Social media influencer Casey Neistat announced recently that he is "quitting" social media. He said he was "addicted", and decided to delete the apps off his phone and only access the sites from his computer.
Deleting the apps has become a trend. People are doing it left and right. I can't count the number of times I've deleted Twitter only to redownload it several weeks later.
We are waking up to the fact that we can't keep doing what we're doing. Something has to give. So we're resorting to acts of desperation like deleting our apps or, worse, deleting our accounts.
Here's the truth of the matter: this tactic rarely works.
And, when it does work, it's a forfeiture of the enormous benefits social media can have in our lives.
There's another way. Dare I say, there's a better way.
Instead of deleting apps or accounts, we should be deleting our patterns.
Our patterns are all of our habits, routines, and built up muscle memories. Patterns are our way of being on social media.
It's how our hands unconsciously reach for our phones when we feel bored.
It's how we argue with closed-off strangers.
It's how we've stopped curating and let our news feeds fill up with content we aren't invested in.
Instead of deleting our apps, let's...
1. Delete our unhealthy patterns.
2. Make social media work for us, not against us.
3. Train ourselves to have REAL discipline.
2. Make social media work for us, not against us.
3. Train ourselves to have REAL discipline.
When we do these things, we can move to a place where deleting apps becomes pointless. They have no power over us. We have full control over when we say yes and when we say no.