I’m a socially awkward person. It inhibits all of my personal, social, and professional relationships, and social media plays a big part of that. I could continue to play the blame game, but instead I’m owning the choices I made to bury myself in social media. Which leads me to this article.

As someone who works remotely and in tech, I spend a LOT of time online, and I constantly struggle with social media fixations. Which is why it’s crucial that I learn how to use it in a way that doesn’t leave me as a spectator to life.

Social media is literally engineered to be addictive. Every small change that Facebook or Twitter make to their site is designed to subtly push people into engaging with more content on the site. Each change is tested on thousands, if not millions, of people, with the goal of making people want to use the site as much as possible. This is called A/B testing, and pretty much every social media company does it. And as a data scientist, this has come up for me in a good number of job interviews.

Don’t get me wrong; I still struggle with social media addiction at times, and this is by no means professional advice. But in writing this, I hope to not only adopt and enforce some good habits around social media, but share my findings so as to help the world find true connections, rather than just virtual ones.

Do you want a virtual life, or a real one?

On Facebook, I have almost 700 friends. But how many of them have I contacted in the last 2 years? Less than a tenth of them.

In college, I developed an addiction to browsing Reddit that caused me to waste some of the most formative years of my life. I was barely active in student clubs, I didn’t explore the neighborhoods. I stayed in my little campus dorm bubble, and only explored the world through the lens of my computer screen; exploring other people’s lives through their writings and their posts. And that just left me as a spectator in the lives of “friends” and complete strangers.

Sure, I had a couple of friends, but without real connections, life eventually got in the way, and a lot of us drifted apart. Today, I’m doing my part now to rebuild that connection, but it’s not an easy process.

I did well on paper. I graduated, got my degree, and ultimately found a pretty cool job. But at the end of the day, that’s all it was: paper.

And when I left college, I felt alone.

How I Resist the Poison

1: Digital Detox

Recently, I suffered the misfortune of downloading TikTok. And I quickly found myself spending all my free time poring through never-ending feed of byte-sized content. Some of it was funny, some of it was cute, and some of it was basically pornographic (Maybe that’s just a commentary on my search history).

I went cold turkey and deleted my account and the app from my phone. In fact, I just chose to delete Reddit from my bookmarks as I write this.

A few days ago, I put my phone on Airplane Mode for an entire day. And when I did that, I was surprised at how little I missed out on in the digital world.

You may not want to delete the apps entirely. And that’s okay. But to break social media addiction requires cutting yourself off from it, even if it’s just a couple of hours at a time.

When I tried to quit these apps in the past, I quickly relapsed due to the emotional attachment I had to that digital validation. Social media filled a void for me. In order to push it out, I needed something better to fill that void.

Which brings me to my next point:

2: Take on experiences that get you away from your phone

It’s not easy to rip yourself away from your phone and the internet. Sometimes it’s good to have an external force to help with that. And one way to get rid of a distraction is with another distraction.

Here are some examples of opportunities for that:

• Sports (you don’t want to play football with your phone in your pocket)

• Pottery (don’t cover your phone in clay)

• Hiking (good luck getting a cell signal out there)

3: Do Not Disturb

One of the biggest pitfalls for me are the incessant pings that my apps bombard me with over the course of the day. When my phone pings me, I quickly cave and disconnect myself from the world once again. And those notifications are almost never important enough to merit pulling me from my work or my friends.

Fortunately, iOS and Android both have features for silencing notifications. And for the notifications that are truly urgent, there are overrides available. On iOS for instance, you can allow calls from specific people to go through, as well as cases where someone tries to call you multiple times.

The next time you’re at work, with friends, or on a date, consider turning this feature on.

Parting Thoughts

Social media has the potential to be an extremely valuable tool for learning about current events and keeping contact with an ever-increasing list of friends.

But every tool can be good or bad, depending on the hands that use it. Just like a sword can be used to kill, it can also be used to protect. In the same manner, social media can used to drive us apart, or it can be used to bring us together. And that outcome ultimately depends on us.

Supplemental materials:

• https://www.cnet.com/health/the-right-way-to-beat-your-social-media-addiction-according-to-a-therapist/

• https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2021/10/29/addictive-potential-of-social-media-explained/

• https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/