Being active all day on social media can drain you out physically and mentally. There are times when you need to take a break to regain your concentration on your job. If you feel you too need a detox, this is the article for you.
It’s essential to emphasize that, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with spending time on social media. If you can identify any bad effects that the apps have had on your life, it’s time to take a social media break.
Widespread discussions from people who have been away from social media indicate that a proper detox has helped them become more relaxed, focused and productive.
Why is Social Media Detox Needed?
Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., serve the goal of connecting us to the rest of the world. They are used to share information and news globally. Another important use of social media platforms is to expand your knowledge and get to know and learn about new things.
But let us not ignore the fact that social media does have its downside.
Before social media, your daily news only came from one source- the newspaper. Within one newspaper came a limited amount of information that was necessary for your everyday awareness. However, today you wake up in the morning, and the first thing you see on your smartphone is news from all over the world spamming your notifications.
Every site loads your feed with negative news like the number of Covid related deaths, mass shootings, animal cruelty, child trafficking, and every other disheartening news.
Read: What Should Be Your Social Media Strategy For The New Normal Times?
As a social media marketer, you may want to stay away from this unnecessary stress as it makes you apprehensive.
Your central focus needs to be on the growth and marketing of your business and not on any other news or the low likes and negative comments on your post.
Here are some techniques that will help you guide through the detox process and keep you away from all the negativity.
Social Media Detoxing
Here are some tips to stop the negative impact of social media on your mental wellness:
Inspect Your Apps
Are all the apps on your phone significant to you? Do you use all of them? Take a little while and think about this.
Sometimes at the spur of the moment, you download an application for a task. After the work is done, the app is of no use to you. You do not use it for your job, nor do you need it for your daily interactions.
All it does is takes up the storage of your device. The storage could be used for other necessary and productive apps or photos and videos.
Additionally, the continuous updates and notifications sent by this app do nothing but distract you from your work.
Deleting the unnecessary apps from your device will give you and your phone additional productivity.
Choose Your Notifications
If you are not sure about some apps, the least you can do is turn their notifications off. The whole fuss about receiving unnecessary notifications and getting distracted will end with the app notifications not popping up every few minutes.
An alternative is that you switch on the notifications only for the apps you use daily. You can do the same for in-app content. For instance, if you are interested in only a few social media accounts, then allow the “push notifications” for these accounts. In this way, you only have to check your social media when you see a particular notification instead of staying online all day.
Schedule Your Posts
If you are worried about your detox hampering your activities on your social media, then you can start your detox immediately without any worries! There are plenty of scheduling tools that allow you to schedule your social media posts in advance.
You can plan and create your content and schedule the dates for your post to be published. The schedules can even be recurring and can go on a loop on all your social media platforms.
Feed Organization
What you see on your social media and what is really important for you are two different things. The content which you see on your feed should be something you have total control over.
Unfollowing the accounts whose posts make you feel blue or stressed out will help you detox better.
Your social media account doesn’t need to have unnecessary news that brings on additional stress. It is important to know about everything but, your feed need not be bombarded with disturbing pictures and videos of nerve-racking news to bring you additional stress.
Seeing beneficial and positive feed on your social media helps you relax and increase your knowledge. It helps in getting new and good thoughts and keeps you updated with the latest technology.
Stick to Your Active Hours
It is important to have a time set for when you should and should not be using social media. Your daily average time spent on social media needs to be managed and lessened. You need to distance yourself from social media and give time to other life tasks that need your attention.
If it seems tough to do this when your phone keeps showing you notifications and updates, then you can try keeping your phone away from you. For work-related issues, you can try using messaging and communication apps on your desktop.
Social Media-Free Weekend
While working, even if you want to distance yourself from social media, sometimes you can’t. It is understandable as your work is completely social media-based.
In this case, you can take weekends off. Instead of lying on your bed and scrolling through your social media feed, try something new. You can take up an old hobby, go trekking, try mountain climbing, complete reading that book you’ve been trying to finish for months or meet your online in real life.
As you reduce your use of social media on weekends, you will realize that you have a lot more time in hand. Also, this will help in reducing your urge of using social media in your free time, even on weekdays!
Conclusion
As we all live in the modern era, social media has become a big part of our lives. Being a social media marketer, you may not be able to avoid social media for much longer, but you definitely can control it. You can certainly use your free time more constructively by avoiding social media.
Many people discover that they never want to return to social media after detoxing. It’s frequently the first step toward not only a much calmer and simpler life, but also have had the urge to not want to use social media in their free time and want to learn new hobbies instead.
