Social media has slowly crawled into our lives to become one of the most vital aspects of it in the past few years. Social media addiction has now become an emerging issue
and it may soon turn into a grave one if not curbed at the right time. Let’s take a look at few measures that’ll help you out in the long run!
1. Understand the Issue
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Do you sit on a social media site like Facebook, Twitter, etc. endlessly at a stretch of 4-6 hours refreshing the page over and over again? Do you have no idea why you indulge in that meaningless task for hours without anything productive coming out of it? Beware; you’re slowly turning into a social media addict. The first step is to understand the issue and its magnitude.
2. Understand the Repercussions
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Has something that has occurred on the medium affected you gravely at an emotional level? Have you been pondering over a certain altercation that went down between you and an accomplice on a site which has disrupted your thought pattern? These tend to be the symptoms that point towards social media addiction. Having it affect your day-to-day life reaffirms the impact it is causing over your thinking.
3. Set a Routine
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The first step towards bringing the addiction to a halt is to keep a tab on the amount of time you spend on the sites. Usually addiction is detected when your surfing time starts eating into your work-time or family-time. To avoid that, dedicate a specific time-span that you’d spend on the social networking site on a daily basis. Going ‘Cold Turkey’ and completely shutting out social media networking may not work well and may backfire. To avoid that, set up a timetable and stick to it!
4. Substitute Social Media with a Hobby
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The next step would be to create an equally captivating distraction for yourself, so that you deviate your mind from social media. Pick up a new hobby; revive a hobby that you once cheerfully cherished. Dedicate some of your networking time to it and go ahead. This’ll help you in keeping your mind busy and focused towards something useful and productive and will also assist in slowly easing you out of the social media addiction.
5. Don’t Prioritize
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Never prioritize social media over anything else. Social media has to be the lowest on the priority list. The minute you start prioritizing social media over your job, your family, or your personal health, things start turning ugly. Avoid that. Social media is only a source of entertainment and should be done in your leisure time.