7 Habits for a Healthier Relationship with Social Media
Oh, social media...we love it and we loathe it, am I right? Social media is amazing because it allows us to connect with people all over the world that we might not otherwise get to meet but on the other hand, it can really take a toll on our mental health if we don't have healthy habits and boundaries in place.
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 7 habits that will make your relationship with social media healthier
Obviously, I have a deep gratitude for social media because it plays a massive role in how I run my online business. I love how it brings people from all over together to learn, grow, and encourage one another but, as I’m sure we’ve all experienced, it can also be a little rough for our mental health if we don’t have habits and boundaries in place to support a healthy relationship with it.
I’ve been on social media for work purposes since around 2013, when I started an online fitness business. I’ve had my own ups and downs when it comes to social media and mental health but I’ve established habits and boundaries that have helped a ton.
Before I share them with you, let’s talk about what it looks like to have social media boundaries and to not have them.
When you have habits and boundaries in place for your social media usage:
You use social media intentionally - you are in control of your social media usage.
You have a purpose when it comes to using social media (education, personal growth, etc.).
You’re able to spend time with someone without checking your phone.
You feel light after being on social media. It’s not a struggle for you to stop scrolling and focus on your priorities.
You find yourself celebrating others, encouraging, and being a light while on social media.
Social media is a connection tool.
When you don’t have habits and boundaries in place for your social media usage:
Social media consumes your day - you spend an ungodly amount of time scrolling.
Your time spent scrolling isn’t only unproductive but it’s distracting.
It’s super hard for you to not reach for your phone when you’re spending time with someone.
You feel foggy after being on social media. It’s tough for you to stop scrolling and focus on what needs to be done.
You find yourself comparing, judging, and gossiping while on social media.
Social media is a distraction.
Now let me share with you 7 really practical habits that have helped me nurture a healthy relationship with social media:
01. Protect your mornings and evenings by having sign on and sign off times.
I know myself and right when I wake up and right before I go to bed are the times that I’m the most fragile mentally. I’m more prone to comparison, letting limiting beliefs take over my mind, and feeling “behind” in my goal progress (which I feel like goes back to comparison).
I don’t have a specific time that I allow myself to start using social media in the mornings but my rule of thumb is don’t get on social media until I’ve done my morning routine. My morning routine sets me up mentally to take ownership of my day and that puts me in a good headspace to check social media. In the mornings, I pray, journal, read the Bible, and meditate before checking social media.
I am usually in bed between 10-10:30 (except on Taco Tuesdays, lol) so my sign off time is 8:45 PM. I know from experience that when I’m scrolling before bed, it invites in anxious feelings and ruins my sleep. Not a fan.
Figure out what works for you, whether it’s having designated time windows to not be on social or having activities that you like to do before logging on.
02. Schedule your social media time.
I feel like this can go one of two ways:
- You can choose designated time blocks (so like 8:00-8:15 12-12:30; 6:30-7) that are reserved for scrolling or
- You can have a limit for how much time you want to spend on social media in a day
I kind of combine the 2 to do what works for me. I have my time boundaries around when I’m not using social media that I talked about in the first habit and then I keep tabs on my time spent on social media by swiping right on my iPhone home screen - it pulls up a graph showing how much time that day you’ve spent on each app. Kind of terrifying tbh, lol.
Now because I do a heavy amount of work on social media, I have pretty high time limits. I give myself 3-3.5 hours a day on social media. That includes scrolling for fun, answering DMs, interacting in the Hustle Sanely BFF Facebook group, posting Instagram stories, etc. If I didn’t work on social media, I would dial that back to like 1-1.5 hours a day.
03. Have a social media free day every week.
Okay, y’all HEAR ME OUT - I am not trying to be dramatic here but I started doing this in October and it has changed my life.
I’ve stuck with this habit since then — I choose one day a week (usually Sunday) to be off of social media. Now full transparency, this used to scare me. Because my business relies a lot on social media, I thought taking a day a week off of it would hurt me in the algorithm, cause people to forget about me...ya know super healthy ways of thinking and probably another podcast episode for another time, lol.
Isn’t our well-being and mental health way more important than making a sale or getting a new follower? My vote is yes, girl!
It does wonders for my mental health to be “unplugged” from social media for 1 day a week without feeling this weird pressure to showcase everything that I’m doing and looking at what everyone else is doing.
04. Do a mental check-in and set an intention before you start scrolling.
When I reach for my phone, I pause, take a deep breath, and ask myself, “How am I feeling in this moment? What purpose do I have with getting on social media right now?”
It will literally take you 10 seconds and will radically transform your social media usage and I can say that with confidence because I’ve experienced it.
If you are feeling overwhelmed or anxious do you really think scrolling is going to support you? If your intention aka why you’re about to start scrolling is to avoid a task that you need to be doing or to fill some void you’re feeling, is scrolling social really going to help you out?
If I answer something like, “I am feeling grounded and my intention is to answer 10 DMs so I can serve my community.” then HECK YEAH I’m gonna continue on.
The key to this is being honest and then doing what is best for you - whether it’s scrolling or putting the phone down depending on how you answer the questions.
05. Limit your notifications.
I’m gonna tell you straight up — having your phone ding and light up every 5 seconds is hindering you from being present and being productive.
Treat your lock screen as sacred space. Don’t allow Facebook, emails, and Instagram to rule your day. Because every time your phone goes off and you stop what you’re doing to look at it, you’re giving up your control. You’re allowing social media to dictate how you spend your time and energy and that is just not how we do it around here.
We are in charge of our lives. So let’s limit our notifications because I don’t know about you but I am not available to be pulled in 15 different directions at once. I set the tone for my life and that means I decide when it’s time to check social media.
The only notifications that I get on my lock screen are phone calls and Libby (which is the app I use to rent library books, lol - I like to know when my books are available to download on my Kindle, okay). Other than that, I don’t know if I’ve got a notification unless I manually go into an app. And that includes texts y’all. I recently turned text notifications off on my Apple Watch too and I kind of love that I did that.
I turned email off a while ago because I needed that work/life boundary. And I’ve had Instagram off for years at this point.
I challenge you to audit the notifications that you are allowing to pop up on your phone throughout the day and steal your attention.
06. Strategically arrange your social media apps.
What I mean by this is try putting all of your social media apps together in a folder on your phone. Then move that folder off of your home screen so that you have to unlock your phone, physically scroll, click into the folder, and then open up the app. This is a big change from just unlocking your phone and opening the app that is on your home screen.
Creating these extra steps to access your social media apps makes it to where you have a few seconds to process what you are doing rather than just mindlessly clicking something open out of habit. In those few seconds, you can be like OH WAIT HOLD UP, do I really need to be scrolling social media right now?
Doing this has helped me to not habit open apps while I’m at red lights or standing in line at the grocery store and it’s made me more aware of my social media usage.
07. Curate your feeds.
You get to decide, to an extent, how your social media experience goes. Now obviously you can’t control what people post but you can control who you’re following. Curate social media feeds that elevate you and draw you closer to the woman you want to be by auditing and cleaning up the accounts you’re following. Girl, if someone gets offended that you unfollow them on social media, that’s a them thing, not a you thing.
You have to protect your scrolling as much as you can, right? Fill your feeds with life-giving content.
And hey, let’s say your great Aunt Sally’s post on Facebook are dragging you down. If you read one more piece of family drama on the internet you might lose it. But you also don’t want to “unfriend” her because that’ll make for an awkward time at Thanksgiving so MUTE HER. That is one of my most favorite features on social media...muting people.
Once a month-ish, I go through the accounts I’m following on Instagram and make sure I still want their content to be popping up when I get on the app. Sometimes different types of content affects you differently in different types of seasons and that is OKAY! You are the gatekeeper of your mind and of your heart so take that seriously.
Okay, now that you’ve heard all the habits, I want to leave you with this — don’t feel like you have to go like balls to the wall and do all of these immediately. Choose 2-3 of these habits, integrate them into your life in a way that works for you, and then stack more of the habits on once the original few have become part of your daily routine. The goal here isn’t to drink from a water hose, overwhelming yourself and adopting something that doesn’t feel sustainable to you. The goal is to take sips and find tools that support your well-being and make your life better!
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 106 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
