A few weeks ago, I got tired of seeing the same old faces and ridiculous posts and decided I needed to go on an unfollowing spree. I needed to completely declutter social media to give myself a more peaceful mind when it comes to tapping on those social icons and scrolling through the content.
We all know that social media isn’t exactly the place to boost your self esteem. It’s filled with too much gossip, fake lives and people we quite frankly would rather not see. In fact, these days there seems to be more cons than pros when it comes to social media.
I was getting caught up in what people that I haven’t seen or spoken to for years were doing. When I realised that, it made me hugely sad and a little disappointed in myself.
I didn’t want to be one of those people who clings onto the past or judges people from what they were posting on Instagram (which is basically a platform to only show the happiest parts of your life) and so I knew I had to make a change.
Social media platforms were created for a variety of reasons. One of those being for entertainment. If you’re not laughing at the content you follow or getting some sort of happiness from it, you need to rethink how you’re using it and how you’re benefiting.
The idea of decluttering social media actually came from something my boyfriend said to me a while ago. Every time he got a notification from Facebook saying it was someone’s birthday, he would evaluate his relationship with the person and if he had no intention of staying in touch, he’d delete them. On their birthday! Harsh.
But it definitely inspired me to apply some strict measures whilst I unfollowed.
The People & Platforms I Tackled:
Declutter Social Media Platform 1: Facebook
I started with Facebook. This was where I knew I had practically everybody I’d had a physical social interaction with at some point since I was thirteen.
This scared me massively.
There were people on there who could see exactly what I looked like now, where I was at university, who I was in a relationship with and anything else I’d put on there thinking it was harmless.
There were also people who were posting the most ridiculous things and my timeline became very spammy with the same lot of people trying to rile each other up.
Since I’ve moved about a little bit, there were plenty of ‘friends’ that I knew I’d never see or speak to again, so I asked myself some questions:
- Will I speak to them again?
- Will I miss them on social media?
- Do I miss them in real life?
- Do I want to see what they’re doing with their lives? And do I want them to see mine?
Sounds brutal, right? But it’s what cut down my friends list by almost two thirds. That’s right. My friends list went from over 1700 to 600. Now my Facebook timeline content is much more specific to what I want to see and from the people I know and love.
Facebook also has a lot of pages and groups that you can like and join. I did a quick declutter and unfollow of those as most of them were deactivated accounts or things I no longer wanted to be a part of.
Quick thought: deactivated accounts aren’t deleted accounts. The owners can choose at any time to reactivate so delete/unfriend/unfollow if you don’t want the owner to see your content anymore.
Declutter Social Media Platform 2: Instagram
Oh, Instagram. You started as everyone’s best friend.
Then the influencers came and everyone had to up their game.
I can’t lie, I love Instagram… when I use it right.
Like a lot of others, I got sucked in to posting all the great things that were happening, pictures of my fancy brunch or the sun setting over the sea the other night. Then I grew up a bit and I became a little more self conscious about what I was doing and putting out into the world.
I remembered that if my Instagram wasn’t private then anybody can see and find me. That was a bit scary. There are over a billion active Instagram accounts now in 2021. That’s 1/7 of the entire world population! Insane! Any one of these accounts can search and find you.
I’ve always been a little bit of a serial unfollower on Instagram. If something pops up on my feed and I don’t connect with it I usually unfollow that person.
If someone has been on a night out and posted a 10 minute long story of the DJ playing D&B… unfollow.
If someone who I haven’t seen for ages and don’t intend to stay in touch with comes up… unfollow.
Again, it’s brutal. But it definitely cleared my head and cleared my phone out from seeing things that I really didn’t want to see.
I’ve also become a lot stricter on which celebrities I follow and why. I still want to see what’s going on in the world and I like to read some online magazines. However, I didn’t want 90% of my Instagram feed to be celebrities – people I’m extremely likely to never see or speak to. I’d rather see what my uni friends have posted or what my sister’s getting up to back at home.
Rather than asking myself questions about every single person I followed, I instead decluttered my feed and gradually removed people.
Instagram also has a ‘least interacted with’ feature which I used to reevaluate some accounts.
You can also change your settings on Instagram to properly control what you want to be seeing on your recommended and sponsored posts.
Declutter Social Media Platforms 3&4: Twitter & LinkedIn
You may be thinking, two very different platforms, right? Well, the things I did for both of these were very similar.
Both feeds work very similarly. People you follow on Twitter will like and retweet things that will pop up on your timeline to view and interact with yourself.
On LinkedIn, the same sort of thing happens. Someone you have connected with will like or comment on someone’s post and it will come up on your screen.
There’s nothing we can do about it. The people we connect with may be some of our best friends but they may dedicate their accounts to their career (on LinkedIn) or their meme page, for example (on Twitter).
Neither of those things may be something you’re hugely interested in but you don’t want to hurt your friends’ feelings by removing them.
This is where I choose to remove their content from my timeline but not as a friend/follower. Most social media platforms will have this as an option. This is something to bear in mind in case you’re worried what people will think about you removing them from your social media.
You can even do the reverse in some cases and ‘prioritize’ people who you want to see more of.
Declutter Social Media Platform 5: Phone Contacts
Okay, maybe not a social media platform, but it was the quickest one to tackle and actually a good place to start if you’re not ready to go through hundreds of names and faces.
I found I had so many numbers saved from people I’d spoken to once or twice. Some of them were friends of friends who I’d been on a night out with and thought I better get their number just in case. There were people who I’d saved from a WhatsApp group who I no longer needed as a contact. Even people’s old numbers that I hadn’t deleted yet.
I spent a quick 10 minutes going through and removing all of these. It was as simple as that and also freed up a little bit of storage on my phone.
These are just a few ways which I used to declutter social media. But do it however it feels best and works for you.
If you feel you need to completely strip down your accounts for a fresh start, then do it! Do whatever makes you happy. Post whatever the hell you want, whatever makes you feel good.
But if you feel conscious of who you’re sharing your content with, definitely have a quick look over your followers and who you’re following.
