8 hours.
The average amount of time I was spending on my phone per day, according to my weekly screen time report.
I quickly did the math. If I kept this up for an entire year I would be spending ~120 days on my phone. (Nevermind the actual number of days I had already lost) 😳
🚨Alarms blared
🚩Red flags raised
❤️ My heart raced
Is this really how I wanted to be spending my time? My days? My life?
I needed to take a hard look at my relationship to my phone, particularly social media.
(Social Media) Relationship status: It's complicated
I was a freshman in college when Facebook was created and as an introvert I immediately loved it. When Twitter and Instagram came along a few years later, I instantly embraced them too. So much so that I started my career as a social media manager!
Although I didn't have an iPhone in those early years of social media, I still had plenty of screen time. I spent a good chunk of my free time on my laptop reading blogs, Facebook status updates, and tweets.
What was it about these platforms that I loved so much?
Part of it was that I struggled a lot in college as an introvert. It was hard for me to make friends, I was super homesick, and lonely. Reading people's Facebook statuses and tweets, seeing their photos, and/or reading their blog posts made me feel like I was part of the crowd in a way. It was a salve that made me feel connected when I felt so dis-connected from the world around me.
My relationship to social media changed when iPhones became ubiquitous. Now, I could scroll to my heart's content whenever (and wherever!) I wanted. Around this time, a new social media power player came on the scene: Instagram 📸.
I ❤️ Instagram (even though we have a complicated relationship) and could spend all day on there (wait, I have). No other platform has exposed me to people, places, and ideas like Instagram has.
For the most part, it's my (digital) happy place. And although it can be a dark space for some, that hasn't been my experience.
Instagram is where I find:
People that inspire me and that I would have never found or connected with otherwise
Recipes to try
Places to visit
Books to read
What products are worth buying
Community around shared interests
Life hacks and tips
Creative inspiration
Funny memes and videos that brighten my day
... and on and on.
It's a platform that has, quite literally, expanded my world beyond what I experience and have exposure to in my daily life.
And because of that, I find myself in a vicious (and oftentimes mindless) cycle of scrolling, refreshing, scrolling, refreshing.
Consuming, consuming, consuming.
For hours on end.
Related: there’s a brilliant scene in Broad City where Abbi and Ilana realize how dependent they’ve become on the Internet after they get sucked into their computers. It me.
Addicted to love social media
Addiction. That's a heavy word. And honestly, in the context of "social media addiction" the word gives me the ick. But because I have such a strong reaction to it, I know it's something I have to look at.
According to Addiction Center, social media addiction is "a behavioral addiction that is characterized as being overly concerned about social media, driven by an uncontrollable urge to log on to or use social media, and devoting so much time and effort to social media that it impairs other important life areas.
Addictive social media use will look much like any other substance use disorder and may include:
Mood modification (i.e., engagement in social media leads to a favorable change in emotional states)
Salience (i.e., behavioral, cognitive, and emotional preoccupation with social media)
Tolerance (i.e., ever-increasing use of social media over time)
Withdrawal symptoms (i.e., experiencing unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms when social media use is restricted or stopped)
Conflict (i.e., interpersonal problems ensue because of social media usage)
Relapse (i.e., addicted individuals quickly revert back to their excessive social media usage after an abstinence period)."
Umm... yeah, I definitely check some of those boxes ✅✅✅
Like how when I'm on a flight without wifi and I keep refreshing Instagram to see if I can catch a signal 35,000 feet in the air.
Or when I physically feel sick from overstimulation after hours of scrolling. Not to mention the dry eyes from not blinking.
Or how I worry I'll miss something if I spend even a day off social media (the FOMO is real).
Or (and it’s hard for me to admit this) how I spend so much time watching others live their lives at the expense of creating a life of my own.
It's no secret that platforms like Facebook and Instagram are designed to be addictive. They hijack our brain's dopamine reward system, just like gambling and recreational drugs. We end up engaging in counterproductive behaviors even if, and especially when, they are harmful to us.
As I was learning more about social media addiction's harmful effects, I came across a study cited by Nicholas Kardaras, author of Digital Madness. In his book he shares a study that found that university students who use social media for more than three hours each day suffered from poor sleep, poor academic performance, and had much higher rates of depression, substance abuse, stress, and suicide. One of the biggest culprits is too much false social comparison: In posts, photos, and videos, the grass always seems greener elsewhere.
The grass always seems greener
As much as I have heart eyes for Insta and as much as it adds and enriches my life, my overconsumption floods my brain with false social comparison.
Although I know Instagram is a highlight reel (and am guilty of feeding it myself), I can’t help but feel like “everyone else” is doing more and doing better than me. Their lives are more fabulous, more successful, more fulfilled, more more more.
And I can’t look away despite feeling anxious, stressed, and yes, sometimes depressed.
What's more is that I counter these feelings by numbing, distracting, and avoiding with - you guessed it - more scrolling (!)
It took a long time for me to make the connection between how (and where) I was spending my time and the way I was feeling. Months, actually. And I credit a lot of this awareness to my mindfulness and meditation practice (thank you, Headspace).
Admitting I have a complex and fraught relationship with social media gives me the ick. And it's easy to want to beat myself up about it, judge myself, and shame myself. But that's not what is going to help me change. This habit, addiction - whatever you want to call it - is 18 years in the making.
What I need is self-compassion.
What I need are boundaries.
What I really need is a break.
Breaking up is hard to do
I’ve tried a few different ways to break up with social media in the past: sheer willpower, giving it up for Lent, and setting app limits on my phone. None of them had any lasting effect because they were either too easy to override or too extreme.
After months of tinkering with my own behavioral change around social media, I noted what made the biggest difference to my consumption. This is still very much a work in progress, but impactful nonetheless.
Once you begin to change your relationship to social media you’ll begin to notice the benefits immediately, including:
Better quality sleep
More presence with loved ones
The expansion of time (ever notice how time flies when you’re scrolling?)
Less stress and anxiety
🌱Growth happens here
Below is my framework for starting to change your relationship to social media. There’s no need to make all these changes overnight. My recommendation is to hold yourself accountable to making one change a week. Remember, you’ve likely built this behavior over years, so it will take time to undo. It is possible!
Reflect
📝 Journal on the following questions:
WHY do you want to change your relationship to social media? WHO do you want to change for? (You will return to your WHY and WHO many times during this process so it’s important to get crystal clear on this.)
How does social media make you feel? (Sidenote: this is why I love my meditation practice. Even when I’m mindlessly scrolling, there are moments of mindfulness where I “snap out of it” and realize what I’m doing. It’s in these moments that I can notice and recognize how I’m feeling, or at least notice when something feels off.)
How are you going to spend your time when you’re not scrolling? Create a list of activities you can do instead of checking social media. These could be projects you’ve been meaning to tackle, new (or old!) hobbies, taking a walk outside, spending time with loved ones, etc.
Evaluate and eliminate
🔎 Take a look at all the social channels you actively engage in.
Which platforms can you eliminate entirely? Delete your account. For me, that was Twitter.
For the social platforms that you choose to keep, go through the list of people you’re following and unfriend/unfollow anyone who:
You don’t speak to anymore (yes, that includes your friends from high school that you haven’t seen in 10+ years)
You feel obligated to follow but don’t really want to (this includes family!)
Makes you feel bad about yourself or have a negative effect on your mental health
You follow on multiple social platforms. Choose one platform to follow them on (they’re likely posting the same content on all of their social channels so you’re consuming duplicate content)
Hasn’t posted in more than a year
My advice here is to be relentless. When I look at who I’m following I continue to ask myself, “Are they inspiring me? Does their content add to my life?” If not, I unfollow them. I’ve also made it a habit to do a quarterly purge of who I’m following on social media.
📱Remove social media apps from your phone. This one was really hard for me! At first I tried removing the apps from my home screen, but that didn’t stop me from easily accessing them from my phone’s search function. If you really struggle with this one, at the very least log out of your account and remove your profile (otherwise the apps will save your login information). I find that when I’m prompted with the login screen when I open the app I’m oftentimes too lazy to enter my information 😂
Set boundaries
✋🏼What is one boundary you can hold yourself accountable to around your social media use? Here are some ideas:
Take a social media sabbath one day a week
Don’t check your phone until a certain time (i.e. 9AM)
Put your phone away after a certain time (i.e. 8PM)
Only check your social media accounts from your desktop
Keep your phone in a different room
Creating (and sticking to!) boundaries is hard, which leads me to my next step…
💗Self-compassion
Behavioral change is messy. It’s imperfect. It will take trial and error. But that is OKAY. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself. Know that you can start again at any time.
You will also be confronted with uncomfortable emotions, feelings, and sensations. Oftentimes we use social media to numb, distract, and avoid. When we take away our coping mechanism, we can be forced to confront these wildly uncomfortable feelings. This is where a mindfulness and meditation practice can be hugely supportive (as well as journaling!).
👩🏻🏫 Review
Speaking of journaling, doing a weekly or even nightly review of the changes you’re making and experiencing can be an eye-opening way to track your progress, obstacles, and learnings. I notice that I make much more progress toward change when I’m actively documenting and reviewing what I’m noticing, how I’m feeling, and action I’m taking. Here are a few questions to get started:
Today/this week I noticed…
Today/this week I learned…
Today/this week I realized…
I’d love to hear if this resonates with you. Our relationship to social media seems innocent enough on the surface, but its effect on our lives is far and wide.
Take care,
Alison