So, I'm leaving social media behind for a couple of months. But social media does not want to leave me. If you think it's as easy as uninstalling your Facebook app and being like, "Peace!", I have some news for you: THE INTERNET WANTS YOU TO BE WITH IT FOREVER.
Probably some people CAN just uninstall Twitter and Facebook, and be like, adios. Not I. I tried. I realized several months ago that I wanted to get Facebook off my phone, so I uninstalled it. But two days later, I was accessing it on my phone's browser like the greedy little internet psychopath that I am.
The fact is, I have zero willpower. Simply logging out of Twitter one day and brushing my hands of it wasn't going to be enough. I needed to take stronger steps. I need to make everything literally inaccessible.
Below are the steps I'm taking to make sure I can't hit up the internet:
-Installing website blocking software on all my browsers, on all my computers. I'm using Blocksite on Chrome and the same add-on in Firefox. Seems to be working just fine so far - Twitter.com, Facebook.com, and Instagram.com are blocked.
-I think there are equivalent add blockers for your phone's browser, but I just used the 'enable restrictions' function. Like I'm some 12-year-old trying to access 'adult content' on my parents' phone. And of course, I uninstalled all the apps.
I thought there were more steps, and this might make an interesting blog post, but... I guess that's it. Just literally blocking everything in sight, and sobbing. That's my advice.
Previous to blocking access to these sites, I also did the following in order to ensure a more 'Slow Internet' return when I come back:
-I significantly cut my Twitter following. I did this primarily using ManageFlitter.com, which allows you to mass unfollow people by selecting inactive accounts, those not following you back, etc. It's a very handy tool. I unfollowed probably about 300 people. If I unfollowed you, please don't take it personally - I tried to keep following only people I interact with face-to-face on a regular basis, or news sites whose articles I actually enjoy keeping up on.
-I unliked about, oh, one billion pages on Facebook. Facebook does not make it easy to do this (Facebook doesn't make doing anything to do with leaving it easy). There's not one simple way to do this, but you can go to this page, and see all the pages you've liked in one place, and then unlike away from there. (By the way, I'm not deactivating my Facebook account because it's linked to a couple of groups I'm an admin for and they'd be deleted otherwise, and I need to keep them for work.) I also defriend a bunch of folks, using the same rational - if I haven't interacted with you in person in several months, it was an unfriend. It's hard to do because it seems very personal, but... I did it anyways. It was hard and felt mean, but I also will be surprised if anyone even notices.
-I unsubscribed to a significant amount of email newsletters using unroll.me.
-I installed an app called "Moment" that records how often you're using your phone. In the past few days (before the big internet quit, which was today) I measured my phone use. I thought it would be relatively low because I was training myself to look at TFI (Twitter FB Instagram) a lot less. Guess what? I was averaging still TWO HOURS A DAY ON MY PHONE GOD WHAT COULD I BE DOING WITH THOSE HOURS I HATE MYSELF FOREVER. Granted, a lot of those two hours is in little 3 minute chunks, and I don't think it's TERRIBLE to look at your phone a few times a day for a few minutes -- but two hours? And that was in a time period when I was looking at it LESS. God forbid what do you think it was beforehand? Sheesh. I wouldn't have been shocked if it was between three and four hours. God I should just throw go myself out of a window.
-I bought an alarm clock. My biggest excuse for having my phone in bed (and scrolling on it to wake myself up/put myself to sleep every morning and night) was that I needed it to function as an alarm clock. New rule: no phone in the bedroom.
So those are a few things I'm changing to help myself in ridding my addiction to the big three (TFI, Twitter Facebook Instagram). Hopefully, a few of them might help you too.
Anyways, as mentioned, I will be blogging (fingers crossed, lots more) here. I'm also hoping to get my tinyletter restarted - subscribe here.
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