How To Detox Your Social Media

We’ve all known that person who has 1000+ unopened emails in their inbox. Or, we’ve been that person.

We also know folks who have so many Facebook friends that they actually don’t remember half of them. Or, we’ve been that person, too.If we aren’t careful, our social media accounts can become like beach balls dipped in glue and rolled through the flea market. And pretty soon, we start missing the things we actually care about, because we’re under a pile of junk.

So if you haven’t done it in a while, it’s time to detox your social media accounts.

Why it’s like a food detox

People who do dietary detoxes every once in a while have a theory: that over time, we eat, drink and inhale garbage that is slowly breaking down our bodily functions. These toxins can weaken us in physical, emotional, and mental ways.

Similarly, cluttered social media accounts lose their effectiveness and purpose. While we become nearly robotic about scrolling through our feeds, we’re not actually getting anything out of them.Meanwhile, we spend precious time sorting through the personal reports of folks we hardly know anymore: their favorite lumpy couch, their new tattoo, or their BLT sandwich. And no one really needs that.

I’m not against social media; in fact, I think it can be a wonderful tool for keeping up with people you love and who inspire you. And for many of us, our daily routines can suffer a dearth of inspiration. So if used wisely, social media can be a great thing.

The Social Media Detox: it’s easier than it sounds

Remember the person with so much clutter in their accounts that they never pay attention to anything? You might have thought to yourself, why do they even have an account?

So why have an account in the first place? That’s the question to ask yourself. What is the purpose of your twitter/facebook/instagram/pinterest/email/etc.?

Is your account currently achieving that purpose? If not, then it’s probably bogged down with clutter.

And the solution is easy: start unfollowing. Invest the time to do it, as it will save you wasted hours in the long-run. Go through the folks that you follow. Click on their accounts, and assess their recent posts. Ask yourself: does this inspire me? Do I like this? Do I care about what they share? Do I know them? In response, unfollow, unlike, unfriend. You can do it.

Now, is your email full of unread (promotional) junk? This is probably because unsubscribing to lists has been designed to be difficult. Promotions don’t want to lose email recipients!

But you can do this too. The next time you check-mark an unread email to delete, think about whether you want to receive these emails ever again. Perhaps it was just one uninteresting email among many good ones. Or, it’s the 70th you’ve deleted from the same source within a month. Time to unsubscribe!

And remember, unfollowing/unsubscribing are not permanent decisions. You can always refollow the things that you actually miss, and no one will even notice you were gone.

The longer detox

Now that you’ve gotten rid of the clutter, it’s time to get rid of the compulsive habit.

I am a HUGE fan of unplugging. I notice more of my surroundings. I try more things. I feel less stressed. I breathe more.

But how can someone in the 21st century actually unplug? Isn’t that irresponsible? Inconsiderate? Inexcusable?

It’s true: due to work and relationships, few of us can afford to fully unplug all the time. Instead, what we can do is draw boundaries with our social media accounts, and develop new ways to fill those needs that social media fills.

Here are some practical ways to break a compulsive social media habit:

1. Set on and off hours. Tell yourself, “I won’t check social media before 7AM or after 11PM”.
2. Delete the apps on your phone. If you don’t have the app, then you won’t know if you got a notification. You’ll have to open up your computer to see it. Which leads me to…
3. Leave the computer on the desk. If it’s a laptop, then close it. And don’t sleep with it– it’s not your puppy.
4. Occasionally, take a whole day off. Go a whole day without checking social media, and re-evaluate whether you still want to follow whom you’re following.

If you’ve done all of this and are suffering from a social-media-shaped hole in your heart, good for you! You’ve done something that very few people have the courage to do.

But there’s no need to disappear completely.

This is why I advocate a detox, not a complete cut-off. We need to regain control over our social media accounts and simplify our uses of them, not delete them because we don’t have self-control. Most of them are great platforms on which to share ideas and experiences with people we love, and to keep up with folks who are far away. But what we need to really insist on is to only follow those things that are inspiration-worthy. The things that bring us joy. And then, we go live our lives.

Now it’s your turn! Have you struggled with social media clutter? What have you done about it?

{If you liked this, please check out: Instagram and Other Fake Lives}