Raise your hand if you feel like life social media is taking over your life!
**Two hands raised over here**
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have addictive qualities that make it hard to look away.
The following are suggestions and quotes from creatives and their path towards a healthy balance of social media, whether it’s deleting it all or staying in the gray area.
Take a Month Off
Taeyoon Choi, an artist, suggests taking breaks from it. By separating yourself from it for a period of time, you can assess your need with it or without it.
“Ideally, you want to be able to enjoy social media for entertainment, socializing, and professional development on your own terms. When you use social media with self control, you can connect with friends far and wide, and get exciting opportunities that you might not be able to find otherwise.” –Choi.
“…However, it’s very important to have boundaries between work and life, and exposure and intimacy.” –Choi.
“If you are checking social media more than once every hour, for more than a few minutes at a time, it’s clearly become a distraction from being present and engaged in your world. Your world is more complex, beautiful, and meaningful than other people’s worlds represented on social media. It’s your job to cultivate your life, relationships, and practice, and keep social media at arm’s length when necessary.” –Choi.
Tweak Your Settings
Visual artist, Addie Wagenknecht, offers her suggestions to start small by changing your settings. With each social media platform, you have the ability to turn off all notifications or just uninstall the apps on your phone.
“Overall, you don’t have to take an all-or-nothing approach to social media — instead, there are small changes you can make to your habits and alert settings that can make a big difference.” –Wagenknecht.
Deactivation Is Your Friend
Kimberly Harrington, a writer, wants you to not be afraid of deactivating one or all of your accounts.
“I shudder to think of the actual months — if not entire years — I have wasted scrolling, retweeting, clicking, filtering, posting, editing, and sharing. I have both made and lost friends, secured paying projects, made incredible connections, fortified long-forgotten networks and relationships, and suffered staggering bouts of insecurity and envy all due to social media.” –Harrington
“My advice is to look for the gray area between your black-and-white questions. This doesn’t have to be an all (keep everything, don’t change a thing) or nothing (delete every account you have) situation. Think about each platform and what you don’t like about it and how you could change it. The answer might be ‘delete it entirely’ or it might just be ‘unfollow people who make me want to throw myself off a bridge.’ ” - Harrington
“I basically try to alter, change, or focus my access and who I’m listening to, seeing, interacting with. If you find that those adjustments aren’t enough then, yes, leave/deactivate/delete. Or leave some and not others. Whatever you choose, you will not regret it. You want to make a change (otherwise, why ask for advice?) so find the places where you can do that. You will adjust to it. You will feel better. It will be worth it.” - Harrington
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Do you think being more visible makes us more relevant?
What are your thoughts on these suggestions?
What are the chances you will try one (or all) of them?
