The advancement of technology has transformed the way we live. While technology has many benefits, it also has some harmful impacts. One of those bad technological impacts is the excessive use of social media. The majority of the population is seen finding the solution to their query, “How can I use social media in a healthy way?”
By writing this article, we have taken on the responsibility of being your north star for developing healthy social media habits. Here, we will explore some practices that help you fight your procrastination, avoid anxiety, and manage your time better.
After reading this blog, you should be able to manage your instant gratification habits and spend healthy time on social media.
7 Healthy Social Media Habits for Productive Use
Responsible use of social media is essential to ensure productivity and avoid time wastage. Many individuals, including students, struggle to manage their social media use, especially when they realise, they have spent hours scrolling Facebook and Instagram reels instead of completing their academic chores. However, they can acquire assistance with coursework from experts, which can compensate them for the time lost.
Someone persistent in making their social media habits healthy and beneficial for their career and academic goals can utilise the healthy habits described below.
1. Use Your Time Wisely
Recent research shows that 72% of adults use social media. An interesting fact is that anxiety and depression are more common in those individuals. That is because people do not track their screen time and see how much time they are wasting in their daily routines. They usually spend their time for entertainment purposes, such as watching reels (where nothing is in control) or scrolling through memes.
Remember that watching short videos can make you obsessed with them, and being addicted is not a safe option. When you log in to a social media platform, there are plenty of distractions, and scrolling for hours through the roller coaster of different emotions can give you mood swings and negative feelings.
2. Connect Carefully
There are multiple aspects of using social media: people can make meaningful connections and grow digitally, and at the same time, they can be exposed to harmful habits and behaviours. Behaviours like excessive drinking, eating disorders, and substance use are common bad impacts seen in teens especially.
Watching the same things happen over and over again can influence you to do the same. For example, a few years back, there was a social media trend with the tagline, “Mommy needs a break at the end of the day.” This trend promoted the “wine-mom” culture in the West.
This culture was associating the use of alcohol for managing depression and stress, which is not a healthy strategy. As a result, we saw a rising trend of alcohol consumption in Western females as compared to men. Equality is appreciated, but it is not recommended for negative things.
3. Avoid Watching Short-Form Video Content
When we watch short-form video content such as reels, Tok-tok, and shorts, we are addicting ourselves to instant gratification. Have you noticed when you start watching reels, time flies by rapidly, and you end up watching those short-form videos for a significant amount of time (maybe 2 to 6 hours)? This happens due to the instant gratification we are inducing in our cognitive systems.
If we discuss reasons to avoid it, we find out that short-form content is addictive and might lead to compulsive behaviour as well as disrupt your daily routines. Because we consume various sorts of content one after another, we can experience feelings of depression, anxiety, and lack of focus.
To avoid watching reels and short videos, you should increase offline activities such as exercising, spending time with family, or reading books. Implementing other learning strategies can also give you a sense of self-control and responsibility.
4. Switch off Your Notifications
We often find it difficult to resist the sound of notifications. This temptation to check the notifications can lead to three hours of scrolling reels. Turning the notifications off is a good strategy for managing your social media activity and keeping a check on yourself.
However, if you are a professional or job person and you think you might miss out on important notifications, you can turn them off while working. If that also doesn’t work, you can set a five-minute reminder on your mobile device before you open an app.
Furthermore, there are settings available where you can choose to lock the phone automatically after every 10 minutes. That’s how you can hold yourself accountable for your time. Nevertheless, turning off the notifications is a more safe and risk-free option.
5. Be Aware That Social Media Fuels Anxiety
When we go through the roller coaster of various emotions (social media), we feel more anxious, and experience mood swings more often. Social media raise unfavourable experiences such as FOMO (fear of missing out), inadequacy around your life, cyberbullying, and isolation.
Various studies found a strong connection between the duration of usage of social media and feelings of self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety. Where many people use social media as a way to escape from their anxiety and stress; they get stuck in a never-ending loop of anxiety escape and getting back into it. How can one thing that is the cause of anxiety cure self-caused diseases?
6. Consider How Much Time You Spend Online
There is no specific limit for screen time as the limit can be different for each person depending on their age, work type, and quality of work spent online. You need to stop using social media for entertainment purposes. If you do not have a specific task to complete through social media, you should avoid excessive use of it.
So, you need to make a decision. Do you want to spend most of your time scrolling through other people’s lives, or would you prefer to live your own life more productively? Remember that when you realise that no one on social media shares about their true selves and shares only small and carefully edited information about them, you will be offended by yourself spending too much time knowing about someone’s fake life.
7. Set Time Limits on Your Device
If you open your device’s settings, you can set time limits. This will enable you to track the exact time when you reach the set limit. When you reach the limit, the device will be automatically locked, or the app you have set the limit for will be closed.
This strategy can hold you accountable for your time spent and help you avoid distractions. It can also help you build healthy social media habits and be more productive.
What Is the Healthy Social Media Time?
Healthy social media time depends on your objectives behind using it and your personal preferences. Some people who use social media only for entertainment can maintain free time where their study schedule and other responsibilities, such as family time, are not affected. In contrast, people who use it for networking and business purposes can increase their time span.
According to Very Well Mind Health, social media time can range from 20 minutes to 2 hours for different individuals. However, it is recommended to spend 3 hours in offline activities for every hour spent online. This time can be compromised in special scenarios where your studies are involved. For example, if you are searching for the best coursework assistance companies, you might end up spending more time as this is a lengthy and urgent sort of work. If you follow this rule in every scenario, your tasks might be delayed for days.
Conclusion
To wrap up the discussion, social media has been crucial in defining our behaviours and habits. If we look at the habits of the recent generation, we can say social media has influenced their patterns.
However, with the rise of depression and stress cases, its role is significant. If we want to save ourselves from being addicted, depressed, and anxious, plus we want to be more productive, we need to track our social media habits and replace them with healthy ones.
This article explores some healthy social media usage habits and strategies to help you avoid time wastage. After reading these comprehensive and valuable insights, you should be able to transform your habits and be more productive in your social media usage.
