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Here come the long-awaited New Year holidays. The time you have been waiting for so long to relax, take a walk, spend time with your family, meet friends. But instead, as soon as you wake up, you reach for your phone to check the feed of Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia), Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia) and other social networks. In the evening, instead of a book in your hand, you have a tablet, and instead of happiness and joy, you feel irritable and tired. Is social media really an evil to fight? And how then to be with that useful that they give?
In my work as a psychotherapist, I use social networks as a way to talk with subscribers about what is important to me, to tell how, to whom and when psychotherapy can help, to share my personal successful experience of seeking professional help. I am happy when my articles get a response.
On the other hand, clients often complain that they spend too much time flipping through the social media feed, watching one video after another, watching someone else’s life. Often this does not bring them joy, but rather increases dissatisfaction and depression.
Is social media harmful or helpful? I think this question can be asked about everything. Let’s take a walk in the fresh air. Are they evil or good?
It would seem that the answer is obvious: even a child knows about the benefits of air. But what if it’s -30 outside and we’re talking about a newborn? It would hardly occur to anyone to walk with him for two hours.
It turns out that the point is not in the social networks themselves, but in how and how much time we spend there and how this pastime affects us.
The first effective way is to reduce the time you spend on social networks.
I propose to answer a few questions to understand how dependent you are on social networks.
- How much time a day do you spend on social media?
- What happens to your mood as a result: does it improve or worsen?
- Thanks to social networks, do you feel inspired, move forward?
- Do you ever feel worthless and «freeze» after watching a tape?
- Shame, fear and guilt increase?
If you understand that your mood does not depend on social networks in any way or even improves after watching the feed, you are usually inspired and start doing something — congratulations, you can safely stop reading this article, it will not be useful to you.
But if you notice that dissatisfaction, depression and depressive states are increasing and are directly dependent on what you see in the feed, we have something to talk about. First of all, about how to optimize your relationship with social networks.
Strictly by the clock
The first effective way is to reduce the time you spend on social networks. To do this, you can use a regular watch or special applications for smartphones. Moreover, the same Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia) and Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) recently introduced a feature that shows how much time the user spent in the mobile application over the past week. In the first case, the schedule is located in the “Your Time on Facebook” section (an extremist organization banned in Russia), in the second, it is in “Your Actions”.
There is even a tool that allows us to specify how much time we would like to spend in the application. When the limit specified in the settings is reached, we will receive an alert (access to applications will not be blocked).
It’s a good idea to do an informational detox from time to time. For example, one day a week to do without viewing social networks.
Analyze it
The second way is to analyze how and what you spend time on. Try to understand:
- What do you watch and read?
- What feelings does it evoke?
- Why did you subscribe to people you envy?
- Why are you doing this — scrolling through stories, reading these particular bloggers?
- What’s stopping you from making a different choice?
- What could help?
After analyzing your own behavior on social networks, you can take the following steps:
- Review your subscriptions and content.
- Reduce the number of profiles you follow.
- Unsubscribe from people you are not interested in.
- Subscribe to new, interesting.
- Take back your choice and freedom.
Yes, changing habits, and even more so giving up addictions, is always difficult. Yes, it will take determination and determination. But what you get at the end will be worth all the effort and will allow you to enjoy every day — not only on holidays, but also on weekdays.