I realized a few years ago that social media (and the smartphone) has been an attractive shiny new toy for many people. Many people spend way too many hours just staring at a screen in hopes that people will like or thumbs-up their post/image/etc. If they don’t get a lot of these, then they directly reflect that onto their self-worth.
I’ve also noticed that, out of boredom, people would scroll through the endless stream of nothingness that is social media. This was me at times.
My slow long journey starting about 2 years ago when I started removing all of my subscriptions in my email that I didn’t even read. It took a while to get used to, but it became a new habit that I didn’t have to check my email every few hours.
This was followed up by removing all inessential notifications from my phone – which meant that I only had notifications from important friends and family members coming through. Everything else could wait.
A few months ago, I deleted all of my social media accounts, save one. The only one I have left is for communicating with certain people who don’t have other contact options. So, I log in to that particular social media account once every week or two at this point, to see if I have any contact.
It’s been about a month now without any of my social media accounts, and it’s been liberating! I’m also down to checking my email, on average, once a day whenever I have time to actually respond to people. I find I have more time to do other things in life, rather than staring at the endless scrolling stream of nothingness, hoping for notifications, or checking email many times a day.