Why I Delete Instagram and Facebook Everyday!
Recently a friend caught me doing something that I do every single day. It made me laugh so I thought i’d share it with you guys. What they caught me doing was deleting Facebook and Instagram from my phone.
And of course they asked me “well why are you doing that?”, and my answer, whilst i said it laughing was very much the truth, “I have absolutely no self control when it comes to social media.”
Understand that these applications are designed in a way to keep you checking and using them. These apps have been specifically designed to keep you looking at them.
The designers of these apps are literally working on insuring you are constantly scrolling down a never ending ocean of content.
We are all aware that spending large amounts of time on social media is not a productive use of our time. So it's essential that we find ways of putting barriers of entry in the way of us constantly engaging with it.
Personally I’ve tried using ‘screen time’ and other limiting software, as well as my own personally enforced restrictions on the time I use apps. However, the ease of access, simply being able to click a button and use the app causes me to fall back into bad habits.
We’ve all been guilty of it, you pick up your phone on autopilot and before you know it you are mindlessly scrolling down Instagram, when you know you have 100 better things to be doing with your time.
For me personally, I’ve found that the most effective way for me to limit my use of social media is to download it in the morning. Look at what I want to look at, post what I need to post, and then delete it.
Not coming back to the application until the evening, where I will do the same process over again before deleting it again to go to bed.
The first thing to understand is just how easy it is to delete and retrieve these apps. None of it is locally stored data, it's all in the cloud. So by deleting the app I’m not truly deleting anything, just simply putting up a barrier to entry in regards to using it.
When it comes to reinstalling, I often don’t need to re-enter any information. It’s all stored, and with less that a couple of clicks I’m back in.
But when I’m going through my day and that urge to pick up my phone hits me, this simple process helps cause enough pattern interruption to stop me in my tracks. I simply end up doing something else with my time. I’ve placed enough friction in the way of the task to bypass my need to check it.
Now this might all seem a little extremely, and inconvenient. But it's that very inconvenience that provides the pattern interruption that is needed. When it comes to trying to build good habits or break bad ones. It’s all about Cue’s. The thing that starts us off on a habit loop. If you want to build a good habit, like reading more. It helps to place books all around your house, or next to your favourite chair.
Likewise, if you want to break the habit of using Instagram all the time, by removing the app from your phone, you are creating friction between you and that task, reducing your likelihood of using it.
At the end of the day, it's about being honest with yourself. We have limited willpower that we get to use each day. So if you are wasting that on trying to resist social media or, as another example, eating junk food. Then you are not going to have enough left for the bigger decisions that are left to be made.
Create obstacles for these decisions and remove the need to use willpower to avoid them. Thus freeing your decision making abilities to be put to better use elsewhere.
Understand that I’m not trying to tell you not to use social media, or that apps like Instagram are inherently bad for you. But that limiting the amount of time using them can only be a good thing for both your physical and mental well being.
