THERAPIST THURSDAY: Does Social Media Control You?

Literally millions of dollars are spent by companies every year to figure out how to get you hooked on social media and how to keep you coming back. No wonder it is so easy to use it mindlessly and to find yourself under its control! Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if this is happening to you, and some ideas of what you can do to change it…

1. Is social media sucking up your time? Do you find yourself getting on it mindlessly? Do you get on it and then wonder where the time went?

2. Do you find yourself NEEDING to check your social media accounts? Pay attention to your body. If you find yourself becoming anxious because you haven’t checked your social media, this is a sure time you need a cleanse from it.

3. Is it impacting your relationships? If the significant people in your life complain about your phone use, if they become annoyed when they see the phone in your hand, this is a problem.

4. Do you find yourself needing your phone with you constantly? If you find that you can not watch TV, be in bed, or unwind in any way without your phone next to you, I would bet that you are not REALLY relaxing at all.

5. Is your phone the first thing you reach for when you get out of bed, or maybe even before your feet hit the floor? This means it is on your mind from the moment you wake up. Which means your brain has become addicted!

6. Do you find that getting on social media causes you to have negative energy in your body? Are you more easily irritated when you are on it? (You may not recognize that it is social media or phone use that is causing your increased irritation until you cleanse yourself from it for at least 30 days. If you’ve found yourself lacking patience or more easily irritated, it is probably an experiment worth doing).

7. Do you compare yourself to others or compare your life to the lives of other people on social media? If you find yourself wondering why you don’t go on as many vacations as your social media “friends” or feel bad about the messiness of your house or the achievements of your kids or yourself after being on social media, then social media is controlling you.

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, you may want to consider changing your social media use. Here are a few examples of things you can do to help you stop being controlled by the companies that create these apps, and help you become in charge of how you feel and how you manage your time once again…

· Remove all of the apps from your phone. This requires you to log on manually using the browser on your phone, rather than accessing it by one click.

· Put the apps on subsequent pages on your phone to require you to scroll to find them.

· Shut down your social media accounts for a set amount of time (a week, 30 days, summer break, etc.). If you do this, you may find it very difficult to go without it for a while (which is a sign you really needed this cleanse from social media); but after a while you will find yourself feeling free and probably more relaxed as well. In most cases, it takes about 30 days or so to work through the sense of loss and begin to feel relaxed and free.

· Turn off notifications on your social media accounts, so you only know what’s being posted during the times you CHOOSE to access the accounts.

· Put time restrictions on your phone for accessing social media apps and then don’t go on them once you’ve reached that time limit.

· Set rules for either the amount of time you can use social media daily or the amount of times you can get on it. You can also set rules like, “I can get on it once in the morning, and then not again until after dinner.”

· Set a timer when you get on it and commit to getting off of it once the timer goes off.

· Limit the amount of posting you do daily ahead of time and do not allow yourself to exceed that limit.

· Keep your phone in a room other than your bedroom at night. Set a rule that you will not look at it after a certain time of day. At that time, plug it in and leave it be. Turn it upside down and put it on silent so you are not tempted to check it. If you need to be in contact with certain people, such as a teenager who is out of the house, then set a specific ring tone for that person and don’t flip your phone over unless that ring tone goes off. Otherwise, the phone is not checked until the time you decided you can check it in the morning.

Social media can be a very positive part of a person’s life. It can be a way to connect and to keep in touch with those we would otherwise lose touch with. It can be a way to gain information, to connect with those with similar interests and points of view, to support each other, and to keep up with what is happening in our neighborhoods and in the world as a whole. But if we are not mindful of how we use it, it can become a negative. So, I encourage everyone to check in with yourself every so often. Ask yourselves the questions above. Doing so from time to time and re-establishing balance if it has become unbalanced, allows you to keep social media as a positive and allows you to have the kind of life you want to have without something interfering in a negative manner. For more information on how and why social media and technology in general can be a problem in our lives, watch for next week’s article on this topic.

Rochelle Whitson is a psychotherapist in private practice in Temecula, CA. For more articles like this, please subscribe to her website, www.meetme4therapy.com.

Ms. Whitson can be reached by email at meetme4therapy@gmail.com.