Challenge (Week 7): Give up personal related social media for a week. Baseline Goal: 7 of 7 Days.
Social media can be a great tool for connecting us with family, friends, and even strangers with similar interests. However, social media can also be addicting. You’ve experienced this addictive quality firsthand if you’ve ever meant to hop onto social media for just a minute, but then realize 30 minutes later you’re still scrolling through the posts feed of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Social media sites work similarly to slot machines. With every scroll downwards, it is mimicking another play on the slot machine to see if you’re rewarded, not monetarily, but with interesting content. Every post you make is also like a pull on the slot machine to see how many likes and comments you can get. Social media sites track your behavior and customize the content in your feed to keep you interested and on the site/app (and seeing ads) for as long as possible.
Potential Benefits
- It will inherently reduce your screen time, subsequently reducing blue light exposure and allowing for better sleep.
- A social media cleanse can influence better mental and emotional health.
- In the absence of social media for one week, you may find yourself less stressed and having more mental clarity. If you are a heavy social media user, you’ll have more free time to spend on other activities.
How to Avoid Social Media
- Go gray – Our primitive brains haven’t had a chance to adapt to all the over-stimulation that social media throws at us. Bright colors shot from a backlit screen can attract us, much like a bee is attracted to brightly colored flowers. To make social apps less captivating, turn on grayscale mode. Different phones will have different ways to turn this mode. On your PC, hit Windows + Ctrl + C to toggle between grayscale mode and color mode. If you’re on a Mac, you’ll need to go into Accessibility settings.
- Install a website or app blocker – If you lack the willpower to use a site or app, install a website/app blocker on your phone and computer. There are dozens out there to choose from, so read reviews to see which one would work best for you.
- Turn off notifications – One thing that keeps us coming back to social media are push notifications. Turn these off on your phone or email for the social media apps you use (you can always turn them back on later). If you’re normally super active on social media, you might announce to your followers that you’ll be taking a week off. If you’re just a typical social media user, most people won’t notice your 1-week absence.
- Leave your phone in another room – The more you have your phone on you, the greater temptation you’ll have to whip it out the instant that boredom hits. So, unless you’re expecting an important call or message, just leave your phone sitting somewhere.
- Find something else to do – If you find yourself getting the urge to hop on social media, try to find another activity to engage yourself. This could be anything from reading, to cooking, cleaning, exercising, meditating, going shopping, going out with friends, or walking the dog. Just avoid going right for the TV in place of social media. That’s just replacing one bad habit with another.
You may not realize how much social media you were actually using until you give it up. We know it will be difficult to give up, but we hope you will experience the benefits from a week off.
