How I Built a Healthy Relationship with Social Media in 6 Months

“I told you so”

One of the most impactful changes I’ve made while recovering from burnout is completely overhauling how I interact with social media.

6 months later, I feel like a film has been peeled from my eyes. My mind is significantly calmer, more focused, happier, and more hopeful. It’s no exaggeration to say that creating a healthy relationship with social media has completely changed my life for the better.

When I mentioned this to my husband and brother (who have both been off social media for years) they just said, “I told you so.”

I used to think they were too intense, but now I’m rallying the cry with them: less social media = more happiness.

6 months

I never had a timeline or a goal for improving the way I interact with social media. It happened naturally as I recovered from burnout over the course of 6 months.

I don’t think going cold turkey would have taught me anything in the long run anyway. If you’re considering changing your relationship with social media, I recommend making small changes over a few weeks and see how you feel.

Here’s what I did...

I turned off nearly all phone notifications and sounds

Notifications are just distractions for the most part. Very, very few are actually urgent. By turning off my notifications, I was able to start choosing when to read and respond to them.

How to turn off all notifications except calls and text messages: for iPhones, go to Settings > Notifications > Notification Style > Select each app individually to turn off notifications.
How to turn off notification sounds: for iPhones, simply flip the small switch on the left side of the phone so that you see an orange bar.

When I’m waiting on an important message or call, I turn my notification sounds back on until I’m done.

I replaced my phone in the bedroom

Taking my phone out of the bedroom has greatly reduced my night anxiety (which manifests as nightmares) and gets me out of bed much earlier. I’m not scrolling before bed or after I wake up, making me significantly calmer. Here’s what I do in detail:

I leave my phone on my desk in the living room every night before bed.
I use an old iPhone 7 as my alarm clock. It has almost no apps on it and it isn’t connected to my phone plan (so I don’t get texts or calls on it). My husband uses his Apple Watch as his alarm (another option).
I set up ‘Sleep Focus’ on my phone so all notifications are completely off between 9:45pm-7:00am. Only specific people’s calls can come through in case of emergency. For iPhones, go to Settings > Focus > Sleep.

This method guarantees you won’t be scrolling on your phone unless you leave the bedroom.

I went off all social media for 1 week

I went off all social media for 7 days as a part of “The Artist’s Way,” a 12 week creativity program. In addition to avoiding social media, I also did not consume any media including: books, news, movies, wikipedia, etc.

This was very challenging. I found myself constantly and intensely irritated. I assume this is because I didn’t have things to distract me from feeling uncomfortable and bored.

On the flip side, I had so much free mental space. I found that I had my own thoughts that were not influenced by other people’s opinions. In a world of TikTok giving you dozens of people’s opinions and creations every few minutes, this was an epiphany: I have something to say.

I made an active effort to notice how I’m feeling during social media use

After my challenging week with no social media, I returned to social media with new eyes. I made a real effort to stop scrolling and notice how I was feeling. I felt self-hate, jealousy, and anxiety. So I decided to make made some minor positive changes:

I unfollowed accounts that made me feel jealous. This was mostly elegant French women. They seem to trigger insecurity in me.
I deleted old, unused social media accounts. It felt good to lift the burden of maintaining Facebook and Twitter accounts. I made burner accounts for rare occasions (like selling a shoe rack on Facebook Marketplace).

I deleted nearly all social media apps off my phone

After noticing how bad I felt while using social media, I slowly and naturally began deleting apps off my phone one at a time. This whole process took 6 months. It got easier every time.

I deleted these apps off my phone: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest
I still have Spotify and Youtube on my phone because I use them to practice singing and play the harp. I hide them both in a folder to create slightly more friction in opening them.

To be clear, I did not delete my social media accounts. I only deleted the phone apps so I could not access them on my phone.

I used plugins to block ads and feeds on desktop

After deleting my phone apps, the only way for me to access social media was through my desktop browser. This made it a lot less likely that I’d even look at social media since I don’t use my laptop every day.

However, I found that when I did look at social media, I was easily distracted by the feeds and annoyed by the ads (a theme in my life). I would look at the clock and see I’d spent an hour doom scrolling. So I finetuned my approach.

I installed Chrome plugins to block feeds on Instagram, Linkedin, and Youtube. The plugins I used are Antigram, LinkedIn Feed Blocker, and Unhook. When I need or want to see a feed, I have to manually turn it on. I love this method because it makes the action of looking at a feed intentional.
I use an ad blocker to block ads on Pinterest (and elsewhere). I can’t believe half of all pins are ads now. An ad blocker makes this painfully obvious, as half the screen is blank.
I use Youtube Premium to block ads on YouTube. It’s a necessary evil at this point.

I found other things to do with my newfound time

As I slowly came off social media, I had more mental space and more free time.

I was able to replace social media scrolling with solving crosswords, reading dozens of books, starting a dog walking business, going to music school, learning to sing professionally, writing music, playing the harp, dancing ballet, texting/calling my friends and family, learning to swim the butterfly, cleaning my apartment, taking lots of fitness classes, and so much more.

I would choose that list of fun things over hours of social media scrolling any day. It just takes a lot of intentional work to get to that point.

Outcome

Interestingly, I’ve found that since I’ve broken the habit of social media scrolling, I don’t really enjoy it anymore. When I intentionally unblock my Instagram feed, I find myself bored and moving on to something else in less than a minute. After 15 years of social media scrolling addiction, I’ve realized on a deeper level that I fundamentally do not need it.