How To Be Intentional With Your Time On Social Media

Back in the early 2000s when I was a kid, the internet was not omnipresent. Googling was not the first thing kids used to do whenever a question popped up in their head. The very first time I was made aware of the existence of a mobile phone was when I was about eight years old. Communicating was about one-on-one interactions, landlines, and remembering the phone numbers of school friends. Now, it has conveniently transitioned into posting the perfect vacation selfie or having a crazy social media following.

I believe that the internet has a lot of power: Power to educate, Power to bring a change, Power to impact lives, and although there are numerous benefits of having a platform that serves as a backbone of interconnectedness in a fast-growing world, it would be a tad bit unfair to disregard the stress, insecurity and the FOMO that comes into one's life with it.

I mean, what’s the first thing you’d do after finishing an online lecture, or a team meeting at work? Probably scroll through Instagram or Facebook to see what has changed in the world during an entire hour of your absence.

Here’s a fun little fact about social media: The more you try to run away from it, the more it will follow you. Ever since I joined Instagram in college, I made a rule of disabling my account once every two months for as long as I wanted. This time around, I just deleted the app from my phone, intending to reinstall it a few days later. Two weeks into my detox, I was so present in my real life that I nearly forgot about my association with a platform that enabled me to share my life with my internet friends. At the start of the third week, I started getting emails from Instagram. Not one, but two each day. They made sure to remind me of my absence from the online world and how I was missing new posts from people I hardly knew. Sure, we can’t stay aloof from the world at all times, but we can try to make a conscious effort to reverse the suffering of social media controlling our lives.

Here are a few things that I intentionally tried to implement in my life that have gone a long way in keeping me sane in a world full of distractions and triggers.

1. Take Regular Breaks

I cannot emphasize enough the fact that taking regular breaks from social media does have a positive impact on our mental health. If you struggle with taking month-long breaks from your socials, select one specific week of each month as a detox week. Use your week off from social media to be more present in your surroundings: meet friends, go out for walks, read a book, spend time with family.

2. Set Realistic Screen Times

Intentionality is not just about taking regular breaks from social media. Setting a realistic screen time will be a constant reminder to spend more time doing things that add value to our life. Targeting a 15 minute screen time on apps you spend at least four hours on daily can be hard to accomplish. Start slow to observe a long-term change.

3. Be Selective with the Content You Consume

The amount of information available on the internet is beyond what any human mind could ever register at once. So naturally, the kind of content you consume is entirely up to you. Follow accounts that encourage you to stay fit, provide you information about the happenings around the world, and most importantly the ones that always lead you back to your hobbies in some form or the other.

4. Minimize Anxiety Via Linkedin

In my personal experience, Linkedin gives me more anxiety than all the other social media apps combined. I feel overwhelmed every time I scroll through tons of college acceptance or job update posts on my feed, question my self-worth and make unconscious comparisons with people I barely know. The constant thinking usually drains my energy and leaves a throbbing pain in my head. Fortunately enough, I was able to realize very quickly that I need to be intentional with how I use this platform to my advantage and not as a self-destruction weapon.

I started by evaluating my goals which would require me to use the platform. To find a job, I set job alerts on my email specific to what I was looking for. I set out time during the weekends to browse through my connection requests and some important news articles that I must have missed. I also set email notifications for new messages to easily reply to the important ones during weekdays, even when I wasn't using the platform that much. These minute changes helped me reduce the mindless scrolling and saved my mind the pain of constant comparisons.

5. Reduce Convenience

This is something that has worked for me but may not for everyone. Overuse of social media can be justified by the convenience it offers. You are just a tap away from your virtual identity. Various apps have made it extremely convenient to handle multiple accounts at once. However, this virtual identity seems distant when the road that leads to it is a little longer. Limiting my access to social media only via the browser makes me glance only through the most relevant information before logging out.

This small change in habit has done wonders for lowering my screen time and proved to be extremely beneficial for my mental health.

Life can feel so out of control sometimes that we need to grab hold of the few things we can control and turn that into an opportunity for personal growth. Choosing our mental peace over the social forces goes a long way in creating a life that has meaning, mindfulness, and a feeling of fulfilment.