- Using social media apps for prolonged duration can play with your brain and the ability to think and operate.
- Check out these 6 ways you can reduce social media usage on your phone to begin with.
- From disabling notifications to uninstalling unwanted social media apps and beyond, this guide will help you figure out the course of action to limit your social media duration.
You can use reduce social media usage on your phone without needing a professional’s help. Albeit, there are endless reasons to stick to using it and yet, there are ways to reduce your exposure to social media. You can follow to hop away from all the pseudo vibrations, dumb scrolling, FOMO, and whatnot.
Why reduce social media usage, you ask? Simply put, this is important as we have become prey to developers rolling out apps and updates with endless content to consume, making it difficult to stay away from our phones. It doesn’t require a rocket science degree to say that’s a wrong thing to fall prey to. Thus, we are here to give your social media usage a break, and here’s how.
6 Effective Ways to Reduce Social Media Usage
Let’s take a look at some of the tips to figure out the best that works for you.
Disable Notifications
The What & Why? I believe notifications are probably the most prominent reason why I would check my social media apps. These constant blabbering of notifications right from messages to likes to comments to tags and beyond, are something that always keeps me on the edge checking my phone a million times every day.
In fact, there’s also a term coined ‘textaphrenia’ which exactly means you feel like your phone just buzzed when it hadn’t. It is a phantom vibration and probably that’s why millions of users check their phones just to find nothing.
The How? Well, for starters, you can reduce social media usage by limiting notifications that are sent to your phone every day. You can go for Settings, Notifications on your iPhone or Android devices and turn them in for most of the time if not all or for all apps. In fact, some Android versions even let you play granular control over notifications so that you can disconnect receiving notifications for messages but still get notified of calls.
Track Your Usage and Set a Goal
Modern smartphones have the ability to keep track of everything, and that includes the app usage duration as well. You can track your usage for Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, or other platforms individually to get a clear picture of how much time you are spending on these apps. It is kind of a bummer to see how much time these apps consume when you could’ve used it somewhere else.
Simply set a goal on the total time you would spend on these apps to eventually reduce social media apps. In fact, some smartphones have the functionality to put a timer on individual apps such as OnePlus beyond which, the app ceases to open until you reset the timer.
Uninstall
The What? What social media apps do you use on a regular basis? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Snapchat? Or All? Well, the best way to cut back on your social media exposure is to uninstall the ones you seldom or rarely use. For instance, I have uninstalled Facebook and Twitter as I barely use them. However, I can still use the web version should I need to. Having apps installed on your phone persuades you to use these apps more frequently than otherwise, which is why uninstalling is the key.
The How? Well, simply uninstall the lesser-consumed social media app, and you should be good to go. I would advise getting rid of those apps that you would not care about much before getting to the juicy apps that take most of your life, gotcha?
Add Resistance
The What? Developers are making social apps more accessible and convenient to use. Scroll on the explore page, and you get a tonne of new content to ponder. Instagram has endless scrolling which, as the name suggests, is limitless, unless you have enough time to scroll through all the content available at the moment.
Another term that I would like to add here is ‘dumb scrolling’ which is when you enter a realm of endless scrolling and that has some psychological impact as well that you might not be aware of. However, adding resistance can help.
The How? Instagram has both web and app versions and so does TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Turns out the app functions way differently than the web version, as the latter usually takes a few seconds to load every time you refresh. Open an image and you will see a minuscule delay. Open a video, and you will see it lagging a bit as well, and the list goes on.
I would rather use the Instagram website so it lets you access social networks but with a sort of resistance. Facebook on the web is relatively faster than Instagram, however, its UI might put you off at times and that’s a being resistance right there.
Adding resistance does work in your favor as it tends to discourage you from using social media too much.
Give Your Phone a Break
There’s no rocket science here. Simply put your phone down and give it a break. Instead, talk with your family and family while your phone is sitting nicely in your pocket. I know it is a bit challenging, but hey, we got your back. After some days, you will see a positive impact of not using your phone too much, such as better focus, concentration, more time at your disposal for other tasks, etc.
Wrapping Up
These were some ways you can actually try to reduce social media usage on your device. Perhaps, we recommend doing at least a few of these techniques. It may need some efforts, but it will eventually show off in the form of increased concentration and focus. Also, you will get enough provision of time that was earlier stolen by these social media apps.
These are actually designed as rabbit holes to lure users and make it stick for longer and the sad thing is, the users often don’t realize their phycological tactics that can have detrimental impact on your life. Thus, we recommend using social media but in a certain moderation and too much of anything is injurious to your health directly or indirectly.
