How to Break Your Social Media Addiction

Huge thanks to Brilliant for sponsoring this video and supporting the channel!

If you're one of those people who can't help but pull our your phone to look at Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter 1,000 times a day, then this video is for you.

Today, I'll be sharing some practical tips for using social media responsibly - and breaking your addiction.

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[naiarasantanasantos]

I quit Facebook 2 years ago and I never had an Instagram account. Now I feel focused on my job and on my studies. I feel free, actually!☺

[ClaudiaTorres-gtkv]

The timing on this feels like a sign to me.. I was just saying to a friend how I feel that I’m wasting my time/life watching other people live and not actually living myself

[queenbee]

I’ve been off social media for over a year now. It has benefitted me in three ways:
1. I have more time to do productive work.
2. My anxiety has disappeared altogether.
3. I’ve learnt to live in the moment. And actually enjoy little things.

Most of the time, when you’re constantly dancing to the tune of your notifications, you tend to lose out on the little details in life which makes it worthwhile to live.

[harshshekhawat]

You are so addicted that instead of listening him you are just scrolling in comment section hope you'll over come this addiction ✨🙏🏼

[Yonatan]

I need to stop reading Youtube comments!

[GauravDeo]

I quit Snapchat a year ago.
I am on a break from Instagram (after watching the Casey neistat video on Joe Rogan/Elon Musk podcast)

I use Facebook only on my laptop.

Twitter is the only social media app on my phone. Not addicted to twitter but feels good to login once a while and read some funny tweets !


Here's how I broke my addiction of Instagram.

I aksed myself these 2 questions
1. Who am I trying to impress ?
2. What do I need to prove ?

[pedrop]

My relationship with social media nearly caused me to screw up my university degree. I was using it so much as a procrastination device during my second year and I didn't perform well in exams. Thankfully I realised this in my final year, resolved my issues and managed to save my degree lol.

[thecritic]

I want to quit my social media addiction so bad. The first thing I do in the morning is checking social media. I hate it. I can feel that it is terrible for my brain. The constant overstimulation is awful. This is my second try at breaking the cycle. I hope I'll stick to it this time.

[kevdayao]

Not using social media is not my problem. My problem is doing the work. I remove all social media I do other stuff (read books, cook, clean, exercise) just to stop myself from doing whatever it is I actually need to do.

[Matthew-rlzf]

2:29 - Kill your notifications
3:13 - Redesign phone's homescreen (ios users can also turn of siri suggestions)
4:23 - What about only using social media on a computer?
5:19 - Only use social media at a specific time of day (Can use freedom to help enforce this)
6:26 - Consider blocking certain features of social media
6:48 - Should you quit social media

[calmchaos.]

I had a road trip this weekend when I got to my destination I realised that I left my phone at home I was angry at first but then I said to myself it's just 2 days and guess what I had the best weekend !

[Joy-nlvp]

I stopped facebook 3 years ago and insta 2 years ago. I cant remember the last time i was this happy in my life. No comparisons no jealousy no low self esteem. Absolute happiness🌺❤!

[MaximumOverTrolll]

i am truly addicted and have been struggling for a long time to break free. thank you for reminding me of my initial idea of the social media detox. i always made excuses saying that they provide value in my life for networking etc. but i know thats a lie. im going to do it and come back here in 30 days to update. thank you.

[xboxer]

I only check social media after 10pm each night. Which is when I’m done with basically everything for the day, really helped me with distractions

[obara]

My biggest social media time eater is YouTube. I uninstalled snapchat without looking back 1.5 years ago, I deactivate my Facebook regularly and killed my notifications for a while on everything else.

But YouTube man.

I mean, that's where I'm watching all your amazing videos. I get sucked into a rabbit hole if video essays and edutainment, but also comedy and creativity. And I could be using that time to further sharpen my skills and get my shit together.

If you ever made a video on how to get un-addicted to YouTube, you'd me my messiah.

[TheRok]

Social media occasionally had that "addictive" effect on me, where literally several hours would go by without me even noticing it as I'm just scrolling and scrolling endlessly, but even then, I was never into reading trivial social news, memes, or new pictures; I still read intellectual articles, posts, and world news to expand my knowledge and understanding of the world, which was the perfect justification for what I was doing. Of course, if I invested that reading time into books, well-researched investigative journalism articles, and scientific articles, it would have been exponentially more enriching and cultivating for me than reading it on social media. On the other hand, the stimulation of computer and video games has had a hold on me since I was a preteen kid.

The very first time I came across the simplest platformer console game, I stayed up from early evening to maybe 7:00 in the morning playing with my jaw dropped in awe — pretty much. Fast-forward a bit, and I don't know how many thousands of hours I've put into World of Warcraft, hundreds of hours I've put into Left 4 Dead, Destiny, Mass Effect, Black Desert Online, and so on and on, hundreds of games that I've played throughout the years. Sometimes today not a single game grasps my attention to any significant degree, and I find myself playing while just "going through the motions" really. The only game in recent history that had me in awe again as I was a kid was Disco Elysium. Other than that, it's all "going through the motions" pretty much for me while still returning to games every now and then. I don't know why but certain games have this awesome hold over my attention; I find them fascinating, engaging, and incomparable to anything else I've ever done in life, including reading good novels. Playing a good game for me is not just about pleasure, I think; it engages my mind and fascinates me on an intellectual level sometimes.

I've never done drugs but deep down I know that the "euphoria" that a human can feel from a narcotic is much more intense than what I feel while gaming, but gaming is still objectively and subjectively much, much more superior than drugs in terms of engagement and excitement, especially because the euphoria from drugs is extremely short-lived compared to what a player can feel while playing a game for hours.

With all that said, I've succeeded in finding pleasure in life in all the little things when I stopped playing games for weeks or months. However, I gotta admit, nothing I ever do in life seems to give me that same sense of fascination and awe as when I felt when I played a good game. I think maybe making a positive change in many people's lives can offer the same sense of awe, excitement, and contentment, but that's not easy to accomplish in today's corporatocracy. At the same time, I don't know if the effort you make to change others' lives to the better can have the same sense of engagement and awe as when exploring a fictional world in a good game.

I might've been addicted to games at several points of my life but at the same time, I know deep down inside that games for me aren't just about pleasure or excitement; I think it's sometimes about living in better worlds or at least worlds that you feel you can change to the better via your protagonist, because this world is sometimes too painful to live in, not because of my personal life, but because of what I see in it. Yes, yes, there are trees, forests, beautiful lakes and beaches, beautiful people, but most of it is made relatively inaccessible to you by the system — or the corporatocracy — that we live in, either by packaging us all in boxes, lines, and skyscrapers, too far away from it all or by keeping us too busy making ends meet.

More importantly, the evil, hatred, suffering, mass-murdering in the world is increasingly all too widespread. If anyone's been living in their own bubble for too long, just read about what China does to the Uighur, including the more recent information about using them to harvest body organs, and keep in mind that most probably most of the things you own in your apartment and office today are made there, in China. Read about what the Saudi and UAE regimes are doing to the people of Yemen, their neighbors. Read about what the U.S. and its allies have actually done in Afghanistan (search for "20 Years in Afghanistan: The Untold Story" to know the truth you'll never hear in mass media, ever). Read about Trump's "favorite dictator, " Al-Sisi, and his war crimes against his own people and the police state in Egypt today. Read or watch videos about how the Swedish government and social welfare system's solution for the reduction of its population is stealing kids from Syrian and other Muslim immigrants for excuses like "not fostering democratic values at home, " considering that "abuse" and so on, to remove, for example, 32, 000 children from their parents — mostly Muslim — in 2014 alone. We are living in a world where the very governments are committing crimes like the mass murder of women and children, legalized child abuse and kidnapping, organ harvesting of prisoners and the homeless, while the population is too busy scrolling, swiping, gaming, drinking, paying off their mortgages and university debts, or making ends meet. Yes, the beaches, trees, and forests are still there but it's hard to really enjoy them when you know so much about the ugliness and crimes that most humans are committing all around you.

I don't know if you can ever tackle all that in a project for a series of videos, Thomas, but there you have it, a new perspective on the so-called addiction of games, and it's much more semi-justified escapism than addiction.

[banana-yxei]

1. Delete your Twitter/Discord/Instagram/Facebook/TikTok, etc. Or you can just ignore them.
2. Sleep
3. Do your work without seeing any social media on your phone.
4. Touch grass or some plants everyday.

Benefits:

1. More storage on your phone
2. Reduces anxiety
3. more.

[mischake]

My phone broke and for two weeks I was cut off from social media on my phone. It was hell for about two to three days. Then I realized how addicted I was, mostly to Facebook notifications. When I got my phone back from repair the first thing I did was delete facebook from my phone. I still have it on my computer but I only have notifications on pages and people that I actually value. Not saying I don't waste time on my computer but for the most part I am fairly productive behind my computer. I do have a slight YouTube problem but I try to only waste a little time on the dozens of open tabs in my browser. And most of the channels that give me notifications, same as with facebook, are channels that I really value.

[roma]

me: Yes Frank, social media is a cesspool

also me: Social media has provided 98% of my entertainment for the day

[magetam]

it's 3 a.m and I'm youtube binging instead of sleeping and recharging haha. I needed that vid <3