Social Media
December 11, 2016
We hate it, but we can’t get enough of it. It’s so useful, but the subtle allure of the infinitly-scolling timeline is a dangerous, unproductive time sink.
Here’s how to fix it:
un[follow/subscribe/watch] EVERYONE.
Facebook is vastly useful. For many people, the killer feature is how easy it is to organise events. But features such as groups, messaging and polls are great too.
The timeline makes you hate your friends.
To fix: Unfollow everyone. Click the timeline options and then click on all of your friends to never see their food pictures and baby photos again. Do this for everyone, without exception. Yes, that includes your significant other. The goal here is to break the habit of checking facebook. This may take a long time, if you have something of the order of a thousand friends - as many people do.
After doing this, facebook will be working for YOU: push notifications and/or emails will be your sole prompt to open the app.
(Bonus tip: When facebook says it’s someones’s birthday, force yourself to post a “happy birthday” message to them, or unfriend them. If you don’t even say hi on someone’s birthday: you are not even acquaintances)
Reddit’s another timesink with actual useful features. Diving into a breaking news story, finding out leaked information about a new product/service, or simply lowering your blood pressure browsing r/aww are fantastic.
Subreddits good, front page bad.
Unsubscribe from everything:
Side-effect: You can still navigate to /r/all, but good luck wading through all the /r/THE_DONALD and /r/EnoughTrumpSpam noise.
This technique can be used for almost any social media site. Give it a try, it’s given me the benefits of unsubscribing from these services without losing the genuine benefits.