It seems a no brainer to me now, when I sign up to follow a friend, a company, a group or a page….I often turn off notifications straightaway.
This may seem counter intuitive – why follow if you don’t want to be kept up to date? But this assumes we are purely reactive users of social media and I am advocating that we become more proactive so social media has a balanced place in our lives.
I don’t need to tell you that by turning off some of our notifications we are not bombarded 24/7 with what turns out to be 95% superfluous information, unsought bias and constant opinions.
We were not built to be connected all our waking hours to hundreds of strangers, we were built to make lasting and meaningful connections with a select few if we are lucky.
Sometimes to me that pull I feel, which I think we all feel, to check what we’ve missed online is the antithesis to this feeling of connection; despite giving the illusion of connection itself it can leave us feeling more isolated than we were in the first place.
When you check in on your own terms you are accepting responsibility for your own actions and reactions. If someone’s incessantly image crafting posts about their beautiful stress-free family holiday are winding you up, then unfollow them for a while. It won’t hurt anybody and its very likely they won’t (unless they are your mother or bff of course).
"Where attention goes energy flows" James Redfield
Same for groups that you follow, you can dip into them asking for recommendations or wanting to connect at any time YOU want to. Taking this further, as keeping a handle on all activity on all groups and pages is impossible, why not mute them all (except a select few)?
My rule is that if anything is that important someone will contact me directly, I check my email and phone messages daily and keep up with my what I call #madmin with the time I save from reading facebook, insta and twitter like they were modern day tabloids.
Nobody is perfect and I still often get swallowed by the abyss (the term my husband and I give to endless scrolling whether of movies to stream or posts to read) but I try and reduce the opportunities for me to get drawn into this unwittingly. I ensure my feeds are full of inspirational people, groups and pages that I feel add to my wellbeing rather than making me feel there is an expectation I respond in some way.
Final tip coming soon and it’s a good one!