This is inspired by all the people that leave unconscructive comments all over the internet ("Nobody cares"; "I don't even know who these people are"; "5 minutes of my life I can't get back", and so on and so forth), but really is dedicated to those that don't but feel like their time on social media (or on their phone in general) can get a bit out of control sometimes. Like a great con artist, it lures you in, makes you stay and get cosy, then leaves you with nothing. Being human just like everyone else, I'm too familiar with this trap... after a long time of letting it dictate my downtime, I've tried a few things to take back the steering wheel (I still go visit obviously, but I'm driving myself there thanks). Here's where I'm at currently:
1. Decide which medium is meant to serve which purpose, then unsubscribe/unfollow ruthlessly
Every now and then I'm loathing that we have to be part of so many different social channels to get the right(-ish) mix of content and connection, but then I also realised that nothing should stop us from continuous content finetuning on each channel. Just like each social media platform is meant to serve a relatively specific purpose, we don't go to everyone we know and/or like for everything in life either.
I decided that Facebook is mainly for staying in touch with friends, family and acquaintances (and keeping tabs on who's now got children); Instagram is for creative inspiration (and memes involving funny kids and animals), and Twitter is solely for following a few artists and recording some of my random fleeting thoughts that no one needs to know about - so I've "cleaned up" accordingly. I've unsubscribed from all newsletters I hardly ever touch, and if it's from a business I do like I go follow them on a channel that suits (I've actually moved a lot of them onto my LinkedIn follow list). It also pays to spend a few extra seconds and untick all marketing boxes when signing up for something online, or hit unsubscribe as soon as you do even just an internal eyeroll when a newsletter arrives.
