How to have a healthier relationship with social media

The Social Dilemma, Netflix's documentary about the impacts of social media and technology in our society has been a big collective eye opener.

My biggest takeaway is that we need to gain back control on how we use these platforms.

Here’s the thing:

Facebook, Instagram, Google and such are created to keep us engaged as much as possible. And we are just complying with it all: uploading every app, accepting every notification.

They even put those on our watches and glasses, so we stay connected 24/7!

But this is affecting directly both our mental health and productivity.

We all need to minimize our addiction to our devices. If you ever checked your phone during dinner or while watching something else, you too have a problem.

Although these platforms, social and email, have many ways to keep us constantly checking and scrolling, we also have a little thing called settings and other options that most people didn't know was possible.

Here are some of them, and my advice to you:

1) Delete social media apps from your phone and only use them in your computer instead. 

That's right. I deleted Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter from my phone.

If I limit my usage of these platforms to when I'm sitting in front of my computer, there's a smaller chance I will be wasting time on an endless scroll -or even working after hours. 

I kept Instagram because otherwise I can't do Stories, Lives or Reels, but I don't ever post natively to the app, which also minimizes how much time I waste there.

2) Follow less then 500 accounts on Instagram!

Instagram is a huge part of my job and business, so I spend a lot of time on it. I have limited myself to 500 followers. After that, if I follow a new one, I unfollow one.

This benefits you in two ways: first, shorter scroll which will equal less time spent scrolling. Second, by following less accounts (and limiting to the ones that are relevant to you), you will have a curated scroll and actually see valuable content for your business.

If you follow more than 500 accounts, make sure you start unfollowing some that aren’t relevant to you.

If you click on the number of accounts you follow, you will be able to see the 50 least interacted with.

That’s a good place to start!

3) Change all your notifications settings, so they don't pop on your phone or computer.

You can go to settings > notifications on all these platforms and read through them to turn them off. I have done this a while back and find it very helpful.

4) Delete your Facebook news feed! 

Yes, that's an option!

Removing the news feed, where you see 15+ years worth of people you met and pages you liked (and all the content they share without checking sources) will be the self care routine you never knew you needed!

I first heard about this last year via my friend Jessica from @mystylevita who was recommending it back then. Jess recommends you do it manually on Facebook. See how here.

You can also install a Chrome extension  like this one, which is what I did. Note that if you do this, you will still see the feed when using a different browser or the app — which is why I got rid of the app!

Check out my feed-less Facebook page! So fresh and so clean! 

5) Schedule all your posts for auto-publishing using an Instagram partner app.

Only business accounts are able to do this, so I recommend that if you're a creator, you switch it right back to business so you can do this too!

Even when I don’t have posts planned and scheduled ahead of time, I still use auto-publish for my post of the day.

When you schedule a post for auto-publish, you are minimizing getting sucked into more scrolling and I will tell you, you'd be saving hours and hours by the end of the month!

6) Only post what you know FOR A FACT is true and include your sources.

Whether you're talking about how the algorithm works or politics, ONLY SHARE WHAT COMES FROM A RELIABLE SOURCE - if in any doubt, don't share it.

The movie tells us that fake news spread 6x faster than real news. Let’s not be part of that problem.


7) Protect your kids and teens from the effect of social media.

The movie shows us that the newest generations have seen a enormous growth of self inflicted harm, depression and suicide in kids and teens.

If you have kids that are always glued to their devices, GET INVOLVED.

Spend more time with them, limit their time on the platform, apply the same rules we talked about above to them and check out Bark, an amazing app that helps parents monitor their kids social media use (this is NOT an affiliate link). 

8) Only own a couple of devices.

I have a phone, a laptop and airPods, which I just use as headphones. I never had an iPad or a Apple Watch or anything else, and while they are cool devices, the more of them you have, the less you take a break.

9) Be smarter at creating content. The more time you spend creating content, the more obsessed with its performance you will be. This will probably lead to comparing yourself with others on Instagram and more time spent refreshing and checking out your competitors. Don’t do it!

If you need some help, check out our Canva templates here. They will help your audience stop the scroll and you will have more effective content in less time (plus they are so fun and will spread all the vibes!).


There is still a LOT of good these platforms can do for us — imagine this pandemic without Instagram and Zoom!!  

So now that we know better, we can regain control and minimize the impact it has in our lives. 

Let’s use social for good!


Love you all!
Manu

PS: this post has some great tips for you to limit the endless scroll and emotional effects of social media. Read it all!