5 Steps to Controlling Use of Social Media

Five steps to improving social media use are:

Let’s go in order.

This makes you less exposed online and thus less obsessed with notifications. With less Friends, less people see who interacts with your profile on their News Feed — so you worry less about notifications for those interactions. If you upload fewer photos you get fewer interactions, so you get less notifications. You control social media when you stop clicking notifications, and these changes make that easier.

2. Stop checking notifications

Let them get to 99 and go back to 0. You won’t miss much. We don’t know when notifications come in, and if we’re hooked on notifications that may make us check social media more. Social media gives uncertainty as to whether we have been publicly validated or devaluated, and by whom. That uncertainty is alleviated only by clicking the notification. It can be worth it to detach from this uncertainty and the notification checking.

3. Lower use of News Feed and profile browsing

The News Feed and profile browsing involve peer comparison. Subconsciously we contrast others’ romanticized lives with our own selves isolated behind the electronic screen and may feel worse. We also may be more drawn to Facebook when lonely — looking for that feeling of connection. When we use Facebook may be when we are most vulnerable to peer comparison it offers.

Maybe to fight the bad feelings from peer comparison, we upload pictures and check likes for validation. And so other people feel the negative effects of peer comparison with you. This may be a feedback loop of peer comparison and seeking external validation. Both don’t seem great. So it may be worth lowering use of News Feed and profile browsing.

This also limits how much sexual content you see online. This is good for those who want to stop watching porn. Sexualized content on social media stimulates and may create sexual frustration. Porn may then be the next logical place to channel it — and with free and endless novelty, online porn may invite more use.

For some reshaping relationships with technology may be a good thing.

Take control or be controlled.

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