As is true with so many things in life, technology—including social media—can be helpful or harmful. It can be the best or most destructive tool in our arsenal. It’s all a matter of how we use it. If you feel like your digital life could use a revamp, this blog post is for you. Before you throw in the towel and delete all your social media apps (or even more drastically, get rid of your devices altogether), I’ve got some tips for turning them around to work in your favor!
1- Unfollow social media accounts that make you feel negatively.
There doesn’t have to be a huge, obvious reason why they make you feel this way. Sure, it could be your toxic ex or former best friend, which is pretty self-explanatory. But it could also be the person who you always play the comparison game with, which leaves you feeling insecure. It could be the account that’s always posting clickbait headlines that make you feel anxious. Heck, it could even be someone whose content just doesn’t sit right with you, for reasons you can’t quite articulate. If you’re in a position where unfollowing someone would lead to drama or hurt feelings, you can at least mute them so that their content doesn’t come up for you. We often underestimate just how much we absorb the energy of the content we consume. We only see the difference once that unhelpful content is off our timelines.
2- Follow social media accounts that make you feel positively.
Yes, this is just the reverse of the first tip, but it’s equally important! By unfollowing the wrong accounts, your timeline could go from feeling harmful to neutral. But by then following the right accounts, it could go from feeling neutral to incredible! There are countless positive effects that the right content can have on us. To quote a previous blog post, Mindset Regimen: Daily Habits to Nurture Your Mindset, “These positive effects [of social media] can include but aren’t limited to lighting a fire under you to achieve your goals, making you feel less alone in what you’re going through, providing valuable insight relevant to something in your life, teaching you about a topic of interest, and getting your creative juices flowing.” These are just a few great examples to look out for!
3- Reevaluate what you post on social media.
Whether you’re a full-fledged content creator or you just post for people you know, consider how your own content affects you. That’s right, it’s not only about the content you consume, but the content you create as well! For instance, obsessing over portraying the “perfect” life, face, body, etc. is only going to create a feeling of inadequacy, as “perfect” is an illusion. There’s a good chance that it stems from the comparison game, which, if you’ve taken the advice in the first tip, should be less of an issue if you don’t consume content that prompts constant comparison. (If you’ve been struggling with envy and comparison in general, Monthly Mindset Shift: How to Turn Envy Into Something Positive might just help you out.)
Anyway, though, a good question to ask yourself is, “what purpose(s) do I want my content to serve?”. If you’ve taken the advice in the second tip, hopefully the new accounts you’ve followed have given you new perspectives on positive types of content. Of course that doesn’t mean you need to be, or even should be, doing what they’re doing. It just means that they can act as inspiration and proof that social media can be powerful in an amazing way. Wherever your power lies, focus on it, and let it drive your content!
4- Make DND your friend when you’re looking to disconnect from the digital world.
Whether you’re trying to get work done or have quiet reflection time, notifications can be incredibly distracting. These distractions can make you resent your phone altogether. But what if the solution is as simple as a click of the DND button? Of course, you can remove anyone whose texts/calls could be emergent from the DND list. As for everyone else, though, they can wait until you’re ready to reconnect!
5- Seek out apps that inspire, educate, or otherwise help you.
They certainly don’t need to be limited to social media; they can include productivity apps, creativity-based apps, etc. The possibilities of technology are endless. The key is to use it as a tool for bettering our lives. Since we have this tool at our fingertips all the time, why not optimize it? Between that app that helps you learn a new skill, the app that allows you to organize and color code your notes to your liking, and the app that gives you daily positive affirmations, together, they’ll change the game for you!
6- Declutter anything on your devices that makes you feel negatively.
Circling back to the key theme of the first point, this time we’re going beyond just social media. Texts, photos, notes, documents, etc. that you don’t want nor need to look at anymore have got to go! To reference yet another past blog post, Decluttering Tips + Things to Declutter in Your Spring Cleaning, sometimes the spaces that need the most decluttering are our digital spaces. Once again, there’s energy in our digital files that we absorb when we look at them. If it’s negative energy, and it’s not something you need to keep for any reason, there’s no need to continue absorbing it. If you suspect you might want to refer to it in the future, you can always e-mail it to yourself and delete it from your devices. Ultimately, whatever you have the easiest access to on your devices should be adding value to your life, not depleting it!
The bottom line…
And there we have it—tips to revamp your digital life! At the end of the day, technology can be life-changing for the better. While it’s not something we should lean on for everything, we can certainly use it to enhance our lives. So, let’s take our power back and make our digital lives work FOR us!