Strategies to Optimise Your Social Media Habits
Be a critical consumer
Research tells us that young people form para-social relationships with influencers (21% of young people believe that they would be friends with influencers and 71% learn from influencers in terms of health, style, news, and hobbies)6. However, there’s no quality control or vetting of what influencers share online, so think critically and evaluate the credibility of what’s shared on social media platforms. Do you think the information being shared by this person online is an educated opinion and one worth following? Do you think they are knowledgeable about what they are saying? Do they know better than you?
Safeguard your privacy
Social media platforms own your images and videos, all of them and forever, and they can use them without your permission in any way they want. Understand how your data is gathered and used and know your rights to protect it. Regularly update your privacy settings, as these regularly change and it’s not always clear how they’ve changed in an update. It is difficult to ascertain which social media platforms own your images and/or video, so the onus is on you to determine video and image ownership.
Pause before you post
The recent video that was shared on Tik Tok that involved Billie Eilish making racial slurs in her teens and mocking non-English speakers highlights that there are long-term implications for what you share online. You are curating your digital DNA with every single keystroke you make. Every image, photo, post and message can be digitally disseminated and re-surfaced years down the track, sometimes with serious, embarrassing, or detrimental consequences. There are also legal implications for the types of content you post online. 25% of young Australians admit that they’ve used inappropriate language on social media or shared posts containing such content7. Whilst 58% of young people consider the implications of what they share on social media on their family and 55% on their friends, concerningly, 43% of young people do not consider the repercussions of what they post on their current or prospective employers8. Consider how might others perceive this post? How could this comment/image/video be misconstrued? How would you feel if someone brought this post up in a job interview in your future?
Avoid book-ending your day with social media
Checking social media first thing when you wake up or last thing before you go to sleep can have a negative impact on your mood. You only need to see one upsetting comment or DM and you activate the amygdala, the emotional hub of your brain. As humans, we also have a negativity bias, meaning we’re hard-wired to look for negative things. If we start reading social media posts that have a negative message, we not only feel bad in ourselves, but we also signal to the recommendation algorithm to share similar content in our social media feeds, which perpetuates the negative cycle. Equally, viewing social media before sleep can over-stimulate the brain making it more challenging to fall sleep. This problem is exacerbated by the adverse impact of blue light that comes from smartphones.
Track your screentime
iOS users can use the Screen Time tool and Android users can use the Digital Wellbeing feature to track just how many hours /day and week you’re spending on social media platforms every day or week. Many of us don’t realise how much time we’re spending on these platforms each day. However, knowledge is power. If you were in total control, how many hours a day would you want to be on it and how many would be too many?
Go greyscale
This is a simple step to make social media more boring and unattractive, so you’ll want to pick it up less. Find out how you can activate greyscale mode on your phone.
Schedule your social media hours
Be intentional about when you want to use social media, rather than using it constantly throughout the day. Nominate set times of the day when you want to use it. Set a timer on your phone as a reminder to stop you going down the digital rabbit hole.
Manage your social media notifications
The default setting on phones is to keep push notifications on for all apps. You need to disable any non-essential social media notifications in your settings, elect to bundle your notifications to come to you at set times of the day as opposed to dribbling in throughout the day (perhaps you’d like your notifications to come to you after you’re likely to have completed your homework or study). Also learn to set up VIP notifications from the apps and people who are critical for you to receive instant updates, so then when you switch your phone to Do Not Disturb mode, the only notifications that will come through, will be from those on your VIP list. Ask yourself, what’s really important enough to interrupt what I’m doing? If your phone isn’t constantly pinging and dinging, you’ll be less tempted to pick it up.
Remove tech-temptations from your home-screen
If there’s a social media app that you can’t resist, remove it from your home screen, so you’re less likely to open it every time you unlock your phone. Dragging the icon off the home screen and into a later page on screen, creates more friction.
Take social media off your phone
If you’re really struggling to control your social media use, consider a three-day or one-week trial where you remove the app from your phone and see how you feel afterwards. You could still access the social media platform on your laptop or tablet but taking it off your phone creates more friction.
Keep it out of sight
A study found that the mere presence of a smartphone, even if it’s turned over and even if it’s off can trigger us to pick it up and slide down a digital vortex9. When you need to study, when you want to be present with your friends or family, put your phone out of sight and on silent.
Log out
Logging out of social media platforms creates extra steps to log back in. You’re adding intermediary steps and in doing so creating more friction. One of the reasons many young people fall down the social media hole is because using it on your phone is frictionless- it’s effortless.
Use digital nudges
Most social media tools now allow users to nominate the amount of time they’d like to spend on the platform in an effort to help users regulate the time they spend online. These are very easy to override, but they can sometimes be enough to remind you about how much time you’re spending on social media and may prompt you to revaluate what you’re doing.
Use tech prohibition tools
Tools such as Freedom, Forest and Rescue Time offer digital protection if willpower alone won’t work. These apps and tools vary in their design but offer various ways to curb our social media use.