If your phone or tablet is always within reach – in your back pocket, at the dinner table or by your bedside – it’s easy to start mindlessly scrolling and clicking, and before you know it, minutes turn into hours.
Here are a few ways to find calmness during stressful times and curb your social media habit:
- Engage in hobbies or activities that don’t involve digital devices such as reading, journaling, painting, gardening, exercising outdoors or playing board games.
- Turn off phone notifications from news outlets. Otherwise, your phone will be dinging every few minutes to alert you to every grim detail of the latest crisis.
- Cut back on your total news consumption. Instead of giving in to the urge to constantly check social media or flip on the TV, set aside one specific time a day to get news updates and limit your time to 20 or 30 minutes.
- Keep your favorite two or three social media apps and delete the rest. A recent study showed that young adults who used 7 to 10 platforms were three times more likely to feel depressed or stressed than those who used none or just a couple platforms.
- Clean up your news feed and unfollow people who post negative content that offends you or makes you feel bad.
- Avoid sharing or commenting on posts that offer questionable health advice, which can spread misinformation on social media.
- When getting health updates, look for trustworthy, internationally recognized sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO).
LEARN MORE. CLICK ON LINK BELOW: