“I can’t believe how much time I waste on Facebook,” a friend told me. “I really should just get rid of it.” My friend isn’t alone. Plenty of people feel they get little value out of social media, and yet they continue to use it more than they would like, often to the detriment of their productivity and their mental and spiritual well-being.
Facebook isn’t the only offender. People throw their hands up at Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and other apps and websites all the time. Still, not everyone wants to quit social media for good.
If you’re not willing to quit cold turkey, you can limit the amount of time you spend on social media per day. For example: “I’ll spend no more than 10 minutes per day on Facebook,” or “I will spend no more than 15 minutes per day on all social media.” The following resources provide advice on how to implement a strategy such as the suggestions mentioned above.
The first resource we’d like to suggest is Digital Wellbeing tips and tools from Google. https://wellbeing.google/ . This is an excellent resource, with tips for individuals and families. It provides some thought-provoking ideas to get you thinking about your use of technology. It also includes helpful instructions on how to set-up the various tools and apps. The downside to this website is that it focuses only on Android phones and other Google-owned products.
The other resource we suggest focuses more on Apple (IOS) devices. https://www.imore.com/how-set-screen-time-your-child. This article is chockful of tips and screenshots that walk you through how to utilize the Screen Time app that is part of the Apple operating environment. It’s written assuming you are doing this for your children’s devices, but you can and should do this for the adult devices as well!
If you already have Qustodio installed on all your devices, then the Digital Wellbeing or Screen Time apps are not necessary – you should be able to set up the monitoring and time limits through Qustodio. However, if you don’t have Qustodio, these are excellent resources you should consider. They are free and already installed on newer Android and IOS devices, so try them out!