How to Properly Use Social Media

Consider for a moment the story you’ve been told: that social media is a tool for connection, a bridge to others. But what if that’s not the whole truth? What if, beneath the surface, it’s a device designed not to fulfill, but to distract? To spot this, notice the difference between intentionality and aimlessness. When you catch yourself checking “just one more post”, witness how fruitless this activity is and focus on a more purposeful question, like: “What am I truly seeking here?”

To start properly using social media, you need to change the way you think about social media. You need to start using it like any other website online. You need to start using it as a tool.

Let’s take Google for example.

At the time of writing this piece, and taking into consideration the last 20 years, the first page of Google is still a simple search box. There is literally nothing when you go to google.com.

Meaning that there aren’t half-naked bodies and perfectly organized offices that will make you feel bad about your own physique and your cluttered desk when you open the website – unlike Instagram.

There is nothing. Why is that?

Well, the website is waiting for you to make a choice. To choose what to search for. This means that the thinking part needs to come from you. You consciously need to consider what you want to see. Only then, to perform a search which will eventually shape what you will consume.

Here’s how the process looks:

You think about what you want > You make a choice > You search > You consume. The end result is you consuming something based on what you want. By my standards, this is intentional use of the online world.

On social media, this is reversed. The thinking part is stripped and outsourced to the algorithm and the initial setup by the designers of these websites.

When you hop on social media, it’s like a mixtape is inserted into your brain. A packaged opinion is placed into your mind, similar to inserting a cassette into a cassette player. You don’t actively think about what you want, you react based on what’s available. You consume what’s already out there.

Here’s how the process looks:

You enter social media > You see content that is 99% unrelated to what you need right now, but it’s what you end up consuming because of the people you already follow. The end result is a busy mind and time wasted.

Twitter and all the other apps deliberately want to make you follow more people.

After all, without following anyone you won’t see anything. If you don’t see anyone sharing tips and tricks about progressively increasing your muscle power or whatever you believe you are interested in, the platform itself won’t make sense for you. It’s useless.

You expect to see things. And Twitter and all other platforms push you to follow people.

The more you follow, the more you stay inside. Thus, the more these sites profit from you – even if you don’t know it.

This was a huge realization for me a couple of years ago.

When I hopped online, I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted to consume. I simply absorbed everything like a sponge.

Stuff like…

• Friends going on vacation.
• Friends eating in restaurants that seemed too expensive.
• Friends who shared links that were not related to what I wanted from life, but since they were already there, I took them.

Like a starving animal, I devoured every crappy pixel that crossed my feed.

In this sense, improving your relationship with social media is an experience similar to a person who wants to lose weight.

For example, if you want to lose a few pounds, I bet you won’t place a bowl of chocolate chip cookies in the center of your dining table. You will clear your house from all the junk food or, at the very least, shove anything containing even a micron of sugar into a dark corner.

After all, every time you see the cookies, you will want one – or two, or probably the whole plate. Even if you are not hungry, you will consume them because they are there – visible, staring at you. You are deliberately torturing yourself by putting this right in front of your face.

Similarly, if you want to stop the obsessive use of social media, you need to remove the bowl of toxic, irrelevant content from your system – your life.

I won’t say that you have to turn off your notifications – not yet. Yes, you’ll need to do that too, but that won’t solve the core problem if this is not done first:

Foremost, we need to remove the want. The desire to want to be inside the platform.

Since you are reading this series of posts, it means you are on the right track.

There is a need. You feel the need to get offline.

But that’s not enough. You also need to stop wanting to use social media.

1. As the Department of Psychology in the University of Exeter, England, mentioned in a paper: A slot machine or lottery result correct up to the last element, would normally be “encouraging”. The occurrence of a near miss may be taken as an encouraging sign, confirming the player’s strategy and raising hopes for future success. Source: LINK.