Maybe quitting social media, selling your smart phone, and living in a cave in the woods isn’t a good plan for you right now.
That’s okay. It still doesn’t mean you have to continue obsessively checking Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever else you spend half your waking hours staring at on your phone.
You actually can have balance between digital awareness and physical presence. It’s called living intentionally: you must dictate how your technology will serve you. If not, you’ll risk becoming a slave to it. I’ve been there—opening my eyes first thing in the morning and reaching for my phone just to “check the time…” and then the weather…and then the latest headlines…and then Facebook…and then my emails…and twenty minutes later I haven’t even left my bed and I’m already in a terrible mood. This is an example of technology detracting from my life, rather than augmenting it.
If you find yourself in similar straits, here are a few ways to turn it around and be more intentional when looking at your screens:
6 Ways to Be More Intentional With Your Time Online
- Turn off notifications. This is the first thing I did when I decided to be more intentional with my online time. It gives you more control: you be the one to decide when to check your phone for updates. Don’t give Facebook (or any other apps) the power to pull you away from whatever important task you’re currently using your phone for—or worse, from whatever important life event is happening in front of you right now. The only thing I want my phone to notify me of while I’m busy living my life is an impending natural disaster and evacuation order.
- Charge your phone in another room. Studies have shown that smartphone usage harms our sleep. If you (like me) rationalize that you need your phone to wake you up in the morning, time to cut it out. Pretend it’s 1999 and buy an actual alarm clock—I promise they still exist. This might seem counter-minimalist at first, buying a separate item when you already have a phone that does the same job; however, the increased sleep you’ll get by moving the glowing screen out of the room will be worth the burden of owning one more item.
- Set times for social media. There are many apps available to help you minimize your time on social media. One free app with very high ratings is Moment. Not only does it track the amount of time you spend using different apps every day, but it also allows you to limit the amount of time you spend on each one. Or you can go old school and just…stop using social media so much. Maybe you decide to allow yourself 30 minutes per day, or maybe you only check social media on your lunch break. Whichever way you do it, you’ll be amazed at how much free time you suddenly have.
- Delete social media apps altogether. Remove that one-tap access you’re used to, and you’ll remove the ease and frequency with which you normally check your profiles. Take it a step further and keep track of how many times per day you accidentally go to open your old favourites. You might be surprised how often you used to fall back on them. Then use that time to…
- Read a book. There’s probably a huge stack of them you’ve been meaning to get to, and now’s your chance! If you want to be very highbrow and fancy, you can even carry a physical book with you just like people used to do in case of unexpected down time. If you don’t want the extra weight, download a few to your device. You’ll still be looking at a screen, but at least it will be in the pursuit of greater knowledge. (Actually, I don’t care if you are reading total fluff; without the constant advertisements and notifications on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, it will still be better for you than social media.) Most public libraries now allow you to download e-books with your library card, so you don’t even have to pay for your book or leave your house if you don’t want to.
- Click judiciously. Whenever you *do* allow yourself some leisure social media time, please promise that you’ll never (ever) bite the clickbait. Clickbait—articles with titles like “He Puts on This Giant Pizza Suit and You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next!”—is designed to waste as much of your time as possible. That’s because the longer you stay on their crappy ad-laden website, and the more times you have to click through each mindless photo barricade, the more money these people will make. Clickbait writers don’t want to add value to your life: they want to add dollars to their lives. Just say no to clickbait.
So there you have it. 6 things you can do today to minimize the amount of time you waste on social media, and how to maximize the time you do spend there.
Let me know how it goes!