinate? Is it the time of day? For me everything seems worse late at night, so being online at night is something I try to avoid. These are just some examples of reasons that social media may not be adding to your happiness.
2 – Take a break from social media for ten days and take note of how you feel.
Ten days? Ten entire days without going on any social media platforms?! Are you serious? Yes I am. Ten days is a long time. That’s the point! If you never get away from the toxic relationship, how are you supposed to see it for what it was?
The nice thing about this relationship is that you have all the control and can recreate it into the relationship that you want it to be. Eliminating social media for a while can help you identify exactly where you feel better without its influence (this will likely be related to what you took note of in the first step) and why that makes you feel better. Not only is this essential to step 3 as well, but it can give you a clearer perspective with which to view the problem.
Some reasons you may feel better could be that you have less things to worry about during the day. Taking that away helps create simplicity within your mindset which can benefit you in all areas of your life. Do you feel better because you can now focus more on accomplishing your goals instead of comparing where you are to where others are? Is it because others aren’t telling you where or who you should be? Don’t get stuck where you’re at.
The beautiful thing about life is that you always have the chance to move forward. Remembering this can help you create an environment where you’re looking forward toward your goals instead of being distracted by your phone. Define what you need from your social media experience in order to create that environment. Be proactive. Which leads us to the third and final step!
3 – Create a plan for how you will use social media in the future to better suit your needs.
This is the part where you get to recreate your relationship. It’s important to remember that social media is there as a tool for you to use. It should be at your beck and call, not the other way around. It can be a tool to stay connected with those you love, to provide inspiration for projects, and yes, even as a mental break or distraction.
The key is to know what your weaknesses are and how you can use social media with control, for its benefits, and avoid your personal pitfalls.
Here’s the plan I made for myself after following these steps:
- Set a 30-minute timer on Instagram per day and don’t go over that.
- Don’t scroll down the search page! (For me, it’s only a rabbit hole that wastes time.)
- Don’t scroll through celebrity accounts. (I’ve learned that celebrity accounts make me feel particularly down on myself, so I no longer allow myself to go scrolling. I still follow celebrity accounts that I like, I just don’t go through their individual pages.)
- No social media on Sunday. (We have days off from the workweek, so why not take a day off social media every week?)
Everyone will have different things that make them tick, so don’t expect your plan to look exactly like mine. If you’d like to use this for now until you whittle down what works for you, please do. If this does work for you, great! Feel free to take what you like and leave what you don’t, but these are some tricks that worked for me to revamp my social media usage into something that serves me and my goals and doesn’t add unwanted negativity or clutter into my life.
In the end it all boils down to simplicity. These rules have helped me rein in how I use my time, the things I think about, where my priorities lie, and generally simplifying my social media use into what I’d like it to be.
Good luck with your own plans!
Sincerely,
Kayla