Heya playa, social media is ruining your life and I want to walk you through on what you
can do to take back control so you don't feel obsessed with all the clicking and the liking
and the scrolling that you do for hours every single day.
My screen time for Instagram alone this week was almost six hours.
I made a few posts and stories but what did I do for all that time?
I don't even know!
And most likely, you're in a similar boat.
You spend hours of your day on Instagram, and Tiktok and Snapchat and Twitter and before
you know it, the day is done and you're just like "woah".
Tip number one is to be mindful of when you're using social media as a distraction.
We all do it.
Right before you're about to go to bed you just start doom scrolling until you get tired.
Or you're watching a TV show and you just need to see what's going on on Twitter at
the same time.
And what makes that such a natural response is that we just don't like boredom.
The idea of sitting there and doing nothing?
Yeah... that just doesn't sit right with me.
If you want to start curbing the amount of times you reach for your phone as a safety
net whenever you're bored, the best thing you can do is to start curating what you're
looking at and who you're following.
We tend to follow a lot of accounts that don't really bring us value so what I would recommend
is only following your friends, people that you know actively in real life, and people
that you feel inspire you to do something and to be somebody great.
That might mean axing out some of those meme pages or cutting our some of those actors
that you're following because you watched their TV show five years ago.
And once you're created a stricter environment for yourself, the next best thing you can
do is to truly be aware of every time you pick up your phone.
If you're picking up your phone, ask yourself that question.
"What am I picking it up hoping to achieve in this moment?"
Am I doing it just because I'm bored or am I doing it because I want to share something
or interact with someone that I care about?
Tip number two if social media is ruining your life is to stop putting so much value
on getting likes.
We all do it, right?
We enjoy that ego boost whenever a lot of people like our posts and interact with it
but when you don't get that response from people, how do you feel?
Constantly chasing this online clout can be super stressful.
And the fact that people are posting every single day can make you feel like you're always
falling a bit behind.
You don't have enough likes, you don't have enough followers, you're not cool enough because
you're not popular on social media.
So how exactly do you disconnect from this deep desire to feel liked by others online?
I think a big part of it is to really reflect on why you post the things that you do.
If you share stuff online just to get people to notice you and in some ways you're hiding
a bit of your real persona just because you don't want people to see that, scratch that
whole idea.
Treat your social media account like one of these two ways.
The first one being an online journal. Treat it like a place where you can express your
creativity.
Did you record a new video of yourself playing guitar?
Are you working on a new song?
Do you have a picture that you're proud of that you want to share?
Put it on your account.
The second one being a place that provides inspiration for others.
If you get your mindset focused on helping other people, you're going to be less likely
to fall into the rabbit hole of posting things just for likes because just knowing that you
can help one person out there with something that you post, that's going to make all the
difference in the world to you.
You're going to be way more conscious and aware of everything that you share because
you know you're doing it for an altruistic purpose.
Tip number three if social media is ruining your life and you better follow this one,
disconnect from people that are making you feel bad.
Social media is an opt-in process. You can choose who you want to follow, you can also
choose who you don't want to interact with.
There are a lot of uncomfortable emotions that can rise to the top just by scrolling
on your Instagram feed.
You might see a picture of someone that is super muscular and think to yourself "why
don't I look like that?".
Or you might see pictures of your friends always partying and hanging out with girls
and think "how come I don't have that type of lifestyle?".
And while I don't really recommend creating blinders so small that you can only really
see things from this narrow perspective, it is incredibly important to build resilience
but and a big but here, if you have repeated exposure over and over to these things that
are making you feel these negative feelings you might start to believe that this is the
way the world is.
That everyone else is having fun, everyone else looks good, everyone else is living the
life and your life just sucks.
"Look at that, they're partying and having fun"
"Oh wow look, they're all hanging out by the pool"
"How does he know so many girls?"
"Who's paying for all these tips? How do they get to travel everywhere?"
"I've been working out too, how come I don't have a body like that?"
"Why can't I look like and be as cool as everyone else around me?"
It's incredibly important to realize that social media doesn't show you the reality
of people's lives.
All it really does is show you the highlights and those highlights are highly highly photoshopped,
they're curated, and made to look better than they actually are.
You don't often see these influencers posting about when they're stressed out or having
a bad day or just things aren't going well in their life.
What you end up doing though is comparing your life as it is.
Your humanness.
Your challenges, your problems, all these things you face to their perfect highly curated
photogenic lifestyle.
So take all the time you need to really do a deep social media cleaning.
Remove the people that you feel are bringing negativity into your life, that are making
you feel bad, that are making toxic comments or making fun of other people and really only
focus on the people that you think are going to bring you up.
And tip number four if you feel like social media is ruining your life is to stop displaying
all your personal matters publicly for the world to see.
I know, it is important to be transparent and open with others but by putting stuff
out there into the world, you also have to be aware of how much context other people
have when seeing what you post.
For example, if you're someone that's suffering from mental health issues, it's probably best
for you to not make this public open statement that's going to get people worried that you
might do something drastic.
Instead what you should really focus on doing is finding one or two close friends or maybe
even a parent or therapist, someone close to you that you can talk to and communicate
those deeper problems with intimately.
I know it feels good sometimes to get that attention from people but going back to rule
number two here, you might fall into the trap of posting things that are more and more drastic
just to keep maintaining that level of attention and getting those likes.
"I hate my life. Goodbye everyone I know."
"Dude are you okay? Oh my God, don't do anything drastic, please. What happened? What's wrong?"
"Well, my parents won't let me play Xbox and none of my friends are talking to me tonight."
"Knife emoji. Knife emoji. Knife emoji"
"Oh... k"
Now look, I don't say that to trivialize what you're going through at all but you have to
really look deeply at the gravity of what you share online and the ripple effect it
can cause.
That's why it's important to have close people you can really open up to or even a community
that you can share things with.
Having a community of people that are willing to be patient, kind and understanding of what
you're going through is crucial.
Which is exactly why I've created The Josh Speaks community over on Discord.
This is our free and open community for anyone working on being their best self.
If you want to talk to other people about school or dating or just share some of the
new cool things that you're working on, this is the best place to do it.
It's a judgment-free zone where people really want to give their honest feedback and help
each other grow.
I would love to have you as a member of our community so check out the link for it down
below.
And when it comes to stopping social media from ruining your life, you need to set those
healthy boundaries.
Maybe that means using Instagram a lot less.
Maybe that means blocking people on Snapchat that make you feel insecure or negative about
yourself.
Maybe it means having a close group of friends you can open up to.
Either way, social media doesn't have to run your life.
You are in the driver's seat, you are in control so, take ownership of it.
On that note, I'll catch you next time.
As always, love and peace.