There\u2019s no doubt our relationship with social media is complicated. Sure, on the one hand, we love staying connected to our friends and the people we follow on Twitter and Instagram and Tiktok \u2014 and at the same time, there are times when we\u2019re staring at the phone in our hand and secretly wishing we could toss the damned thing into the garbage can and enjoy life without the glowing screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How many times have you picked up the phone, intending to just spend a few minutes on it, and somehow Time has rocketed past and it\u2019s two hours later? When that happens, if you\u2019re anything like me, you\u2019re probably feeling bad about yourself and about this disgusting social media habit you\u2019ve developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there some way that we can enjoy social media without hating it or hating ourselves for being overwhelmed by it? Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first step in breaking free of the Social Media Web is to clear out some of the \u201cdead weight\u201d apps. Do you really all those apps on your phone? Probably not. Here\u2019s a helpful hint \u2014 you don\u2019t need your phone to access your social media accounts. You can reach them through your computer, right? So why not just keep the apps on your phone that you\u2019re going to definitely want to check out during the day and your other accounts you can look at when you\u2019re at the keyboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s a cute picture of a puppy. Let\u2019s just click on \u201clike\u201d and move on, right? Wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take a minute to comment. Engage the person whose post you\u2019re liking. When you do that, two things happen. The first is that you\u2019re actually consciously taking action with the person that you\u2019re following or who is following you. There\u2019s an actual benefit to doing that \u2014 when you comment on something you like, you get a quick hit of dopamine from your brain and that gives your mental health a quick hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second thing that happens is the person that you\u2019re commenting on gets to see that what they\u2019ve posted has actually made enough of an impact on you to warrant a comment \u2014 and that makes them feel good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes, that leads to them commenting back to your comment and before you know it, instead of just following someone\u2019s social media account, you\u2019re connecting with them on a level that is so much stronger and mentally healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you really need to be notified every time someone posts something on social media? Probably not. And yet, when we\u2019ve got notifications on and we hear that special sound, we grab our phones to see just what\u2019s going on out there. It\u2019s time for us to stop acting like Pavlov\u2019s salivating dogs and take back control over our actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are better than our phones, you know. We should be in control of our phones and not the other way around. Turn off notifications and only look at the apps when you\u2019ve got the time to do so. That way, when you\u2019re enjoying time with friends or family, you don\u2019t automatically reach for the phone when you get a notification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, I\u2019m not suggesting that you only send snail mail letters and make actual phone calls instead of sending quick texts. What you can do is simply take the time to put your phone away and walk away from social media for short periods of time. When you\u2019re with friends, focus on just enjoying yourself and not looking for opportunities to post pictures to make others jealous or to show the world how much fun you\u2019re looking like you\u2019re having.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve all got accounts we follow that make us wish we had a different life. The thing is \u2014 we don\u2019t. This is the life we\u2019ve got. Instead of wasting our lives looking at someone else\u2019s life and wishing that was us, let\u2019s spend time away from the social media accounts and working to make our lives better. We\u2019ll feel better about ourselves at the end of the day \u2014 and, who knows? Doing that might give us the kind of life that others will wish they had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is your life, right? Spend more time enjoying the life you\u2019ve got and less time watching the lives of others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s no doubt our relationship with social media is complicated. Sure, on the one hand, we love staying connected to our friends and the people we follow on Twitter and Instagram and Tiktok \u2014 and at the same time, there are times when we\u2019re staring at the phone in our hand and secretly wishing we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":2446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3118,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/3118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.facts-ahead.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}