Develop Mindful Social Media Habits With These 5 Tips

Have you ever felt so emotionally or mentally exhausted after scrolling through your social media feed for what you thought would be 5 minutes, but turned into an hour? Social media has provided us with an outlet to express who we are, what we like or don’t like, and to be able to stay connected to the world. But, is it healthy to constantly scroll through your feed and switch between one app to another 50 times a day?

According to Broad Band Search, the average amount of time people spend on social media is over 2 hours per day. This may not seem like a lot, however, the average time spent on social media has increased approximately 70% since 2012 when Instagram was first introduced.

Broad Band Search estimates that the average person will spend a total of 3,462,390 minutes using social media over their whole lifetime.

That’s a total of 6 years and 8 months -Yikes!

It’s safe to say that we probably all have a little addiction to social media. (I know I’m guilty of this) Social media has become the lifeline for staying in the know with current events, family or friends, and discovering new brands.

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of using social media:

Pros

  • Staying connected with the world, friends, news, local businesses

  • Creative expression

  • Political expression

  • Learning or teaching new skills

  • A good distraction from reality

  • Discovering so much about the world and seeing it through different lenses (literally)

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Cons

  • Over-stimulation

  • Addictive

  • Life being filtered – grey area between reality and fantasy

  • Comparing yourself to others

  • Cyber-bullying

  • A bad distraction from reality

  • Pressure to prove your self-worth through likes, comments, views and engagement

This is a short list of pros and cons, as I didn’t want to overwhelm you.

Can you think of other pros and cons for using social media? Share below in the comments!

Social media for me, has been bitter sweet the last 8 years. I’ll be honest, when I was in middle school, getting ready to go into high school, I was so desperate to become Instagram famous. I bought 4,000 fake followers from some random website when I googled, “How to grow your Instagram followers”.

I saw these other girls I followed on Instagram, who I didn’t even know, but wanted to be (and look) just like them . They had thousands of followers and likes and I felt that was the only way to prove my self-worth at the time.

I kept that Instagram account until about 2 years ago when I came to the realization that this was not who I wanted to be after all.

Call it an epiphany or enlightenment – at the time I didn’t even realize I was changing to become the person I am today. A much more confident and independent woman who uses social media for enjoyment, rather than to get likes.

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I created a new Instagram account and followed only people I wanted to follow or who inspired me. No more fake followers, no more fake friends, no more comparing. Just 100 followers and about 20-50 likes per photo (when I decide to post).

The great part about my social media journey is that I know I’m not the only one out there who struggled with self-acceptance. So believe me when I say that you are not alone. Social media has plenty of ups and downs, but it’s how you choose to use the platform that can make all the difference in the world.

Here are 5 tips for developing mindful social media habits:

Set an App Timer

One of the great things about advancing technology is that you can now set timers on how often you use an app. For example, Instagram has a feature where you can view how many minutes per day you spend on their platform. Right now my average is at 32 minutes per day on Instagram (yay me!). I also created a reminder to let me know if I’ve reached my daily limit of 1 hour per day on Instagram so that I know when it’s time to stop and rest my eyes and mind.

Turn off alerts

In addition to having a timer, I have also turned off social media alerts in my phone settings for both Instagram and Facebook. That way, every time I go to look at my phone I don’t have 100 notifications about new posts, live videos, or DM’s. This has really helped me stay present and not instantly get sucked into social media every time I pick up my phone.

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Only post if you have something to share

For my old Instagram account, I made it a goal to post every day. This added so much stress to me, in addition to going to school, doing homework, hanging out with friends or family, and traveling. I felt pressured to stay ‘relevant’ and to post something even more creative than my last photo. It was fun for a while until one day I felt so burnt out and realized that the platforms were bringing myself more harm than inspiration. I deleted my social media apps for about 2 months and when I decided to log back in, that was when I realized something needed to change. I created my new account and made a promise to myself that I would only post if I really wanted to and had something I felt proud of.

Dedicate a full day to unplug from social media

Whether it’s once a…

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