Cutting Down on Mindless Scrolling
No, I’m not deleting all my social media accounts. I’m just trying to make it harder for me to reach the rabbit hole.
This is what I did on Dec 31, 2020
- Cleaned up the home screen on my phone. Now it only has the essentials — a search bar, Google Maps, my work email, time widget for IST and EST, a couple of banking and finance apps, Firefox web browser, Google Keep, Nike training app, phone and camera. If its not on the home screen it is less likely to grab my attention.
- Uninstalled facebook, twitter, instagram, reddit and other apps. All of them have decent web browser versions and that way I’m not being tracked as much as in the apps because I have several privacy browser add-ons installed.
- Cleared browser sessions, cookies, location and notifications permissions given to sites for all social media websites on desktop and mobile.
How I’m accessing social media now
When I feel like browsing social media I open the web browser on desktop or mobile, log into my account, browse and log out.
It’s only been a couple of days but I’ve seen my screen time go down quite a bit. Especially when sometimes I can’t sleep at night and I unlock my phone for no reason there is going to be nothing on the home screen that can drag me into the rabbit hole of social media with one tap.
Hopefully someone else finds this useful. Happy new year!
