You should treat your social media the same way that you should your physical possessions. If it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it! We shouldn’t be asking ourselves to remove the negativity in our lives. We should just be doing it, especially when we’re wanting to declutter social media.
Sometimes, that’s all too easy.
We should be asking whether they bring you happiness, that way all those things in between that you don’t care either way about are removed too. Those things that are physically cluttering up your house and your spaces are gone and can begin attracting more positive energy.
In the world we live in nowadays, why would we cling to things that don’t make us happy anyway?
Just like decluttering your home, refining your social media content can have a huge benefit on your mental health and thought processes.
Why You Should Declutter Your Social Media
Less intrusive – Less Screen Time
Social media tempts us to continue scrolling and adverts try to make us click onto one thing, then onto another and another…
We know that screens aren’t good for our eyes in excessive amounts so reducing our screen time can have physical benefits too. Cutting out the source of the problem is the solution.
Here I will introduce my favourite button: notifications
I absolutely hate it when someone’s phone is constantly ping, ping, pinging with endless notifications. When your phone buzzes, you’re immediately tempted to pick it up to see if it’s important.
Even if it isn’t, it may be a notification trying to tempt you to open it and click through the content it’s offering. This bait is easily taken by us and so turning off most of your notifications could be a big help to reduce that temptation and therefore reducing your overall screen time.
My phone is constantly on ‘do not disturb’ and I like it that way.
Positive Energy
I recently discovered Manifestation Babe, a website run by Katherin Zenkina and I signed up to one of her classes. In her videos she talks a lot about how we all attract our own positivity and that there are some things we need to start doing to help ourselves be more open in welcoming this energy.
Decluttering our social media can help to make way for more valuable content to come onto our screens. The content replacing it could help us to learn more or gain inspiration that you might’ve not had from the posts before. I’ve noticed now, especially on my Instagram recommended page that I’m seeing more helpful content that triggers my creativity and inspiration.
Comparisons of Your Life to Others
Social media is often criticised because of this. We see old school friends posting that they’ve just bought a new house or are going on lots of holidays and we put ourselves down because we’re not doing it.
But we’re only seeing the things that they want us to see and that’s mostly going to only be positive things. Yes, buying a house and having lots of holidays is great, but we shouldn’t put ourselves down for not living the same way as someone else.
If you unfollow those influencers that portray unrealistic life goals, then you’re less likely to compare yourselves to others and instead applaud that friend for buying a house.
You’ll Feel Less Lonely
There is actually a study by the University of Pennsylvania that suggests that using social media actually makes us more isolated and feel more lonely. This is the complete opposite to the intention of social media – communication and interaction.
The fact is, the more time we spend scrolling through our phones, the less we’re interacting with the world and physical people.
Cyberbullying
This is a fairly simple explanation to this. If you’re blocking the people who are causing you harm online, then they can’t contact you.
However, it’s not always that simple. But if you’re not on social media at all then you can’t be cyberbullied.
I’m not saying to delete all of your social media platforms because I definitely won’t, but we can change the way that we engage online to reduce the likelihood that we receive negativity from others.
Reduce Anxiety
There are very little studies on social media that look into the long term effects of social media engagement as it’s still relatively new to the world. However, it’s proven that face to face interactions can help to reduce anxiety and depression.
A lot of us look to our phones when we feel awkward or need to find something to do which restricts how many social interactions we could be having instead. Therefore, indirectly affecting social anxiety.
If we declutter our social media, we may have less content to look at and so can reduce the amount of time we spend on our phones and provide opportunities to socialise face to face.
In general, it’s not great for us to spend so much time online and on our phones. But decluttering our social media can enhance our experiences when we do use it and can help our mental health by cutting down on our content consumption.