Nowadays, social media play a significant role to connect and share our views and important moments with our friends and family. But, the inappropriate use of social media results in severe addiction symptoms among youth and adults, which has affected our work and relationships. Hence, a digital awareness of social media users is necessary for the effective handling of our digital alternatives. This blog aims to provide some initial tips to recover from social media addiction and to enjoy a balanced social life.

Self-assessment and realization

• The most critical step is to understand and admit your social media addiction. You should acknowledge your social media addiction based on the frequency of your online visits and duration of each visit.
• Further, take a look at your previous social media updates  the frequency of your posts, and analyze the content, and its relevance.
• In addition to finding the extent of your addiction, track the duration of your social media usage by noting down the time you spend in social media sites or using some apps (e.g., Quality Time, Reality check, etc.) [1] [2]

Take a short break from social media

• As an initial step, take a short break from social media sites for approximately three weeks and check whether you have any visible addiction symptoms after stepping away from your social media network.
• As a part of your recovery journey, remove the social media apps from your cell phone and temporarily deactivate your social media accounts for a specified period (three weeks) to beat the habit of frequent social media use.
• In case you feel this short break is beyond your control, seek help from your near ones to step away from the social media network or get help from a trained therapist. [3] [4] [5]

Self-management

• Before using social media every time, take an effort to understand your real need and necessity for using social media  which will reveal the cause of your continuous social media use  In case the need arises from boredom, find any productive activities such hobbies, do some physical activities, learn new skills, read motivating books or spend time with your beloved ones to entertain yourself.
• After taking the social media break, train yourself to use social media in moderation, namely, use social media only after finishing your work for the day, or when you are free from all your responsibilities with a clear understanding of your social media time limit.
• Further, follow just friends you know well in real life and delete the unknown people from your social media connections, which will reduce the volume of your news feed and thus automatically save your social media screen time.
• In addition, limit or delete the number of social media accounts in the same social media platform (multiple Facebook accounts), keep the only one social media platform you value the most (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) to connect with your real network and turn off notifications of updates in your account.
• Moreover, give priority to your important events, relationship and work/academic assignments by reducing your screen time and enjoying your everyday moments with your real friends and family around you instead of documenting and framing yourself living happily through social media updates. [6] [7] [8]

Use other healthy alternatives

• Instead of craving for social media occupy yourself with healthy options such as exercising, learning, reading or engaging with friends which will help you to achieve a healthy life with face-to-face relationships.
• In order to increase your interpersonal relationships, make a habit of meeting or calling people or write emails to communicate with your friends and family other than rely on social media sites.
• Further, beat your social media obsession by investing your valuable time to improve your productivity by developing yourself in your profession, achieving an excellent academic record or becoming a real-life role model to your network. [9] [10]

Read next: Are we the real culprit of social media addiction or is someone else playing behind the scenes? 

References

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/may/18/five-apps-help-smartphone-addicts-fight-fomo/

[2] Kagan Kircaburun, Journal of Education and Practice, 7, 2016, 64-72.

[3] Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, 2014, 773-782.

[4] Ichia Lee et al., Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference, 2007, 211-217.

[5] Larry D. Rosen et al., Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 2013, 948-958.

[6] https://www.adweek.com/digital/fight-social-media-addiction/

[7] Babajide Osatuyi et al., Computers in Human Behavior, 85, 2018, 95-105.

[8] https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-overcome-my-social-media-addiction/

[9] David R. Lubans et al., Frontiers in Public Health, 2, 2014, 1-11.

[10] https://thoughtcatalog.com/luisa-brenton/2016/04/15-ways-to-combat-your-social-media-addiction/