How to quit social media – Lead distraction free productive life

These days, social media has become a part of our daily life. It is fused with us so much so that it feels like it is engraved into our muscle and bones. There are always moments when we hate ourselves for wasting too much of our time browsing through social media. Almost everyone goes through this point of life, and it is not once or twice. With very low number of people being the exception.

Whenever we are broken or we messed up everything to a point where things can’t be fixed anymore. Just because we wasted our precious time on something like social media. In those situations, I always had one desperate wish. Only if I had some more time, Only if I could undo everything, Only if I could start over from the beginning again…

Stop from repeating past mistakes?

Even if we are given another chance, what of it will change? Everything will remain the same. We will once again mess everything up. For me, I wasn’t given the opportunity to go back in time to fix everything. But with newfound determination and motivation to do better the next time, I started on the quest of fixing myself. At that time, my determination was at the top of my head. I just jump started dopamine detox, quit not only all social media but everything related to digital devices, started doing everything that I would consider a good habit and so on. But, I made a mistake. That wasn’t the right thing to do……..

Before we get how hard it is to quit social media and how to tackle that level of difficulty, I think it is necessary to talk a little about why you should quit social media. The more reason you have to quit social media, the better you will be able to control yourself and change for the better.

Why should you quit social media?

A lot of reasons can be found why you should quit social media. But, you don’t necessarily need to quit social media. You just need to keep yourself in control so as not to be affected too much and ruin everything. Here are some of my personal reasons.

1. Academic Performance: Distractions from social media can negatively impact on your academic life. I myself had previously wasted a lot of my time behind social media and ruined my academic as a result. There are time when social media was helpful, but I mostly just scrolled endlessly.
2. Sleep: While various research says that the blue light radiating from your device screen can interfere with your sleep pattern and lead to bad quality of sleep and cause fatigue and anxiety. For me, I even stayed up till late night just scrolling through or chatting with people. Which led to me having a bad sleeping schedule.
3. Nothing feels good: You all should have this experience, where everything seems to be boring so you are just lying down and scrolling through reels, but they even they are boring. So, you are just scrolling in hope to find something new and better. That happens because social media is a high stimulant of dopamine, but once you trigger it too often, that becomes regular standard. Now low stimulations is completely meaningless and sometimes even high stimulations are not enough and you always have emptiness and uneasy feeling.

How hard is it to quit social media?

While I am using myself as an example to explain the situation, I am sure that everyone who tried has experienced the same thing. We all want to be a better version of ourselves, so that we won’t repeat the mistakes we previously did. This was the greatest purpose for me to work hard and remove everything bad about me. But even after trying and failing in life over and over again, I was unable to do it. I was still the same old me. Nothing of me changed except for my age.

While I was trying to make myself change in many fields, social media was the biggest one of them all. At first, I just completely cut off social media from my life. It felt like I was a drug addict who couldn’t get his hands on any drugs from then on. The feeling of unease I felt every moment, made it extremely hard to pass the day. I could not focus on anything productive, the whole day was wasted just like it was before. But this time, without the need for social media.

Once you completely shut off everything concerning social medias, you start to loose interest in everything. Nothing seems to interest you. The whole world becomes meaningless to you. No matter what you do, you cannot release the dopamine you want. A feeling of emptiness will always follow you.

While some people are persistent enough to overcome everything and then your brain slowly starts to accept what you have there. You once again find meaning in your life other than the endless scrolling of social media. But for most people, they can’t get past this trial. This is where I also failed a lot, and got back to my usual self, loosing all motivations that I had.

Why is it so hard to quit social media?

While it sounds really easy to quit social media, it certainly isn’t as easy. It’s a challenge that many have and will underestimate, but even the people with absolute resolve have failed doing so sometimes. It’s like removing a mark from your body that’s deeply engraved into your bones. There are a lot of factors that make it hard…

Scientific Reasons :

FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out): One of the biggest reason that urges you to open up your social media is the fear of missing out. These are all merely excuse made by your brain to get you back into social media. So you will start having worry about something important might be happening right now that you are missing. That wouldn’t be something you want to happen.

Withdrawal Symptoms: This is what makes most of us quit including myself. Just like when you quit an addiction that used to give you a whole load of dopamine. After you quit, you will feel bored, lonely, or anxious without the constant stimulation it used to give you previously. Nothing can remove that uneasy feeling unless it’s an even bigger stimulation, but it will then turn into another addiction.

Social Pressure: This can be considered a less of a reason but many of us use social media to connect with friends and relatives. Completely cutting yourself would feel like isolating yourself from the whole world. You would start to feel lonely. This mostly happens to those people who usually live alone.

Addiction: Social media is creating in a way that can make anyone addicted. The constant supply of notifications, likes, comments, messages that give you a surge of dopamine gets you addicted. So when you completely shut yourself up, you will always feel the urge to check the notification once, check if someone messaged yourself, check if someone is worried since you haven’t been online for a while.

These are all some of the prime factors that forces most people to fail the journey. Quitting social media is not only about the great and beautiful destination you will get to, but also about the hardships you go through while being on the journey. It is not an easy journey, no matter what you try. It might even be one of the hardest experiences you have ever had in you life.

How to quit social media?

While I am unable to give you some special technique or method that it will make quitting social media extremely easy, nor can I give you some great magic spell from harry potter that will erase your memories of ever having social media. But what I can do, is helping you through your journey. So that you can actually go through all the hardships. I will tell you how you can make it somewhat bearable and see through it till the end, just like I did it in my life.

I have also suffered because of my excessive addictions of social media. I also have suffered trying to fix my addictions. After failing a few times, I grew tired of the same loop. Then I started to look for solutions. I have browsed through many articles and videos trying to find a solution, and I eventually did so. For you to not need to go through so many articles, I will tell you how I solved my own problem and also go through various other solutions that can be found and evaluate them based on my own experiences.

How I quit social media

While there are a lot of methods and step by step guides on how you should quit social media, they are difficult to follow through the end. I have completely shut off social media, made routine and set up limitations to social media like one hour a day and many more. But for me, I am not someone so disciplined to follow them. I wont’ say all methods are a failure, but I couldn’t continue more that a week.

The way I was finally able to get myself into control is also not a full proof method. That time I was successful could be because my determination was high. There are many factors to consider. But in my opinion, it was a really great method. You should also be able to use it for your benifit.

The reward and punishment method

That time, I just set up some daily goals which I must complete no matter what happens. I was more focused on my academics, so my goal was something like finishing 2 chapters each day. I would not care about anything else but my goal.

You cannot completely call it a reward and punishment method. I didn’t have any kind of reward for myself if I was able to complete my daily goal. Instead, I set the rule that after I am done, I can do whatever I want with the remaining time. Be it browsing through social media or anything else.

But it had a problem. I even used to scroll social media even before completing thinking that todays tasks are easy, I can finish it in no time. That is where the punishment comes. I had hard set rules which would not change no matter what. If I was unable to finish my daily goal, I won’t sleep until I am finished with it. And I never neglected this one rule. So every time I procrastinated, I would stay up till late night finishing my daily task.

Another rule which might not be so important but you should keep in mind is, you cannot cut off your sleep just for scrolling social media a bit more. No social media after the sun goes down. This is kind of an important rule for some situations and people.

If you follow through this, then I am sure it won’t be so hard to quit social media. You are not even forcing yourself to stay away from social media here. You just have to finish certain tasks before you can touch them. If you are able to finish your tasks early then you have the whole day left for social media.

You might think that it would be the same if you could browse social media the whole day like that. But it won’t and you will also generate a great habit. You will actually be able to see what’s actually important and make a halt on your scrolling to finish those tasks. You won’t just ignore everything and keep on scrolling social media.

Thanks for the read-