If you’re looking for a quick solution that you can completely stay away from social media, this article is not for you.
But if you’re looking for a sustainable method that you can slowly stay away from social media with consistent effort, I am sure that this article will help you so much.
I'm a guy without accounts on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram.
I do have a Facebook account for texting my friends but I unfollowed everyone, so nothing comes up in my timeline; in fact, I never open the page where I can check the timeline.
But how did I do that?
Wasn't it painful giving up the social media accounts one by one?
Let's take a look at the simplest method to stay away from social media completely.
Negative Effects of Social Media
Obviously, the overuse of social media has many negative effects on your physical and psychological condition.
Let's take a look at some quotes on both the medical side and the industry side.
According to the article "Has dopamine got us hooked on tech?" from The Guardian, "Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, “we… give you a little dopamine hit.”
Clearly, this constant little dopamine hit will break your dopamine receptor and you become slowly addicted to social media even though you do not think you are addicted.
The information from the article of Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER) is interesting; social media use can also negatively affect teens, distracting them, disrupting their sleep, and exposing them to bullying, rumor spreading, unrealistic views of other people's lives and peer pressure.
(Sentence quoted from the said article.)
If you search for the negative effects of social media overuse, you will find thousands of articles or research results stating how harmful it is.
So, how can we escape from this negative circle?
I would like to propose 4 steps that you can follow o say goodbye to social media completely.
How to quit social media for one month
How to quit social media for a month is very simple.
Let's divide a month into four weeks.
Week 1: Know the reason why you have the accounts
Week 2: Delete the app from your phone & check once a day
Week 3: Check only once a week
Week 4: Delete your account & Use a simple texting app only
The simplest method ever to quit social media is to imagine yourself living without social media and trust that you can do it.
Week 1: Know the reason why you have the accounts
First of all, you want to understand the reason why you have accounts on social media.
I think most of you have never thought about the reason why you check the timeline of social media every day.
If you want to stay away from social media completely, the first thing you have to do is to talk with yourself.
If you have a social media account for your profession, things will be something a little bit different.
However in most cases, you use social media for your personal use, so in extreme cases, we can say it’s unnecessary.
Please write down the reasons why you have a social media account and you will realize that you have such an important reason that you have your social media account.
Please do not finish this process in one day but please keep doing this for a whole week.
When you do this process, please keep asking "why?" to yourself.
For example, your first answer to the question is "I have a social media account because I want to check the timeline."
Then you’ll ask yourself "Why do you want to check the timeline?"
And the answer to it might be " It's because I want to catch up the trendy things."
You do not stop asking why until you ask yourself three times.
"Why do I want to catch up with trendy things?"
"Because my friends talk about it all the time."
I think this may be the most popular reason you check the timeline.
If this is your reason to have a social media account, I would say you can quit social media very easily because in most cases, catching up on trendy things doesn’t define friendship.
If you do not catch up with the timeline and if you are still friends with your best friends, they are the real ones.
Writing down over and over again will clarify your mind so that you can easily go to the step you do in week two.
Week 2: Delete the app from your phone & check once a day
The second step you will do in week two is actually not deleting the account itself, but you will delete the app of the social media from your phone.
The reason for doing this is that human being is not able to change themselves drastically at one moment, so if you are trying to reach a goal you would like to take step-by-step actions.
However in week two, you will still log in to the social media account and also check the timeline, so please make sure that you know your login password and things like that.
Deleting the app from your phone works very well because when you go out for your work or go shopping, what you will bring with you is not a laptop but a smartphone.
By the way, if you want to know the radical treatment of social media addiction, "Extreme digital detox challenge “Unplug the wifi before you sleep” can be a helpful article.
Back to the mainstream, making yourself not able to access any of the social media from your phone is a very efficient step that you can take to at an initial stage of social media detox.
In week two you will not be allowed to use social media from your phone.
Week 3: Check only once a week
The third step you will take in week three will be something much more interesting.
What you have to do in week three is to reduce the frequency you check the timeline.
You can only check or even access social media once a week; meaning only once this week.
At this point, you don’t have the social media app on your phone so the only way you can check your social media timeline will be from your laptop.
If you can manage to come to week 3, you will realize that in your life, social media is not that important.
This will be my point of view but I think life is happening in the real world, not in the lovely but addictive small black square objects, so face up!!!
At this stage, some of you may seek a way to do the digital detox as well not only the social media detox.
The below articles will be something interesting to read out if you’re interested in digital detox.
I live without my phone and the only digital devices that I have are an iPad and MacBook Air; this lifestyle is so comfortable.
As mentioned earlier, I follow no one on Facebook and I only check messenger so there’s no way that I will get involved with the timeline chaos things.
Week 4: Delete your account & Use a simple texting app only
The final week and the final step of the social media detox is finally deleting your account.
For this step you need to pay attention to two things; if there are any pictures or data that you want to back up from the accounts, you should rescue those data first, and also you need to contact your friends that you are deleting your social media account soon.
I think the hardest thing to do when you do the social media detox is to tell your friends that you will delete your account.
Before deleting your social media account, you should make sure that you will have an alternative solution to text your friends; either preinstalled messaging app or a texting app that is popular in your country.
The most important point I want to highlight here is after deleting your account please keep your lifestyle for at least a month so that quitting social media for a month will be finally achieved.
You may be off from the topic that goes on around social media, but still, you have a lot of topics to talk about with your friends.
The final week will be the hardest week of all of this challenge, but once you can manage to stay away from social media, your life will be something very different than before because the way you use your time will be completely different.
To sum up "how to quit social media for a month" the full steps guide is as below.
Week 1: Know the reason why you have the accounts
Week 2: Delete the app from your phone & check once a day
Week 3: Check only once a week
Week 4: Delete your account & Use a simple texting app only
I hope step-by-step, you’ll be able to achieve your goal.
Thanks for reading.