Discussion of excessive consumption of social media. Tips and aids to weaning ourselves off of it.
1 Like
Hi, I’m Ted and I’m a Social Mediaholic! 
Reddit going (temporarily) dark made me fully realize how much time I waste browsing through social media feeds like it and also my YouTube home page. Too many cute cat videos and other time-eaters!
I found some help in the form of a Safari extension called SocialFocus. It optionally hides some of the most tempting (or annoying, like YouTube Shorts) stuff on the most popular social media sites. This one’s $1.99 on the iOS App Store and worth it, IMHO. There’s surely similar apps for Android/other browsers. Share it if you have one you like.
(This is outdated. There are more options now. e.g. Reddit has four.)
5 Likes
I don’t have very many social media apps on my phone. I set up a quiet mode for Facebook along with a warning “You’re about to exceed/You have exceeded 1 hour” message that is built into FB. I think I need to drop it down to 30 minutes because I rarely reach that limit. YouTube is the one I struggle with the most because as a Google app on my Pixel, I can’t uninstall it and it doesn’t have any of those features to limit your time built in. I’ve tried a couple of other apps to help limit my time on my apps in general, but they’re not great so far. The actual best thing I’ve found in helping me kick any addictions is not keeping my phone on me. I just tend to grab it when I’m not doing anything else, so if it’s not near me, I can’t do that. I very rarely get phone calls or texts, so as long as I check it occasionally where it’s at, that is the best way for me. I’ve found once I’ve mostly kicked the habit of constantly checking my phone, I can start carrying it again for awhile, but after a month or so, I’ll fall back into the habit again, and rinse and repeat.
2 Likes