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It is no secret that hundreds of studies have connected social media use to anxiety, depression, sleep issues and a plethora of other mental health issues. Even Facebook admitted that their platform use can make people feel more alone. College women spend 8 to 10 hours a day on our phones, and mental illness is on the rise. One way to reduce anxiety around social media is to do a full detox of your accounts. While many platforms are making steps to ensure social media is building meaningful connections and healthy conversation, you can take it into your own hands. Start by cleansing your social media accounts with these tips.
Keep Facebook for friends and family, article sharing, occasional album updates and event sharing. This isn’t the platform for following celebrities, so don’t “like them” and keep your feed clean.
Unfriending isn’t unfriendly. Go through your friends list, and don’t be afraid to unfriend those obnoxious oversharers, young “politicos” and old high school acquaintances. If you don’t enjoy their posts, if you don’t personally know them, or if you are only friends to stalk them, hit that unfriend button. It will make you so much happier and de-clutter your newsfeed.
Prioritize Posts
Facebook now allows you to hide peoples posts and prioritize others, so you can hide Uncle Bob’s political rants, while still being friends with him because, duh its Uncle Bob, and ensure the news headlines are the first posts you see.
Use Instagram for friends, celebrities and other influencers. This isn’t the place for breaking news or anything too serious. It is for photo sharing, not for political discussions. By making sure you narrow who you follow it will make things so much easier.
This is crucial for detoxing Instagram. Go through who you follow and unfollow anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself, jealous or anyone you don’t really know. It isn’t healthy to always see unrealistic ideas of life. If they aren’t bringing something truly valuable to your feed, then unfollow them. You won’t be missing out on anything.
Previous Posts
Every once in a while a good old photo cleanse is so important. Go through and delete those old, embarrassing photos from 7th grade and it will make you feel so much better.
Twitter is a total dumpster fire of meme thieves, internet “activists” and more headlines than you really need. Seeing constant news 24/7 can be very emotionally frustrating, so don’t spend too much time on Twitter worrying about the news. Let Facebook give you the full story and Twitter give you headlines only.
Narrow your timeline
To stop the constant 24/7 news interrupting your memes, follow one or two news sources. Do this ONLY if you also use Facebook, because the format of the platform will lead to less stress if you let the long news stories be on a long post platform, and let Twitter be the place for headlines. If you follow NBC News and Politico, you will get the major headlines (without bias) when you need them, and let all the others be on Facebook.
Follow Chrissy Teigen
This will make you happier and less stressed. Laughter makes you happy and her account will make you happy
Snapchat
The newest Snapchat update isn’t great and there is no way to make Snapchat less toxic with this new look. If you really can’t forget Snapchat, make sure to unadd those people (Tinder boys and anyone who sends “streaks” snapchats) cluttering up the stories and it might make it a little prettier.
Forget the streaks
If you don’t actually talk to this person every day, or if they aren’t family or bridesmaid best friends, ditch the streak and revel in all the free time and extra phone battery you have without the worry of “losing your streaks.”
Just delete it. Really, you aren’t gaining anything meaningful and it is just going to make you feel worse for being single.
The most important part of cleansing your social media is knowing who and what to follow where. If you stick to following only the “best” content on each feed, it will allow you to have some separation, choose what you see a little more and relax a LOT more. Detox your social media and watch your entire life change.