After one month without social media

One month has passed since I started the one month without social media challenge. Honestly, it wasn’t easy at the beginning. However, the challenge’s key was to throw my cellphone away and keep my mind working on other things

One plan

My first action was to uninstall the apps that had less interaction in my life, so bye-bye Threads, X, and LinkedIn.

Next, I set up an app called Digital Wellbeing on my Android to limit my app usage. I allocated 5 minutes for using Instagram and Reddit each day.

Also, I’ve modified the notification configurations on those apps, they now only alert me when a friend has sent me a message.

Lately, I’ve been leaving my cellphone in other rooms to reduce the number of times I check for notifications.

The fruit

This month, I’ve seen a significant change in my digital habits.

Before, I used to check for notifications and then I would open the first social media app I saw. After wasting some minutes, or even hours, I would move on to another social media app. This cycle would continue until I realized that several hours had already passed.

Now that I think about it, I’ve come to realize that I don’t really need some of those apps. In the case of Instagram, helps me communicate with some friends and share memes. As for Reddit, it’s quite different. I use it to get information on multiple specific topics. It’s like my news app, but with a discussion forum style.

Thanks to this challenge, I have been able to reduce the time spent on those apps from an average of 21 hours per week to just 4 hours! (>80%). My next goal is to further reduce this time and reach at least 3 hours per week.